News and views from Britain's railways
Sometimes we make a simple thing sound difficult. Take this phrase from a recent report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers: “On-demand door-to-door mobility solutions”. For context the report is…
This year should see governments in Westminster and Holyrood reveal what they want from Britain’s railway over the five years from 2019. With the rail industry’s love of jargon, acronyms…
I’m not a train driver. I have sat in a cab and made a train move. I’ve even made one stop in roughly the right place. That’s far from being…
Britain has a safe railway. It’s the safest in Europe by many measures, including the number of passenger fatalities and injuries per billion passenger train kilometres. It’s a record that’s…
It’s easy to overlook the Midland Main Line as it sits between the two great Anglo-Scottish routes. That’s despite its southern terminus being St Pancras. This architectural masterpiece towers over…
It started in the 1960s within the US defence industry. It’s just reaching Network Rail now, five decades later. What is it? Earned value management, usually abbreviated to EVM. It’s…
The message to Network Rail was clear: “Over ambitious claims for improvements in capacity must be met with scepticism, and Network Rail should be very cautious about how it uses…
Euston. What to do about Euston? Recent years have seen various proposals to rebuild the station for High Speed 2. The latest came a little over a year ago when…
October 4 marked the 40th anniversary of British Rail introducing High Speed Trains into everyday service, between Paddington and Bristol/South Wales. Over those four decades, the HST has become Britain’s…
There’s a deep irony at the heart of the government newly published rail freight strategy. It boasts that each tonne of railfreight reduces carbon emissions by 76% compared with road…