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So, you think giving a struggling depot another unit to look after is a good idea? By the way, GWR 150 availability has been pretty good recently. p.s. Congrats to the MHR on getting what I knew in my Anglia days as “King Edmund”.

The Civil Contingencies Act is not a catch-all. There are limitations on use, based around proportionality and not creating or causing offences. It is certainly not applicable where the DfT themselves screw up a ROSCO contract, badly in this case. OA Abstraction is something that is very...

You obviously have no idea how revenue works these days. Dedicated fares have rendered ORCATS almost redundant on main line flows. ORCATS Raiding is so last century. Contract laws exist for a reason - so nobody can come in and easily disrupt agreements, governments included. If the DfT couldn’t...

When BR ran out of money in autumn 1980, economies had to be made everywhere. Starting in 1981, there were cutbacks on the GN.

No.

The 2023/4 figures seem to be at variance with the figures supplied to the ORR for their table 7226. The 2024/5 figures have yet to appear on table 7226. When doing any year on year comparison, the key thing to remember what Fixed Track Access does between those years on a TOC by TOC basis...

That inward working should have been 165110 because the whole diagram got cancelled much earlier in the day after ‘110 got into trouble on a Gatwick working and limped into Gatwick. Co-incidentally, it eventually ran ECS back to Reading TMD in the approximate path of one of its diagrammed...

Lympstone Commando. One station you don’t want to linger at.

It was 15 max (with two locos) after the 1976 track alterations at KX. They had to use Platform 1 if they were that length and even then they could go out on only one route - A. There were two northbound trains that were load 15 in the late 1970’s and both were Aberdeen motorail trains, iirc...

Some “interesting” commercial practises that were commonplace all over NSE. They ceased immediately after the LTS situation blew up.

Yes, it was on the menu of items FG submitted for the DfT to consider under the DA3 award. Angel, who had spent a fortune “upgrading” the system on the 166 fleet, was not keen and so the DfT said no. The GWR 165 fleet, however, did get Chiltern style air-con but someone very senior in GWR...

Correct. Recruiting for Rochdale has not started.

Because they were waiting for NR to comment, much to everyone’s frustration.

I think the second is Verney Junction. The distinctive fencing matches, the box is a match and there appears to be a disused formation going off behind the box. Presumably, as others have said, taken on the same day as the Swanbourne pic.

There are two reasons for this. One is the large increase in FTAC and the other is the IEP contract. GWR has also suffered with the latter. They really are an expensive train which has ruined the overt economics of the two businesses, given the caveat that the wild fluctuations in VTAC make...

It isn’t fair to say Lumo is almost entirely revenue abstractive. That is just your assertion because you don’t like OA. It has no basis in fact - I have dealt with that on another thread - and political pressure was not applied to grant it rights (not a licence). You are absolutely correct...

Lumo’s business model isn’t revenue abstractive from rail. The push from aviation is both price and time led. Getting through airport security became a pain way before COVID and Lumo had their eyes on that issue before they had even operated a train. The airline analysts aren’t either fans or...

Stop the hate because it isn’t persuading anyone. Lumo has grabbed quite a bit of the London-Edinburgh air market, according to air analysts who study the domestic air market. Rail market share of the total London-Edinburgh transport market has risen in greater % numbers than on other...

Except that when the ORR crunched the numbers, it wasn’t. Virgin was £64.1m, WSMR was £11.7m and Lumo was £3.4m, all per annum figures. That isn’t so surprising as FG have years of experience when it comes to OA applications and revenue prediction.

Oh, Chris Green had plenty of money to spend - those were the years of plenty. After years of scrimping and saving, when the money taps were turned on again in the mid 1980’s, everyone took advantage. The amount of money we had to spend at NSE was positively obscene. And in each financial year...