Recent content by thenorthern

Back in 2008 I remember being awake listening to the Shipping Forecast and suddenly I heard the house shake. Thought nothing of it then I woke up at 6:30 am put Radio 1 on and heard Newsbeat and they mentioned there was an earthquake. A couple of years ago I felt and eathquake and I posted on...

Although it was never completed, I know there was controversy about the Penistone Line tram train plans as the trains don't have toilets on them. I think it was going to be about 90 min. Other long ones include Hunts Cross to Southport (67 min) and Rochdale to East Disbury on Metrolink (1h...

Sinfin Central was an odd one as I think there was an overgrown footpath that was about 400m off Wilmore Road which was enough justification for British Rail to claim it had public access. According to Wikipedia the public right of way from Wilmore Road to Sinfin Central was still in place until...

Saw this tweet and others like it doing the rounds, I have removed the bad language. It's got over a million views It's obviously inaccurate in many ways given Network Rail has been state-owned since 2002. Also Greater Anglia and Southern are both state-owned. In reality, privatisation has...

I assume that it was the newish Rail operating centre at Manchester that failed? I know Rugby was designed to withstand most conventional issues that a building of that importance may face such as being blast-proof, high fencing, UPS backup with backup generator protection from environmental...

It depends on who you ask, announcements should give passengers the information they need. A couple of weeks ago I was at a station and there was a train which was a medium-distance journey which went through a national park. The platform staff announced over the tannoy that passengers catching...

At what location do Avanti do routine driver and staff changes? I know the most obvious one is Preston where the London to Glasgow and London to Glasgow/Edinburgh via the West Midlands do driver changes and the stop staff regularly make an announcement that the shop will be closed just before...

Far too soon in my opinion. While people are talking about him now because he has died I don't think people will be talking about him as much in 10-15 years time.

Obviously, back in the British Rail days Merseyrail had the Regional Railways branding and colours until 1993. Given that Merseyrail has the unique Merseytravel and National Rail two-arrow dual branding will the dual branding remain post GBR? I know London Overground and Crossrail got rid of...

Aside from the controversies off the pitch, realistically, this has been a relatively boring World Cup. The final in particular was relatively boring to be honest. Other than for Spain fans, it's not really a final that most people will remember.

Has there been any mention of his rail policies? There was things discussed on the radio a few weeks ago about him potentially reviving HS2's northern leg. So far in my opinion he is a bit too northern and a bit too Manchester-centric. His focus on the north is not going to appeal to voters in...

London St Pancras certainly feels like it for domestic services.

Given that as things stand the TOCs which although the majority of which are state-owned, are still functioning as private companies the previous brands will likely still be used until EMR is nationalised. GBR is a long way off being used.

Argentina were the better side, although England played well for most of the game, Thomas Tuchel in my opinion bears most of the responsiblity for England's defeat.

When Virgin Trains first started they had he VT0 route which ran from Birmingham to Swindon via the Golden Valley Line. It of course ended in 2003. How frequent were the services along the route and did it always run from Birmingham to Swindon? It always seemed like a route that Virgin...