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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
On September 27 1825 a steam train crowded with excited passengers travelled 26 miles from Shildon via Darlington to Stockton in north-east England. It broke down on route, and one man fell off and had his foot crushed. But the journey is recognised as the birth of the railway age, which was to transform human mobility, business and social life around the globe.
Two centuries later, trains remain an essential means of transport for many millions of people and billions of tonnes of freight. But the bicentennial celebrations are tinged with regret that in much of the world investment in railways has languished behind roads and air for many decades.
A rail revival is overdue on grounds of environmental sustainability alone: trains, especially powered by green electricity, emit far less pollution per kilometre than cars or planes. A reliable and widely accessible rail network also brings a range of social and business benefits, from reducing individual loneliness and community isolation to increasing economic mobility.
National authorities are beginning to take environmental and social impacts into account when assessing transport projects for investment or planning purposes, but too many decisions are still determined by narrow financial metrics. There is scope to broaden the criteria further to include indirect effects — even if these are hard to quantify.
China stands out for the extraordinary expansion of its high-speed lines, which reached 48,000km at the end of 2024, an estimated two-thirds of the global total. The target for 2030 is 60,000km. The investment, which exceeded $110bn last year, has transformed the country’s connectivity. The core network between big cities is heavily used, though more remote regions reportedly have some “ghost stations”.
Nowhere else has found the political determination and financial resources to build high-speed trains on a scale that comes close to China, but there are some bright spots. Japan continues to upgrade its pioneering Shinkansen network. India has embarked on overdue modernisation of its sprawling railways.
In Europe, Spain stands out for the recent expansion of its high-speed network, now larger than France’s. Swiss trains retain remarkable reliability. In contrast, Germany’s Deutsche Bahn is suffering a crisis of poor punctuality, and Britain’s reputation for rail expertise has been dented by staggering cost overruns on the sadly truncated HS2 line running north-west from London. Much-needed improvements in the regional network are often shunted into the sidings of government indecision.
A priority for Europe is to overcome fragmentation across the continent — a legacy of national railways keen to maintain their own standards and operating procedures. The lamentably slow rollout of the European Train Control System required to run trains smoothly across borders must accelerate. While glamorous high-speed lines attract most public attention, the routine rail infrastructure requires renovation after decades of under-investment. Further electrification is essential; more than 60 per cent of the network is currently electrified in just 10 out of 27 EU countries. Too much passenger and freight traffic is still hauled by dirty diesels.
In the US, the second Trump administration has so far been kinder to Amtrak, the public intercity operator, than many rail advocates had feared — sparing it from budget cuts. Last year Amtrak carried a record 32.8mn passengers, up 15 per cent on 2023, as Americans showed signs of falling back in love with train travel.
With reliable punctuality and affordable fares, surveys show that most travellers would rather take the train than fly or drive for short or medium distances. In the third century of the railway, as many people as possible should be given that option.
