2021年经济学人 火车，与现代化抗衡的铁轨（在线收听）

Britain

英国版块

Trains——Railing against modernity

火车，与现代化抗衡的铁轨

The meaning of rural railway lines

乡村铁路的意义

IN THE SILENT ticket office, beneath the half-moon windows of the booths, a large green sign announces “OKEHAMPTON” to an empty room.

在售票亭的半月窗下，一个空荡荡的房间里挂着一个巨大的绿色牌子，上面写着“奥克汉普顿”。

On the platform, a faded poster reads "DEVON—Travel by rail".

站台上，一张褪色的海报上写着“德文郡——乘火车旅行”。

Those reading it have had little chance to do so.

那些看到它的人几乎没有机会这样做。

The last passenger train left Okehampton on June 3rd 1972.

最后一列旅客列车于1972年6月3日离开奥克汉普顿。

The town turned out to mourn: the mayor stood by, holding a wreath.

镇上的人们纷纷哀悼：市长手捧花环站在一旁。

On the line, between the sleepers, the grass started to grow.

在这条线上，枕木之间，草都开始长出来了。

But Okehampton is changing.

但奥克汉普顿正在发生变化。

New steel tracks gleam beneath the platform; diggers toil in the car park.

新的钢轨在站台下闪闪发光；挖掘机在停车场里辛勤工作。

The station is being reopened as part of the government's "Restoring Your Railway" fund, launched in January last year to keep a manifesto promise.

该站正在重新开放，作为政府去年一月启动的“修复铁路”基金的一部分，目的是信守宣言承诺。

The aim of the scheme is, as the transport secretary Grant Shapps explained, to "reverse catastrophic cuts to the rail network primarily led by the Beeching axe".

正如交通部长格兰特·夏普斯解释的那样，该计划的目的是“扭转由比奇铁路停运潮带来的铁路网的灾难性削减”。

Some 141 bids have been made; 25 have been successful.

大约有141次投标，其中25次成功。

Okehampton is the first to reopen.

奥克汉普顿是第一家重新开业的。

Eleven miles of track have been laid with Brunellian briskness in four weeks.

在四周内，布鲁内利快速地铺设了11英里的铁轨。

The first train arrives on November 20th at 7.10am.

第一班火车将于11月20日上午7点10分到达。

In 1963 a report by Richard Beeching, chairman of the British Railways Board, earmarked 5,000 miles of track and 2,363 stations for closure.

1963年，英国铁路委员会主席理查德·比奇在一份报告中提出要关闭5000英里的铁轨和2363个车站。

To this day, it is seen less as a piece of bureaucracy than as an act of "infamy"; its cuts "a wound that hasn't healed", according to Stewart Francis, a former chairman of the Rail Passengers' Council.

据铁路乘客委员会前主席斯图尔特·弗朗西斯称，到今天为止，它仍然被视为一种“耻辱”，而不是一种官僚主义；铁路的伤口是一个“尚未愈合的伤口”。

On the Beeching "wound", Okehampton's 11 miles of shiny new track are a mere sticking plaster.

在比奇的“伤口”上，奥克汉普顿11英里长的闪闪发光的新轨道只不过是一块橡皮膏。

But to see this in terms of pure numbers is to miss the point.

但是如果只看数字，并没有抓住问题要害。

More than sleepers and steel were lost.

损失的不止是枕木和钢材。

"Railways have a strange position in the British psyche,"says John Preston, a professor of rail transport at the University of Southampton.

南安普顿大学的铁路运输学教授约翰·普雷斯顿说：“铁路在英国人心目中的地位很奇怪。”

"A lot of rural lines disappeared that were emblematic of a way of life…for which there was a lot of nostalgia,"he notes.

他还提到：“许多象征着一种生活方式的乡村线路消失了……许多人对此有怀旧之情”。

The new line is less about travelling through Devon than about travelling through time.

这条新线路与其说是穿越德文郡，不如说是穿越时间。

Lots of infrastructure is prosaic.

很多基础设施都是平淡无奇的。

In Britain trains become poetry, their lines not just crossing the land, but running on into the literature of Robert Louis Stevenson, John Betjeman and W.H.Auden.

在英国，火车变成了诗歌，它们的诗句不仅穿越了大地，还与罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森、约翰·贝杰曼和奥登的文学作品交织在一起。

Restoring railways nods to this fictional England, a place of branch lines and straight backs, railway porters and station masters; an England paused, like the train in Edward Thomas's poem "Adlestrop", in the late June of national memory.

恢复铁路是对文学作品中的英格兰致敬，这个地方有支线和直背，有铁路搬运工和站长；就像爱德华·托马斯诗歌《阿德勒斯特罗普》中的火车一样，英格兰的国民记忆在六月下旬停了下来。

But poetry, while nice, has never been particularly profitable.

但是，诗歌虽然很好，但从来没有特别赚钱。

It remains to be seen whether these lines will be.

这些线路将会发展成什么样还有待观察。

There could hardly be a worse time for them to open: in the first covid-19 lockdown passenger numbers fell by around 90% and "the post-covid demand path is not yet clear", says Mr Preston.

普雷斯顿说，对他们来说，这几乎是最糟糕的开放时机：在第一次新冠肺炎封锁中，乘客数量下降了90%左右，而且这条线路的后续需求还不清楚。

Still, in Okehampton the locals seem pleased.

尽管如此，奥克汉普顿的当地人似乎很高兴。

Becky Tipper, the Network Rail manager in charge of the reopening, was surprised when, as her workers started laying the track, "a crowd of people" turned out once again.

让负责重新开通的铁路网经理贝基·蒂珀感到惊讶的是，她的工人们开始铺设铁轨时，“一群人”再次出现。

This time, no wreaths. Instead, says Ms Tipper, they started clapping.

蒂珀女士说，这一次，没有花环，只有掌声。