Railway Garden Competition - Ravenglass

Railway Garden Competition - Dean Forest Railway

Pointless Signs 2012 - Games Edition

So farewell Digital Boris!

TfL have pulled the automated messages featuring the Mayor which have encouraged Britons to abandon their Capital in droves.

No matter.

Meanwhile perhaps the Pink Police can now deal with the following:

• At Waterloo enormous signs tell you to walk to Charing Cross station to get the train to ...er... Blackheath. Has no one heard of Waterloo East?

• The authorised route from Waterloo to the Olympic Park seems to be to walk to Embankment and then take the District line to West Ham and walk again. Has no one heard of the Jubilee Line? Are they really expecting families with small children to take such a lengthy and tough route?

• At St. Pancras International the signs for the Javelin trains point towards the Eurostar arrivals area from both directions – yes they really do! Obviously the staff are totally peed off with people complaining about the mis-direction as some of the arrows have now been covered over with bits of pink paper!

• At KXSP underground concourse (the one by the entrance to the Met and Circle lines) there is a big sign pointing onto the underground for the Olympic Park! The posters correctly tell you to use the Javelin service.

Come on guys. There is still time to fix this.

Royals back High Speed Rail!

Good to see Her Majesty the Queen's granddaughter backing High Speed Rail!

Go, Zara, go!

Mad Vulcan opines on railfreight

This from the outer reaches of planet Redwood...

The cross country and long haul railway is probably most productively used for freight. The railway needs to be more interested in single wagon  marshalling and single load  business. Rail freight has grown since privatisation, and there has been improvement in the offer. The old nationalised industry was only interested in trainload contracts. A whole generation of new business parks was built with motorway access instead of branch line connections to the railway as a result.

Highly illogical, captain.

UPDATE: This from Our Man at 222 Marylebone Road...

Wisconsin Central Lives!
 
The Vulcan has clearly been talking with EWS founder Ed (all American) Burkhardt who seemed to think that the 'Mom 'n' Pop' shortline operating pholosophy would transform a modern European freight railway.
 

Railway Garden Competition - Birmingham New Street

Pointless signs - York

Railway Garden Competition - Crewe

This from Andrew E...

A fine Railway Arboretum!

Is Crewe perhaps going for Gold?

DfT economises with others IPR

This from Our Man by the Photocopier...

I have been reading the Great Western ITT, which finally limped into the platform on Friday having been delayed at Didcot by the late running gold-plated IEP.

It includes these words: "This document is subject to copyright. Neither this document, nor any part of it, nor any other information supplied in connection with it, may be published, reproduced, copied or distributed in any way except with the prior written consent of the Department." 

But the last page suggests that intellectual property rights are not always at the top of the agenda in Marsham Street:

 Just fancy that!

Pointless signs - Leeds

Railway Garden Competition - Hacking back NR debt

This from a Mr William Dargan...

While emptying out my spam folder, I came across this gem:

If a 1 litre tub of Buddleia is worth £9.99, surely this means Network Rail is sitting on a goldmine?

Railway Garden Competition - Crewe

Oh go on then...

Eye wishes good luck to all those involved with the Olympics!

Railway looks after those who also serve

Good news from ATOC!

National Rail companies have finally been allowed to join TfL in granting gallant service personnel, involved with the Olympics, free travel on rail services to and from Games venues.

And quite right too!

Eye understands that despite the willingness of the industry to recognise the contribution made by service men and women the MoD remained to be convinced.

Perhaps such generosity from private sector contractors is not usually encountered by inhabitants of the Main Building?

No matter, the offer has been accepted.

Is this the first time that Petrol-head Hammond has helped the railway celebrate anything positive?

Alycidon amidst the IEP excitement

This from a Mr Dickens...

A sight to stir the blood - Alycidon nearing Werrington Junction, just north of Peterborough, this morning.

Eat your heart out Captain Deltic!

Fleet reliability will be key for IEP

This from Ithuriel...

With DfT highlighting the importance of reliability in the IEP contract announcement, here is a list of today's Top 10 most reliable fleets on the national network.

(With thanks to an irate 'Captain of the Golden Spanners' for correcting the earlier version - so this with added Ford Imprimatur!) 
 

Ranking	Operator	Fleet	Maker	Miles per 3 min delay
1	South West Trains	Class 458	Alstom	105,761
2	South West Trains	Class 159/0	BREL	82,053
3	London Midland	Class 350/2	Siemens	75,315
4	South West Trains	Class 159/1	BREL	70,240
5	South West Trains	Class 158	BREL	62,932
6	London  Midland	Class 350/1	Siemens	58,652
7	South West Trains	Class 444	Siemens	51,369
8	South West Trains	Class 455	BREL/GEC	40,710
9	Cross Country	Class 220	Bombardier	38,463
10	c2c	Class 357	Bombardier	37,840

Eye congratulates all the above manufacturers.

UPDATE: This from Button Moon...

I was just wondering if any of your esteemed readers could extend the table of manufacturers’ performance to include Messrs. Hitachi, who already have a fleet of trains operating in the South East? 

(Sadly, in the interest of fairness, Eye is unwilling to extend the range of the above table to include lesser performing fleets as Bombardier and Siemens have had quite enough free publicity for the reliability of their rolling stock already. Ed)

UPDATE: This from Deep Purple...

Further to the top ten table, the ‘Owner’ column appears to have been omitted.

This is at least as important as the ‘Maker’ and would make interesting reading, 7 of the top 10 and all 5 of the top 5 being Porterbrook fleets.

Derby may not build trains like it used to but Derby can certainly manage these assets better than the rest.

So fess up Greening - exactly how many IEP jobs?

Compare and contrast.

This from the DfT press release on IEP in which Greening claimed '730 new jobs' would be created at Newton Aycliffe...

With this from Hitachi which said 'at least 500 jobs' would be created...

As @L_Jameson pointed out: "at this rate they'll be laying people off by dinner time".

UPDATE: This from Our Man at 222 Marylebone Road...

May I congratulate Fact Compiler San for helping Hitachi to amend the wording of their on-line press release so that it now reads:

Just fancy that!

IEP announced - Parliament in recess

Good news for fans of Parliamentary scrutiny!

This from the DfT:

£4.5 billion investment in new trains creates new jobs

More than 900 jobs will be created and thousands more secured after Transport Secretary Justine Greening approved a £4.5bn contract to supply Britain with the next generation of intercity trains.

In a major boost to the UK’s manufacturing industry, 596 railway carriages will be built at a brand new train factory in the north east of England.

Agility Trains, a consortium made up of Hitachi and John Laing, has been awarded the contract to build and maintain the trains under the Intercity Express Programme (IEP), the project to replace Britain’s Intercity 125 trains with new higher capacity modern trains.

Hitachi will assemble an intercity fleet of 92 complete trains at a new purpose-built factory in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, in the process creating 730 skilled jobs with a further 200 jobs during construction of the factory itself and securing thousands more in the UK supply chain. The company will also locate its European rail research and development capabilities on the site which will further enhance the factory’s ability to win rail contracts across Europe.

As well as building the new state-of-the-art assembly facility, Hitachi will construct maintenance depots in Bristol, Swansea, west London and Doncaster, and will upgrade existing maintenance depots throughout Britain.

The announcement comes on the eve of the Global Investment Conference in London where the Government will kick off the largest series of trade and investment events ever held in the UK involving more than 3,000 business leaders, policy-makers and ministers from around the world, and half the companies in the FTSE 100.

Cont' p94...

Putting to one side the enormous cost is there anyone outside Marsham Street and the Japanese Embassy that actually wants this hybrid monster?

Therefore, time for an exciting new Eye survey... (see right)

UPDATE: This unusually bullish statement from ATOC...

Michael Roberts, Chief Executive of the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) said:

“This announcement is good news for passengers as it will mean faster, more comfortable journeys and many more seats.

“This DfT-led procurement, however, has been contentious. Some of the earlier scope of the project has been changed because of subsequent Government decisions to electrify parts of the rail network. 

“Train companies believe that the key to delivering better value for money is to ensure that they play a bigger role in shaping rolling stock solutions through the competitive franchising process.  It will help get things done more quickly and bring down costs, and we welcome the Government's support for this approach.”  

ENDS

UPDATE: This from a Mr Tony Miles... 

You are right - we have yet to find anyone working on the railways who wants the IEP.

DfT says £200m saving over the life of the trains - forgets to mention "set against £75m a year extra that fare payers on Great Western will pay to have these trains rather than a more conventional design." (data from R. Ford) - which wipes out that £200m within the first three years....

Clearly that paragraph got missed from the DfT press release.....

As was the line from GW passenger groups saying "We welcome the opportunity to pay well above inflation fare increases to fund these trains which will deliver the lower levels of comfort we have been calling for for several years."

J. Greening assisted by Mr Kipling, and along with her predecessors Adonis and Hammond, has rightly earned her place in history alongside Beeching.

Alongside 'The Beeching Cuts' we now have 'The Greening order' - long may we rue this day...

Railway Garden Competition - Llandovery

Eye exclusive - NR holds Bonus Party?

Someone has apparently been living it up at 40 Melton Street! 

But judging by the empties, times remain hard!