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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Here’s a great chance for you to put forward your thoughts on how our local railway stations could be improved. Network Rail is asking the public for its opinion on the future of Britain’s 2,000 railway stations, and is offering respondents the chance to win an annual season ticket or £2000 in cash. As owner [...]
When the Northern franchise was let 6 years ago, it was let on what the Department for Transport (DfT) called “Steady State”. What it meant was the franchise would be run with no improvements to services and on the assumption there would be no growth and no new or replacement trains. Thus at the end [...]
An article on Tram/Train appeared in our Summer 2009 “Rail Report”. In brief “tram/train” is a concept where the “trains” involved can run on both conventional (heavy rail) railway lines as well as on tramway systems with their lighter rail and tighter curves. The best example of this is Karlsruhe in Germany, where this has [...]
I went to the fringe meeting on “The future of rail in the north – our vision for travel and the economy” last Monday evening. Chaired by TV Presenter, Andy Crane, the speakers were Cllr Ian Macdonald, GMITA (GMPTA, as was) Vice Chair, Paul Plummer, Director – Planning & Regulation, Network Rail, Edward Timpson, MP [...]
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