Railway Garden Competition - Derby astroturf

Derby Telegraph wins award for Derbygate campaign

Good news from today's Regional Press Awards...

The Derby Telegraph has won two awards.

The paper won Campaigning Newspaper of the Year for its Bombardier campaign following the award of the Thameslink fleet order to Siemens, and Steve Hall was named as Editor of the Year.

Good effort and well deserved.

Eye readers will be aware of the fury in the East Midlands over the Thameslink contract award, a fury given full voice by the Derby Telegraph.

So shaken were the normally supine ministers and mandarins at the Department for Transfer that they actually worked over Christmas to end a 999 day rolling stock order hiatus, awarding a contract in record time to Bombardier's Derby plant on the 28th December last year to provide Southern with much needed new trains.

Since then, despite much ministerial huffing and puffing over the new IEP and Thameslink fleets, nothing of course.

If any doubts remain over the particular power of the Derby Telegraph the picture below should put paid to them...

Once bitten, twice shy eh, Dave?

Chiltern unveils new Mk3 fleet

Chiltern unveiled their new Mk3s with plug doors and retention tanks today.

It didn't take the wags long to make their presence felt.

First Community Rail iPhone app launched

So. The once supposedly doomed Community Rail Lines are yet again putting mainstream TOCs to shame!

Whilst the marketing genii of the privatised railways struggle to master the use of social media it is left to the Big Society railways to show the digital way forward.

Eye presents an iPhone app from the Bittern & Wherry Lines!

The very first Community Rail app, and of course it is free!

Good effort!

Meanwhile several TOCs remain wedded to a sadly dying analogue world.

Perhaps Eye's Open Access friends, who haven't even mastered Twitter yet, should do a spot of poaching from the Big Society?

NR unveils mono-rail trial in Bedfordshire

This from the Cardinal...

 As you can see the new platform for the mono-rail station at Sandy is coming on well.

Good to see that NR's development of Alternative Solutions makes use of existing signalling provision.

Villiers lets slip size of CP5 Budget - Shocker!

Tafia Vanity Express partially derailed

This from ITV...

The Welsh Government have announced changes to the North-South Wales express train service.

From September this year it will run once a day instead of twice, but will stop at additional stations in Wrexham and Flint. The Government say it will save half a million pounds a year.

Who would have guessed it would have come to this when the second daily return service was announced last March.

No doubt the few remaining passengers of the soon to be withdrawn second train can be catered for more cost effectively by chauffeured Rolls?

Life imitates art - No. 94

Good to see that the Highways Agency is up to speed.

This from the glossary of the 'Post Opening Project Evaluation, M27 J11-12 Climbing Lanes, One Year After Study' undertaken by Atkins Transport Planning:

That is all. 

Exclusive - Baker 'crosses the floor' shocker

This from Aslef...

"A letter from the Conservative Under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport, Norman Baker, makes it clear that the government is ‘disappointed’ that East Midland Trains pressed ahead with reducing pension contributions – the cause of the current dispute."

Good to see the brothers have their fingers on the pulse.

Eye wishes them well as they try to negotiate with EMT managing director Karen Boswell...

Carlsberg moment in Kemble Street

This from Captain Deltic...

According to ORR its objective for the current Periodic Review is:

...ensuring our determination enables Network Rail and its industry partners to deliver or exceed all the specified outcome and output requirements safely and sustainably at the most efficient levels possible, comparable with the best railways in the world by the end of the control period.

Good to see that the ORR leads the pack when it comes to b*llsh*t mission statements.

ORR, the best rail regulator in the world... probably! 

Smooth man gets hot and bothered, possibly

Eye was amused to receive the following email from Odgers' uber-recruitment guru Tim Hartley.

Well not from him, obviously, but from his PA...

Having been on the Board of Railway Children for nearly 5 years, I am ashamed to admit that I have not yet taken part in the flagship annual fundraising event – the 3 peaks by rail. 

That is, until June of this year, when I will be boarding an especially chartered train with hundreds of other participants to climb the UK’s 3 highest mountains. I am told that the climbs are mentally and physically draining, and to be completed sequentially with very little sleep in between… clearly not an ideal challenge for me! 

Eye bets that at the end of the three days Smooth Tim doesn't even glow!

Either way, all those businesses, quangos and departments of state who have benefitted from Tim's skills may want to divvy up?

News from the wild side - Phineas Gage

This from Reuters...

  

 Errr... railways pushing forward the boundaries of science?

Hendy - Railway Hero?

This from the BBC's Tom Edwards...

@BBCTomEdwards: Peter Hendy very proud he has been awarded the "beer drinker of the year" by Parliamentary Beer Group 

That is all!

Apart from good effort, of course

Derbygate - the chickens come home to roost!

This from a Mr Saltaire...

I wonder if Eye readers have spotted this gem from Cruella given in the House on the 17th May?

Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what the reasons are for the time taken to finalise the Thameslink rolling stock contract; and when she expects the contract to be finalised.

Theresa Villiers (Minister of State (Rail and Aviation), Transport; Chipping Barnet, Conservative)
The Department expects to conclude the core project agreements with Siemens and Cross London Trains shortly, following which Cross London Trains and their lending banks then need to conclude the financing documentation required to secure the necessary equity and debt funding for the project.

So, let me get this straight.

There are now two processes taking place:

The projct agreement, which will be agreed 'shortly' (whatever that may equate to in Daftime) and the project funding, which apparently is not even in place yet!

How, therefore, could the DfT have accepted Cross London Train's offer, given that a prerequisite of the project was that it be fully financed?

More importantly how does the Government know whether the Order of Magnitude financing costs assumed at the time of the bid, still stand today, tomorrow or in six months time when the Euro may well have disappeared from the commercial landscape?

If I were Wabtec, Bombardier or Railcare, I’d be getting my tendering pencils warmed up for a Class 319 refurb offer! 

And if I were ATOC, and had just delivered a Rolling Stock Strategy, then I’d be thinking about going back to the drawing board, as far as EMU cascades are concerned.

UPDATE: This from Steve Strong...

And if I were in Marsham Street I would be stuffing a telephone directory down my trousers in advance of a spanking from the National Audit Office!

Pointless signs - Wimbledon

Railway Garden Competition - Euston Carriage Sidings

Pointless sign - Penge West

Or Railway Garden?

You decide.

Pointlesss signs - Nottingham

 

UPDATE: This from Willow...

They'll have done this to avoid planning permission. It may be pointless but it is needed for the sign to exist.

Sedgefield MP exposes massive cuts to IEP

Oh dear!

It looks like the IEP project has been reduced to plumping the cushions and painting the buffers of the HST fleet.

This from Sedgefield MP Phil Wilson yesterday:

I also wish to discuss Hitachi, which I always mention when I can because it provides a massive boost to the north-east economy; it is providing the biggest private sector investment in the north-east since Nissan. Hitachi is going to build a £90 million factory—a train-building facility—in my constituency at Newton Aycliffe. 

The company is going to refurbish the rolling stock for the east coast main line and for the great western line into Wales. Hitachi is going to create 500 jobs, with thousands in the supply chain. 

Either a little knowledge is a dangerous thing or Marsham Street is to be saluted for its frugal perspicacity. 

UPDATE: This from The Cynic, who has discovered even greater savings... 

Well, it won't take them very long to paint the 'buffers of the HST fleet'

The remaining power cars have has just 16 buffers fitted between them!

Stormin' Norman bulldozes TramTrain through

According to the Department for Transport...

Transport Minister Norman Baker today gave the green light to a £58m pilot scheme to run revolutionary Tram Trains on both rail and tram networks, making them ideal for the eight mile non-stop journeys of no more than 25 minutes between, suburb and city centres from Sheffield to Rotherham.

As well as providing a boost to the regional economy thanks to improved connections across the region, the project is also expected to create 35 new jobs locally as well.

Full marks to Norman Baker for championing this, no doubt to the delight of local MP and DPM Nick Clegg.

And with Tram Train due to "commence in 2015" what a fitting memorial it will make to the ConDem government, as it leaves office...

UPDATE: This from Captain Deltic...

According to Stormin' Norman:

The knowledge that we obtain from the pilot will enable us to understand the technical and operational challenges involved in this project so that the concept can potentially be rolled out elsewhere in the UK.

Presumaly these are the same 'technical and operational challenges' that had to be understood before the successful operation of Tyne & Wear Metro cars over Network Rail infrastructure to Sunderland? (shurely 'already mastered by LUL's Met and District lines, whose stock have long shared routes with 'heavy' rail operators'? Ed).
 
Still, however dodgy the justification, who cares if the Treasury buys it and a lot of people should benefit - unlike the original bonkers proposal back in 2008 to run diesel tram trains as Pacer replacement over the Penistone Line.