Railway Garden Comptition - Boston

How kind of Network Rail to grow this bowling green for Railsports...

Railway Garden Competition - Factory Junction

This from Fiona Gail...

Here are some examples of the greening of the railway by Wandsworth Road and Factory Junction.


Please note the soaring buddleia trees on the viaduct.


Presumably Network Rail intend to decorate this one with tinsel come Christmas?

Railway Garden Competition - Abroad

This from Sealink Sam...

A couple of pics for Eye taken at Treviso, 30 mins north of Venice.


Above very green tracks...

...and an interesting advert that, judging by the liveries, seems to show Clapham Junction several years ago!

UPDATE: This from Driver Potter...

Now now, TFC - that naughty Italian advert clearly doesn't show Clapham Junction.

'Tis Victoria, old thing.

I claim my Monthly Anorak prize

Railway Garden Competition - Wakefield Kirkgate

Railway Garden Competition - Elephant & Castle

Public servant commits career suicide - Shocker

Whilst the new government warns that transport will not be immune from swingeing spending cuts it appears that not all civil servants are on message.

This from The Journal...

Elaine Holt, chairman of state-owned rail company East Coast, told The Journal new trains were needed to cope with rising passenger numbers and the needs of travellers in the coming years.

Presumably Elaine's new boss, Philip Hammond, will shortly be summoning her for a meeting, sans coffee?

A word on Hammond - the other one...

This from the Wimbledon Guardian...

Mr Hammond said: “I am disappointed my campaign to prevent the split of the line at Kennington has not been successful."

Not half as bloody disappointed as we are that you didn't get a Ministerial post.

Perhaps that nice Derbyshire MP, The Rt Hon Patrick McLoughlin, would consider Stephen Hammond for the new Transport Select Committee?

Just asking like...

Letters to the Editor...

This from Disgusted of Welwyn Garden City...

Sir

What's all this tosh about the East Coast Main Line having capacity problems when 15 minutes at my local station this morning produced only two FCC EMUs bimbling along.

I had promised my toddler grand daughter IC125s racing by at line speed, MTUs snarling and IC225s at the ton?

I blame Elaine Holt for (cont' p94)...

Ministerial roles and responsibilities

This from the DfT website...

Secretary of State, Philip Hammond MP

• Spending Review
• Transport Security
• High Speed Rail

Minister of State for Transport - Theresa Villiers MP

• Rail
• London – including Crossrail
• Olympics
• Europe Aviation – including Air Accidents Investigation Branch

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State - Norman Baker MP

• Regional and Local Transport
• Buses and Taxis – including concessionary fares
• Walking and Cycling
• Accessibility and Equalities
• Alternatives to travel

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State - Mike Penning MP

• Strategic Roads and Highways Agency
• Motoring Agencies
• Road Safety and Standards
• Freight and Logistics
• Maritime and Dangerous Goods - including Maritime and Coastguard Agency

Good to see that the 'Spending Review' comes first and foremost...

UPDATE: This from the Shunter...

Presumably once the Secretary of State has completed his Spending Review the other ministers can return to the back benches?

Job done - last one out please turn off the Marsham Street lights.

UPDATE: This from Our Man at 222 Marylebone Road...

It looks as though the portfolios have got crossed within DfT.

Should not Norman Baker be in charge of "Things that are really important and cost a lot of money and can screw up the country if they go wrong"

And should not Therasa Villiers have under her wing "Politically correct things that we have to care about or can let the PTEs get on with?

And ITSO smart cards seem to have fallen into a black hole.

Steam Dreams spins a rescue story...

Telegrammed by Our international Correspondent
Publicity hungry railtour operator Steam Dreams got itself into The Thunderer this morning, with this offer of help to air travellers becalmed by Icelandic volcanic ash:

Additional capacity was made available on alternative transport from Scotland to London, including an extra 7,000 seats on Virgin Trains. The tourist firm Steam Dreams, which runs steam train trips for enthusiasts between Edinburgh and London, also offered an extra 50 seats to passengers who were unable to fly this morning.

Steam Dreams Chairman Marcus Robertson is himself no slouch as a spin doctor and has a reputation for attending the opening of an envelope.

But a big bowler raspberry to Times hackette Joanna Sugden for not enquiring more deeply into what Marcus was peddling her.

The Steam Dreams train, 1Z31, was booked to leave Edinburgh at 09.34, and after two lengthy water stops and a change of kettles in York, arrives at Kings Cross at a convenient 20.00 tonight.

A lugubrious 10 hrs 26 mins for 394 miles, an average speed somewhere south of 40 mph - pretty much in line with Eurostar's special Christmas timings and rather worse than the booked time in 1938 of 7hrs 20 mins offered by the pre-war LNER. Even a National Express coach promises to do the trip in 10hrs 5 mins.

The 1955 Modernisation Plan? What's that, then?

UPDATE: This from Gresley the Younger...

Love the comment on the SD story about ash clouds, was on R5 Live too!

But factually incorrect, the 1938 timing for Edinburgh to London steam hauled was 6 hours.

Of course, that was at 90mph without all these electric new fangled thingys to get in your way, hence the ten hours schedule today, and no water troughs as the track-circuits don't like them!

Fastest in preservation was eight hours (April 2009) but that was Clarkson powered, snigger!

Railway Garden Competition - Gloucester

Poetry Corrner - Norman

This just in from Clarence Spad Life President, Young Railway Poets Society:

LINES WRITTEN AT READING STATION ON WATCHING A BEDWYN WORKING BEING RELEASED ONTO THE BERKS AND HANTS JUST BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF A LATE RUNNING TRAIN TO TAUNTON: THEREBY ENSURING THE LATTER TRAIN WILL CONSEQUENTLY RUN TEN MINUTES LATE AND THE BEDWYN SERVICE WILL HAVE TO WAIT AT NEWBURY UNTIL THE FAST TRAIN HAS PASSED

My premonitions were right.
Norman has got the job.
Jim who has worked
For forty years on Platform 4
Told me that in 1962
Sue Thompson
An American singer
Had a hit song called Norman
I have listened to it on Youtube
It is very catchy
I am sure
Once Phil hears it
He will soon be humming it to his new
Parliamentary Under Secretary



'Clarence is the Rilke of Reading Station,' Wordsworth

Railway Garden Competition - Birmingham New St

Railway Garden Competition - Warrington Central

Hammond's Chrizzie Card list is already shorter

Telegrammed by the Raver
Sadly Mr Hammond’s little tete a tete yesterday was missing a couple of the more illustrious railway hacks.

Neither Wolmar nor Captain Deltic saw fit to join the Marsham Street love-in with the new Secretary of State.

Presumably both were, ah..., too busy?

Or perhaps they thought that being summoned to bathe in Hammond's glow with just two hours notice showed a little too much of the "old Tory" style?

Despite his busy diary Wolmar still found time to scribble a disparaging blogpost ridiculing Hammond's early surrender to the carbon hungry road lobby.

Eye fears that Christian's first invite to meet Hammond may already be his last.

The new improved DfT at a glance!

Philip Hammond's exciting and vibrant new team as below...

Theresa Villiers MP has been appointed Minister of State. Theresa Villiers is MP for Chipping Barnet.

Norman Baker MP has been appointed Parliamentary under Secretary. Norman Baker is MP for Lewes.

Mike Penning MP has been appointed Parliamentary under Secretary. Mike Penning is MP for Hemel Hempstead.

Errr... that's it.

Harris on Hammond

Nigel Harris of RAIL has the following to say about Philip Hammond's first exposure to the transport media yesterday:

You have to admire the brio and assertive approach of a brand new SoS who invites the specialist media into his department for an unplanned chat on an entirely new brief within 24 hours of his appointment in Downing Street and before he had even been to Buckingham Palace to ‘kiss hands’ and collect his seals of office from HM the Queen.

As expected Hammond's overall message on funding was bleak.

Good news, however, for those with "new and innovative ways of funding things".

Words that will no doubt delight the open access operators!

A word on Lord Adonis

Now that we have a new government it is time for a brief word on the former Secretary of State for Transport.

Eye subscribes to the view espoused in a recent edition of Railnews by Adrian Lyons, the former Director General of the Railway Forum:

Surviving and overcoming bad times means that getting the right message over is even more important.

The railway industry is not doing this.

To some extent this does not matter while Lord Adonis is Secretary of State as he is the most effective Railway Forum there has ever been.

Indeed.

Alas, he is now gone.

Eye hopes not for too long...

UPDATE: This just in from Ithuriel...

Can we stop this mindless adulation of Lord Adonis.

Just because he was pro-railways and a bit of a crank doesn't mean that we should mourn his being cut off in his pomp.

Oblivious to an emerging economic crisis and his Deprtment's warning that at current costs the railway is unsustainable, he happily dumped over a billion on the Network Rail credit card for a long overdue but ill thought out politically driven electrification programme totally unrelated to the realities of resignalling and rolling stock availability.

Why Great Western and not the more straightforward and financially more attractive Midland Main Line?

On high speed, it could be said that his promotion of HS1 provided a beacon to see the industry through a grim decade ahead. And at the worst he imposed second thoughts on his department's Gadarene rush to IEP. At best, he binned it.

He was the right-minded man at the wrong time. In 1997 he would have been in his element.

Now we have a Transport Secretary in tune with the times.

Sweating the assets is the order of the day.

Farewell Prince Rupert, Hello Oliver Cromwell.

One for the HRA

This for Eye's friends in the Heritage Railway world...

TOURISM MINISTER: John Penrose

Mr Penrose is about to become the kettle fraternity's New Best Friend.

Villiers back in junior role

***Theresa Villiers back at Department for Transport but demoted***

With a bowler tip to @MichaelSavage, via Twitter

UPDATE: Iain Dale giving Villiers as Minister of State (Sadiq Khan in old money)