Smith to Crossrail

A busy day for TfL and those named Howard!

This from Crossrail...

Crossrail today announced the appointment of Howard Smith as Operations Director.

Howard Smith is currently Chief Operating Officer for Rail at Transport for London and has successfully led the £1bn East London Line extension project as well as the development, launch and operation of London Overground and management of its operating concession.

Howard Smith will be responsible for leading the development of Crossrail’s operational and customer service strategy, defining the structure of the new railway’s operating and maintenance organisations as well as leading on the arrangements for the future Crossrail operating concession.

Note the magic word 'concession'.

What possible reason, apart from DLR and London Overground, could Crossrail have for preferring a concession over the hugely discredited and thinly capitalised franchising model? (shurely: "highly successful and investment rich franchising model"? Ed)

Collins to Upside-Down-Land

This from the Sydney Morning Herald...

THE man who made the London Tube work during last year's Olympics will be the next boss of Sydney's rail system.

Howard Collins, made an officer of the Order of the British Empire for his management of transport during the Olympics, will be the first head of Sydney Trains, the new organisation to run trains in the city.

The appointment continues a long tradition in Sydney of appointing British rail executives and has been hailed as a coup by the Transport Minister, Gladys Berejiklian.

And so the brain drain down under continues! 

Silver Stump Watch - St Pancras

Helpful of someone to put double yellow lines alongside these Silver Stumps.

No doubt to prevent damage to car doors when exiting your motor.

Anyone care to hazard a guess at the unit cost?

Silver Stump Watch - King's Cross

Beautiful, a veritable host of Silver Stumps.



A shame they don't take into account mopeds or motorbikes...

Silver Stump Watch - Waterloo

Nice - Just where people want to walk.

 
What a great blessing for the visually impaired.

Latest ABC - RAIL reverses the trend

It's ABC time again.

Remember most industry titles don't submit their titles to circulation audit so a bowler tip to those that do.

Here the 2012 circulation figures with those for 2011 in brackets...

Railway Magazine 37,298 (36,523)
 
Rail 20,123 (19.801)
 
And by way of comparison, Steam Railway 31,810 (32,266) 

Railway Magazine continues to perform strongly and RAIL has grown its circulation for the first time in several years.

If Eye has missed anyone out, please shout.

Once again reports of the demise of Dead Tree Media appear somewhat exaggerated.

UPDATE: This from the Railway Gazette...

Railway Gazette International has been a member of ABC since the 1960’s and has every intention of remaining a member for the foreseeable future.

Our 2012 certificate has been submitted to the  ABC.  We were a week later than usual in submitting this but well within the ABC deadline.  ABC have issued the draft certificate to us and the official one will be live next week.

Figure for 2011 was 10,548 print copies, figure for 2012 will be 10,533. 

We are 15 print copies down but this has been replaced by a huge increase in our digital only copies which are not counted in this audit.