The change would save Britain £3.5 billion and 12 million metric tons of carbon emissions – or the equivalent of taking 80,000 internal combustion cars off the road – over 35 years.

It's also the equivalent of planting a forest across an area the size of the Isle of Man and saving 1.8 million litres of diesel fuel per year.

Siemens Mobility's new Train Functioning Facility in Goole, East Riding of Yorkshire, would manufacture the new locomotives that are called "bi-mode" trains, which can run on battery charge or from the electrified wires that already exist above the British railways.