After 200 years, Britain’s railways are preparing for the future

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Few technologies make it to two centuries of existence without some changes, and Britain’s railways are no different.

The country celebrated the 200th anniversary of rail transport in 2025, but the locomotives and carriages that ferry 1.7 billion passengers a year across the UK, alongside freight on wagons every day, wouldn’t look all that out of place to some of the rail network’s early luminaries. So what does the future hold for the UK’s rolling stock?

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Even if the impetus was there for engineers to overhaul railways from scratch, pragmatism prevents that. Trains will still broadly look like trains in the future, says Paul Allen, director of the Institute of Railway Research at the University of Huddersfield. The UK’s loading gauge limits size, and steel wheels on steel rails remain the most mechanically efficient way to get people around, while alternatives such as hyperloop and maglev don’t add up on practicality and cost – at least not yet.

“While it looks ancient having a big steel wheel set running on steel rails, it’s actually a very efficient mechanical system,” Allen says – and we haven’t yet found a better alternative.