It’s probably obvious to most of my colleagues that I am more than a little fond of our amazing railway models collection. And a less well known area of that collection are the concept models, made to promote the benefits of new designs.

We’ve recently acquired the concept model above, which is of one of the rarer examples of railway traction – a locomotive that was never built.

The model of the InterCity 250 is one of the few physical remnants of a scheme that, had British Rail had their way, would have revolutionised high speed rail in the UK almost 10 years before Virgin’s Pendolinos appeared on the scene. The InterCity 250 model was used in the publicity photo below:

In 1994, British Rail boldly stated their aims for the future of passenger travel:

“The two key words that will really decide InterCity’s future are ‘civilised’ and ‘speed’.”

The proposed high speed train illustrates the extent of InterCity’s ambition, before it was privatised along with the rest of British Rail in 1994. The locomotive concept was devised by design company Seymour Powell, who incidentally designed the famous Lynx deodorant can along with a host of other instantly recognisable designs.

According to contemporary articles by the Design Journal Magazine, the designer strove to come up with a concept for a train that would “make small boys want to become train drivers once more”. According to contemporary accounts, no concept drawings were created, which may go some way towards explaining why the only available images of the design are based on the model we have acquired.

By the late 1980s, Britain was casting an envious eye towards France where the TGV (Train Grande Vitesse) was revolutionising long distance travel. There was also a sobering realisation within British Rail that any new high speed trains were going to have to run on existing tracks, which were essentially forged in the 19th century. This combination of factors provided the spark for the ill fated IC250 concept.

Running at speeds of up to 155 miles an hour (250kph), these trains, British Rail hoped, would make UK high speed rail the equal of any in Europe. Passengers would be cosseted in boutique hotel style interiors, far superior to anything they would hope to find on the London to Glasgow air shuttle. The InterCity 250 project would involve track and signalling modernisation and complete re-electrification. British Rail also envisaged the IC250 trains running on the East Coast Main Line where their full potential could be unleashed due to the more forgiving terrain on the line.

British Rail were confident enough in the Intercity 250 plan to declare in 1994 that: “the train of the future: the 160mph IC250 is designed and ready”. But not built. Full interior and exterior designs were mocked up, but the trains never progressed beyond the concept stage, and the recently acquired model is valuable evidence of how the last trains designed for British Rail would have appeared.

So what went wrong? Some railway observers see privatisation as the main obstacle in the path of higher speed InterCity trains. Others argue that the concept was always bound to fail and was used to lure prospective purchasers of the InterCity business.

Whatever the truth, the failure of the IC250 meant that passengers on the West Coast Main Line had to endure ageing and increasingly unreliable trains until the introduction of Virgin’s fleet of Pendolino high speed tilting trains in 2002.