Smash hit

That, it transpires, is not the full extent of Swiss ingenuity. At major terminals, all incoming trains arrive a few minutes before all outgoing trains (and buses) leave, minimising the time that passengers wait for connections. A few years back, when John Prescott was blustering on about an “integrated transport system”, this was presumably the sort of thing he had in mind. We will never know for sure.

But isn’t such a perfectly co-ordinated timetable fiendishly difficult to calculate? “It takes a little time,” Grossenbacher acknowledges, with a modest smile. “But the beauty is, once you have planned an hour, you have planned a whole year. Of course, you must also have control of the entire network.” And that, too, is a thought that will recur with ominous regularity in our conversation.

We board the Manchester train. This will take us up the troubled West Coast main line — the infuriatingly tedious route that happens to link half a dozen of Britain’s biggest cities. Once upon a time this line was to have been upgraded, high-speeded and generally magic-wanded for the comparatively tolerable cost of £2.5 billion. Then, for reasons lost in the mists of time, the cost soared to an amazing £10 billion plus.

Now, thanks to Winsor’s proposed curbs, a large part of that modernisation appears to have been shunted into the train-shed labelled “maybe, someday”. Virgin, the main train operator on the line, is demanding compensation because it has already invested £1 billion in developing high-speed trains — and the whole project is tottering.

As it happens, the Swiss have also been expanding 200 miles of their inter-city network, as part of a massive modernisation project called Rail 2000. And as you can probably guess, their scheme was painstakingly planned and has been flawlessly realised for just £2.4 billion — some 20 per cent under budget.

Grossenbacher is courteous enough to say that there are “real difficulties” about the West Coast line. “It has to fulfil too many purposes: carrying freight trains, fast trains, slow trains. That’s too ambitious. Our new inter-city lines are reserved for fast passenger trains by day and freight by night. No regional trains: there is no space in the timetable.”

But the other problem with huge infrastructure projects in Britain, Grossenbacher believes, is that our over-fragmented rail network is incapable of sustaining a long-term project. “In my country, Rail 2000 was planned for years,” Grossenbacher says. “But in Britain it doesn’t make sense for the rail companies to have long-term plans. They don’t know from one year to another if they will get the money, or even if they will still have a franchise when the planned work is complete.”

Grossenbacher suddenly glances out of the carriage window. “Ooh, look at that bush!” he cries. “Much too near the track. And those trees too. That’s why you English get your famous leaves on the line!” How do the Swiss deal with trees near the railway? “Cut them back each year, of course!” he replies, as if I have asked a really stupid question. Which, I suppose, I have done.

We reach Manchester’s spanking new Piccadilly Station. Grossenbacher nods approvingly at the bright, clean concourse. “No obscure corners, no sense of threat,” he notes. But then he sniffs the air. “Oh dear, the diesel fumes stay trapped in these covered stations, don’t they?” In Switzerland, diesel engines are practically extinct. The whole passenger network was converted to electricity 70 years ago. In Britain, we will be lucky if that happens in our lifetime.

Then Grossenbacher examines the profusion of retail outlets around the concourse. He frowns when he spots an amusement arcade full of teenagers. “I understand that Network Rail must maximise its income, but a casino in a railway station? Such places do not have a good reputation in Switzerland. We would not allow it. Most people in there would not have a train ticket, I think.”

He moves into the ticket booking hall, and starts counting heads. “Hmm. Five people serving, 40 customers waiting,” he announces. “At SBB we say there should be no queue longer than two people.”

Perhaps, I suggest, this queue is so long because, with the British railways now offering seventy different types of ticket, customers are so bewildered that the booking-clerk usually has to spend time explaining the options. “That’s not optimum,” Grossenbacher notes, in what is possibly the understatement of the year.