再Heritage railways, December 21st 2013 P76 英国の蒸気機関車
Bigger, faster, more modern：that is what transport planner want, whether they are talking about airports in south-east England or a new railway connecting London with Leeds and Manchester. But the British - especially British boys and men - beg to differ. The mode of transport that is really popular these days is small, slow and old. Britain has fully 108 steam railways；the highest concentrations are in north Wales and the Midlands. In 2011 they carried 7.1m passengers - 25% more than four years earlier. Passenger trips on boring ordinary railways went up by 20% in the same period. Some heritage railways are little more than a few men in overalls tinkering with locomotives. But most are semi-professional, backed by trusts and staffed by volunteers. Some 18,500 people volunteer on steam railways, and the number is rising. As well as tourists, lots of enthralled British children visit. A day at a steam railway is cheaper than taking a family to a theme park, points out Robin Jones, editor of Heritage Railway, one of several specialist magazines that report on extentions to lines and run features with titles like：LNWR Webb Coal Tank No.1054゛. The lines evoke a nostalgia for the time when Britain was the world's workshop. Fences and gangways at the Bluebell Railways in Sussex are plastered with old advertisements for cigarette brands and now-defunct newspapers, including the News of the World. Inadvertently, the heritage railways boost an almost-forgotten government policy. In 2010 David Cameron vigorously promoted the ゛big society゛：a vision of Britain in which local communities band together to run schools, postoffices, transport links and the like. It was going to ゛turn government completely on its head,゛promised the prime minister. Few talk about the big society these days：the wooly idea has been dropped. But in these anachronistic, sooty corners of Britain, it is thriving. Steam railways cast a dimmer light on another big idea. In 2011 ministers hoped that the economy would rebalance from financial services to honest manufacturing：George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, spoke of ゛a Britain carried aloft by the march of the makers゛That has not happened. Britain used to have armies of engineers；in retirement, they run the steam railways. It has so few working ones that big infrastructure projects struggle to recruit enough. Steam railways are a ゛reminder of our industrial heritage,゛says Barry McGuinness, a visitor to the Bluebell Railway, which has just expanded. He means it kindly, his judgement is painfully accurate.
