Since the very beginning of the railway, fascination has always been directed towards the rolling stock rather than the rails. This is, of course, understandable. Over the past 200 years, rolling stock has become increasingly sophisticated and traffic has grown to unprecedented levels. Yet the rail network in Europe is practically the same as it was in its early days: two tracks, embankments, bridges — nothing has fundamentally changed apart from electrification and colour‑light signalling.
This article explores why this essential segment of the railway has long been sidelined, and what has changed today to finally address that imbalance.
Bitter realities
For many years now, various authorities – as well as public opinion – have been urgently calling for higher train service frequencies as part of the modal‑shift agenda. These perfectly legitimate demands run up against a simple fact: most of the additional services would have to run on a network that has changed very little in the past 150 years. Lines are still double‑track, urban development has hemmed in the railway to the point that widening is no longer possible, and so on. In the best cases, quadruple‑tracking has been achieved, but even that is no longer sufficient. Stations, too, cannot be expanded indefinitely.
