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The gen is accurate. It has been a fairly open secret in the industry that the DfT have been wanting to place the 350/2 with Northern and that is where they were heading. Northern declared their hand at industry timetable meetings quite a while ago. The deal has taken ages to get through...

I presume you are talking about Watford Met. It’s in Watford and five of Watford’s twelve wards form it’s walking catchment area. It is just under a mile to the top of the town centre - about a 15 minute walk. The DC is too slow for the City and east end of London. Far quicker for those in...

And the SWR cl.701 rollout! It was ever thus with politicians.

That’s a bit tin foil hat. MH has been trying to get the seat cushions changed for ages.

The Heathrow Express track access contract is an unregulated Track Access Contract that ends in 2028. They don’t have a standard template TAA - the basis of their track access contract is the contract they made with the BRB. In the situation where DfT ensures GBR jacks up the base track access...

The Westerns went way before the 56’s hit the WR.

No idea. I was told that news last week, from the ORR themselves. We have been here before and decisions have been put off so let’s just see if any decision letters get issued this month.

It’s often forgotten that the twin engine hydraulics also played into the WR maintenance philosophy. WR depots were expected to undertake major component changes, in complete contrast to the original ER philosophy, which was to concentrate on maintenance and minor work. So while WR depots...

Now there was a character. Colin was a very dedicated councillor and I remember one regional Lib Dem conference when (appearing as a fellow LD councillor - for Watford, not the Anglia new services man!) I gave him the quiet tip that Norwich-Cambridge was now a strong possibility, he nearly...

I would be very surprised if they bother - 360115 will just be written off without replacement.

They are hoping to deal with all the WCML applications at their July board meeting.

Approximately 12 to 18 months in both cases, if all goes well. But that means they would have had to do some solid preparation with NR and a ROSCO beforehand. But with GBR on the horizon, they would probably have to apply to them if they wanted to start in Dec 2028 and their application will be...

A couple of years ago I was at the funeral of the former KX Divisional C&W Engineer (Pat Sumner) and David Russell, the DME who appointed him, was there. David was very frail - he died in April last year but as the ER CM&EE, he had to sort out the Romanian 56’s. He told me a a few things about...

Total abstraction is a significant item in the assessment. £30m sounds like too big a figure to approve. This is not a new consideration, despite what Ian Yeowart has said. I produced some cracking OA schemes for GB Railways but they took too much revenue off the franchised operator. They...

There is a very strong rumour going around that the DfT are currently deciding on a possible deal that will mean cl.350/2 units operating in the north of England.

Lumo had no interest whatsoever in the cl.350 units - they are outer suburban EMU’s. The cl.222 units were what they were after and that is what they got. Nobody else was going to decide what stock they could lease.

It was just a reason to answer queries about the demise of the through trains to Cambridge. The decision to reduce that section from Royston to just being a DMU service had been taken years earlier. In those days there was no intention to wire to Cambridge or provide catering on any EMU...

No, whether the TOC is fully run by the DfT or run via a contracted proxy makes no difference in all this.

I can’t now remember when the 7 year “rule” came in but they would have started by reference to a database as at a certain date. I seem to recall that renumbering to free up a number was easier than re-allocating a number of a previously scrapped vehicle, presumably because of data retention issues.

No, A1 and B1 did not fill gaps - the existing classes were renumbered A10 and B18 respectively. The same thing happened with 01 and L1 - the existing classes became 03 and L3 respectively. The GWR eventually used the second number for blocks of similar types. There weren’t exclusively reserved...