CENTRE POINT
The Fort William sleeper should have Vote for Me blazoned along its side
SIMON JENKINS
Ai old Treasury game is to guess where in Britain has the highest subsidy per square yard. Strong runners have included a field of East Anglian wheat, a stalls seat at the Royal Opera and the deck of the First Sea Lord's yacht. Until last week I had forgotten about the Fort William sleeper.
This incomparable boon to the walking and stalking classes is being ended, to pre- pare for privatisation. A single berth appar- ently costs the tax-payer £450 per passenger trip, over and above the ticket price of £140. At roughly eight feet by five, that takes some beating for generosity by the many to the few.
The Fort William sleeper is one of those corner-stones of British life that we never knew we needed until told it is to go. We felt the same about that other local institu- tion, the Argyll and Sutherland High- landers — when the Argylls went the Fort William sleeper could not be far behind. I often used the train to enjoy the glories of Loch Linnhe and tramp the slopes of Glen Coe in the autumn. It was rarely even a quarter full. The average occupancy in win- ter is 18 people, and only 36 even in sum- mer. The service is a magnificent extrava- gance. It would be cheaper for British Rail to fly passengers to Glasgow and hire them a car and chauffeur.
That does not stop the supposed guardians of the public purse howling every time such subsidies are withdrawn. The Liberal MP Alan Beith once demanded the retention of the Edinburgh sleeper to get him back to his constituency after late- night votes. British Rail calculated that on some nights it would have been cheaper to lend him the royal train. To Mr Beith it did not matter; it was just taxpayers' money.
The Fort William sleeper is a political phenomenon. It is like the mid-Wales line, saved from Beeching because it ran through six marginal constituencies on its way from Swansea to Shrewsbury. It runs still. Whenever we cast aspersions on the antics of Italian or Spanish politicians, we should remember that delightful train trundling its empty carriages up from Llan- dovery to Builth and Knighton. It should have Vote for Me blazoned along its side.
Overnight trains are like ocean liners. They are the romantic face of transport. The snatched conversation at the bar, the surreptitious creep down the corridor, the awakening in a different land, the pulling back of the blind to see snow-capped mountains and crofters with pipes and sporrans: these are British Rail's answer to moonlight at sea and a kiss on the after- deck. Love-making on a modern sleeper may demand the skills of a contortionist, but the idea evokes a leisurely past and, we like to hope, a leisurely future. One day we all mean to use the Fort William sleeper. One day. So could the Government please run it until we do?
British Rail cannot win these battles. The Settle-Carlisle line was financially indefen- sible until it was proposed for closure. The public promptly poured onto it, for a while. The Fort William sleeper will take more determined saving. Yet the Times described it as a 'vital link' to Scotland, whose ending would 'question the entire viability of rural lines north of Glasgow' (it would surely assist their viability). Alan Clark said its closure would reduce Scotland to 'colonial status'. A local action group said it would `devastate the local economy'. To the Scots- man's former editor, Magnus Linklater, it would be a 'hammer blow to the Highlands' requiring a revival of his father's much- feared Scottish Vigilantes and their anti- Beeching Macpuff campaign.
This is all insane. Some time ago British Rail was criticised for sidetracking the Fort William sleeper in favour of the more pop- ular Inverness one. It was an adjunct of the Inverness service. Now the Fort William train runs direct from Euston, with new rolling-stock, at a slower constant speed and with shock-absorbent couplings, all to help the delicate sleeping habits of the modern traveller. Yet this is described as a cruel BR ploy to increase losses on the line and justify killing it. The staff, who have no conceivable interest in closure, are also accused of '''being deliberately rude and unhelpful to the same end.
What is undeniably outrageous is that closure is so clearly linked with the most ham-fisted of all recent privatisations. Under Margaret Thatcher, British Rail was forced to sell off its profitable assets, including property, ships, hovercraft, hotels and anything that might raise ready cash to reduce the public borrowing requirements. Nobody cared if it damaged the railway's value for privatisation. Under John Major, the opposite is happening. Privatisation value is all. Today anything unprofitable is stripped out, for fear of scaring off poten- tial purchasers. Because of the smallness of the 25 proposed franchises, cross-subsidy is ruled out. Hence the demise of Motorail and the Fort William sleeper. This is not BR's doing but that of the Government's franchising director, Roger Salmon, des- perate to push as many services as possible in the direction of surplus.
An obvious solution for the campaigners is to demand of Mr Salmon that the sleeper be declared a separate subcontract, like the Orient Express or the Royal Scotsman. Then they can approach Alan Clark and ask him to chair a bid from a Fort William Sleeper Users Committee to buy the train lock, stock and carriage. He is a noted pri- vatiser and might care to put his money into the new company. If he believes 'colo- nial status' is at hand, this is a serious mat- ter. The rail regulator can be asked to ensure a low track charge.
The campaigners can then all buy deben- tures plus an agreed number of tickets each week. Provided they pay up, they will have the comforting feeling that every night a warm berth is chugging the length of the land with their name on the door. For this I am sure Mr Clark and his colleagues would expect no subsidies from the tax-payer. I reckon it will cost them the same each year as renting a house in Eaton Square.
Simon Jenkins writes for the Times.
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