Thursday 16 July 2009

Setback for Adonis, DafT and NXEC

This just in from our man on the frontline at the Battle of the Barriers...

Listed Building Consent application rejected by the City of York at Committee today, despite officer recommendation for approval.

A breakthrough!

Perhaps the other NXEC gating schemes could now also be quietly buried, along with the franchise?

UPDATE: This from the BBC.

2009 Railway Garden Competition #9 - Chester (again)

This from the Chester Chronicle...

FORMER Beirut hostage Terry Waite has criticised the state of Chester’s Railway Station.

He wrote: “Normally I visit by car but recently I decided to travel by train. I was totally depressed by the state of the railway station.

“Large weeds were growing between the tracks and the station, potentially a beautiful building, looked absolutely dreadful."

If only NR and ATW had paid attention to this and this!

Eye is sure the former Archbishop's Special Envoy will forgive this paraphrasing of Holy Writ:

What did you go out into Chester to see? A reed swayed by the wind?

Pointless signs #5

Pointless signs #4

2009 Railway Garden Competition #8

This offering from the North end of platform 6 at Sheffield Station.


What a splendid trip hazard.


Good effort EMT and Network Rail.

Lookalike XXII - Dark Lord?

White handbags at dawn

Good news from the ludicrously named C2C...

Essex train operator c2c has not only just become the best ever performing franchised train operator in Great Britain, but has also equalled the punctuality record set by the Swiss Federal Railways.

Good news indeed!

And to mark the occasion C2C helpfully provided this picture of Heidi and Helga draped with a Swiss flag (with a bowler tip to the IRJ).


When Swiss punctuality reaches C2C levels can we expect SBB staff to dress-down as Essex girls?

UPDATE: This just in from The International Rantiquarian...

Well Done to the Essex Girls of c2c for equalling the punctuality record of
Swiss Railways.

That should put paid to the cuckoo clock smugness of my chums in the Cantons.

After all, c2c has to manage all the complications of a virtually self contained railway with just three physical connections to anywhere else on the network, no through trains beyond their boundaries, and a vanishingly small volume of freight traffic.

Meanwhile the Swiss enjoy the simplicity of international borders with Italy, Germany, Austria, and France, and have to coax their trains across and sometimes over the Alps.


Well done, Essex. Rule Britannia!