Transport Central

It all started on Sunday evening. The wires came down onto the track at Watford Junction causing all kinds of issues – every single train in and out of London Euston was cancelled. As I personally travelled on Sunday evening, I was witness to a complete lack of information and problems all over the railway network. Passengers were being diverted to London Marylebone to catch the train to Birmingham Moor Street and change there.

The Chiltern service connects reasonably well at both Banbury and Leamington Spa to CrossCountry’s Birmingham New Street and Manchester Picadilly service thus preventing the need for the walk from Birmingham Moor Street and New Street in sub-zero temperatures. This, was not mentioned however. There were delays en-route due to a trespasser on the line on the Chiltern route and big delays on the route via Coventry due to a cracked rail. 

Read more »

Newly elected London Mayor, Boris Johnson, announced the implementation of one of the key pledges of his election manifesto yesterday, for which London voted for by a majority of approximately 140,000 combined preference votes. It has, however, come under a sustained attack from unions fearing that their members will have to approach members of the public consuming alcohol to have to deal with it.

There will be no powers to deal with the incident until the Conditions of Carriage for London transport have been amended, a process which will take about a year according to The Times in a news article released this evening. There will, reportedly, not be regular patrols of carriages by Transport for London or British Transport Police officials but there will be the recruitment of 440 community support officers to assist with any disorder related incidents.

Read more »

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) has approved the recently unveiled Network Rail delivery plan as detailed in March 2008. The ORR considers the delivery plan sufficiently robust for the completion of the modernisation work by the end of 2008. The aim of the work is to allow the number of services to run to increase by 30% and also allow for much improved journey times.

The work is going ahead in the way Network Rail desires despite protests from the Train Operating Companies that use the Main Line for its passenger and freight services. There will be disruption to routes at all bank holidays and most weekends until the end of the year meaning the challenge to passengers and the desirability of traveling via rail will be much reduced.

Read more »

Although the overhead line problems affecting the West Coast Main Line have been fixed, there is now another, separate issue affecting the area between Tring and Leighton Buzzard which all Virgin Trains to and from London Euston go through. This is causing delays of up to one hour and the odd cancellation.

A quick look at the live departure boards reveals that the London Euston to Liverpool Lime Street 11:07 is currently running an hour late, as is the 11:56 London to Glasgow service. These issues are also affecting London Midland causing delays of up to thirty minutes on some services. Network Rail have no estimate as to when a normal service will be resumed.

Read more »

UPDATE: This action has been suspended pending further discussions. 

South West Trains are facing industrial action in the form of strikes due to Aslef members voting to reject a 4.5% pay increase. The strike action is planned for four days: 31 March, 1 April, 2 April and 3 April. South West Trains say they have met with the union informally today in an effort to avoid the action.

The company is planning to run a limited service and use replacement bus services for other services where possible. In a statement on its website the company’s Managing Director, Stewart Palmer, said:

“We regret the significant disruption this will cause to our passengers and we reassure them that we will do everything we can to avoid this strike taking place However if they do go ahead we will pull out all the stops to run as many trains and buses as we can.

“We are very disappointed that ASLEF has taken this decision as we believe that this is a very good offer in the current economic climate.”

Read more »

It will come as little surprise to those of us who use the railways on a regular basis that the government is not really interested in improving the network beyond what exists today. While the government continues to consider railway investment as ‘subsidy’ and ‘cost’ there is little hope of this ever changing in times of such great need.

There are to be no rail reopenings considered except at local authority level for the next seven years, the electrification decision has been postponed again, there will be no decision on a new north-south high speed line until 2012 at the earliest, and there is little forward thinking and guidance from the Department for Transport in these matters. It, therefore, comes, also, as no surprise that ‘investment’ in roads is talked about quite a lot.

The Times ran a very interesting article detailing this phenomenum: the road network is growing fifteen times faster than the railway network. According to The Times, “In five of the past eleven years, no track was added to the domestic rail network, and in the peak years for rail growth, in 2001 and 2002, the network grew by only six miles a year.” Reopenings have happened in Wales and Scotland, however. The Highways Agency has 40 new projects in the planning stages and the only seriously considered railway project is Crossrail which only benefits London and the surrounding area.

Read more »

Train operator First Great Western (FGW) received a formal notice from the government that the company is in breach of its franchise agreement as to the number of train cancellations.

The DfT served FGW with a remedial plan notice to improve services. First Great Western was regularly at the very bottom in the punctuality statistics.

Only last month FGW doubled the compensation paid to season ticket holders and apologised for delivering a poor service over the previous 12 months.

Passenger group “More Train Less Strain” staged another fare strike in the Bristol area in protest of First Great Western’s fare increases on 2 January 2008 which saw the cost of some of the most overcrowded routes increase by up to as much as 10%.

Read more »

UPDATE: The strike action has been called off for the present time so a normal service will run on the 28th and 29th of February.

National Rail reports of proposed industrial action by ASLEF on London Midland services on 28 and 29 February 2008. Read more »

The 11.5 mile link between Skipton and Colne was one of the many sad casualties of the rapid reduction of the network after the war. Although Beeching had recommended the line to stay open as a terminus from Preston, it did end up being the line to be closed to and from Skipton.

Read more »