Getting water from Scotland to London

Let's think of our railways in the UK in a new and different way. Let's turn them into utility highways.

What if the Railway lines became a utilities highway?
Much of our telephone network already uses phone lines that are part of our railway track system.

There is currently a big row about megapylons to get power from Inverness to Edinburgh. Funnily enough there is a railway line that goes from Inverness to Edinburgh that needs to be elctrified. Is it beyond British engineers ability to add some additional power cables to the gantries - no of course it isn't. The mega-pylons proposed could then be smaller pylons that cause less offence.

The idea gets better: The common thing between railways lines and water pipelines is they both avoid steep hills. We could lay a pipe alongside the railway track that links reservoirs from North to South of the country (and east to west). The same power cables that are in the overhead gantries can provide power to pumping stations to pump the water.

This would allow water to be pumped from reservoir to reservoir overnight and we could get water to the South East or anywhere there was a water shortage anytime we wanted.

Now that would be vision!

It requires our politicians to bring people together: National rail with the electricity companies and the water companies - and persuade them to cooperate with each other. We'd have truned the railways into a utilities distribution network - not just transport but water and power as well as telecommunications.

It could all be done for a tenth of the money wasted going to war in Iraq.