Lose bolt kills cat!

Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road
ORR is reported to be waiting for a visitation from the provisional wing of the RSPCA!

The recently mailed out hard copy of the 2008 Periodic Review final determination was a whopping 447 page tome.

Lobbed through a letter box by your average Postie it could reach speeds of almost 12mph by the time it hit the doormat.

With a weight close to 3.5lbs that would be enough to flatten the average moggie or toy dog with extreme prejudice.

Where is elf 'n' safety when it is really needed, demand the pet lovers of Great Britain?

Smiling Assassin

Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road
Reflections on the defection of the well known wrecker and trouble maker Chris Randall to Cyprus...


It is worth mentioning that the 'Smiling Assassin' was one of the dauntless three who saw off the soi disant political 'bruiser' Tony McNulty.

When he was appointed Rail Minister McNulty's PR minions thought it would be a good idea to expose the bruiser to the railway press and set up a session with the Smiling Assassin, Captain Deltic and the Media Tart .

Every question put to the slowly deflating bruiser got the answer 'What would you do?'.

A fatal ploy for obvious reasons.

As the meeting ended a battered McNulty said, 'I look forward to meeting you guys again when there's more to say'.

Alas, either McNulty had nothing more to say or the invite was lost in the post...

For pity's sake #2

Contempt of the High Court of Parliament?

As any fule kno DafT's Laughing Stock Plan will produce only 1156 additional vehicles (at the last count) for the train starved railway network.

My Lord Adonis meanwhile appears insistent on treating Parliament with ill disguised contempt.

Here some words from the perfectly formed peer delivered to the highest court in the land on Wednesday 29th October:

Lord Adonis (Minister of State, Department for Transport; Labour)
"It is the intention that 1,300 additional new rail vehicles will be delivered by the end of control period 4."

Send him down!

Follow the money

Good news from National Express East Coast.

Consultants employed by the TOC have backed their bid for additional ECML paths!

No shit sherlock!

For pity's sake

Telegrammed by our man in 222 Marylebone Road
In assessing the affordability of DafT's High Level Output Specification for its final Determination (published today) the Office of Rail Regulation had to take into account the cost of leasing extra vehicles.

Obviously the source of data is DafT's Laughing Stock Plan which allocates the 1156 (at the last count) additional vehicles.

ORR comments:

When DfT submitted its HLOS in July 2007, it estimated that at least 1300 new vehicles would be required to deliver the extra capacity.

In its SBP Network Rail estimated 1519.

DfT published a Rolling-Stock Plan in January 2008. This stated that “The emerging indicative number of vehicles is set out in Appendix B. The additional trains may be new vehicles or vehicles cascaded from other services.”

As Appendix B of its document combined new vehicles and cascades we did not use it as the basis for our draft determinations.

So even with all those consultants ORR is baffled too!

Bon voyage!

News reaches the Fact Compiler that rail hack Chris Randall is taking an extended break from writing about Britain’s ever-newsworthy rail industry.

The jaded scribbler is moving to Northern Cyprus, where trains haven’t run for more than 50 years.

Randall, who is taking up a news editor’s role on an English language daily in Nicosia, admits he will miss writing about Britain’s railways.

Those who have been on the receiving end of barbs in his Rail Professional column are unlikely to share that view and will be pleased to see the back of him.

Pandrols to go

***LNE/NE (D2) Pway trackwalking has found 5chain lengths of keys stolen from track on down between Stockton Stn & Norton South 30m 68ch to 30m 73ch.***

Andrew in HLOS land

Telegrammed by our man in 222 Marylebone Road
Lord Adonis is now being creamed regularly by the feared Railway Lords as his civil serpents keep on giving him hospital passes.

Here's a typical exchange.

Written answers, Tuesday, 28 October 2008, House of Lords

Lord Bradshaw (Spokesperson in the Lords, Transport; Liberal Democrat)
Whether the figure published in the Department for Transport's Rolling Stock Plan for additional vehicles required for TransPennine Express services is correct.

Lord Adonis (Minister of State, Department for Transport; Labour)
The Department for Transport recently published High Level Output Specification (HLOS) plan update July 2008, which described the process for implementing the Rolling Stock Plan. This stated that it would announce a number of vehicles different from that shown in the plan only if and when it contracted with a train operating company for a different number.

This was a subtle question because the number of vehicles for Trans Pennine Express is shown as 42 when the actual number is 24.

Since the Noble Lord can't admit that one of his minions suffers from dyscalculia he has to come up with the Alice in Wonderland statement that the numbers in the HLOS are correct until they aren't!

Spotted

Good news for travellers and time keeping on the Midland Mainline.

EMT has decided to adopt an initiative first used by Virgin Cross Country to help passengers determine which end of an approaching train is first class - leading to significant reductions in loading and dwell times.


Alas, despite the use of the traditional yellow first class indicator on the coupler, EMT continue to use a 'festering zit' motif to indicate first class on coach bodysides.



A design that is frankly invisible on platforms over a distance of 10 yards.

Come on Stagecoach - if Virgin Cross Country could lose the ridiculous 'Club Class' branding and restore the yellow line on it's Voyagers then surely EMT could do the same.

Whither ED?

So Metronet staff are finally to transfer over to London Underground in December.

And not before time.

The amount of duplication and man marking that has taken place within London Underground, as it sought to rein in the errant contractor, grew to epic proportions before Metronet collapsed.

And still the swollen headcount remains.

First in Tim O'Toole's sights must be LU's bloated Engineering Directorate.

In the heady days of Shadow Running it numbered a mere 16 people, now over 400 are on it's books; most of whom are too busy peering over the shoulders of their now in-house infraco colleagues to add a shred of value to the business.

Whilst the omens aren't looking good for the massed ranks of paper pushers in ED, the future of LU's Engineering Director, David Waboso, looks much more rosy.

Waboso, a former SRA man, has been lobbying hard to take on the Metronet top job since the infraco was nationalised in May this year.

With current MD Andie Harper, and most of his team, coming to the end of their interim contracts can it be long before Waboso and his trusted lieutenants fulfill their dreams and Metronet posts?

I'm on the train

C2C is planning to invest in mobile phone busting technology.

Read the London Paper story here.

Not a future expense that needs worry EMT, whose Meridians render the term 'mobile communications' meaningless.

Gare de l'eau

TGV service delayed for two hours!

BBC report here.

The gentleman involved is reported to be unharmed, although looking a little flushed.

Porterbrook flogged

***Porterbrook Leasing Company Limited has announced that a consortium of investors including Antin Infrastructure Partners (the BNP Paribas sponsored infrastructure fund), Deutsche Bank and Lloyds TSB has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of the Company from Abbey National.

Completion of the purchase is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to take place before the end of 2008.***

Sources at the Rosco deny that Deutsche Bank's interest has anything to do with Porterbrook's 'DE1' postcode.

UPDATE: The Deutsche Bank led consortium will pay £1.4bn for the Rosco - the same price Abbey paid to Stagecoach when it acquired Porterbrook in 2000

Shoots foot

Oh dear - the Tories grand plan to replace additional runways at Heathrow with a new High Speed line is already coming off the rails.

According to today's Financial Times several speakers at last week's Integrating High-Speed Rail conference poured scorn on the plans.

Not least because BAA revealed that only 'three per cent of the 480,000 annual take-offs and landings at Heathrow were for flights to, or from, Leeds or Manchester', with none at all for Birmingham.

Who on earth is advising Teresa Villiers? (Answer here)

Cus-tomer

Telegrammed by The Master
No doubt people waiting further up the line will be tut-tutting the late running of this morning's 10:21 FGW Paddington to Oxford service.

However passengers aboard were treated to the full story of why it ground to a halt on leaving Reading.

A weary Train Manager came on the PA to explain that the delay was due to a passenger trying to access the train whilst it was moving.

Staff then had to secure the door only to have their efforts undone when the self same passenger tried to exit the train on realising it was going in the wrong direction!

Railway Eye tip for ministers: Keep increasing fares, drive away passengers and we'll have a near perfect PPM.

Foreign Rail

***Porterbrook, according to the Sunday Times, is to be sold to Deutsche Bank***

Read the Sunday Times business section article here.

British Rail: fragmented by the Tories, exiled under Labour.

The last shall be...

Telegrammed by The Master
The revision of the ATOC guidelines on enthusiasts appears to have hit a stumbling block.

Regular readers of Railway Eye will recollect that ATOC circulated revised draft guidelines on photography at stations to the industry several months ago.

These are inline with Ian Johnstone, Chief Constable of the BTP, claiming that enthusiasts are additional eyes and ears on the network.

Alas, it appears that one of the TOC owning groups has decided to be difficult and break ranks .

Unless sanity (and diplomacy) prevails we may yet see camera-wielding enthusiasts being frog-marched off sizeable chunks of the rail network in the future.

Such an unedifying spectacle would be a massive PR blunder causing the industry acres of hostile media coverage.

Railway Eye hopes that this can be resolved by wiser and more senior heads first?

Shoots from the hip

Adrian Shooter, Chairman of DB owned Laing Rail, is not backward in coming forward.

Thus in today's Transit we read:

"From day one I've been on the IEP group... I told (DafT Civil Serpent) Mark Lambirth that the whole thing was ridiculous - a stupid way to procure a train."

So far so good.

But then it emerges that Shooter no longer attends the meetings.

And furthermore, that he is an 'informal advisor' to Tory shadow Transport SofS, Teresa Villiers.

Adrian - are you surprised no one in DafT is listening?

Missing the point

The proposed re-opening of the Leamside line is apparently exciting much agitation amongst local residents.

According to the Sunderland Echo a Mr James Lewis of Fatfield, Washington, claims that more than 90 per cent of people would prefer the line to be ripped up and the land put to other use.

Apparently the line is also regularly targeted by vandals who set fire to the sleepers and thieves who took the metal for scrap.

Mr Lewis said: "It is used as a dumping ground and people are afraid to walk along it because of drunken youths and underage drinkers."

Well Mr Lewis, as it's a railway line perhaps that's a good thing.

Ambulance chasers

Passenger Focus today responded to the publication of RAIB's report into Grayrigg.

Anthony Smith, chief executive, Passenger Focus said: “Passenger Focus will speak up for all rail passengers at whatever inquests or enquiries follow this report and will ensure the right questions are asked on behalf of passengers”.

Oh goody. More grandstanding from civil servants.