I spot the beginnings of circular economy ideas everywhere. There’s many more repair and second hand ideas in the consumer world, but it’s also happening with large items as well.

JP loved and loves these old London Underground District line trains: the D78 stock (photo via wiki, below ).  Unfortunately for him, these were replaced by new stock (the S-stock).

JP has been in deep mourning ever since. Our family is given >38 reminders day about this situation, and it can really impact us and him, mentally.

There are two pieces of fantastical hope. One piece is that there are two modified D78 stocks sitting as rail adhesion trains at Neasden depot, NW London. In old satellite pictures from google earth, you can see them there. He yearns for the day they may appear on the District line. Another smaller piece is that some of the D78 stock went west to Vivarail.

Vivarail are upcycling these D78 trains and putting them back in service. A circular economy idea! Vivarail are attempting battery powered trainsas well for those lines that are not electrified.

A few upcycled D78 trains have made it to this small railway line: the Marston Vale Line. This line travels between Bletchley (famous for code cracking) and Bedford and passes through a number of quirky English places. (According to wiki) The line is a remnant of the former Varsity line between Oxford and Cambridge, most of which was closed in the late 1960s, although the line is to be adopted and upgraded as part of East West Rail, a project to re-establish the Oxford–Cambridge route. (I’ve seen the site on the Cambridge side which may open between 2026 - 2028 (depending on delays etc.)  This will be a piece of under pinning infrastructure that - I think - would reinforce the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle of “innovation agglomeration”.

Eg, look what we managed to build in Cambridge over the last few year (and plenty of room for more).

As an international aside…Two two-car battery D-trains have also been shipped to America (Penslyvania) where they are being used by Railroad Development Corp (a Vivarail shareholder) to demonstrate its ‘pop-up metro’ concept for providing ‘lower cost, lower risk, faster start’ passenger services on under-utilised railways. The thinking behind Pop Up Metro seems to be that it would reduce the risk of any real estate/infrastructure development projects and reduce the time taken to prove and implement a project (from-scratch implementation would ordinarily take longer than a political cycle). [That’s what the rail journals are suggesting, at least]

Recently, we went to visit the Marston Vale line. In some ways it caused as much trauma as joy, as these are converted D78s and not in their original state. But these trains have >30 years of life left in them (and are 35+ years old). They are comfortable and they work.

The Marston Vale line embodies several ideas I’m interested in:

• the infrastructure that powers the positive agglomeration of place based innovation

• circular economy upcycling of material intense items, such as trains

• connecting niche pieces of history and culture to our wandering transport interests

This is a slice of the steady march of progress. Its interconnectedness. Its current, past and future.