Delayed on East Coast
Arriving at Newcastle station late last night for the 2115 to London, I was met with a departures board displaying an ominous ‘Delayed’. This was strange because the 2115 starts…
A first class conundrum
At face value, it sounds simple to convert first class coaches into standard class to reduce congestion. Think of first class and many will think of large seats arranged in…
NR transfer pushes ORR towards redundancy
Network Rail’s debt are now our debts. Of course, they always were, it was only accounting niceties and fudge that kept debts guaranteed by government from government’s books. With the…
Switching Network Rail debts to government could increase sell-off pressure
This week could see Network Rail’s debts of around £40 billion added to Chancellor George Osborne’s account. It depends on a decision from the Office of National Statistics which is…
Network Rail faces fines for late trains
In the three months that constitute Quarter 2, around 122,600 trains ran late as Network Rail posted performance that varied between 0.9 and 5.1 percentage points behind its targets. These…
Plenty of work on the Great Western Main Line
An awards event in Bristol last Friday took me west of Reading on the Great Western Main Line for the first time in many months. Most recent attention around Reading…
French railways
A trip last week to Normandy provided a perfect opportunity to reflect on the differences between British and French railways. The default view would have you believe that Britain’s railways…
Metro warns users not to hold doors open
After an incident in which a woman was dragged along a platform at Jarrow with her arm stuck in the doors of a Metro train, the train operator has released…
On weekend engineering
I should have known better. To travel on the East Coast Main Line on an autumn Saturday is to risk lengthened journeys, bus replacements or diversions. And so it was on…
HS2 future chief: Place less emphasis on businessmen working on trains
High Speed 2’s forthcoming strategic business case is expected to place less emphasis on whether businessmen work while travelling. Debates about HS2 over the past few years have been punctuated…