Saturday 7th January 2023 Listening to Mark Harper, Secretary of State for Transport and Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the RMT doing the media rounds during this week’s strikes brought home the dysfunctional state of Britain’s railways. There seems no hope of an early resolution to the current industrial disputes while a state of paralysis... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Photo courtesy Network Rail Aside from the shiny new mega-size stations about to open in the Crossrail core there are quite a few other brand new stations currently under construction on the national network which are due to open during 2022. It’s a bit of a sweepstake to see which will... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 22nd February 2022 A deserted Hassocks at 07:30 I was up bright and early yesterday morning taking a few rail replacement rides to see how Brighton Main Line commuters were faring on their first weekday of the blockade without trains. It was soon apparent, as in 2019, extensive pre-blockade publicity had done its job... Continue Reading →
Sunday 20th February 2022 It's a bit déjà vu on the Brighton Main Line this week. Flushed with a successful nine day blockade south of Three Bridges to Brighton and Lewes during half term in February 2019 which at the time was billed as a one-off efficient way of completing a whole host of upgrade... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 14th December 2021 The winter rail timetable began on Sunday incorporating LNER's new once a day direct service between Middlesbrough and London; a much improved timetable from GWR on the Severn Beach branch; a new direct hourly shuttle service linking Crosskeys with Newport in South Wales; and the return of Gatwick Express branded trains... Continue Reading →
Friday 15th October 2021 Rail. Replacement. Bus. October 2021: warning for February 2022 already As you can see down here in Sussex Rail Replacement Buses are front page news again as GTR and Network Rail's media machine begins the warm up warning to give rail passengers plenty of advance notice of next February’s nine day... Continue Reading →
Friday 16th April 2021 It used to cost just £14 to land on Monopoly's Bow Street but in 2021 the latest new station of the same name (added to Britain's rail network on 14th February) has come in at a tad higher cost than that - an eyebrow raising £8 million - to build. And... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 9th June 2020 Network Rail have launched its second consultation into the extensive plans to sort out the Croydon bottleneck on the Brighton Main Line as well as enable more trains to run on enhanced frequencies. Once complete "it’s expected there would be capacity to run an additional 2 trains per hour to each... Continue Reading →
Monday 6th April 2020 With the continued absence of travel, I thought I’d have a browse online at public consultations for various transport plans and projects. There’s one closing today which is part of Network Rail’s continuing Brighton Main Line (BML) upgrade project: a proposal to build a new 12-car ‘turn back’ platform at Reigate... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 18th December 2019 There's never a good time to have a complete signal failure at East Croydon but for the power to go down just as the evening peak is kicking in around 16:45 is probably one of the worst of times. I'm sure everyone at Network Rail did their very best to get... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 4th June 2019 Sometimes it's instructive to turn up at the launch of a new rail station a day late. Opening ceremonies can be tedious affairs with dignitaries descending the scene, wooden speeches, congratulatory words, smiles all round for the cameras, pats on backs, then back to their offices. The second day often has... Continue Reading →
Friday 3rd May 2019 Finding myself in Glasgow at 7.30am yesterday morning (after my inaugural Caledonian Sleeper Mark 5 journey) I thought it would be an opportunity to continue the first-time experiences by taking a ride on the recently completed electrified ScotRail line to Edinburgh via Shotts and then catch a Borders Buses X62 down... Continue Reading →
Thursday 21st February 2019 It's reminded me of London 2012. Aside from the brilliant athletes and the behind-the-scenes organisational excellence it was the deployment of Games Makers which made for such a positive and enjoyable visitor experience despite mega crowds and challenging transport logistics before and after events. When the wash up review of this... Continue Reading →
Sunday 17th February 2019 It's been publicised for over a year; preparations have been going on behind the scenes for much longer than that. It was originally planned to happen last October. Now we're finally on the cusp of the biggest rail replacement ever as the nine day Brighton Main Line closure is hours away... Continue Reading →
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