Wolmarvision HD

Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road
No expense has been spared in this super colossal production!

Fire and Steam includes the recreation of the building of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway complete with toiling navvies, bowler hatted ganger and topper wearing engineer.

Sadly, none of these are moving and the rostrum shot is one of several taken from that fount of all railway wisdom: "The story of railways" (a Ladybird achievements book).

Alas, this excellent publication failed to survive our passion for dumbing down. A search on the Ladybird Books web site brought the following response:

"Sorry, your search for Railways has not returned any results."

Perhaps Team Railway should invest in our future and help Ladybird to fill the gap?

Gordon is a moron

Splendid news. The Prime Minister shares passenger outrage over fares increases.

This extra-ordinary statement was quoted in Saturday's Daily Telegraph:

'A spokesman for Gordon Brown said "It is clear that passengers have concerns about the value for money they receive from train companies. It is a matter for the rail companies to explain why they have made the decisions they have made".'

The Fact Compiler is speechless.

UPDATE: The Fact Compiler is grateful to a distinguished Railway Eye reader for the following:

"The tragedy of much government mishandling of the industry is that no-one - including Atoc, which is meant to be their industry association, for goodness' sake - is willing to make a fuss about it.

"First got plenty of stuff wrong on Great Western but they also took flak that should rightly have gone to the government for the reassignment of the Class 158s to areas that just happen to have lots of Labour MPs.

To quote (in expurgated fashion) Bunk, the coolest detective in cult TV series The Wire, "Sometimes it makes me sick how far we done fell."

Quite so.

A pedant writes

Railway Eye was delighted to receive an invitation to Balfour Beatty's 100th anniversary bash.

It has a picture designed to illustrate the company's involvement in the electrification of the West Coast Main Line captioned "1969".

Alas, BB decided to use a photo of a Class 87 locomotive to illustrate the piece.

As any fule kno these mainstays of the West Coast Main Line weren't introduced until 1973.

Such lack of attention to detail will come as a surprise to many in the industry.

Bah humbug

Festive cheer!

Network Rail stations have entered into the Christmas spirit!

Here's to January's New Year Grandmother sale.

Crisis, what crisis?

Telegrammed by The Master
Anyone travelling through Kings Cross on Saturday morning could be forgiven for thinking 'crisis, what crisis?'

There certainly seemed to be no sign of passenger numbers slackening in the wake of the economic downturn.

NXEC departures were rammed, with a mid morning Glasgow service full and standing.

Arrivals were equally busy, including Grand Central's first train of the day.

No doubt the cheeky decision by all three Open Access Operators to freeze fares in 2009 will continue this trend.

Wolmarvision

Is Christian Wolmar in danger of becoming a national icon?

Wolmar's book Fire and Steam has been transferred to DVD in time for Christmas.



Does the Fact Compiler detect a faint whiff of arch-crank and poet laureate Sir John Betjeman in Wolmar's agreeable cadences?

Fat head

The Fact Compiler is grateful to a reader for sending in the picture below which was taken at St Pancras station.


The Fact Compiler fears that passengers may have to wait slightly longer than the weekend for this particular train to appear at Agincourt International

Sense and sensibility

Is My Lord Adonis a good or bad thing?

Does he know his stuff or is he talking through his coronet?

You picks your commentator, you takes your choice.

For instance Nigel Harris made the following observation in a blog posting on Monday:
"What most of these commentators missed – or got completely wrong – was Andrew Adonis’ deep and detailed interest in railways. He comes to the transport job with an existing knowledge and support for rail which is going to be intriguing to watch."

Intrigued, we watched.

And lo it came to pass, a mere three days later, that Lord Adonis made clear his existing knowledge and support for rail:

Lord Adonis, House of Lords, Thursday 20th November (Hansard source)
"However, a perfectly sensible report was published, commissioned, I think, by the Department of Transport and possibly British Rail. This was the Serpell report, although it, too, proposed options that could have led to significant network cutbacks in the 1980s."

Presumably his Lordship means sensible in the sense that Raymond Ian Burns might understand it?

Silver lining

Telegrammed by The Raver

Which senior LUL director was overheard saying that Metronet's collapse was a blessing in disguise?

The reasoning from the 7th floor of 55 Broadway is that Crossrail would have been almost impossible to build due to the over complicated PPP contracts.

These would have provided greedy private sector Metronet with infinite opportunities to hoover up vast sums of public money in frustrated access compensation claims.

Presumably Tube Lines, under Terry Morgan's direction, will be taking a more pragmatic approach; unsurprising as the wily poacher will turn gamekeeper at Crossrail in 12 months time.

70% listen on the wireless

Railway Eye surveys continue to confound the so called experts and the industry chatterati.

Last week readers were invited to express their views on the recent redesign of Railways Illustrated; a subject which has excited much debate on other internet fora.

Unsurprisingly, it emerges that this debate was entirely spurious, as a massive 70% of you usually listen to Railways Illustrated on the wireless.

For those of you who haven't yet had the opportunity to hear the mag over the airwaves here is a taster of the latest issue:



A splendid result for Pip and his team.

Divergence of opinion

A reader has kindly sent in these images of the Loram rail grinder in action at Crewe on the 11th November.




Perhaps an occasion for grinding of teeth rather than rails?

Timing 2

Just a week ago National Express alerted the media to an exciting "cook off" for the coveted title 'Chef of the Year'.

The press release burbled "The winners and runners-up from both (NXEC) heats are now preparing for the final cook off, where they will join the winning chef from National Express East Anglia".

Alas, yesterday's announcement of swinging redundancies also saw NEG admit that its East Anglia franchise is "proposing to remove the restaurant service, and improve our buffet and at-seat service".

With restaurant cars in East Anglia on the way out The Fact Compiler fears that the souffles of the NXEA chef may not rise to the occasion.

Timing

Yesterday NEG announced swinging redundancies at it's East Anglia TOC.

Time for the struggling owner group to keep its head down some might say.

Fortunately not a view shared by NEG's brave PR monkeys, who decided to proceed with last nights special sponsored run of A1 Tornado, which saw the National Express logo emblazoned on the kettle's tender!

A sight surely designed to gladden the heart of those facing the dole queue.

UPDATE: Harumph, snorts our man at 222 Marylebone Road!

"From where in National Express did the outburst of Kettle Mania come from that saw the company's logos plastered on the £3million carnot cycle prototype?"

Perhaps from the very top?

What's missing...

...from this over-excited tosh?

"Eurostar... has appointed RAPP (formerly WAVV RAPP COLLINS) to support its Pan European Customer Relationship Management, Loyalty and E-commerce programmes.

"RAPP has been appointed to the consolidated account and will be tasked with supporting Eurostar across these three core areas. Over the coming months, Eurostar will be further developing its traveller communications and refining its award winning website eurostar.com to continue to push the standards of the customer experience."

Etc... etc... yawn.

Perhaps a big fat capital 'C' ?

Poptastic!

***LNWR sold to Arriva***

Crewe should be so lucky. Lucky, lucky, lucky

Float like a butterfly...

Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road
...answer like a weasel!

Written answers Monday, 17 November 2008, House of Lords

Lord Bradshaw (Spokesperson in the Lords, Transport; Liberal Democrat) | Hansard
Whether the 40 additional vehicles which First Great Western will receive for Paddington suburban services will be new vehicles, as stated in the Department for Transport's Rolling Stock Plan of January 2008.

Lord Adonis (Minister of State, Department for Transport; Labour)
The Government's Rolling Stock Plan of January 2008 stated that the assumed actions and numbers of vehicles were not prescriptive. The update to the plan, published in July 2008 and available on the Department for Transport website stated that different numbers would be announced only when the Government contracted with the operator for more or fewer vehicles. Discussions with First Great Western on detailed plans are in progress.

Errr.... Yes Minister.

FOI shock horror

Tom Harris has pre-empted a highly embarrassing Freedom of Information request by publishing the offending document on his own blog.

Read Tom's shock disclosure here.

12 out of 13 ain't bad!

High premia costing dear

National Express is to shed 300 rail jobs according to The Independent.

Read the Indy piece here.

Or indeed Railway Eye from October if you like your news a little earlier.

Boiled Frog

Bowker's Law says there are only two sources of railway funding - from the fare box and the tax payer.

The Public Accounts Committee have kindly provided last year's figures for these.

In 2006/07, passengers paid £5.1 billion into the fare box.

Whilst the Department for Transport gave £3.4 billion to Network Rail and a further £1.7 billion to the Train Operating Companies.

Total amount of our taxes spent on the 'privatised' railways in 2006/07 = £5.1bn

Total amount of our taxes spent on the nationalised railway in 1993/94 = £1.46bn (figure corrected for inflation).

Future in the past

Telegrammed by The Master
Inter TOC co-operation and holding connections for late services isn't always the stuff of myth, as passengers on todays 0845 Padd - Swansea have found out.

Those punters using the train to get to Fishguard anxiously scanned their watches (or admired flooded fields) as their train was held outside Bristol Parkway due to an AXC service blocking its path.

Perhaps Arriva felt guilty, as the TM on the FGW train came on the PA to apologise for the delay and announce that ATW had agreed to hold the connection and allow punters to make their train.

So, if it can be done on this occasion...