Travelling around the developed world’s railway systems can feel like time travel. Being whisked between cities at more than 300kph in air-conditioned comfort, passengers can feel as if they have arrived in some happy future existence. But changing on to a regional diesel train, they step into a world little changed in the past 40 years.

Freight customers find some operators provide electronic, internet-based tracking of loads from departure to arrival. Others take weeks to deliver loads and themselves have little more idea where they are than when their locomotives were powered by steam.