2010 Railway Garden Competition - Halifax

With a bowler tip to Snapper...


Note the tree line seductively hugging the retaining wall immediately below Halifax station.

Labour manifesto - Transport section

This from the Labour Party manifesto launched today...

Rebuilding our transport infrastructure

At the heart of our growth plan is the commitment to a new high-speed rail line, linking North and South. Built in stages, the initial line will link London to Birmingham, Manchester, the East Midlands, Sheffield and Leeds, and then to the North and Scotland.

By running through-trains from day one, cities including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Liverpool will also be part of the initial network. Journey times will be slashed – those from the West Midlands to London will be as little as 31 minutes. We will consult fully on legislation to take forward our high-speed rail plans within the next Parliament.

High-speed rail is not just about faster journey times. It will free up capacity on existing intercity rail lines, enabling more rail freight, commuter and local services. We will press ahead with a major investment programme in existing rail services, hugely improving commuter services into and through London, and electrifying new rail-lines including the Great Western Main Line from London to South Wales.

We will complete the new east-west Crossrail line in London adding ten per cent to London transport capacity. Rail passenger numbers have increased by 40 per cent in the last ten years and punctuality and quality of service are improving steadily.

We will encourage more people to switch to rail with an enforceable right to the cheapest fare, while trebling the number of secure cycle storage spaces at rail stations. We will welcome rail franchise bids from not-for-profit, mutual or co-operative franchise enterprises and will look to remove unfair barriers that prevent such bids benefiting passengers and taxpayers.

Tackling road congestion is a key Labour priority. We will extend hard-shoulder running on motorways, alongside targeted motorway widening including on the M25. Too much disruption is caused by local road works: we will increase tenfold the penalties on utilities who allow work to overrun. We rule out the introduction of national road pricing in the next Parliament.

Heathrow is Britain’s international hub airport, already operating at full capacity, and supporting millions of jobs, businesses and citizens who depend upon it. We support a third runway at Heathrow, subject to strict conditions on environmental impact and flight numbers, but we will not allow additional runways to proceed at any other airport in the next Parliament.

Through our investment, Labour has put Britain at the forefront of electric and low carbon vehicle manufacturing. To promote the rapid take-up of electric and low-carbon cars, we will ensure there are 100,000 electric vehicle charging points by the end of the next Parliament.

Tories and LibDems manifestos to be published tomorrow and Wednesday respectively.

UPDATE: This from Billy Connections...

The Labour Manifesto says:

"We will encourage more people to switch to rail with an enforceable right to the cheapest fare..."

Er - so there will only be one fare for every journey then?

The end of any quotas?

Every passenger doing the same journey will have paid the same fare?

That'll make for some interesting renegotiation of franchises won't it?

Sounds a bit like the stuff those Open Access chappies do - surely the Labour Party hasn't suddenly decided it is in favour of free market competition after all?

Or did this come about after they tried to book a load of seats for their trip to the West Midlands today at the last minute and found they couldn't get any of the Advance Purchase bargains?

I presume they'll level the playing field by applying the same rule to the internal airline services - would be good to see everyone having "an enforceable right to the cheapest fare" on FlyBe, EasyJet and RyanAir....

UPDATE: This from Leo Pink...

So, no mention of Thameslink in a parliamentary term which runs to mid 2015. Although it may be implied.

And no mention of the McNulty review of value for money review.

And no mention of how it's all going to be paid for.

As for 'We will welcome rail franchise bids from not-for-profit, mutual or co-operative franchise enterprises'...

So can we expect to see not-for profit Network Rail taking on the Co-Op?

UPDATE: This, surprisingly, from Daisy Daisy...

Trebling cycle storage is all very well, but will this include provision for tandems and tricycles?

Eye detects the hand of the Noble Lord - expect paroxysms of delight from Wolmar...

UPDATE: This from 70s trio the Goodies...

Ecky thump!

Will there be provision for comedy tridems with more than two seats/pedals?

UPDATE: This Lookalike from Henry Macrory, via Twitter


Okay, he's the Tories head of press - but it is funny.

UPDATE: This from Sir Humphrey Beeching...

Is it not a licence condition that TOCs must offer passengers the cheapest fare?

So is the Labour Party now suggesting that Train Operating Companies (including state owned East Coast) are in breach of their licence conditions?

UPDATE: This from ATOC's response to the Labour Party manifesto....

“Train companies are already under an obligation to give customers full and impartial advice about tickets.”

Which party has the bigger commitment to rail?

Gordon using the train to campaign whilst Cameron uses the plane.

Go figure.

UPDATE: This from Steve Strong...

If Gordon is being prudent no doubt he is using an All Line Rover.

Presumably ATOC will now put the price up in May.

UPDATE: This from @RichardHebditch, via Twitter...

Cabinet ministers all on train to Birmingham for the manifesto launch. In second class, apparently.

General Election 2010 - policy briefings

There is a useful Election briefing on the rail policies of the main political parties over at the Norton Rose website.

Lawyers giving something for nothing - shurely shome mishtake - allegedly.

2010 Railway Garden Competition

How the media works...

This from The Journal...

IN PREPARATION for my meeting with Heidi Mottram, I searched on some railway industry internet forums to see what those in the sector thought of the woman who, until recently, headed Northern Rail, the provider of local rail services across the North.

I soon found an article on the “gossip” website Railway Eye, instructively headed: “Northumbrian Water’s gain, the railway’s loss.”...

Soon into our meeting, I tell Mottram about the glowing praise in the article.

She’s read it.

Just fancy that!

Railway cost creep explained

This from the BBC...

A £1.3m project to replace an ageing footbridge at a Teesside rail station has been confirmed by council bosses.

Anyone care to calculate the cost per step?

Thameslink 4000 start date - Shocker

Telegrammed by Ithuriel
Spot the deliberate mistake...

This from Network Rail's resource library:


The next generation of 12-car trains will begin operating in 2012, with a full fleet in service across the Thameslink route by 2015.

Operating in 2012?

Shome mishtake shurely.

Especially since NR doesn't know when London Bridge will be completed.

Lies, damned lies and ATOC statistics

This from Herr Dr Kalculus...

On April Fool's Day Michael Roberts titillated an early morning audience on Radio 5 with the 'fact' that railways were a mere 1% of total government service spending (or as he put it "a penny in the pound") .

If ATOC were important enough they would be expecting a letter any moment now from Sir Michael Scholar, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, for misusing government statistics.

On the basis that total government support to the railways is £5bn (ORR's figures only go up to 2008/9 when it is recorded as £5.2bn in National Rail Trends) this seems to indicate that £500bn of the government budget goes on services.
This is certainly an imaginative way of looking at the figures

The respected website www.ukpublicspending.co.uk shows that total central Government expenditure for 2010 is £488.5bn but that includes £247bn of interest payments as well as expenditure on pensions, defence and welfare - hardly services in the way that Michael means.

Also if capital spending on schools etc, paying for running government, such as HMRC, and such mysterious figures as £12bn of accounting adjustments are excluded the amount spent on services in its widest sense, probably does not exceed £200bn.

On this basis ATOC has got its figures completely wrong.

But to help them out a little, if local authority spending on services of some £100-110bn is included the variation is not quite so bad but still a long way adrift.

Almost certainly the Radio 5 audience didn't give a toss when this statistic was produced but it's not going to help the industry if it receives wider exposure and can easily be countered by those who do not mean us well by pointing out thar overall government support has risen from £1.4bn to £5.2bn in a decade.

An increase that is probably the biggest rise in any category of spend across Whitehall.

First for saving shoe leather...

This from Paul Robertson...

I thought you'd be amused by this view of a First Capital Connect 365 whose driver obeyed very strictly the instruction to draw up close to the stop marker on platform 11 at King's Cross last Thursday.


Good to see FuCC reducing interchange times with the Tube.

Be not afraid gentle reader!

In response to numerous concerned emails (for which many thanks)...

The Fact Compiler is on his hols.

Normal invective will resume next week...

BREAKING NEWS: RMT Strike

Twitter sources reporting Network Rail gets court injunction to prevent RMT strike

More to follow...

UPDATE: This from Network Rail...

Network Rail head of operations and customer service, Robin Gisby said:

"The signallers strike is off and train services next week will run as normal. This is good news for the millions of passengers who rely on us every day, and for our freight users and for the country as a whole.

"A dispute with the unions remains however, and we have a responsibility to our people to continue talking to the unions to find a settlement that works for us all."

UPDATE: This from the Archer...

Signallers can’t strike, maintenance staff still can!

UPDATE: This from @swlines...

Read between the lines "Services will be normal until something fails and then there will be no service until strike over."

UPDATE: This from Channel 4 News...

Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT, said: "This judgment is an attack on the whole trade union movement and twists the anti-union laws even further in favour of the bosses.

"Workers fighting for the principle of a safe railway have had the whole weight of the law thrown against them. Our executive will meet this evening with a recommendation for a re-ballot."

March visitors

In March Railway Eye received 32,001 visits from 8,552 unique visitors.

According to Google Analytics you viewed 43,223 splenetic utterances in total.

Thank you.

ATOC claims 99% of railway spend is waste!

This from the Archer...

Further to Eye's earlier piece on RAIL's expose of the doomed nature of railway financing, did anyone else hear Michael Roberts of ATOC on Radio 5 this morning?

He rolled out the following amazing statistic:

"For every pound that is spent on services by the government just one penny is spent on running the railways."

To Listen Again click here and go to 1:51.51 into the programme.

The canny journalist obviously wasn’t going to be caught out by what he must have thought was an All Fools' day wind-up.

If only this were so!

UPDATE: This just in from @EdwardWelsh, not via Twitter...

I am delighted to see that it wasn't just Michael and I who were up at the crack of dawn this morning.

I am confused, however, why you think that "services" applies only to train services?

When talking to a national audience, I think you can safely assume that they would know he was referring to all government services and not just train services.

Happy All Fools' Day.

Strikeballs - The Grauniad

Reports of the demise of National Express East Coast appear somewhat exaggerated...



Unless this is what passes for All Fools' Day humour in Kings Place?

Maundy Thursday at St Pancras

Evidently railway padre and St Pancras station chaplain, the Rev Jonathan Barker, takes Dominical Injunctions seriously.


Although Eye is struggling to find any specific reference to the use of Cherry Blossom in John 13.

Industry bust by 2020? Eye told you so!

Telegrammed by Bulldog Drummond
RAIL (issue 640) breathlessly reports a shock meeting on 14 March where Dr Mike Mitchell told railway chiefs that the industry faces economic meltdown by the start of CP6 (2020).

Of course this won't be news to Eye readers who were told this was going to happen wayback in December 2008.

The CP4 settlement exacerbated the problem and by 2014 leaves Network Rail with a £31.5bn debt mountain costing a cool £1.7bn to service.

If this goes on to 2020 DafT has come to the conclusion that NR's debts would cost £4.5bn a year to service and that 'urgent, radical reform is needed to slash costs generally.'

What was even more surprising is RAIL's description that eighty ashen-faced industry chiefs 'listened in shock' to this news.

What do these guys do all day?

They certainly don't read Bill Emery's vivid prose, look at what passes for Network Rail's company reports and, crucially, don't understand that even gravy trains can hit the buffers.

But Eye readers can relax.

RAIL reports these comforting words from a Network Rail spokesman: 'Our debt payment charges are more than manageable and only increase by affordable investment that's supported by a business case which delivers a positive return over time. By 2014 Network Rail will be amongst the most efficient rail infrastructure providers in the world, having cut 50% of its costs...'

So that's all right then.

UPDATE: This from Ithuriel...

But that doomsday debt scenario is dependent on DfT using the Network Rail credit card (aka the RAB) to the max and ORR letting them do it.

And ORR is already questioning Lord Adonis flashing the plastic on electrification.

So the real message from Mike Mitchell is 'things will get really nasty if my Secretary of State carries on spending money he hasn't got and ORR hasn't budgeted for'.

UPDATE: This from our man at 222 Marylebone Road...

It's all very well Bulldog calling RAIL's cover headline 'breathless', but if you had a scoop wouldn't you be a bit up front?

What is more interesting is that the meeting was held on 4 March, yet there was absolutely nothing about it in Informed Sources published three weeks later.

No doubt Captain Deltic will try to cover up being last with the news with a smokescreen of brain numbing analysis.

Whatever happened to boiling frogs?

Lookalike: The future is...

First for not putting its head above the parapet

So the government's exciting plans for franchising have gone down like the proverbial turd in a punchbowl amongst ATOC members.

This from the Telegraph...

In a joint reaction to the new guidelines proposed by Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, the companies will express their fears over even more "micro-managing" of the railway by politicians and express their frustration at the Government's failure to listen to their concerns.

Their response is being co-ordinated in a letter from the Association of Train Operating Companies, whose members include the rail subsidiaries of Britain's big five quoted transport groups – Stagecoach, FirstGroup, Arriva, National Express, Go-Ahead – and Virgin.

But what's this?

Despite ATOC claiming unanimity amongst its members there is one significant signature missing from the excoriating letter.

Whose could this be?

Why step forward First Group's very own Sir Moir Lockhead, who clearly knows which side his bread is buttered on.

And a jolly good thing too!

Not least for Dr Mike Mitchell, who can continue referring to Worst Group franchises in the first person plural.

FuCC up?

This from Storm Force...

Our friends at FuCC have a major problem.

North of London: up is south; while south of London, up is North.

North of London: down is north and south of London, down is south.

Get my drift?


Well, clearly FuCC don’t.