Owner group responds to latest DfT Consultation - Exclusive

Eye has been sent a copy of a response to the DfT's consultation on the new London and the South franchise, launched yesterday.

According to the Department...

The franchise is expected to cover most of the existing First Capital Connect franchise, including the Thameslink line which is undergoing a £6 billion upgrade. Services currently run by Southern will be added to the new combined franchise from 2015. This would see a single train operator to take responsibility for all rail services from Brighton to King’s Lynn and Southampton to Ashford with London at the heart, creating the largest franchise in the UK rail market.

The top secret response to the consultation comes from TOC owners Arrational StageginAhead Firellio Group.

It says...

Dear Justine

Whilst broadly supportive of the proposals for a vast new franchise covering London and the South we do have one slight issue.

Namely the risk associated with having to put 30% of the country's entire fare box revenue through our books and the likely impact on our cashflow and market rating.

In consequence we are only able to offer effusive support for these proposals, furthermore we suggest an urgent meeting with both you, and the genius that thought this one up, at the usual little Bistro round the corner for trebles all round!!!

Love and kisses

Your mates on the Board

That is all.

Pointless signs - Steam, Swindon

This from a seriously hacked off photographer...

Thought you'd like this utter bollocks sign from STEAM in Swindon.

There is no child protection law concerning photography.

They appear hopelessly confused with the Data Protection Act and even then it has no relevance.

Presumably some petty council jobs-worth with too much time on their hands dreamt this one up?

The luck of the Irish

Eye had a right royal craic last night!

Those nice people at Railtours Ireland hosted a champagne reception at St Pancras yesterday evening, to celebrate their daily Boat Train from London to Dublin .

Whilst taking an innocuous phot of RI supremo Jim Deegan and the mighty bottle used to refresh guests, another tableau inadvertently appeared in the frame...

The Fact Compiler can only wonder what Virgin's Leathley and Stagecoach's Stacpoole were discussing...

9A goes top to bottom - slowly

It appears that the Fact Compiler has a long lost sibling!

A Mr Methane, aka The Fart Compiler (sic, but very funny) has written to ask...

Can Eye give the lads at 9A a plug?

Especially Virgin drivers: Martin 'Fred' Sullivan, John Young, Alan Moss, Gary Nuttall, Steve Griffin, Craig Brooks and Dave Carter.

Fred Sullivan, and his fellow top link men from Manchester's '9A' Longsight depot (supported by Ian Mead & Dave Massey) are swapping their air-condtioned high speed Bendydildo cabs for the hard, cold, pile enducing, cast iron seat of a cabless 1955 Massey Ferguson tractor, with a top speed of just 15 mph. 

The 9A team plan to drive the tractor from John O'Groats to Lands End starting at 09:00 on 10th Sept 2012.

The 985 mile journey will take 14 days and is in aid of the Young Oncology unit at Christies hospital in South Manchester, where Fred's 19 year old boy, Aaron, is being treated for Hodgkin's Lymphoma. 

You can sponsor The 9A Team by donation or go one further and pay to drive the 1954 vintage support tractor for part of the journey at Top to Bottom Tractor Run.

Good effort!

Name your own Pullman car!

Clearly the recession hasn't hit the parts of Derbyshire served by the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway!

This from yesterday's email update on progress at the Duffield - Wirksworth line, sent out by GM Martin Miller...

...I returned today to find that John had completed the third lining out of our Pullman set.

I am open to receive the first £10,000 donation to put any name required on one of the vehicles.

Surely worth £20k of anyone's money to see 'Cruella de Villiers' and the 'Captain of Netball' permanently paired for posterity?

Bombardier shrinks the world - Official

This from Dan Dare...

According to a Bombardier press release, celebrating an award for its Standsted Express class 379 fleet:

The Class 379 trains’ current performance is such that on average each train would circumnavigate the world more than twice before encountering a technical failure. The target availability of 90% has been met consistently

Now the circumference of the earth is 25,901 miles at the equator, so Professor Peabody calculates that the Class 379 feet should be recording a Miles per Technical Incident of 49,802.

The Moving Annual Average for the Class 379 in Period 1 2012-13 was, errrr... 13,363 miles - or almost exactly once round the planet Mars, scene of my second adventure when my archeologist uncle discovered how the Martian civilisation had been wiped out before it could develop railways.

Southern's Class 377 Electrostars would get 1.4 times round Earth before suffering a 3 minute delay.

For the record, the Equatorial Train Reliability Analogy winners are the SWT Class 458 and LM Class 350/2 fleets which would be starting their fourth circumnavigation before conking out. 

Which is roughly 20,000-25,000 miles short of a circuit of Uranus, not a planet I visited although I understand the track gauge is 13 grots in the Uranian system of measurement which is based on the avarage length of the male Uranian divided by...

Right, that's quite enough Eagle pastiche, Ed.

Meaningless job titles in need of ridicule

Congratulations to the following...

TfL's ticketing top man, who has acquired Meaningless Job Title No 587 in Railway Eye's on-going Series Meaningless Job Titles in Need of Ridicule.

He is now Director of Customer Experience.

Good to see that RSSB haven't taken this lying down.

Their Head of Safety Knowledge & Planning (Meaningless Job Title No 588) has now been appointed Acting Director Policy Research & Risk (Meaningless Job Title 589).

More please...

Diesel trains undead - Official

As any ful kno due to electrification there will be no future requirements for new passenger diesel trains, ever.

So this from TfL is plainly moon-shine:

TfL is seeking expressions of interest for the following Supplies and/or Services.
a) Provision of approximately eight 3-car DMUs suitable for operation on the Gospel Oak -Barking railway, without associated train-maintenance services
b) Provision of approximately eight 3-car DMUs suitable for operation on the Gospel Oak -Barking railway, with associated train-maintenance services
TfL may consider 4-car DMUs in lieu of 3-car, but does not envisage a fleet of mixed train length.
TfL has an aspiration to introduce longer trains from 2013.

So much for the views of experts...

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?