Best railway tweet, ever!

And the prize goes to - Greater Anglia!

Eagle-eyed drivers spotted a snake under a train at Southend Victoria station yesterday. The snake was rescued & taken to a local vet. pic.twitter.com/OP2J6lksj5

— Greater Anglia News (@GreaterAngliaPR) August 24, 2017

Run Away!

SWT - the brand that refused to die!

Top tweeting here from the new incumbents of the SWT franchise...

But what is that cheeky logo on the bottom left of the message?

Surely not!

Come on First/MTR social media peeps - it really isn't that difficult to update the on-line branding!

UPDATE: They are getting there!

Note the subtle, but important, change to the hashtag.

Paddington - an expert speaks!

This via Twitter...

No need for an @raibgovuk investigation to establish the cause here! pic.twitter.com/JnciPWI28L

— Michael Holden (@holdmch) August 21, 2017

Scorcio!!!

TfL getting a bit tetchy on Twitter...

Good point and well made...

Leave him bruv, he ain't wurff it!

NR sources 96% of steel rails from UK

Some nice NR infographics appearing on Twitter...

Let's hope tax-payer funded HS2 will match NR's commitment to UK industry?

Brand Pride - South West Trains

Or should that read South Western Railway?

No matter.

This is the bespoke case that SWT's twitter supremo has had created for her iPhone.

Cool, no?

Anyone else done something similar?

Additional points in this game if it annoys the brand police!

An exciting Eye poll on VirginTrains' use of Twitter

As previously covered on Eye...

Beardie Rail has been using the @VirginTrains twitter account to encourage passengers and followers to sign an on-line Number 10 petition.

The petition asks the government to "reconsider" the award of the InterCity West Coast franchise to First Group.

Virgin Rail Group and Richard Branson have made clear that "a member of the public completely independent of Virgin has set up" this petition.

So. What is your view of this approach?

Sour grapes or listening to your customers.

You decide in Eye's exciting new survey (see right)!

Sadiq says...

This from Transport Minister Sadiq Khan, via Twitter...

Big big announcment today on High Speed Rail. Lord Adonis to make in Lords at 1130 with me making statement in Commons at 1215. Big Day!

Who says Twitter isn't useful.

UPDATE:This from Lobby Fodder...

Thought you might like to know that there will also be an un-press conference with Lord Adonis between 14:00 and 15:00 this afternoon.

But as it will be "off the record" and "off camera" it won't officially be happening.

And now that you know I'm afraid I'll have to kill you.

UPDATE: This just in from the DfT Press Office...

To confirm our press conference today is on-the-record but off-camera.

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

According to the Thin Control-freak writing in The Thunderer today:

"Three of the pioneers of high- speed rail are Japan, the Netherlands and South Korea."

Ah yes, who can forget the race between the Dutch and the Japanese to be first with a high speed line.

Those were the days when the railway world followed with fascination the ever increasing speeds achieved in test runs of the Bullet Train and 'Flying Clog'.

UPDATE: This from 10 Downing Street, via Twitter...

No10: Gordon Brown travelling to East Midlands this morning ahead of the government's HS2 announcement.

The 'tweet' was accompanied by this picture:


His staff may wish to ensure that there are no mobiles in the vicinity when they tell him he is on the wrong train...

UPDATE: This from the Commuter at about 12:12...

See there's a pic of Gordon Brown taking the train to the HS2 announcement on his Twitter feed.

Funny, because I live opposite the site and saw his cavalcade of about 6 highly polluting cars, accompanied by several police motorcycles, pull up a few hours ago.

So he certainly didn't arrive by train!

Latest news from the Eurostar broom cupboard!

It's Nick Mercer this time, with a bowler tip to the Railway Gazette via Twitter...



A reminder to PR's everywhere.

Put them in a HiVi, get them to a station or trackside and for God's sake lock up the broom-cupboard and throw away the key!

House of Commons statement at 7pm

Via Twitter:

SadiqKhan Just been inside Chamber of Lords for statement by Lord Adonis on National Express . I think I am making my statement to commons around 7pm

Tune in, turn off, nationalise - or something like that.

Chiltern blows bubbles on Twitter

Those of you unconvinced of the benefits of Twitter may soon be converted.

Those canny boys and girls over at Chiltern are "offering Twitter followers the perfect gift for Father’s Day – a train cab ride on our infamous bubble car."

The Fact Compiler, whilst not convinced that a bubble car can be 'infamous', has already entered!

UPDATE: This, unbelievably, 'twittered' to The Fact Compiler by a very slick Chiltern...

We used the word "infamous" with a sense of irony.

This is an amazing prize for one lucky dad.

We all love the bubble car!

Good effort - nice use of technology.

Guest Post: Railways and social media #2

Monday's guest post from Ben Smith on how the railways might use social media attracted considerable interest amongst readers.

Brendan Nelson, a consultant who works for Tobias & Tobias, helped FCC to deliver the Twitter service that Ben mentioned in his post.

Brendan has asked if he might share his view with Eye readers.

Yes he may and here it is:

A number of rail companies have already responded to Ben Smith's guest column on June 15th, which argued that rail companies are failing to exploit social media.

However, as one of those behind the First Capital Connect Twitter service Ben singled out as "getting it wrong", I thought I'd chip in with my own two cents.

Twitter users subscribe to, or "follow", any number of other Twitter accounts. The more accounts a user "follows", the more information they receive - and the more difficult it becomes to sift through the incoming stream of information.

This information overload poses a challenge to train operators looking to use Twitter. They generate a lot of data, most of which the average customer will find irrelevant. For example, customers travelling between Brighton and London Bridge at 6pm aren't interested in incidents at Stevenage close to midnight.

So if all this data is simply piped through a Twitter feed, its "followers" will have to deal with a high noise-to-signal ratio: the vast majority of messages will be of no relevance. This issue of relevance was the problem we set out to solve with FCC's Twitter service.

Our users state their journey preferences so that the system can send alerts when - and only when - relevant incidents occur. This is the fundamental difference between @FirstCC and @uktrains, which adopts more of a broadcast model. Followers of @uktr_firstcc might receive at least nine irrelevant messages for each relevant one.

Another strength of the "targeted" model is that our system uses Twitter's "direct message" feature, which means users receive emails and potentially SMS messages when alerts are sent. All this is free of charge.

Ben says that we miss the "social" aspect of Twitter. But I feel the social aspect is intrinsic to Twitter itself and users will forward on information that they feel is important - even if it came to them as an official, targeted communication. And a quick look at conversations on Twitter confirms that passengers don't need encouragement to talk about train services.

So while @uktrains has its strengths, I believe that - by solving the problem of relevance - our model does as well.

Just as bulletin boards didn't make email obsolete, the public conversations taking place on Twitter won't make official, targeted communications obsolete either.

Open Access: Railways and social media

Guest columnist Ben Smith, a technology consultant and a founder of The Really Mobile Project, argues that railway companies should use social media to better meet passengers' information needs.

I realise this is likely to get me strung-up around here, but I really don't like trains. At all.

They're a necessary evil - the rubbish bit between breakfast and getting to the office (and yes, I'm looking at you Southwest Trains into Waterloo...). It's not a problem with the idea of mass-transit - I like to save the planet as much as the next man - it's just the sense of futility when things go wrong.

I'd started thinking about how I could get more convenient access to train delay information (without paying National Rail 25p for text alerts, which I resented) late last year when I saw a tweet by the 'Digital Minister' Tom Watson MP asking "Do any train operators run Twitter feeds to give rail information for each route?" on the social media service. Eureka! (and no they don't, by the way...)

Twitter was the answer (no, honestly)... a system entirely dedicated to providing timed status updates which could be browsed on PCs, phones, netbooks... you name it. Made possible by the awesome BBC Backstage project (worth the license fee alone, so pay up) I quickly produced a service to issue disruption alerts on Twitter - either for the whole country or from one of the 25 operators the BBC tracks.

Following the snowy disruption of early February and a day spent manually updating the accounts with extra reports two things became apparent: travellers were willing and able to report disruption long before the existing services could and Twitter was better able to withstand heavy loads than the train operators' websites which crashed in response to the unusually high numbers of visitors .

I quickly added a feature to 'crowd source' disruption alerts and the users (several thousand now) embraced it enthusiastically.

Since then, amidst sporadic media interest, the train operators have started to consider the use of social media, but so far they're mostly getting it wrong - targeting messages from their monitoring network to individual subscribers... they're missing the trick.

The power of social media is the 'social' bit - on the @uktrains service people report disruption alongside the BBC's data to create a much richer picture of travel conditions and everyone benefits... (and no-one pays)

And although constructing the service cost me all of zero pounds and 2 days effort there are potentially big rewards for train operators to consider social media.

Not only could they cheaply improve customer service by moving into the places online where their customers are (like this blog), the replies and comments directed at the @uktrains service (even by those who understand it's not official) give a rich insight into customers' views on their travel providers (good and bad).

More information about @uktrains and the 25 other operator-specific feeds is available at http://uktrains.pbwiki.com .

UPDATE: This just in from Rudi over at Merseyrail...

Can't give you the details yet but we are planning to start using Twitter in the not too distant future to supply our passengers with travel information and keep them up to date with any disruption on Merseyrail.

Mind you, with PPM above 97%, there isn't all that much to tell them...

UPDATE: And this from John over at ATOC...

We now have a feed on Twitter for the entire National Rail network and will soon have live feeds on a TOC by TOC basis.

This is better than the existing UK Trains feed not least because they are getting their information from the BBC Travel News website which – you’ve guessed it – gets its information from us via a 3rd party.

Our view is that it’s better for passengers to hear things straight from the horses mouth as it were.

UPDATE: The Fact Compiler begs to differ...

It's fine to hear it from the horse's mouth, as long as free sources of information continue

This encouraging news posted by Shane Richmond over at Telegraph Blogspots:

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) announced today that it is investigating complaints about National Rail Enquiries' handling of real-time train information in regard to My Rail Lite, the free iPhone application that was removed from the iTunes App Store earlier this year after a licensing dispute.

If trains are late why should passengers pay to be told of the railway's incompetence?

UPDATE: Ben responds to ATOC...

John says ATOC's twitter feed is better than @uktrains because they are the original source for the official disruption information...

I disagree because he doesn't mention crowd-sourcing, but regardless this is brilliant news (if not about 12 months late), but where is it?

Google/Twitter searches found nothing and it's not linked from their sites very visibly (if at all).

The whole point is @uktrains barely took 2 days to build - telling people about it so it actually helps them has been far more important.