An industry was born that has survived centuries of change and helped connect us all. Two centuries on, railways have transformed our society, the economy and travel.
That was then, and this is now.
Ahead of the 200th anniversary of that first passenger journey, we’re asking what the railway might look like in 2125 or 2225 – and how engineers are laying the track for that future.
Professor Clive Roberts, executive dean in the faculty of science at Durham University and previously visiting professor of railway systems at the University of Birmingham, thinks the biggest visible future change in passengers’ lifetimes will be invisible to the untrained eye. Auto-coupling may be a small tweak, but it could have a significant impact on rail.
“Those sorts of things create convoys,” he says. Some realism is also needed when forecasting the future of rail. “The key point is we’re not going to be able to change the laws of physics,” Roberts says, arguing that strings of digitally linked trains running seconds apart, rather than faster top speeds, will unlock huge gains in capacity and punctuality – both of which are bugbears for the current generation of rail passengers.
Living within limits
Roberts’ point about physics matters. A steel wheel on a steel rail still offers the lowest rolling resistance of any mass-transit mode, but lateral forces, braking distances and signalling headways impose hard ceilings on throughput. The industry’s answer is to compress the gaps between trains using real-time positioning, automatic couplers and moving-block signalling.
“That’s about better acceleration [and] capacity,” he says, warning that shiny, new vacuum-tube concepts receive what could be considered undue “emphasis”, while the humdrum task of squeezing more trains on to the existing network
is the bigger prize.
That’s less a hardware engineering problem and more a software engineering one. After two centuries, the balance of innovation is shifting from physical stuff to bits and bytes. Sensors stitched into bogies, axles and switches can feed machine-learning algorithms that spot faults before they stop trains. Control systems that used to be tied to fixed-block signals can now follow individual vehicles, giving better visibility over how the system is running. And beyond the tracks, journey planners exploit live occupancy data to nudge passengers on to off-peak trains or alternative routes.
A cleaner, greener railway?
Digital control could help smooth out the rush-hour crushes and delays that blight the rail network. But work elsewhere can also make it cleaner. Stuart Hillmansen, professor of railway traction systems at the University of Birmingham, frames this as another great propulsion transition. “Originally, rail vehicles were pushed by people. Then horses were used, and then steam, and then diesel and electric,” he says, noting that truly disruptive shifts have been rare. The current shift is away from carbon.
Battery trains are being adopted, albeit very slowly, in the UK at present. In November 2023, LNER ordered a fleet of tri-mode intercity trains. In November 2024, Hitachi Rail replaced the diesel engine in one of its intercity Class 802 trains entirely with a single 700kW battery.
Following the successful test, which saw the train run on battery power alone for 70km, Jim Brewin, chief director of Hitachi Rail UK and Ireland, said: “Everyone should be immensely proud of creating battery technology that had zero failures during the entire trial. Using our global expertise, Hitachi Rail has created new technology, which means the greenest mode of transport just got greener.”
Hitachi Rail ran one of its intercity trains on battery power for 70km
Hitachi followed Great Western Railway, which set a UK record for the longest distance travelled on battery power alone – 138km – in February 2024.
Initial investment
Others aren’t quite so gung ho about the potential of batteries as Brewin. “I’m slightly sceptical, but people I talk to are very confident about it,” says Christian Wolmar, a rail industry expert. “Electric trains have been around for more than 100 years, and are clearly a more efficient way of doing things. But they require initial investment. It’s particularly difficult at the moment because there are so many stakeholders.”
Evidence for what UK railways could look like in the future can be seen elsewhere. Japan Rail’s fleet of 18 Dencha trains were converted from diesel to battery power between 2016 and 2019, in turn becoming the world’s first fully electric fleet. The model converts AC power it takes from overhead lines to charge on-board batteries.
Hydrogen fuel stock demonstrations such as HydroFlex, which began in 2018 by converting a Class 319 train to run on gas and battery power, and which has managed to surmount Lickey Hill, the steepest mainline incline in the UK, show that on-board fuel cells can extend range without the weight penalty of giant battery packs that Wolmar is worried about.
All of which adds up to the potential decarbonisation of the network. But the timespan for that is less certain. “Over the next 20 to 30 years, we’ll see the move to decarbonise rail, and then in 100 years’ time, people will have fond memories of diesels,” Hillmansen predicts. He sees diesel locomotives surviving only on heritage lines, much as preserved steam engines do today.
Roberts is open-minded about alternative fuels, pointing to ammonia as one fuel source, but believes overhead and third-rail wires will still do most of the heavy lifting. “Electrification will continue wherever it’s appropriate,” he says. Putting up those wires is capital-intensive, as the stark stat that the UK network remains stuck at around 38% levels of electrification shows, but that investment can pay off in the long run. Electric trains cost less to run, accelerate harder and last longer.
Weight, materials and self-healing steel
Finding alternative ways to power locomotives is one of the key areas of engineering innovation, but mass matters on railways too. Take out a tonne from every coach and you can save energy, brake wear and track damage over decades. Roberts expects breakthroughs in “lightweight and perhaps self-healing materials” to migrate from aerospace and automotive into rolling stock.
Advanced alloys that autonomously repair micro-cracks and fibre-reinforced composites that match steel’s strength at half its weight could appear first in frames and door mechanisms before spreading to car bodies, he reckons. Meanwhile, additive manufacturing, including 3D printing, is already creating custom brackets and ducting, cutting lead times for spares from months to hours. Combine that with condition-based maintenance and 200 years down the line, depots may stock fewer parts, needing to order replacements only when digital twins predict failure.
George Stephenson's steam locomotive, pictured at the National Railway Museum, had a top speed of 15mph
But the future is not all techno utopia. While the sector can work hard on improving locomotives and carriages, there is also the track to think about. On mixed-traffic routes, new freight paths and commuter services compete for the same scarce rail lines. The ability to sustain high-speed rail is in part why HS1 and HS2 have struggled to gain ground in the UK. And, while the Shinkansen in Japan regularly tops 200mph, Roberts doubts headline speeds in the UK will get beyond that plateau because energy use rises with the square of velocity.
“Steel wheels on steel track has got an awful lot to beat,” he says, especially when compared with “concrete and tarmac and rubber tyres” or maglev exotica. His verdict on Hyperloop, the capsule-based transportation system that hopes to ferry passengers in low-pressure tubes that ride on a thin layer of air and are powered by magnetic levitation (or maglev) batteries, is guarded scepticism. Evacuating tubes raises costs and risk while serving only a sliver of intercity demand.
Hillmansen is equally wary. “There’s been loads of things like this,” he says, but new transport modes find it difficult to gain ground “when you’re up against something that’s established,” crediting high-speed rail with being “quite a good, established technology” that Hyperloop would have to beat on cost, safety and land-take.
Future scenarios
Where both academics see genuine competition is on medium-distance corridors, which could jeopardise rail’s popularity. The competition doesn’t come from the likes of Hyperloop, but self-driving vehicles. “There will be some real significant competition to rail from autonomous cars and all those sorts of things,” Roberts warns.
Autonomous taxis, which the government says could be on the UK’s roads by 2027, could erode rail’s 50- to 150-mile commuter demand by offering door-to-door convenience without the parking pain. But Hillmansen is less bullish on that. “You always get more bang for your buck in the rail system because it’s less: less land, less energy,” he says, hinting that policies on road pricing and carbon taxes could tip the scales.
All the technology in the world is moot if passengers can’t figure out how to get affordable fares. Hillmansen calls Britain’s current ticketing “enormous” in cost and complexity. “I’d like to see big, big improvements, making that more accessible than it is today,” he says, arguing for friction-free, dynamic pricing modelled on mobile data tariffs.
Great British Railways – assuming that it survives its early years and any changes of government over the next decades – plans pay-as-you-go capping across the network, backed by a central database that treats every operator as one railway.
Roberts sees customer-centric thinking translating into personalised journey offers. Your phone might ask whether you value time, seat comfort or carbon savings most, chaining rail with shared e-bikes or autonomous pods at either end. Gone, he hopes, is the “one-size-fits-all approach to journey planning” that today forces travellers to pick from a small handful of fares.
Organising for innovation
Hillmansen worries organisational silos are limiting the UK’s ability to test new ideas. While he admits to not being an expert on policy, he thinks the centralisation of control of the rail network could be a boon. “If you keep everything in one organisation, you can be more innovative,” he says. Fragmentation, he continues, burdens inventors with interface contracts and safety cases that deter experimentation.
Roberts cautions that the skills pipeline must broaden. Data scientists, cyber-security specialists and AI ethicists now rub shoulders with traditional mechanical and civil engineers. Railway schools within universities are rewriting syllabuses to reflect that change: modules on power electronics, hydrogen chemistry and resilience analytics sit alongside rail-specific law and economics.
If you ask passengers why they still board trains, safety and convenience top the list. Hillmansen insists the industry must guard that reputation. “People aren’t fearful of travelling by train. The chances of catastrophic collisions are as close as we can get to zero,” he explains, warning that one high-profile automated train crash could chill support for the very digital tools meant to boost capacity. Scenario-testing AI therefore should be scrutinised with the same lens that investigates physical failures today.
A familiar yet smarter network
Transport Trevithick or Stephenson forward 200 years in a time machine and – provided you booked them a paper ticket, rather than an e-ticket – they would likely understand how to navigate the UK’s rail system… even if they might wonder where the voice telling them “See it. Say it. Sorted” was coming from.
But would we recognise the railway in 2225 if we last that long? Hillmansen thinks so. “My gut feeling is it will not look suddenly different,” he says. The same tracks and trains could endure because they work. Driverless cars may put a dent in ridership and synthetic fuels may stall electrification. Climate change could redraw the old coastal lines, particularly on the east coast and along the Welsh border. But the basic premise of the rail network would remain.
Trevithick and Stephenson’s innovations highlighted how breakthroughs often hide in plain sight until someone stitches them together to create something novel. Whether the next leap is a convoy of auto-coupled, battery-powered carriages carrying commuters through Birmingham at 30-second intervals, or a hydrogen express cresting the Highlands without a wire in sight, the railway remains a work in progress.
IMechE is making 2025 a Year of Rail – a year-long celebration showcasing the expertise and contributions of railway engineers past and present. Through events, training courses and thought leadership, we’re championing the critical role of engineering in shaping
the railways of tomorrow. Find out more.
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