Esoteric Events - exciting new Eye feature!

Time for an exciting new Eye feature!

Welcome to Esoteric Events - a gentle meander through the highways and byways of the burgeoning conference circuit that does so much to add cost to our industry (shurely 'add value to the railways'? Ed)

This from someone called Tiger Projects:

The Tiger Project partners with the European Commission support are pleased to invite you to the Second Tiger annual conference to be held on November 30th 2011 in HAMBURG on the Exhibition Floor of INTERMODAL EUROPE 2011 event – HAMBURG MESSE.

The title of the Conference is:

"The Co-modal industrialisation chain from Ports to the Hinterland destinations answering the challenges of growing maritime traffic volumes ".

Perhaps it reads better in the original German?

UPDATE: This from Eastwestdivide...

Given that Tiger's own website description helpfully starts:

"TIGER is the acronym of “Transit via Innovative Gateway concepts solving European - intermodal Rail needs”. TIGER Project is a Large Scale Integrated Collaborative Project for the development of Rail transport in competitive and co-modal freight logistics chains."

I can't imagine the German being any better, even if it is one single 161-character word that wouldn't fit on a single Twitter entry.

Auf wiederemailen

Von Shooter flies into the sunset?

This from Chiltern's Herr Von Shooter...

I am writing to let you know that I have decided to retire from the Chairmanship of Chiltern Railways and DB Regio at the end of December.

By then I shall have had the great privilege of leading Chiltern for nearly 18 years and I will have reached the age of 63.

I have enjoyed every part of my 41 years in the rail industry but especially the opportunity to lead the teams who built Chiltern Railways.

It is always difficult to decide when to move on but, having for the last 3 years also been acting M.D. of Chiltern, I have now handed that role to Rob Brighouse who I appointed earlier in the year. He will lead a very strong team to further successes, the first of which will be the new much faster Chiltern Mainline service between Birmingham and London. We will launch this together.

Meanwhile, I would like to continue to take an active part in the rail industry. In addition I have been asked to be Chairman of the CBI West Midlands Council for 2012 and 2013.

Adrian Shooter, CBE, Chairman of Chiltern Railways

DafT to receive influx of rail experts tomorrow

Good news for those who care about our railways!

According to this afternoons' Lobby briefing: Civil servants have been told that they can bring their children into work tomorrow, if their child's school is closed because of strike action.

The Government estimates that of England's 17,000 schools - including academies - one third would close, one third would be partially open and one third would be open.

Perhaps a first for the Department for Transfer - Great Minster House will actually contain people who like trains!

But Eye fears tears before bedtime, when Mr Kipling refuses to allow anyone else to play with his expensive new trainset.