Network Rail misplaces new chief exec?

Exciting news from Transport Times Events!

TTE is led by the well connected transport guru Professor David Begg, a man with his fingers firmly on the industry's pulse !

So an event in January asking "Is the North missing out on Transport?" should be packed to the rafters with heavy weights.

According to a TTE email and their website the following are 'Confirmed Speakers'

• Rt Hon Philip Hammond, Secretary of State for Transport
• Cllr Richard Leese, Leader, Manchester City Council
• Richard Eccles, Chief Executive, Network Rail
• Julie Mills, Director, Greengauge 21
• Adam Marshall, Director of Policy, British Chamber of Commerce
• Prof Michael Parkinson, Director, European Institute of Urban Affairs, Liverpool John Moores University
• Alexandra Jones, Chief Executive, Centre for Cities

Let Eye be the first to congratulate Richard Eccles on his promotion.

Presumably David Higgins has been told?

NR lays it on with a trowel...

Oh dear!

The new, improved, caring, sharing and feminised Network Rail is starting to emerge from under the Coucher shadow.

This 'icky making nonsense in an email sent to NR's Safety Central subscribers...

Click on the image to see it in all it's ghastliness!

"Check out the list of David-friendly improvements"

And the pièce de résistance...

"It’s more stylish, like you David"

Has NR recruited the former editor of Just 17 to run Safety Central?

WCML Upgrade suffers whiteout

Our man on the Pendolino reports...

Conductors on WCML Glasgow to London route have been told to announce over the intercom that:

"trains are not allowed to travel at over 100mph because of adverse weather conditions."

Why?

If this is an engineering or design problem, we should know.

Or is it just another 'wrong kind of snow' excuse for general slackness and lateness?

My 13.53 from Preston is over an hour late yet barely a flake has fallen on entire journey...

UPDATE: This from a Mr Tony Miles...

Ice thrown up is breaking outer skin of windows.

I gather 100mph avoids it being thrown up as much in the first place.

I think all 125mph trains are restricted to 100mph when this happens & 'tilt mode' is deactivated on Pendos.

Sensible really.

UPDATE: This from Sunny South...

You will find that NR have written into the rule book that speed restrictions apply in any case where disc-braked stock and drifting snow are concerned, so VWC are merely being good boys & girls and looking after both rules & regs and keeping Joe Public informed.

Yours watching South Eastern self-destruct with growing concern...

MacPorkies?

This from the The Herald...

Thomas Docherty, a former head of media relations for major projects at Network Rail between 2006 and 2007 and, since May, the Labour MP for Dunfermline and West Fife, said:

“My recollection from my time at Network Rail is that both Network Rail and Transport Scotland knew that a 24-hour operation would be required. My understanding is that Transport Scotland did not share that knowledge with Clackmannanshire Council,”

“The way that the Scottish Government behaved is bordering on the criminal. Even when there were FoI documents that showed its involvement in planning a 24-hour railway, it still won’t admit the truth.”

Good to see that the Jockanese Transport Monkeys are rivaling our beloved Marsham Street for transparency.