Message #174194

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Everybody makes choices in their lives as to what they wish to do.

I left school and did an electrical apprenticeship, but a few years later went to work for the old Mechanical Branch of New Zealand Government Railways. That turned out to have been a very good decision, because I ended up as a locomotive engineer, and a few years later locomotive engineers ended up being in short supply worldwide and in recent years with the huge world-wide expansion in the rail transport industry, that has meant that the laws of supply & demand have served me really well as far as wages and conditions go. That, and belonging to a strong, democratic trade union which actually carries out the policies the membership demand of them, because the union officials are up for re-election every couple of years and they know they'll be replaced if they fail to carry out the policies the membership want.

Do you know that the Chinese are even running freight trains all the way from their industrial cities in the east of China to a freight distribution centre near London? They started that service in January this year and have had to considerably increase the number of trains on that route to keep up with demand. The Channel Tunnel has opened up opportunities for those sorts of ventures and the Chinese are the people who are seizing the opportunities created. The Chinese are calling that service the “New Silk Road” and it works both ways, with shipments of whisky from Scotland being amongst UK goods being transported by rail to China. No doubt the maritime shipping companies won't like what the Chinese are doing using rail transport.