Keep it in the family

Network Rail strengthens Board with new appointments

The company's Board will soon be strengthened in preparation for CP4, with three new additions to the leadership team. Robin Gisby, director operations and customer services, Simon Kirby, director infrastructure investment, and Paul Plummer, director planning and regulation, will be promoted and become executive directors with effect from 1 October 2008.

Presumably NR will need to issue an OJEU for a bigger trough?

Unperson

Don't you just love banks?

The Fact Compiler has received a communication from HSBC's very own Ministry of Truth.

It announces HSBC's new management team.

"Following a recent internal review, HSBC Rail is pleased to announce its new management team for the business. Mary Kenny has been appointed Chief Operating Officer, blah, blah, blah..."

But what's this?

Not a word about the HSBC Rail's former top man Peter Aldridge who was done over during the bank's very own night of the long knives.

Railway Eye has a longer memory.

Therefore as a service to the industry and to help the alzheimer suffering bankers of Hong Kong and Shanghai here is a picture of their former guv'nor.


HSBC may be the "World's local bank" but it's evidently still run by a bunch of wankers bankers.

Horley aerodrome

***BAA have announced plans to sell off Gatwick Airport***

View BAA announcement here

Chocks away!

Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road
It's not just Eurostar passengers who are deserting rail for air.

Miriam Lea, Tom Harris' gamine head of rail at the DfT press desk, has been promoted to a strategic comms role in the Aviation Directorate.

Her ability to take on board the most tedious number crunching questions from the gricerati and come back with answers on everything from IEP to the mythical 1300 extra vehicles will be sadly missed.

Miriam many congratulations on your promotion, but who now will make sense of DafT pronouncements?

Airway robbery

With services through the Chunnel severely restricted BA is busy making hay whilst the sun shines.

According to the Evening Standard the airline is quoting fares of £600 between London and Paris.

It's nice to know the spirit of Lord King lives on.

Cashrail

Telegrammed by the RSM
With the Lib Dems focusing on public sector costs it's interesting to note that at Crossrail people have been trousering salaries guaranteed to make Vince Cable wince.

With many senior staff recruited through the 'back door' (ie consultants) the full timers who get final salary pensions, health Insurance and often free First Class rail travel, are doing very nicely at the taxpayers expense.

• Managing Director Delivery circa £175,000
• Corporate Affairs Director circa £135,000 (part time)
• Legal Services Director circa £120,000
• Human Resources Director circa £100,000
• Delivery Programme Manager circa £95,000

What's more most of them will probably have retired by the time they get round to digging the first tunnel.

A nice sinecure when you remember that Crossrail is currently only running an idea - rather than actually operating a railway.

Turncoat

From our man at 222 Marylebone Road
Has the Fact Compiler gone native?

Rail Minister Tom Harris returned from his Centre Parcs holiday and posted the following on his blog.

"Yes, we enjoy holidays in Blighty, and have spent more holiday time here than in any other part of the world. But there were no altruistic or worthy motives behind our decision. As soon as the boys are old enough and Carolyn gets over her fear of flying (or allows me to sedate her for the journey), we’ll be long-hauling somewhere sunny."

So keen was The Fact Compiler to ingratiate himself with Harris' on his return, that he posted the first response to the above, without questioning why the allegedly 'modally agnostic' Minister needed to fly, long haul, to the sun.

What's wrong with travelling by rail to France, Italy or Spain - plenty of sun there and no need to sedate Mrs Harris!

(222 - The Chunnel was on fire at the time, but point taken. Ed)

Railway Garden Competition #10

The Fact Compiler has received the following entry from a Mr Rayner of Ambergate.

It shows a truly venerable railway garden.

As Mr Rayner explains: "The tree is probably 15+ years old", so it has probably survived because:

• BR Civils were too busy being disaggregated
• Railtrack was too busy wishing it was doing something else
• and latterly NR is too busy with its face in the trough

Of particular interest are the two strengthening bars in the picture below. These must be a source of great comfort to users of the busy A6 which passes immediately beneath the bridge.

And see here the cooling dappled shade afforded to motorist and pedestrians alike traversing the Queen's highway.


Normally the The Fact Compiler would berate NR for having let this tree do significant damage to a mainline bridge that crosses a busy major road.

But perhaps NR has secret plans to construct their first totally carbon-neutral parkway station in the mighty boughs of this arboreal behemoth?

Perhaps not.

Number crunching #1

Nice work if you can get it

Go-Ahead increase in pre-tax profits - 19.1%

Increase in London Midland off peak fares - 15%

Go-Ahead carries 30 per cent of the UK's rail passengers. Mostly on commuter routes - a captive market.

Room uptop

It's party conference time and The Fact Compiler has been invited to attend a series of Network Rail and ATOC shindigs where 'Team Railway' hope to meet the political great and the good.

Not to be left behind Passenger Focus are also intending to press the flesh as they celebrate winning the concession to act as consumer champion for bus as well as rail passengers.

The Fact Compiler knows that as a government agency cash is short but surely they could do better than this?

Anthony Smith, chief executive, Passenger Focus said, “The bus gives us a perfect platform to listen to our most important stakeholders, the passengers - through consultation and research we are making sure we represent passenger priorities at the highest level”.

Looks like it's going to be pretty crowded on the top deck then!

Memory loss

The Tories are having a field day putting the boot into Gordon and Shriti's disastrous Tube privatisation.

Quick to jump on a bandwagon, and shift the blame for bad news, is the instantly forgettable Tory shadow Secretary of State for Transport who is now blaming Tube Lines' cost overrun for the likely cancellation of the Cross-River Tram.

Read the Boris Watch story here

A bit rich coming from the party which privatised British Rail, resulting in a massive increase in interfaces and costs, leading to many desperately needed network improvement schemes being shelved as too expensive.

The buck stops where?

The Fact Compiler once worked for a guv'nor who told his staff:

"Where there is success, it is your success; if there is a problem it is mine."

Perhaps a leit motif that might usefully be adopted by other senior managers in our industry!

A couple of weeks ago a "gaffe" saw the following photo appear in Rail issue 599.


In the latest issue editor Nigel Harris has the good grace to acknowledge that this might have been unwise, as it could possibly undermine Rail's splendid campaign against photo-shoots featuring models in the four foot.

So far so good and full marks to Nigel and Rail for taking reader criticism on the chin.

But what's this?

The editor's apology makes clear that he was on holiday when the picture was selected for publication and that on his return he "had a bit of a chat, here in the office."

Oh dear - it looks like some poor junior minion has received a bollocking and a very public one at that.

Hopefully he at least received 'Higher Grade Duty' payments whilst covering for his buck passing editor?

Anorak

High praise indeed.

A thread on Tory Troll says that Railway Eye is like 'Guido Fawkes in an anorak'.

Interestingly Tory Troll's masthead is a picture of David Cameron in the cab of a Freightliner class 66.

The world is indeed full of cranks.

Frankenstein sighted

Express Rail Alliance, the Bombardier & Siemens joint venture bidding to produce the IEP, has released some images of what their train might look like.

View the images here.

The Fact Compiler wonders why the train has been given a bar-code instead of a livery?

Presumably as each vehicle will cost an eye watering £3m it will make it easier to total up the cost of the fleet.

Live from St Pancras

Telegrammed by 'Brochet' at 16:00
From the vantage point of the Betjeman Arms at St Pancras it all seems pretty quiet.

Eurostar running 12 Paris and 6 Brussels returns today (extended running times).

Intending pax advised to report at normal times and they will be put on the first available service - nice!

Seems very quiet though, have most people decided not to bother?

Finally...

EUROSTAR STATEMENT

12 September 2008 – 16.30 (UK time) update

Due to the incident involving a Eurotunnel shuttle train in the Channel Tunnel on Thursday 11 September, Eurostar is unable to operate any services today, Friday 12 September.

Until Eurotunnel and the emergency services have undertaken their assessment of the incident, Eurostar is unable to say when services will resume.

Eurostar must await permission from Eurotunnel before it is able to re-start operations.

Once the single tunnel that is unaffected by the fire is re-opened, Eurostar hopes to begin a limited service with longer journey times.

Eurostar is therefore advising all travellers who hold Eurostar tickets for today, Saturday 13 September and Sunday 14 September that they should seek alternative means of making their journeys.

Travellers holding tickets for travel today, Saturday and Sunday are also able to exchange their tickets for travel at a later date, or get a full refund.

Eurostar will issue a further update when more information becomes available.

-ends-

Somewhat disingenuously Eurostar claims this is an "update".

The last press release from the company was on Wednesday afternoon and concerned bikes on trains!

Pure merde

Three hundred British and French firemen took 16 hours to extinguish the fire that started in the southbound Channel Tunnel yesterday.

So fierce was the conflagration that at times temperatures reached 1,830 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius).

As a consequence it is unlikely that even a limited service will recommence until Sunday, at the very earliest.

Meanwhile the Eurotunnel chairman Jacques Gounon was telling listeners to French radio station RTL yesterday that some traffic could resume on Friday.

The Fact Compiler doesn't know which he preferred - Eurostar's silence (see previous posts) or Eurotunnel's bullshit.

Either way both companies proved utterly incapable of communicating the facts to intending passengers.

A lot less Franks

***Transit reports that David Franks is to start surrendering operational control of National Express East Coast to deputy Susan Goldsmith, but he denies he's leaving the flagship TOC.***

Read the Transit article here

Get a grip

Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road
Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it - and how!

Eurotunnel's Richard (carbon footprint) Brown is a hot shot when it comes to saving the planet, but care of customers clearly takes less of his attention than saving the three toed Patagonian Newt.

Not only was there nothing about the Channel Tunnel fire on the Eurostar website two hours after Railway Eye was alerted, but as this quote reveals they didn't know how serious the situation was three hours after that.

"We checked the website around 9pm," said finance manager Kirsty McIntyre, who had planned to spend the weekend in the Champagne region.

"It just said delays are expected but it didn't say anything about cancelled services, so we came today and it's not happening. We are going to see if we can get a bus to Dover and a ferry to Calais."

Surely there must be a communications plan somewhere, based on what happened last time?

Back to the drawing board

Telegrammed by our independent expert
Nothing does more to expose the ignorance of national newspaper hacks about railways than the products of their picture desks or graphics departments.

Today's Telegraph graphic of the Channel Tunnel fire shows a train of lorries being hauled by the driving cab of a Eurostar Class 373!

You see where they get their bad habits from. A couple of weeks ago they ran a news story about fuel saving measures on the "locomotives" of Trans-Pennine Class 185 Desiros.

Shame on Transport Editor, David Millward.