Wednesday 7 January 2009

Ghost bus

This from The Times...

"The 'ghost bus' runs simply to allow the Government to escape the embarrassment of admitting that it has closed several sections of railway in West London to passenger trains."

Network Rail did a splendid job yesterday of closing the rest...


Ozymandi'm back again

Thought for the day

As a 110 mile/h TSR is imposed on the WCML fast lines between Euston and Rugby, Iain (WCML Job Done) Coucher might recall these lines of Kipling:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre.


Mystic Wright

This in today's FT...

Virgin demands rail reliability

A spot of prescient reporting by Mr Wright.

The 25kv Group

Telegrammed by 222 Marylebone Road
The current daily, or even twice daily, major failures of the overhead line electrification on the WCML are statistically so improbable that they cannot be attributed to normal maintenance errors.

Interestingly they are clustered at the southern end of the route.

Conspiracy theorists suggest that the cause may be sabotage!

Perhaps by a renegade group of DafT civil servants with the dual aim of discrediting electrification and justifying investment in the ludicrous dual powered IEP?

UPDATE: Tom from Blairwatch writes...

Nonsense.

It's Boris Johnson and his transport team campaigning to discredit those nasty bendy foreign trains preparatory to holding a competition to design a 21st century Britannia Pacific.

Perhaps the Tornado team need to clear their diaries...


An end to electrification woes

Telegrammed by Barry Spotter
Worried about pulling down the wires?

Concerned that you might have to rebuild dozens of bridges and lower the floors of tunnels?

Well worry no more, for the Southern has the answer!

It's the all-old, all-tried, tested and almost-nearly-sometimes completely reliable in snow and ice Juice Rail!

Why spend silly money on dangling bits of 25Kv-fed wire across the scenery when you can keep drivers and track-workers nervous for longer with 750dc on the floor?

Contact the Southern Region General Offices, Waterloo Station, for further details.

Remember - it's sunnier down South!


Electrification - An apology

Railway Eye would like to apologise to readers for past stories that may have given the impression that we believed further electrification of the railway to be a good thing.

Headlines such as 'Diesel disaster', 'Moron of the same' and 'Hoon you're an idiot' may also have led readers to believe that procuring additional diesel vehicles for the network was a bad idea.

In light of yet another complete balls up on the West Coast Mainline this morning Railway Eye now acknowledges that Network Rail and it's contractors couldn't be trusted to run a piss up in a brewery, let alone manage the existing wiring on Britain's most expensive railway.

Therefore it also seems highly unlikely that they would be competent enough to preside over an expansion of electrified route miles.

Railway Eye apologises for any confusion previous articles may have caused.