Pointless signs - Taunton station car park

Lost and found #2

This just in from the Archdeacon...

This is what happens when the engine mountings of your (German built) DMU fail when travelling at speed:




How unlike the home life of our own dear Pacers.

Eye welcomes Pierre Attendu

Bombardier UK customers might find the below of interest.

Always worth knowing who is on the up.

UPDATE: This from Anagrammaticus...

Pierre Attendu = Train et Perdue !

So if he loses Thameslink, will he be on the "Down Fast" ?

Gordon Brown breaks Javelin embargo

Oh dear.

It looks like the PM is off message.

This from the Number 10 website:

Gordon Brown called the Javelin train’s first weekday journey, “a momentous day in the long and glorious history of British railways” during the official launch of the UK’s first domestic high-speed rail service at St Pancras International station this morning.

Putting aside the interesting quote about the 'glorious history of British railways' hasn't the dear leader committed a faux pas by referring to South Eastern's high speed train as a 'Javelin'?

This name, we are constantly reminded, cannot be used before the London 2012 Olympics (copyright ODA).

Can it be long before threatening letters are sent to Downing Street?

UPDATE: This from Lobby Fodder...

I'm amazed at Brown's bare faced cheek!

Take this quote from the same release:

“I know some people who think this is not the time to be investing in infrastructure but I believe it is essential to do so and we will be investing £20 billion in our rail infrastructure in the next few years.”

Talk about making spending commitments with someone else's budget.

I suspect the "we" he is referring to will be in opposition within six months and therefore not in a position to invest in anything.

Apart from cleaners and painting summer houses obviously...

Bloke with 'tash is to be new EU transport commissar

Good news from the European Union!

A bloke with a 'tash has been nominated for the role of Transport Commissar in Manuel Barroso's new European Commission.


Bloke with Tash comes from Estonia and lists the following amongst his achievements:

• 1972-1990: Member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
• 1991-1995 and 1999-2004: President of the Estonian Cyclists Union
• 2002: Elected among "100 Great Estonians of the 20th Century"
• 2003: Order of the National Coat of Arms 2nd class
• 2009: Order of the Hair Dryer 3rd Class (is this one right? Ed)

The appointment is expected to be rubber stamped on the 26th January.

Aside from being a former president of the Estonian Cyclists Union the BWT has no previous experience of Transport.

Eye salutes this triumph for demoracy and 'tash wearing.

UPDATE: This just in from Lu Ki Liki...

May I submit the following for the delectation and delight of Eye's readers?

I wonder if they are in anyway related?

UPDATE: An anonymous source volunteers....

Surely Eurotash's British relative is spin doctor Steve Fleming of "The Thick Of It" fame.


He makes an appearance from just after 3.20 on this clip.

Not in front of the kids... & volume off in the office.

Peace breaks out between NatEx and DafT

Happy news for beleaguered National Express share holders.

Today there will be a veritable love in between the doomed company and the Department:

Chris Mole MP, The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport and Andrew Chivers, Managing Director, NXEA will launch the Service Improvement Plan by naming a train at Liverpool Street station at 10.00am and unveil a customer information brochure giving details about the improvements.

Good to see Moley out and about on the network, but a shame the Noble Lord couldn't make it.

Perhaps a late and unexpected diary conflict?

UPDATE: This from the Master...

Sadly 'twas not to be.

Someone at DfT must have 'contacts' as a cable theft at Chelmsford caused the event to be cancelled.

UPDATE: This from Steve Strong...

Adonis couldn't do it because he was at a meeting with Hitachi "discussing IEP".

To suffer one ministerial cancellation may be regarded as a misfortune...

DafT invests in flower power

Telegrammed by Patience Strong
More profligacy from the men at the ministry...

Written Answers — Transport: Departmental Plants (10 Dec 2009)

Grant Shapps (Shadow Minister (Housing), Communities and Local Government; Welwyn Hatfield, Conservative)

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport how much has been spent by his Department on (a) cut flowers and (b) pot plants in each of the last three years.

Chris Mole (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Ipswich, Labour)

The information is not held in the format requested and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. However, the Department for Transport spent £87,401 on pot plants and £3,419 on cut flowers in 2008-09. This excludes spend incurred at the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency as the information requested can be provided only at disproportionate cost.

No doubt that includes the cost of flying in chrysanthemums for IEP meetings.

How the media works...

From...

Bitterwallet

to

Railway Eye

to

Her Majesty's Daily Telegraph

to

The Drudge Report

'Nuff said!

LU leads way in motivating staff to communicate

This from bitterwallet with a bowler tip to Is 1A03 out of Chester yet, Bert

The platform announcer at Farringdon refused to stop talking for nearly half an hour, giving a blow-by-blow account of what was occurring.

Follow the link to hear it in all its glory.

The guy's a natural - who needs The X Factor?

UPDATE: This from A Despairing Member of Staff...

I note your post on the quality of LUL Passenger annoucements; is there any chance of SWT using this gentlemen on their services in the future because I for one have had enough of Digital Doris telling me to "please take my personal belongings with me when I leave the train."

What other belongings would she like me to remove? Public belongings, perhaps? Does she honestly believe that I boarded the train carrying a bench I stole from the park? Or perhaps she means that I may leave the train with belongings which in actual fact belong to persons other than myself?

Please could someone have a word with Lord Carrier-bag of Double-Decker; call it a Christmas request from his chums at the sharp end.

Darling announces 200 earlier vehicles - again!

Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road
Exciting news from the Chancellor's Pre Budget Report...

Introducing a green stimulus – ensuring part of the fiscal stimulus supports low-carbon growth and jobs by accelerating £535 million of capital spending on energy efficiency, rail transport, and adaptation measures. 76,000 low income households will benefit earlier from better heating and energy efficiency, up to 200 new rail carriages will be delivered earlier and 27,000 homes will benefit sooner from flood defences (cont. p94)

Earlier than what?

And could those 200 carriages refer to to the 202 DMU vehicles announced in similar terms in last year's Pre-Budget Report and subsequently abandoned.

We'd ask DfT if we thought the press office would understand the question.

We'd ask Stephen Hammond to raise it in Parliament, if we thought he would understand the question.

But as we suspect it's a cut and paste job from last year's Pre-Budget Report we'll do nothing but bury our head deep in our hands and weep.

After all does anyone believe a word that the 2009 Pre-Budget Report contains?

UPDATE: This, amazingly, from Hammond's 5th Surgeon...

Has 222 been on the Christmas gin?

The reason why the reference to 200 new vehicles looks like a cut'n'paste from the 2008 PBR is because it is from the 2008 PBR!

Not even this Chancellor would be craven enough to try and get away with the same nonsense twice... surely?

Lord Adonis flogs off Kings Lynn station car park

Not many outside the industry know that the British Railways Board still exists, albeit in a residuary capacity.

Known, surprisingly enough, as British Railways Board (Residuary), it is the repository for much of the former nationalised industry's liabilities, in particular claims relating to industrial disease - asbestosis, emphysema and other unpleasantness suffered as a consequence of working on the railway.

It is also tasked with the management and disposal of the industry's remaining land and buildings, which are surplus to the needs of the operational railway.

In most cases this relates to disused tunnels, bridges and viaducts, old track formations, abandoned goods yards and the like - which today's railway has no interest in.

Where possible BRB(R) tries to sell these disused assets off - raising a couple of bob in the process for HMG and getting shot of the liability at the same time.

The BRB(R) is chaired by Doug Sutherland, the former SRA's finance director, and he reports directly to the Secretary of State.

So far so good.

And mostly the BRB(R) does indeed do a pretty good job.

But there are exceptions.

Take the overspill car park at Kings Lynn for example.

Almost four years ago a 96-space overspill car park was built on a plot of land owned by BRB(R).

The BRB(R) has now decided to sell that land, complete with overspill car park, and it has been entered into a Residential Auction to be held by Allsops next Tuesday the 15th December (Lot 83)

The sale could raise as much as £400,000 for the Treasury, which in these fiscally challenging times is not be sniffed at.

After all the BRB(R) is merely fulfilling its remit.

However, according to the BRB(R)'s website:

Land is only disposed of when it has been agreed with the Department for Transport that there is no need for it to be retained for future railway purposes.

Surely a well used overspill car park serving a busy station like Kings Lynn is very much a railway purpose and it ought to be retained for use today, let alone in the future?

Therefore, it is unimaginable that the Department for Transport (prop. Lord Adonis) could have sanctioned the sale of the land to a developer who will not have the interest of rail passengers in mind.

So Eye wonders whether the Noble Lord is paying lip-service to modal shift or whether he continues to be badly advised?

The buck stops with you My Lord - what will you do?

UPDATE: This from the saintly Driver Joseph Locke...

After reading your item on the Kings Lynn car park, I turned to the alliteratively titled section 6.46 ("Prioritising projects and programmes") of the Pre-Budget Report.

The section where it promises to save £170 million by (among other things) increasing the capacity of station car parks.

I wonder if the BRB(Residuary) has read it yet?

UPDATE: This from Charles Yerkes...

Forget whether BRB(R) has read it.

Has the Department for Transport, they approve land sales.

Lord Berkeley bigs up Hammond at RFG lunch

Is ace railfreight lobbyist and Labour peer, Lord Berkeley, mellowing with age?

Despite harbouring republican sympathies Lord B had secured the services of Her Majesty's very own Scots Guards to lead revellers in a medley of Carols at yesterday's Rail Freight Group Christmas Lunch.


The canny political operator had also invited shadow Rail Minister Stephen Hammond MP to address members before luncheon.

There was a collective choking on bread rolls when Lord B confidently predicted that Hammond "would make a very good Secretary of State"!

Of course the wily old fox was clever enough to add... "or opposition spokesman".

UPDATE: This from Steve Strong...

Hammond may not have endeared himself to any railway hacks present.

He told a joke about five surgeons discussing who in the industry was easiest under the knife.

The punch line had the last saw-bones saying he preferred operating on railway hacks; as they had neither heart nor backbone and their lips and ar$eholes were interchangeable...

UPDATE: This from the Lobby Correspondent...

Could this be the same Stephen Hammond who was observed entertaining one Roger Ford in the the cafe area of Portcullis House earlier this year, in what was clearly an unsuccessful attempt by the good Captain to explain the break down of the 1300 (sic) vehicles in the HLOS?

I think we should be told!

UPDATE: This from NR's Internet Rapid Rebuttal Unit...

'Bigs up'?

Tfc will be 'repping his endz', next.

UPDATE: This from 5741 Duck...

You say that Lord Berkeley is a "cany political operator".

Is that because they frown on whips in the House of Lords?

Thank you 5741. Noted and corrected!

Eye suggests how to improve value from the railway

Exciting news from the Department for Transport!

DafT is undertaking a study into: Improving value for money from the railway.

According to the department's website blurb the study will:

...examine the overall cost structure of all elements of the railway sector and to identify options for improving value for money to passengers and the taxpayer while continuing to expand capacity as necessary and drive up passenger satisfaction.

Eye suggests that the Department starts this study by examining its own role in recent doomed or about-to-be-doomed rolling stock procurement exercises, where millions have been wasted with nothing to show for it (eg IEP, the cancelled DMU project, the pointless and very expensive Coco inquiry into Roscos, etc... ).

There's a good £50m of waste identified before we even begin to look at the debacle of franchising.

Sadly turkeys don't vote for Christmas so expect the usual Whitehall whitewash.

UPDATE: This from Ithuriel...

By far the best way to improve value for money on the railways would be to bring back Tom Winsor as the Waste-Finder General.

First for quality branding

Telegrammed by our Independent Expert
First no drivers - now no paint...


This quality offering seen at Agincourt International on Tuesday.

Daily sex on the guided sub

This from the Daily Mail with a bowler tip to a Mr Terris...


?!?

East Coast blows sugar up the Noble derrier...

This with a bowler tip to Anon.

Read carefully...


We are not worthy!

UPDATE: This from A N Other...

As it took over a year to get the EPOS to work at all, I expect we may have this treat for a while.

Of course it may be easier just to change the plaque on the Marsham Street door.

EU rail liberalisation

***Norton Rose provides a useful primer here.***

SatNav directs walkers on to the mainline!

This just in from transport hack and author Andy Roden...

A good friend of mine was given a whizzy satellite navigation system by his employers to help him find his way by road to the various bits of the rail network in Devon and Cornwall he has to work on (despite the fact that he knows the county’s rail network as well as everyone).

After a meeting in Bristol he thought he’d try this new box of tricks out on the train back to see what it could do.

Initially it was very confused, constantly trying to point him onto the nearest road, but around Par my mate decided to try its walking function and asked it to give him directions to Penzance from the railway station.

Lo and behold, it suggested he walk all the way down the Cornish Main Line as far as Hayle, where it finally opted to send him on the main road back to Penzance, presumably having dodged the HSTs, Voyagers and Sprinters along the way.

It’s a bit worrying though – after hearing about people driving down railway lines because they’ve had their brains surgically replaced by Satnavs, is the next thing a plague of hikers getting confused between country tracks and Country Tracks?

FGW and Arriva XC drivers beware!

Lookalike: The Big O...

Steve Bell tells it like it is...

This from the Grauniad...


'Nuff said... (with a bowler tip to Dan)