Exciting news from the world of Adman, Adman, Bowtie and Glasses.
Beardie himself is to appear in a new Virgin Trains commercial driving a dustcart through Glasgow Central station.
Using your skill and judgement can you guess which of these two images will not appear in the ad?
Please, please, please, someone at Virgin spite me and include the other one!
So Transit is to become a monthly from May.
It will also shift from broadsheet format to tabloid (or Berliner if you read the Gruaniad).
But the indignity.
It will be retitled New Transit.
And just as New Labour exits stage left.
Ministers regularly excoriate TOCs and NR for late running so how is DafTs own record at delivering to passengers?
This from a distinctly optimistic DafT press release issued on the 21st December last year:
Invitation to tender issued for 200 new diesel train carriages... Closing date for bids is 16th February and it is anticipated that an announcement on the preferred bidder will be made in April.
It is now May.
When can we expect DafT to apologise for the delay, explain the reason and hand out passenger compensation forms?
Who would be a train operator on today's railway.
Obviously the "thinly capitalised equity profiteers of the worst kind" cannot now even be trusted to run their own stations without some apparatchik of the state sticking their oar in.
Comrade the Lord Adonis today unveiled his latest big idea - "Station Czars".
“I have asked Sir Peter Hall and Chris Green to look at how we can get the basics right as well as to consider the broader role of stations in the future” said Adonis.
Sir Peter Hall is currently the 76 year old President of the Town and Country Planning Association, whilst Chris Green, 65, is a non Executive Director of Network Rail.
How clever of this tired administration to select two men so obviously at the cutting edge of twenty first century retail and facilities management thinking.
No matter.
Messrs Hall & Green, Stationers by appointment to Lord DafT Vader, has a certain ring to it!
On the up-side, shares in Dulux have rocketed on the expectation of an immanent return to the Red Lamp-post Railway.
UPDATE: This just in from Ithuriel...
Given that Adonis described British Rail in the Guardian as "a national joke in terms of quality and reliability" one wonders what is the point of inviting an old-BR retread like Chris Green to be his station czar.
Surely he should appoint some thrusting dynamic new-railway-man, in touch with today's demanding rail travellers like, err... Richard Bowker or Brian Souter or Moir Lockhead or, why not Sir customer focus himself, Richard 'Beardie' Branson?
Odd that when Adonis is in a hole he turns to someone who ran not one, but two "national jokes".
"Railways, like any other industry, have got to modernise." Adonis told the Guardian.
So that's back to the future then!
So what exactly is happening at National Express?
A number of 'NatEx' friendly stories have been appearing in the media recently.
Three weeks ago it was rumoured that NatEx and Stagecoach might merge.
The story was strenuously denied by Stagecoach.
No matter - NatEx shares reacted positively to the 'news'.
And only this weekend the Sunday Times claimed that NatEx's troubled East Coast franchise would move to a management contract.
A story given short shrift by the DfT, who quickly reaffirmed that rail contracts won't be renegotiated.
Even so the mere rumour reinvigorated NatEx's dire share price by 11.8%
Could these Alice in Wonderland ramblings have anything to do with the National Express annual meeting this Wednesday, a £400m rights issue and threatened boardroom shake-up?
Surely shareholders won't be so easily taken in?
UPDATE: This just in from Sim Harris...
Not sure that DafT defines the termination of a franchise and its replacement by a management contract as "renegotiation".
DafT has NOT given this story short shrift -- indeed, it has consistently declined to deny it over the past couple of days. If it is not true, or at least well-founded, why not say so?
More follows, I suspect.
Weird, but strangely believable...
ObnoxiotheClown unmasked!
Spooky, eh?
This extraordinary poster has appeared on the Thameslink network courtesy of FuCC.
Well, at least they are honest...
Can it be long before Esther Rantzen, of Childline fame, joins the Battle of the Barriers?
UPDATE: This from the 'Commuter'...
I noticed with interest your photograph from First Capital Connect which mentions "a child caught in a closing ticket barrier could be seriously injured."
Interesting, given the guidance notes for the Railway Group Standard concerning Automatic Ticket Gates at stations clearly states "there should be no opportunity for the person to become trapped or for the gate to close on the person and so cause possible injury" and "the design of the ATGs should also enable people to pass through without injury, for example by trapped fingers or limbs, or injury to the heads of small children."
So are FCC admitting now that their barriers don't comply with the relevant safety rules?
Telegrammed by Eboracum (50A)
Who knew kettles could be so much fun?
On page 7 of the latest issue of Steam Railway there is the following line:
The real prospect of a ‘Scotsman’ that can ‘suck’ as well as ‘blow’ will come as a huge relief to all enthusiasts.
I’m speechless!
The Sunday Times is reporting that National Express is moving to a 'management contract' on its East Coast franchise
National Express has struck a deal with the government to abandon its east-coast train franchise, which should prepare it for a 400 million pound rights issue and a boardroom reshuffle.
Time for some wise words courtesy of the Daily Telegraph, 15th August 2007...
"We have had a very simple bidding philosophy,'' said Mr Bowker. ''We will not bid at levels we think are unsustainable or undeliverable - there's no point in being a hero for a day and a villain forever more afterwards."
Will NX shareholders take the same view?
A tip of the bowler to I Work For First Great Western for this...
Tim O’Toole and Colin Hood will join the Board of FirstGroup as Independent Non-Executive Directors on 7 May 2009.
And this just after yesterdays announcement that Dean Finch is to be Chief Exec of Tube Lines!
The Fact Compiler's flabber is well and truly gasted.
The latest issue of Rail has secured a nice quote from My Lord Adonis.
During the Pilgrimage of Grice the rail minister used an All Line Rail Rover, which he freely promoted in the media at just about every opportunity (something the train operators have singularly failed to do).
Alas.
As the Eye revealed two weeks ago ATOC are to increase the price of an All Line Rail Rover, from the 17th May, by a whopping 15%!
Indeed, so shocked was Adonis by the scale of the price increase he told Rail:
"With friends like that what enemies need the railways fear?"
With ATOC paying over a grand a day for PR consultants perhaps someone should have seen that coming?
This from Longrider...
I’ll be watching this one with interest. Not least because it is likely to set a precedent and, because this new law; Corporate Manslaughter (2007) Act; worries me.
Read it.
Whilst the rest of the media swallowed whole Virgin's latest puff piece about the introduction of on-train wifi the geek press was not so easily spun.
So full marks to ZDNet for spotting the inconvenient fact that:
Virgin Trains Wi-Fi arrives one year late
Beardie Rail late - never!
This from NCE...
Tube Lines appoints Dean Finch as chief executive
To paraphrase Mrs Malaprop: Tube Lines' loss is First's gain...
UPDATE: This from The Raver...
Fury at London Underground!
Telegrammed by our Independent Expert
The memorial to the great locomotive engineer as photographed at Edinburgh Waverley station on Wednesday.
The memory of Mallard's creator will live on long after the likes of TPE have been consigned to the corporate dustbin!
UPDATE: This just in from Captain Deltic...
Captain Deltic wonders what the Great engineer would have thought of Trans-Pennine Express' German Class 185 DMUs - or for that matter the Intercity Express Programme.
Since his reaction to the Reichsbahn's Flying Hamburger high speed diesel train was to show that loco-haulage could do better, we can only assume that the great man is following with approbation, from the great motive power depot in the sky, Ian Walmsley's campaigning for real inter-city trains with serious traction horsepower on the front end, rather than under the floor.
A little something for the office...
TOC's may wish to affix in a prominent position in carriages.
Telegrammed by the Master
NR's reputation for customer service will take a great leap forward from 2010 when the Leeds train planning office moves to, err... Milton Keynes.
Scotrail and TPE are reported to be non too impressed.
NR have acquired premises in this 'world class' town and are intending concentrating many more functions on the site.
But few staff seem keen to make the move to the land of concrete cows.
That's one way to reduce headcount.
UPDATE: This just in from DOS at Rugby...
The move to Milton Keynes, and planned centralisation of functions currently carried out in other locations, may well be connected to Mr Coucher residing near by.
Perhaps even he is finding a daily commute to Euston too expensive!
UPDATE: This just in from the Major...
I suspect Mr C has few problems with the cost of his MK commute.
Whether he's quite so happy at his train being late so often is another matter.
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