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Given that you've railed against electrification of East Kilbride for the lack of EMUs, and now Fife, where do you think is the right place? Bear in mind of course that this is ScotGov wiring with Scottish money, and therefore wiring the Oxford or Bristol lines would appear to be a questionable...

The plan was for a three year trial. In October 2022, the Transport Select Committee accepted that the project had begun, although consent from UNESCO was still required; link here. "Electrification works in Fife and South of Forth progressing Forth Bridge to be done at a later phase. Some...

Blatant self promotion, but for more information regarding the thinking inside TS, see this post. It's not the final solution, but it is where the thinking inside TS is at the moment that I wrote it; I was speaking to some old colleagues about other, vaguely related things and the topic came up.

Fair enough, that was a change proposed ages ago and I hadn't realised it had been implemented.

Indeed. There have also been ongoing negotiations to rejig the calls between Inverkeithing and Haymarket: switching all the Fife Circle to BEMUs gives you enough slack in the timetable that its not unlikely that everything except the Aberdeen fasts will be calling here in the medium term future.

That's 42 minutes of allowances between Preston and Euston!

Jumping into clarify, there are three reasons TS doesn't want to do a combined order. Firstly, this order is out now, and there's a view inside TS that the DfT is taking too long pulling it's finger out and wavering over what form GBR will take. Any combined order would become a lot more...

Right, that's a lot of crayon, and that line is going to cost an absolute bomb. Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch are best served by Bishopbriggs, Lenzie and Croy, and have 2tph or 4tph into Queen Street, with journey times of less than fifteen minutes. At that point, is infinitely quicker to just...

There's nothing in Allandale, and there's no point building a four platform station straddling the two lines where the Cumbernauld lines dive under, because nobody would use it. Abronhill and Bonnybridge would support stations in their own right, so you site those stations for maximum benefit...

Updated to reflect Scotrail tenders, leasing of the full mk.5 fleet by Chiltern, rejection of Lumo OA applications for Rochdale and Sheffield services, and corrections to the SE tenders.

Jumping into this thread, and updating my master list of tenders, I feel like I can shed some light. Going for a coffee with people I know at TS, there are a couple of interesting points brought up. From these conversations, I have a much better idea of what their desire is at this point...

No matter what happens with the line, this announcement in no way changes the business case. Public transport is not the transport of choice for CentreParcs visitors, most commonly families with young children, multiple heavy suitcases, tents, bikes, food for a week, or some combination of the...

So all the 60s and 90s are shuttered, all the 67s bar the ones leased to TfW, and now over 10% of their 66s!

You are definitely right, that's my mistake for not keeping track of things.

Things in Germany aren't looking too rosy for DB, and having sold Arriva, that just leaves the freight business. With DB losing contracts, offloading and storing workhorse locos, and selling off yard space, at this rate, how long before they decide to just pack up and sell off all their British...

Exactly, it's the same as the Carmarthen to Paddington service saying that they're providing useful competition and capacity for new stations, but realistically will just sell operator only tickets for five quid cheaper than the Bristol Parkway/Cardiff to Paddington price, and siphon money off...

Furthermore, the acute proof will be seeing the loading levels from different stations to London. It's not unlikely we'll see half loaded trains north of Preston, with what passengers there are riding on ridiculously cheap advances to try and show that the service isn't abstractive. I expect...

I'm getting very confused. Are you saying there's no link to an East - West route to Edinburgh from EK? Of course not, the same as Kilmarnock, and Barrhead, and Paisley don't have direct trains to Edinburgh. Motherwell does, several times a day, although I appreciate for most of the time...

Mainly it's historical, with the north of Scotland services switching over to the ECML with the advent of HSTs, but there are pragmatic reasons why it never switched back. Quite simply, ECML services don't have to turn around at Edinburgh. In contrast, WCML services would either have to...

The physical feeder stations themselves have lead times up to five years or so, and so it makes sense to have ordered these a while ago. The three sat at Cadder (simply a good place to store them, in the SPL compound there) were ordered before COVID, when everyone had hot and cold running...