Eye salutes those keeping the railway open

The Network Rail press office is doing a sterling job showing what the industry is doing to keep the railway moving.

And providing hardened hacks and picture desks with some great pictures...


NR's media mastermind Kevin Groves offered the following helpful caption for the picture above:

Great picture of an MPV (multi-purpose vehicle) de-icer / snowplough, clearing the route to East Grinstead at lunchtime today (1pm, 02/12/10, taken from the rear).

Perhaps just as well the last bit was in parenthesis.

Trainy Speakibold - FCC

This from a Mr Sim Harris...


In spite of the snow, it's good to see that Professor Unwin has reported for duty.

Social media heroes and villians in the snow

This from SN Barnes...

With lessons obviously learned from last year, Eurostar has outshone most domestic TOC's with their immediate and steady use of twitter to give frequent updates on a service that was doing a lot better than cross channel flights.

Aside from the wonderfully boring Nicola @chilternrailway telling us nothing was out of order, the efforts of South Eastern's ("the trains are all fecked") @Train_Driver has proven to be the most accurate, honest, and reliable when compared to the fault line slips between what the TOC's were putting on line, what NRES published and the train information displays at the point of delivery.

Passengers, of course, are no longer surprised by kafka-esque relationship between 'official information' and the actual presence of the trains they purport to describe.

Pointless signs - Ashford International (Domestic)

Hack praises hack - Shocker!

This from Captain Deltic...

Hats off to Nigel Harris for achieving the difficult task of getting a positive message about railway safety into the Daily Telegraph letters column today.

Those who have tried will know that when it comes to railways most letter columns prefer Mr Irrational Greene-Ink to the measured views of professional observers.

UPDATE: This from a Mr I Greene-Ink

Dear Sir

Might I take the opportunity afforded by your blog to criticise the performance of the railways during the current inclem... (No. Ed)