Pointless signs - East Coast media dinner

East Coast resurrects fine dining

This from the late Sir Peter Parker...

I am delighted to hear that the state owned passenger train operator will be unveiling their plans for the next five years of the East Coast Main Line at a dinner  tonight.

I was even more pleased to be told that the venue for this exciting event is British Rail's old headquarters at 222 Marylebone Road.

Does this presage an announcement that the franchise will be renamed InterCity East Coast and that the 'Swallow' brand will be restored to all trains?

McLoughlin makes extra-ordinary confession!

Good news for fans of Openness and Transparency!

At last night's ATOC sponsored wake for franchising Patrick McLoughlin made the following confession...

As a junior transport minister in the 1980s, I remember British Rail.
Underinvestment in tracks and trains.
Poor reliability.
Managers whose good ideas were too often stifled by a lack of cash…

Guilty as charged. Send him down! 

UPDATE: This from Captain Deltic... 

So when was Patrick McLoughlin a junior transport minister?

From 1989 to 1992.

Gosh they were grim times for investment. 

All we had was more electrification than under any government, including the East Coast Main Line with a brand new fleet of 140 mile/h IC225s that delivered a London - Edinburgh run in just 3hr 29 min. 

Plus total route modernisation of Chiltern, the re-equipment of Regional Railways with new trains - frequent DMUs replacing infrequent loco hauled services. Oh, and a new fleet of freight locos.

And what about the upgrading of the Kent lines to take the new state of the art Networkers, not to mention... (con't p94)

Oi Deltic, that's quite enough moaning about the bad old days! Ed

Railway Garden Competition - Marple

Railway Garden Competition - King's Cross

This from Fen Boy...

This was the scene at the shiny new King's Cross station yesterday morning at 08.10.

Railway Garden Competition - Barbican

This from Old McDonald...

Good news for fans of Mayor BoJo's Urban Greenway plans.

The first stage appears to be coming on well!

Benefits of the Deep Alliance explained...

This from ITV... 

 In an article posted on the company's website, South West Trains explained why the heat was affecting their services.

    Very hot weather can have an impact on the train service we can deliver. As with all metals, the track we use to run our trains expands and contracts depending on its temperature, i.e. the hotter it gets, the more it expands. Just like a car on a warm day, the metal can reach temperatures far in excess of the surrounding air temperature.

    Whilst we carry out a significant amount of work to prepare for the impact of hot weather by using hydraulic machines to artificially stress the rails to cope with high temperatures, over the weekend we have seen temperatures on our tracks of almost 50oc. The ageing condition of our infrastructure has meant that despite the preparation work that has taken place, we have had to impose speed restrictions at certain locations on our network

– South West Trains 

That's the way to do it! (Where's the video news release? Ed)

ORR makes overnight saving on access dispute process!

Good news for fans of Independent Economic Regulation!

This charming picture appeared in Thursday's Blackpool Gazette...

And it was accompanied by the following illuminating quotes from the ORR's very own Right Price....

“This petition will form part of the evidence in the process. I’d like to thank the readers of the Blackpool Gazette for their contribution to the On Track To The Capital campaign. This petition clearly shows how important the issue is to the people of Blackpool.

“ORR is currently considering the application from Virgin Trains for new services on the West Coast Main Line between Blackpool and London, this will include looking at the benefits new services may bring to passengers and whether they make best use of the limited capacity on the route.”

Fascinating.

Well done to the ORR for being quite so ahead of the game.

In fact so far ahead of the game, that it rather appears that the ORR's Chief Exec has forgotten that this dispute between Network Rail and Virgin over Blackpool and Shrewsbury paths is now subject to adjudication by the Access Disputes Committee.

As any fule kno the Access Dispute Committee "is responsible for the operation of the dispute resolution procedures that form part of all Access Agreements on the national network of Great Britain.". Of course if the ADC is unable to effect a resolution then the ORR may get involved.

No matter and Eye is sure that Professor Richard Butler, chairman of the ADC, will be generous in overlooking this apparent ORR parking of tanks on his lawn...

After all, who can resist getting their picture in the paper with so many MPs?

Hatfield Stainforth reopens!

This morning's 02:52 from Guide Bridge was the first commercial service to use the reinstated route. 

Here a couple of pictures taken from aboard the first train:

6E07 passes Stainforth... 

Sun rises on Hatfield... 

 

 

First one in, passes first one out!

 

Eye salutes all at LNE involved in the massive undertaking required to restore the route to traffic.

Railway Garden Competition - Lewes

DfT vanity project to strip East Coast assets?

With rumours rife that Mr Kipling has succeeded in foisting even more Ninky Nonk trains onto the new East Coast franchise, what now for the IC225s?

Eye's Least Cost Correspondent believes he has found the answer...

Newcastle's loss will be Norwich's gain!

Pointless signs - Lichfield Trent Valley

Railway Garden Competition - York

Reading offers railway's most pointless seat?

This from the late Professor Sir Misha Black...

Emboldened by your contributor’s picture of a pointless clock (or clocks) at Kidsgrove, I attach for your consideration a pointless seat at Reading platform 4.

Now, it’s not that I’m ungrateful for the opportunity of more exercise as I yomp between the ‘south western’ platforms and the rest of the station and I appreciate that after such a slog, some may wish to rest their weary bones on the recently installed benches, but I can’t imagine many who would like to lean back against the comfort of a clear plastic sack filled with the detritus of modern life.

To be fair, the litter bin/hoop was there first.  And the aesthetic of the bench seat would have been completed ruined by, say, moving it a foot to the right.

East Coast tops greyhounds league

This from the late Sir Nigel Gresley...

In the week that we celebrate the setting of the world speed record for steam by my locomotive Mallard, how cheering to read that locomotive hauled trains on the East Coast Main Line still reign supreme on the UK rails.

According to the latest Railway Gazette International world speed survey in that eximious journal's July issue:

"Perhaps surprisingly, Britain’s two fastest runs are found on the conventional network, with East Coast’s 18.55 York to Stevenage pipping Virgin Trains’ 19.42 Stafford to Watford Junction to the top spot with an average of 109.7 mph (176.6 km/h) for 161 miles. 

"Southeastern’s fast commuter services on High Speed 1 take third place with a best timetabled booking of 107.6 mph (173.1 km/h)."

It is clear that Italian tilting EMUs and even Japanese EMUs running at 140 mile/h on high speed track are no match for British heavy metal on the incomparable racing ground that is the ECML.  

And, of course that is running at only 125 mile/h when the IC225 has a top speed of 140 mile/hour and achieved 162 mile/h down Stoke Bank - scene of Mallard's triumph - during a test run,

This should give the Department for Transport even more cause to reconsider its ludicrous proposal to force bidders for the East Coast franchise to replace IC225 with the Incredibly Expensive Procurement.

Pointless signs - Kidsgrove

This from the Manxman...

In this instance more a case of pointless clocks!

Two time zones on display at Kidsgrove station, depending on your direction of travel! 

Not of course that accurate time is in way essential to the smooth operation of the railway.

UPDATE: This from a Mr Steve Kilometer...

The station clocks around the network depend on the time signal from the MSF radio signal transmitted from Anthorn.

As do many of the watches issued to railway employees with time-critical jobs, like Train managers/Guards or whatever they are now called.

The MSF radio signal is a dedicated time broadcast that provides an accurate and reliable source of UK civil time, based on the NPL time scale UTC(NPL). It is available 24 hours a day across the whole of the UK and beyond. The signal operates on a frequency of 60 kHz and carries a time and date code that can be received and decoded by a wide range of readily available radio-controlled clocks. The MSF signal is transmitted from Anthorn Radio Station in Cumbria by Babcock (formerly VT Communications), under contract to NPL.

Sadly they don’t have a backup clock thingy (“we can put a man on the moon, but TWO clocks?”) so when it is maintained the signal is turned off and clocks just drift. Sometimes wildly.

Here are the current outages:
 
Essential maintenance work - signal off-air

Please note that the MSF 60 kHz time and frequency signal broadcast from Anthorn Radio Station will be continuously off-air for maintenance work from:

Monday 1 July, 08:00 BST to Friday 5 July, 18:00 BST
- service off-air continuously

Then it will be off during the day from:

Saturday 6 July to Thursday 18 July, between 08:00 BST and 18:00 BST
- service off-air each day (but will be back on air overnight)
 
So, sadly the inability of this system to have a back-up means many clocks and watches could go wrong in the next few weeks.

It'll be interesting to see whether this has a noticeable affect on PPM.

Siemens out of Crossrail running

This from Siemens...

Crossrail rolling stock procurement
 
Siemens confirms that it will not be proceeding further in the Crossrail rolling stock procurement process.

This is a strategic decision that has been taken based on current business activity levels. Crossrail is a very large project and, since first undertaking our initial assessment of capacity and deliverability, Siemens has won multiple additional orders. To pursue another project of this scale could impact our ability to deliver our current customer commitments - something we believe would not be a responsible course of action.

Siemens has an excellent working relationship with the Crossrail bid team and believe that they have conducted a fair and diligent process.   We remain fully committed to ensuring the success of the Crossrail project through the continued delivery of the signalling and communications / control systems through Siemens rail automation business.

Wow! That is all.
 

Why not let Open Access provide ECML services?

The Fact Compiler's latest column in Passenger Transport published on the 21st June... 

The next edition of Passenger Transport will be published on the 5th July.

Eye assumes the decision to franchise East Coast passenger services is the only way to give the kiss of life to Mr Kipling's Incredibly Expensive Procurement.

Mallard 126mph - unbroken for 75 years

Okay!

It would be churlish not to mention the 75th anniversary of the LNER's 126mph kettle triumph today.



But only because Sir Nigel was brought up in Derbyshire and served his apprenticeship on the LNWR (therefore, de facto, an LMS man!).

That is all. 

UPDATE: This from the late Col H F Stephens...

With speed in mind might I congratulate Lord Mandelson of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and of Hartlepool in the County of Durham, for his intervention against HS2.

As I proved, the hoi polloi are quite happy travelling very slowly, with chickens, sheep and goats if necessary.

Meanwhile terribly grand people can continue to 'monetise' their time by taking private jets to their terribly important meetings across the globe.

East Coast acknowledges Christian Heritage

This from East Coast...

Train operator East Coast today named a locomotive “Durham Cathedral”, as thousands of visitors flock to the North East to see the Lindisfarne Gospels in the shadow of the iconic Norman cathedral.

The locomotive, number 91114, was unveiled by the Dean of Durham, the Very Reverend Michael Sadgrove, accompanied by the Vice Chancellor of Durham University, Professor Chris Higgins, and East Coast’s Managing Director Karen Boswell, on Platform 2 at Newcastle Central Station today

The Durham Cathedral Choir provided musical accompaniment to the ceremony, and also sang for passengers on-board the train’s inaugural journey from Newcastle to Durham. The East Coast Railway Chaplain, the Reverend Stephen Sorby, blessed the newly-named train prior to its inaugural departure for Durham, and on to London King’s Cross.

Very good.

So whilst the Girl Guides have abandoned God, it would seem that East Coast is still prepared to acknowledge our Christian Heritage.

And a perfect opportunity for members of the erastian national church and the nation's erastian train operator to share the same platform.