Posted on July 12th, 2010, by The Chairman
We’ve been a bit (a lot!) slow in the UK in following the cycling examples set by a number of our northern European neighbours – Sweden, Belgium and Holland come to mind.
But now, the new impressive cycle point at Leeds is about to open.
Elsewhere in the UK, there are variations on the cycle point theme.
Here’s [...]
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Posted on July 7th, 2010, by The Chairman
The Railway all over Britain seems to struggle to effectively communicate with passengers when planned replacement buses are running.
We know that a few years ago, ATOC (the Association of Train Operating Companies) set up a working group to come up with a solution to this problem. I was interviewed as part of the research. [...]
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Posted on April 22nd, 2010, by The Chairman
According to the BBC News website, UK train and bus operator Arriva has agreed to be taken over by Germany’s Deutsche Bahn in a deal worth £1.59bn. Shareholders will now be asked to give their approval.
It’s a strange privatised railway in this country.
Chiltern Railways, Wrexham & Shropshire, Cross Country and the Welsh franchise, together [...]
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Posted on April 19th, 2010, by The Chairman
Most readers will be aware of our tram/train blog and our question – “Why are we waiting?” Here’s the link.
MCRUA member, Jim Harkins, FCILT, is Managing Director of consultancy Light Rail (UK) Limited. In January, Jim gave a presentation at Macclesfield Town Hall entitled “The Case for and Applications of TramTrain (a low [...]
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Posted on April 16th, 2010, by The Chairman
Last November, following a dinner I was invited to at which Lord Adonis was the speaker, I put together a post speculating on when we were likely to get some more and newer trains.
I was invited to attend Northern’s meeting for Stakeholders last Tuesday. They were able to give us an update on how [...]
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Posted on March 11th, 2010, by The Chairman
The outline of the proposed route for “High Speed 2″, the TGV-style line proposed to the West Midlands and then northwards, was announced today.
According to a press release, Lord Adonis said:
“I am today publishing HS2 Ltd’s report together with the Government’s proposed high speed rail strategy, which is based on HS2 Ltd’s analysis.
In summary, this [...]
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Posted on February 16th, 2010, by The Chairman
Network Rail today announced their proposals following the completion of “The Manchester Hub” study into providing faster, more frequent and more reliable journeys right the way across northern England.
The study was established at the request of the then minister, following detailed work carried out by The Northern Way, the association of Regional Development Agencies in [...]
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Posted on February 10th, 2010, by The Chairman
Many of you are aware that one of the biggest problems underlying reliability that the railway is having to cope with these days is metal thieves stealing signalling cables.
Here’s an article published recently by our friends in The Middlewich Guardian.
If you spot anything suspicious on the railway, ring British Transport Police on
0800 40 50 40.
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Posted on January 12th, 2010, by The Chairman
Andrew Macfarlane comments:
We’ve been familiar with the concept of “Sunday engineering work” for many years. Sunday was and is the day chosen to do much essential engineering work on the railways because there is less freight traffic on a Sunday and traditionally fewer passengers use rail services.
However a phenomenon which crept in with rail [...]
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Posted on November 19th, 2009, by The Chairman
Many of you will have heard that with the announcement of the electrification between Liverpool and Manchester with services to be running from 2013, the order for 202 extra diesel carriages for Northern Rail was quietly cancelled.
The justification for this from Lord Adonis, Secretary of State for Transport, was that we should not be ordering [...]
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