Run up the flags!
Gordon Brown uses the House of Lords to further government business.
Consensus on how to complete Reform of The Upper House remains as distant as ever.
The railway's Noble Lords need not fear for their seats yet.
Telegrammed by The Master
***BBC reporting NR's 'stay at home chairman' Sir Ian McAlasiter soon to do just that - permanently.***
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?
Telegrammed by our man in 222 Marylebone Road.
***When Gende Homo was at the Ministry of Defence he was known to Daily Torygraph city page readers as 'Buff' Hoon - presumably a tribute to his finely honed body.***
Some good news about Geoff Hoon's appointment to the DafT top job.
A reader observes that in predictive text Geoff Hoon is rendered as 'Gende Homo'.
Railway Eye welcomes Gende Homo to Transport
***BBC reporting Geoff Hoon to be new Secretary of State for Transport***
View BBC story here
A big welcome to readers of Scottish Tory Boy.
The young North British conservative has asked readers of his blog to back rail minister Tom Harris in our ballot to find Ruth Kelly's successor.
When your enemy's enemy is your friend it makes for strange bedfellows. Scots Nats beware.
A feast of crankery on BBC4 tonight to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Beeching Report.
First off at 20:00 is a repeat (it is BBC4 after all) of an interview with the now dead Dr Beeching.
This is followed at 20:30 by what appears to be gratuitous propaganda for anti-rail group Sustrans.
Then at 21:00 vertically challenged Private Eye editor Ian Hislop ruminates about what might have been if all those loss making lines had remained open.
Timely TV with the ORR threatening swinging cuts to NR's budget.
First reports of poor railhead adhesion are coming in following the winds of the last 24 hours.
According to those out on the track the wet summer means that the leaves are "big and juicy".
The industry will be watching with interest to see how Network Rail and the Infracos' plans for leaf fall 2008 measure up.
FT reporting that Eurostar may be looking to procure new trains:
"A senior figure involved told the Financial Times the operator might buy the new AGV train unveiled this year by Alstom Transport instead of carrying out the mid-life refurbishment the 15-year-old trains would soon be due to undergo."
The current fleet certainly looks very tired.
A quick update on our poll of polls asking "Who should replace Ruth Kelly?"
According to Railway Eye readers (see right) the top job should go to Rail editor Nigel Harris!
In this time of financial turmoil can there be a better occasion for Gordon to resurrect his "government of all the talents"?
Wolmar has written a Gruaniad comment piece on the Tories damascene conversion to high speed rail.
Read it here.
Mystic Wolmar is in the van of those who remain to be convinced...
Train spotter's French diary
"This was an American-designed, Canadian-built, British locomotive operating in France for a German company." Read more here.
The Fact Compiler suspects it wasn't a change of driver, more likely an SNCF sponsored work to rule.
So the Tories have come out in favour of a high speed line instead of a third runway at Heathrow.
Read the BBC piece here.
However, with Treasury finances going west as yet another bank bites the dust, The Fact Compiler fears that a new Government will be hard pressed to buy a cup of coffee let alone build a new railway.
The Spectator Parliamentarian Awards are “the Oscars of Westminster, the Booker Prize of our lawmakers, the Blankety Blank cheque book and pen of the political cosa nostra.”
This year the Speccie has introduced a new award category: "Readers' Representative".
The on-line blurb describes the award as follows:
"For the first time, a new Reader's Representative Award is being presented. The nominations for it will come from you, the readers. All you have to do is scroll downwards and - in no more than 250 words - nominate your choice. The person can be of any party you want, a frontbencher or a backbencher and you can nominate them for whatever reason you want. The sole criteria are that the candidate has pursued the noble art of politics in what they believed to be the public interest."
Tom 'Blogger' Harris and The Fact Compiler do not always see eye to Railway Eye!
That said we hope that 'Open Access Tom' receives some recognition for having "pursued the noble art of politics... in what he believes to be the public interest".
Telegrammed by Eboracum (50A)
Time is running out for ex Porterbrook flagship locomotive 55016 Gordon Highlander.
A group of Deltic cranks are busy saving up their used stamps, tinfoil and milk bottle tops in a desperate last ditch attempt to save the loco but despite this there seems to be no agreement in place on how this might be done.
With scrap prices remaining firm current owner Harry Needle Railroad Company is known to be comfortable wielding the gas-axe to convert D9016 into razor blades.
Curiously HNRC's near neighbours at Barrow Hill; The Deltic Preservation Society and the Napier Power Heritage Trust have remained silent about the whole affair and are probably saving their pennies for the expected spares windfall.
These parts are well needed bearing in mind DPS reliability problems over the last two years.
With the loco's last official outing at Peak Rail this weekend at least one crank website is trying to organise a 'protest' over the threatened scrapping.
Perhaps Peak Rail need to draft in their uniformed Nazi battle re-enactors to quell any potential civil unrest?
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