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.

ATOC unsure who the party leaders are - Official

This from the Raver....

Good to see ATOC has its fingers well and truly on the political pulse!


For the politically illiterate, or those who have been asleep for the last year, Gordon leads Labour and Nick the LibDems.

Looks like it's not just railway knowledge that is missing from the TOC lobby group.

Snow stops trains - this time in Sweden

This from The Raver...

According to Railway-technology.com:

Swedish trains have been paralysed after the network was hit with delays and cancellations caused by heavy snow fall and low temperatures.

Sverige schadenfreude!

NedRail to become Albino

Telegrammed by the Raver
This from NedRail...

NedRailways today announced the launch of its new name, Abellio.

In the annals of meaningless names - Diageo, Accenture, Aviva, Consignia - this surely goes straight to number one.

Apparently Abellio was a Celtic god.

Not unlike this one, which carries a broken wheel and a mighty chopper...


...but that's the Dutch for you.

It's the sort of thing Desmond Morris wrote books about.

UPDATE: This from The Archer, no doubt after a good lunch...

The choice of new name and logo is almost genius, with a double L to signify the rails (or road for the buses) which get you from A to b.

Of course, fellatio has the same double L and is somewhat easier on the tongue.

UPDATE: This from an Anonymous Dutch reader...

Might I suggest ClogTrans?

Angel appoints Rowlands as Chairman - Doomed

Telegrammed by the Raver
So Sir David Rowlands has become Chairman of Angel Trains.


What a busy life he leads!

How he packs it all in we will never know.

According to Angel's puff piece Rowlands is also:

...chairman of London Gatwick Airport... a member of the Royal Automobile Club Foundation’s public policy committee... a governor of Anglia Ruskin University and deputy chairman of The Lifeboat Fund, a public service charity.

Not forgetting of course his current position as non-executive Chairman of High Speed 2 - a role he relinquishes in February this year.

Strange that a man who tried to squeeze the rail industry when he was Permanent Secretary at the Department now seems to be profiting from it in all sorts of ways.

Nice work if you can get it.

UPDATE: This from Sir Humphrey Beeching...

The Raver appears to have omitted Sir David's great gift for PR and media relations.

Why only last September he managed to infuriate RAIL by issuing a statement denying a story that his own staff had briefed out to the media.

Angel's loss will surely be HS2's gain!

Shadow Treasury team fully briefed on Crossrail

Splendid news from the new egalitarian Tory party (with a bowler tip to the Raver).

Only last week Boris was taking supper with the terribly grand Osbornes.

Alas

Over dinner it emerged that Mrs O had never heard of Crossrail!

At least Mr O, the Shadow Chancellor, was better informed.

Although poor Boris was shocked to discover that George thought it ran North to South!

No matter

Presumably it will still call at one's club?

A good day to bury piss-poor news

Telegrammed by The Raver
The NAO report on Metronet's collapse is due to be published tomorrow morning.

As Brown and Vadera are personally responsible for the disastrous PPP, which has cost Londoners billions and nearly brought the Underground to its knees, no doubt the report will receive an appropriate level of media coverage.

After all Friday is bound to be a slow news day...

UPDATE: Wolmar takes up the tale...

We had to destroy the village to save the village

Telegrammed by The Raver
Just received an invitation from Railway Strategies to attend their latest supply chain conference.

Alongside all the usual guff is this compelling speaker profile:

Sir Clive Woodward in association with O2 will be sharing his views on creating a winning team...

Would that be the same Sir Clive Woodward who showed how to create a winning team at Southampton Football club where he lasted as technical director for just 13 months in 2005/6.

Meanwhile Southampton has now been relegated for the second time in four years...

A winning team indeed.

UPDATE: This just in from Ithuriel...

And the same Sir Clive Woodward who led the last no expense spared, best prepared ever, British Lions Rugby team to er, defeat in New Zealand?.

Beardie and NR go head to head

Telegrammed by the Raver
Just when Network Rail is celebrating punctuality at 90% (sic) into the inbox thuds an angry missive from Virgin Trains:

Our customers will be far from satisfied with these figures - and nor is Virgin Trains.

After £9bn was spent on the West Coast Mainline, customers have every right to expect performance to be at least as good as the rest of the country.

That has not happened and sadly it proves that many of our past concerns about Network Rail were correct.

We have complained formally to the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) and now demand that the regulator holds Network Rail to account, and that Network Rail delivers the performance we and our customers expect.

Interesting that Beardie's mob are so exercised about Network Rail's failings.

Would they, by any chance, be seeking to distract the media from their own failings?

Notably trains that make the average cow shed smell salubrious, cramped luggage space, falling passenger numbers, a ticket pricing that makes no sense given the frequency of its services and a PR boss who will now never be believed because of his failure to invite any knowledgeable journalists to Beardie's ridiculous musings through fear of embarrassing the great man?

Or would that be mischievous?

UPDATE: This just in from our Independent Expert...

Branson may be right!

Two disastrous journeys with late running along the WCML today leading to a missed appointment for this author.

'Signals' apparently to blame.

Or is it coincidence that there are so many anxious-looking orange-clad men trackside a mere day after the Whitsun break?

UPDATE: This from 'Alexander the Great'...

So according to Network Rail's PPM press release today "No credible numbers exist pre1992" for performance.

Meanwhile, on the 2nd April 1985 Hansard said:

"Information on British Rail's punctuality performance is contained in the annual reports of the British Railways Board and the Central Transport Consultative Committee, which are laid before the Houses and copies placed in the Library."

So pray tell what is "not credible" about that system?

Or is the High Court of Parliament now so discredited that Network Rail dares to accuse it of lying?

UPDATE: Captain Deltic notes:

In the final year of what John Major clone Lord Adonis calls a 'national joke in terms of quality and reliability' British Rail's InterCity business achieved 88.1% of trains within time plus 10 minutes on the West Coast Main Line.

Also in 1993 ECML was at 89.2% (today 87.4%).

But congratulations to Mark 'Black Mac' Hopwood for showing the value of old-railway skills with Great Western today at 90.8% compared with 87.2% in 1993.

And back in 1993 across InterCity as a whole, all customer satisfaction scores were at 90% or above with helpfulness of staff on trains at 98%.

Helpfulness of staff at stations was at 93%, satisfaction with information at stations and cleanliness at stations were both at 91%.

Perhaps we could do with more 'jokes' like that to lighten these grim times.

Last train

Telegrammed by The Raver
Exciting news from Network Rail.

According to a press release issued today there is to be...

A NEW ERA FOR FOLKESTONE HARBOUR

Indeed.

One without trains.

Silver lining

Telegrammed by The Raver

Which senior LUL director was overheard saying that Metronet's collapse was a blessing in disguise?

The reasoning from the 7th floor of 55 Broadway is that Crossrail would have been almost impossible to build due to the over complicated PPP contracts.

These would have provided greedy private sector Metronet with infinite opportunities to hoover up vast sums of public money in frustrated access compensation claims.

Presumably Tube Lines, under Terry Morgan's direction, will be taking a more pragmatic approach; unsurprising as the wily poacher will turn gamekeeper at Crossrail in 12 months time.

Robson Jam

Telegrammed by The Raver

One of the non-executive directors of the Royal Bank of Scotland is none other than Sir Steve Robson.

 

Robson it will be remembered is the former senior Treasury mandarin who pushed for vertical disaggregation on the railways. 

 

Now he clearly did not do his job in trying to prevent RBS from overextending itself. 

 

Shockingly, the non-execs are surviving the purge of the RBS bosses because, apparently, there is a shortage of candidates. 

 

Surely there are more than enough competent and qualified bankers looking for lucrative part time jobs...

 

 

 

Mayor's diary

Telegrammed by The Raver
Boris was meeting the deputy mayor of Beijing, this morning, whose name is:

Mr Chen Gang.

We wonder how many people came with him!!

Tellyfest

Telegrammed by The Raver
Good TV programmes about railway history are rare, usually falling into whingeing nostalgia.

But on BBC4 last night, Ian Hislop hit just the right note, criticising Beeching and yet recognising that the railways in the 1960s had to be cut down.

Aside from allowing Wolmar to sport a ghastly pink jumper the producers are to be congratulated.

Perhaps Hislop would have made a better Secretary of State for Transport?

Credit crunch

Telegrammed by The Raver
The National Rail Awards have been sponsored by Angel Trains for the last nine years.

However, with the media friendly Haydn Abbott shunted over to Angel's European division and a new man running their UK division, the future funding of the event looks uncertain.

Mind you, during his stuttering performance on Thursday night, the new CEO didn't completely rule out sponsoring the milestone 10th anniversary shindig.

But as a devotee of Occam's razor and naturally cautious with the pennies, the new broom is understood not to favour 'monkey suit and champagne' lobbying.

Indeed so discreet is Angel's new CEO that Railway Eye has agreed not to name him.

Rounding error?

Telegrammed by The Raver
Rewriting history is plainly becoming something of a habit for the denizens of rail privatisation.

Railway Eye readers may recollect Nigel Harris's recent confusion over the average age of rolling stock at privatisation

The latest purveyor of samizdat history is one Richard Bowker who, in a Sunday Telegraph puff-piece this weekend, claimed that 14,000 trains a day were running on the network in 1997 compared to approximately 20,000 today.

The true figure for the number of trains operating on the network in '97 is much closer to 18,500.

In the scheme of things not overly important, but National Express shareholders may wish to scrutinise this year's annual report and accounts a little more closely - just in case.

Flat fleet

Telegrammed by The Raver
Judging by his latest rant in Rail the batteries on Nigel Harris's calculator need changing.

He claims that the average age of rolling stock has halved since the bad old days of British Rail, which implies that at privatisation the average age of the passenger fleet was 26 years old.

In fact the true figure was closer to 14.5 years, not a great deal different from that of today.

Part of the reason for the higher average fleet age at privatisation was that the Sectors had been astute enough to retain some vehicles for seasonal peaks in traffic.

With today's chronic shortage of rolling stock what a far sighted policy that now appears.