This from ITV...
Best-selling author Bill Bryson, who lives in Norfolk, is fronting a new campaign to clean up England's railways.
Bryson, who's President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, wants to use the law to make public land managers clear up unsightly litter around railways. He's demanding Network Rail clear up rubbish along tracks in Cambridgeshire.
Well Bill - this is really helpful. Thank you.
Perhaps Bill and his ever-so-cosy Campaign to Protect Ruritanian England should focus on the challenge of fly-tipping, rather than on the poor sods on whose land this rubbish ends up.
Meanwhile, Network Rail is now expected to divert scarce resource on prettifying 8,000 route miles to meet Bill and his chums vision of the English idyll.
Eye hopes that Network Rail will meet the demands of Bryson and the CPRE in full.
And pay for it using the East Anglia maintenance budget.
Perhaps Bill and his CPRE chums won't think they are quite so clever when standing on a litter free station where trains can't run.
On the plus side this would allow Bryson even more time to "write a history of the world without leaving home."
Would that he had done that today.
UPDATE: This from Carbon-Neutral Potter...
Anyone else think that perhaps encouraging, say, the re-instatement of litter bins on stations might be a way forward?
Although it didn't start with NR's reign, housekeeping seems to be something that the railway is particularly bad at.
Perhaps Eye readers are aware of more examples?
Right - I'm off to eat some organic Fairtrade pizza and compost my toenail clippings.
Every little helps.
UPDATE: This from Inspector Blakey...
I thought that the traditional idiom of the flytipper was to dump old sofas, fridges and other household rubbish.
I didn't realize they were responsible for leaving all those chunks of scrap rail, sleepers, fishplates and half-empty aggregate bags lying around the cess too...
UPDATE: This from a Retired NR Contract Manager - one time responsible for litter picking contract in a RT Zone...
Most of the litter on tracks around station areas is from the TOCs trains and passenger/customers.
Most of it away from station areas is obviously not now from passengers throwing things out of windows, one advantage - possibly the only one, of hermetically sealed, air conditioned, non opening windowed, sanitised rolling stock, and is blown in from adjacent premises. Supermarket recycling points, Asda at Longsight for instance, being a prime example.
This does not get away from the fact that its looks a mess wherever, but pointing the legal finger at Network Rail just because it finishes up with them is a bit ripe.
It needs an industry wide task force and solution. Oh - I forgot, that’s not now possible is it?
UPDATE: This from Platelayer...
Perhaps Bill Bryson and the CPRE should be invited to sponsor a Prize Length competition?
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