VTEC in Fake News - Shocker

This from Captain Deltic (for it is he)...

You can imagine the good Captain's consternation when PR firm Hope & Glory sent out a photo of the recent reconstruction of a 1977 East Coast Main Line line-up featuring the handover of the blue riband of high speed traction from the Deltic to IC125.

They kindly attached a black and white print of the original 1977 event.

Which only emphasised that there was something missing from the 2017 line up. Something big and green, with a smokey exhaust and not Flying Scotsman?

But, wait a minute, or 31 minutes to be precise.  Here's a correction from  Hope & Glory with a new photo and caption featuring  D9002 in all its two tone glory, plus some other trains.

And the correction arrived before Captain D had a chance to register his protest.

So who in VTEC spotted this faux pas and ordered a prompt re-issue by their PR agency? (Eye's money is on one D Horne Esq. Ed)

Deltic throws a leg out of bed!

Oh Lordy!

What has Captain Deltic got his pistons in a twist about now?

@ClareMoriarty. @ philiprutnam @holdmch @eastcoastuk When a Transport Minister gets it totally wrong on access charges who fed him duff gen?
— Roger Ford (@Captain_Deltic) February 4, 2014

Eye thinks we should be told!

UPDATE: This from the latest edition of Rail Business Intelligence, in in-boxes across the industry this very afternoon...

The minister later appeared to suggest that the publicly-operated ICEC franchise had been made to look more successful than it actually was.

"We all know that despite a lot of talk about DOR, frankly their punctuality was the worst of the long-distance operators, we can talk about the access charge costs where they got a considerable benefit when they took over, so we’ve got to be careful about comparison from line to line’, he said.

"Once one starts to examine certain figures that people are quoting they don’t always bear up in quite the same way".

And

When RBI pointed out that East Coast was currently meeting its punctuality targets unlike NR on the ECML (RBI454 p4), Hammond replied

"although East Coast’s satisfaction rating has gone up in terms of sheer punctuality numbers against the other long-distance operators, it is a simple matter of fact that it’s the worst-performing at the moment.

"There may be all sorts of reasons for that but it is also true that their access charges, for one reason and another, are lower than others.’

"All I’m saying is that you’ve got to be very careful about comparisons and you’ve got to remember that when it was set up it was deliberately set up to stabilise the railway, to provide a service and to make sure that we did our statutory duty. It was never intended to be a long-term operation".

Oh dear!

Does the ORR know that it has been gifting the nationalised operator preferential track access charges?

Or is the minister perhaps talking through his hat?
 

ORR Draft Determination exposes inflation - Shocker!

This from Captain Deltic...

The Office of Rail Regulation's Draft Determination under Periodic Review 13  (PR13) published today occupies a staggering 813 pages.

The PR08 Draft Determination required just 372 pages.

So that is an 118% increase in five years.

The draft conclusions for the PR03 interim review required a mere 211 pages - and that in the aftermath of  the collapse of Railtrack.

So Richard Price, running a well established process for a relatively stable industry, needs four times the space of Tom Winsor whose interim review was written at a time of near anarchy when the government maintained radio silence on its requirements.

As Flanders and Swann nearly wrote:  "It all makes work for the Regulatory man to do".

Perhaps time for an efficiency review of ORR?

Mystic Deltic claims moral high ground - Shocker

This from Captain Deltic...

May I remind Eye readers of this paragraph from the March 2012 Informed Sources:

For some time now, this column’s default assumption has been that the Department for Transport is dysfunctional.  This has shown up in the repeated corrections Aviation & Rail Minister Theresa Villiers has had to make after misleading the House of Commons with incorrect answers to written questions.  And sometimes, blatant errors have not been corrected (this column passim).

It appears the chickens have finally come home to roost, not that I want to say I told you so.

(Capt D - there is a very fine line between being wise before the event and coming across as a smug git! Ed)

Alycidon amidst the IEP excitement

This from a Mr Dickens...

A sight to stir the blood - Alycidon nearing Werrington Junction, just north of Peterborough, this morning.

Eat your heart out Captain Deltic!

Deltic rails at Deadwood's history rewrite

The mad Vulcan is at it again.

This near illiterate anti-rail rant from Redwood's blog:

Listening today to criticisms of the governemnt’s aim to get the UK railway system to a similar level of efficiency as contiental systems by reducing some 30% of cost, I was struck by people telling me our system is dearer becausee it is privatised. I seem to remember passanger numbers and freight volumes rising strongly, and subsidies falling, when it was fully privatised. Then costs and subsidies rose swiftly again ocne the main part of the railway, the track and signals were renationalised. The old nationalised monopoloy had a poor record with falling use, safety problems and high levels of subsidy.

Happily the Welsh national anthem mangling car-loon has been neatly fisked by Captain Deltic in the blog's comment section:

You claim, presumably from Conservative mythology that “the old nationalised monopoloy had a poor record with falling use, safety problems and high levels of subsidy”.

Fact. Between 1983 amd 1989/90 subsidy fell, at 1989/90 prices from £1,329 m to £587m.

Fact: Over the same period Government subsidy as a share of total passenger revenue fell from45% to 25%. Today it’s around 50%

Fact. Ridership increased from 18.3 bn passenger miles to 20.9bn (21.3bn in 1988/89.

Fact: Over the same period Freight tonnage was down slightly from 145.1 m tonnes to 143.1m (149.5m in 1988/89)

Fact: By 2000 when Railtrack was forced into adminstration passenger miles were 23.7 billion and freight tonnage lifted down to 95.4 million.

1989/90 is chosen deliberately because it marks the end of the economic cycle. Note that passenger ridership in 2000 had only just topped the 1988/89 peak.

Good effort and happy birthday Captain Deltic!

That is all.

The wordz what NR punktuated

This from a harrumphing Captain Deltic...

Is it too much to expect the correct use of hyphens and apostrophes by Network Rail press officers in this day and age?

"STATION PLAQUE MARKS FORMER PAUPERS GRAVE"

This is not a pedantic moan (Oh yeah? Ed), but the missing punctuation makes the headline ambiguous

Is it the grave of a former-pauper - in which case, where is the apostrophe? (eg which ex British Rail manager turned privatisation fat cat has died and can he really be buried on a platform at Manchester Vic?).

Or is a former pauper's-grave which has become part of a station.

Or is it, even, a former paupers'-grave and was there a mass burial on the site of the station after some massacre of the lower classes?

Eye thinks we should be told!

UPDATE: This from NR's Internet Rapid Rebuttal Unit...

I have altered the headline on the website now - it should be less ambiguous.

Nothing wrong with being a pedant. A 'pedant' is what someone who is wrong calls someone who is right.

PS Who led the pedants' uprising? Answer: Which Tyler

Captain Deltic issues a call to arms!

This from the good Captain (for it is he)...

Another railway research strategy consultation document has been published - this time by consultants TRL on behalf of DafT.

It is, if anything, even worse than the TSSB/TSAG document featured in the February Informed Sources.

Here is the link.

Consultation is open until April.

Here are the questions posed by TRL which consultees might care to consider:

• Is the strategic focus right?
• Do you agree with key actions that come out of the report?
• Can we develop leadership for research in a fragmented industry?
• Can we strengthen the case for research in a difficult economic climate?
• Can we share knowledge and maintain the legacy/heritage knowledge in an industry with changing ownership?
• Can we be more effective in making use of technology developed in other industries?
• How do we make the rail industry a more comfortable place for innovation and research?

Where to start!

Tories and new trains - history repeats itself?

This from Captain Deltic...

May I offer Eye followers the chance to re-live a fabled period in privatised railway history?

After Privatisation was announced there was a period of 1,064 days during which no new trains were ordered for Britain's railways.

This was not an hiatus, according to long suffering Transport Minister Roger Freeman, but a long pause.

This Sunday, the 15th August, it will be 500 days since the last rolling stock order was placed.

Can the 1,064 day record be beaten?

We'll be halfway there on 16 September.

Hammond's Chrizzie Card list is already shorter

Telegrammed by the Raver
Sadly Mr Hammond’s little tete a tete yesterday was missing a couple of the more illustrious railway hacks.

Neither Wolmar nor Captain Deltic saw fit to join the Marsham Street love-in with the new Secretary of State.

Presumably both were, ah..., too busy?

Or perhaps they thought that being summoned to bathe in Hammond's glow with just two hours notice showed a little too much of the "old Tory" style?

Despite his busy diary Wolmar still found time to scribble a disparaging blogpost ridiculing Hammond's early surrender to the carbon hungry road lobby.

Eye fears that Christian's first invite to meet Hammond may already be his last.

The Jesuit approach to romancing the railways

This from Captain Deltic, via MMS....

All credit to toyshop chain, the Early Learning Centre, who are leading the fight back against anthropomorphic tank engines with this recognisable A4 in garter blue:

A very timely suggestion. The Fact Compiler is just popping into town...

UPDATE: Captain Deltic adds...

I should have mentioned for those of the Stanier persuasion there is also a stream-lined Coronation in maroon livery.

However, grand-daughter naturally preferred Sir Nigel's design.

Pointless signs - Capt Deltic's name card

With a Bowler tip to @Captain_Deltic...


For the non grease monkeys amongst you the large metal thing on the table is a Deltic piston.

"Will this waste of our money never stop?" - Telegraph

Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road
Here is Philip Johnston writing in today's Torygraph:

All the familiar ingredients are there: the waste of taxpayers' money on an ocean-going scale, incompetent management, political naivete, wildly over-optimistic promises, IT failures, the liberal use of outside consultants and the refusal of anyone in Whitehall to listen to the experts.

Eye was looking forward to some weapon's grade pyrotechnics once Captain Deltic found out that this Johnston-Come-Lately had wandered on to his patch!

Alas.

Mr Johnston was fulminating about proposals to set up a network of national fire control centres, which in 2004 this was due to cost £72m and be ready by 2008. Now the final bill looks closer to being £240m.

Wonder if he knows about the IEP yet?

IEP lobbying explained

This just in from Jumbo...

Overheard on the Derby train: A man telling his travelling companions that he is shortly to meet Captain Deltic and convince him that the bi-mode extravaganza will save the world.

Shome mishtake shurely?

UPDATE: This from Captain Deltic...

How intriguing.

I am indeed going to Ashford Depot tomorrow on a technical visit to find out how the Hitachi Class 395 fleet and the Class 465 re-powering is going and an SET update has been promised over a working lunch.

If Jumbo will provide details of the train I will ask which of those present was on it and actually admitting to talking to me.

They must be coming up to retirement.

UPDATE: Jumbo responds...

I thought that the IEP only had one supporter.

UPDATE: More from Captain Deltic...

Having fallen off his chair laughing the Captain gets his breath back and points out that Jumbo is being very naughty.

So which train from Euston to Rugby was it?

UPDATE: This from our International Correspondent...

What perfect symmetry.

Uncloaking industry secrets by ear-wigging over-talkative and indiscreet rolling stock engineers in the First Class end of anything leaving Derby was an intelligence gathering technique pioneered in the early 80s by one Captain Deltic, in between bouts of car-park watching (a practice now known more colloquially as 'Dogging').

Of course he was just a junior subaltern in those days.

UPDATE: Captain Deltic reminisces...

It was on a train to Derby that a foursome of Department of Transport civil servants were talking about closing the WCML north of Preston.

They didn't seem to notice that I was taking notes.

A minor stir, denials and a witch hunt ensued following publication.

Odd that while DfT is daft, we never referred to DoT as dotty.

It must have been the age of deference. Or perhaps in those dim and distant days the civil service had higher standards of competence.

UPDATE: Further cryptic details from Jumbo...

Definitely a train to Derby, well Sheffield to be strictly correct.

And a clue, it was not the noble Lord but another recently ennobled person, well gonged actually...

Hacks set agenda on Pilgrimage of Grice - Official

The Noble Lord reveals the following on his blog...

I've just been speaking on the train to rail journalists Roger Ford and Phil Haig - who know the rail industry backwards.

Can it be long before Captain Deltic's 'InterCity Manifesto' receives the Adonis Imprimatur?

At King's Cross a solitary lament...

By the wonders of MMS this from Captain Deltic...


Or, indeed, ever!

Captain Deltic - looking for a way out! Shocker

Via the wonders of MMS this from Captain Deltic...


Help! shouts Captain D.

I'm trapped on the refurbished Platform 6 at Derby and someone has forgotten the Way Out signs.

UPDATE: This from a Mr Malins...

Here it is, but there's a pesky ticket barrier in the way!


All part of the Stagecoach plan to make travel difficult.

Captain Deltic derailed?

This from Roger Ford's latest Informed Sources ePreview:

Talk about hubris, my warm glow at having networked the home soon vanished when nemesis followed and a few days later my computer not only wouldn’t connect to the internet over broadband, the back up dial-up stopped working too.

The Fact Compiler fears that this may have been premeditated rather than misfortunate.

Perhaps Captain Deltic should contact the Association of Old Crows to protect himself from future attacks?

Ford appointed NR Public Member!

Just joking - obviously!

For the third year in succession Captain Deltic has failed to make the short list for the new batch of Network Rail Public Members.

No doubt there is huge disappointment in Kings Place that the independent selection panel has yet again robbed the company of the Captain's long experience.

Here a clearly disconsolate Iain Coucher receives the news.

Better luck next time Captain.

Gordon Brown wields the handbag!

This just in from Lord Deltic of Pan in the Counties of Brunel and Stephenson...

Announcing the decision to embark on a programme of electrification the Prime Minister said:

“To build a better Britain, we must be bold, innovative and forward-looking and invest with confidence in our country’s transport infrastructure, jobs and industry. This electrification programme is vital to building a 21st century transport system.”

Given that this coming Monday (27 July) marks the 25th anniversary of the then Transport Secretary, Nicholas Ridley, announcing the go ahead for the East Coast Main Line Electrification, shouldn't that be 'backward looking'?

And who would have thought that Gordon Brown would prove to be heir to Margaret Thatcher!