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Earthworks are the embankments and cuttings that allow a railway to maintain a certain line, level and grade through the landscape. Earth embankments consist of an engineered bank of earth that carries the railway above the natural ground. A cutting is used to carry the railway through ground with a natural level above the line of the railway. Modern (post 1960s) earthworks are carefully engineered to perform well. However, many railways run on earthworks that were constructed over 100 years ago without the use of mechanised plant. The quality of construction of older earthworks was often poor compared with present-day engineering practice. Ageing of the earthwork structures, and the greater demands of heavier and faster trains and climatic change, means that earthworks suffer ultimate and serviceability failures that can present operational difficulties. Older earthworks that fail or do not perform well require maintenance and repair, and sometimes complete replacement. This chapter explores the main engineering considerations for modern earthworks, and the challenges associated with older earthworks including their modes of failure and upgrade and repair.

Of the three ‘pillars of sustainability’, railways’ initial focus was on the economic pillar, having been developed in the nineteenth century to enable economic development and having struggled in the mid-twentieth century to maintain their economic sustainability in the face of competition from road and air transport. From the 1960s onwards, increased focus on and concern about social and environmental sustainability, together with rail’s comparatively high capacity and low environmental impact, has led to renewed interest in the role of rail in passenger and freight transport. Providing the necessary railway system capacity to enable a significant modal shift from air and (especially) road transport requires major investment, and there is a trade-off between the economic sustainability of these investments and the resulting social and environmental sustainability benefits. However, the railways should also benefit from the increased revenue resulting from improved services and could be supported by additional financial incentives to encourage modal shift. Similarly, there are different philosophies of and approaches to timetable planning and development, ranging from making the most economically sustainable use of resources to the provision of high-frequency, integrated ‘clockface’ timetables, providing passengers and freight users with an attractive range of travel and transport opportunities. Future sustainability, capacity, timetabling and other aspirations are set out in the Rail Safety and Standards Board’s Operational Philosophy for the GB Mainline Railway: these aspirations were developed in the context of Britain’s heavy rail system but are also more generally applicable.

Digital technologies provide an opportunity for the rail sector to achieve social, economic and environmental sustainability, if implemented correctly. Unlocking the full potential of technology, however, will require significant changes beyond the technological. Physical assets will need to link with digital assets, making best use of data, simulation and modelling. Transformational leadership informed by systems engineering will be necessary to deliver the change process required to innovate across the whole railway life cycle. Each of these digital railway elements – technology, data, simulation, transformational leadership and systems engineering – presents challenges to be overcome. The authors believe that by instilling core values alongside technical expertise, by being open, resilient, responsive, customer-centric and valuing people, the digital railway has the power to transform the sector. It will enable improved railway processes; safer, faster and more reliable trains; better customer experience; cost-effectiveness; and reduced carbon emissions and more. The digital railway will not just realise the current vision but form the foundation for a sustainable railway to meet changing mobility needs well beyond 2050.

This chapter begins by outlining the ‘theory’ behind the achievement of a financially sustainable railway, before then examining the realities faced when implementing that theory. This is from the context of the main railway financial outgoings and sources of revenue in both the short- and long-term time horizons. What it suggests is that attainment of such a position has proved to be extremely difficult in practice, with the main reasons for such difficulties outlined and discussed. What is clear, however, is that any such initiatives revolve around the establishment of rigid and robust regulatory and organisational structures that create and maintain a clear separation between state and railway, strongly supported by the ideas of rail financing and rail funding.

This article presents estimates of social-overhead construction in Italy's regions. The new-construction series point to a largely common cycle in non-railway work, and largely idiosyncratic bursts of railway building. Maintenance doubles as an index of the underlying stock, which cannot be calculated from the flows alone; one finds limited convergence, and only in railway infrastructure. Industrial and overall growth are increasingly correlated both with the initial stock, and with its increment. Direct measures of welfare improvements are uncertain, but the relative increases in draftees’ mean heights correlate in particular with social-overhead investment.

This chapter reviews railways with respect to their organisation, regulation and ownership, with particular reference to the reforms undertaken in Great Britain in the mid-1990s. First, with respect to organisation, railways constitute a complex industry that has tended to be dominated by integrated monoliths, often organised hierarchically and reliant on governance by command and control. More recently, countries such as Great Britain have experimented with more fragmented, atomistic structures reliant on governance by contract. Second, since their inception, railways have attracted regulation in terms of varying degrees of public control of fares, service quantity and quality, safety and rates of return. More recently, there has been an emphasis on pro-competition policies with respect to open access services (on the tracks competition) and franchising/concessions (off the tracks competition). Third, in terms of ownership, although many railways originated as private companies, a series of nationalisations meant that by the mid-1990s, most were in public ownership, although there have since been a number of privatisations and experiments with public–private partnerships. The focus of these changes has been mainly on the economic performance of the railways, with relatively little emphasis on social and environmental factors. Where sustainability has been considered, it has been mainly terms of determining organisational and financial structures that can last, with the search for such sustainable structures a continuing process.