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They usually go there to use the jacks for engine drops - the jacks at BN have been out of use.

Since 2020 XC has effectively been nationalised. The DfT pays all the costs and takes all the revenue. The DfT sets the budget, what stock is leased and agrees the staffing. The TOC owner now only gets a relatively small management fee, which has a fixed element and a contract performance...

Right, hopefully for the last time, here we go. IET units don’t fit on the Pompey-Cardiff route. Quite apart from the fact that route clearance would be very difficult, given my experience of clearing Turbos on that route, the door cycle times would reduce the timetable to chaos. They really...

The Kissinger style diplomacy will get you nowhere because the individual organisations will wibble away for months. That has been one of the problems so far - too much chat. Getting the timetablers together to work out what is actually possible for December 24 is the best way forward and that...

It was a test train so there will be a number of people on it. When you do compatibility tests, there are a number of elements that have to be checked. On the Turbos in the west, a lot of this work was done at night.

There was more to the GTR problems than just purely train crew. The September 2018 ORR enquiry report shows how the late decisions on the timetable affected matters and what the consequences were. Major recasts should be done years in advance so a year out you are just be doing the final minor...

Unfortunately, it is the DfT’s fault. Key infrastructure enhancements were descoped or delayed and the DfT have been mucking around with the service specifications. The industry has been given a near impossible task, not helped by the Region thinking they could work it out themselves (with...

The problem is that the Region has handled the process ineptly. There has been a lot of chat about the structure (far too much, in fact) and when the hard timetabling finally started it revealed a number of issues, with some operators with firm rights completely disadvantaged or just left out...

No, it’s just the usual update. GWR was done about a week ago. The point about the OLR wibble is that TOC staff would never know before any significant DfT announcement about a TOC. That kind of thing is always kept very quiet between Government and the Owning Group, sometimes with the OG only...

No, each business case would have to stand on its own merits - there was no overall BR investment budget for rolling stock so all that would have happened is that the Treasury would have signed off a smaller amount for the sleeper build and pocketed the difference. The sleeper authorisation...

It isn’t legal, either. If NR wanted to use the “better use” provisions in Part J of the Network Code, they have run out of time for December 24. They have made a real mess of this timetable recast, so far.

You don’t clear lines like that these days. The kinematic envelope of the vehicle has to be run against the infrastructure records model (D gauge is the usual comparison tool) and then if there are any exceedances, they have to be individually cleared. When that is done and you have an updated...

There are ongoing discussions between NR and the DfT this week as the Dec 2024 ECML timetable has several significant issues and NR, at the highest level, want to postpone it, to avoid a repeat of the 2018 fiasco and give them time to sort out the many issues. Bidding at D-40 is going to be...

No, please! Chris is great when there is money to spend but not so good when money is really tight. You need the skill set of a John Nelson for lean times.

Yes, it has been looked at and it doesn’t work because of the time penalty in coupling and uncoupling. You lose your paths and it rapidly becomes a timetabling mess. The ECML is quite time constrained for splitting and joining moves on it. Short trains are not as bad for terminal working as it...

He will want it but Tim Shoveller is another possible candidate.

They weren’t deliberately kept open for OA because paths cannot legally be reserved for types of operator. The argument at the ORR hearing was over how many paths would fit on the ECML. The DfT and LNER argued that there wasn’t 8 but NR and the OA operators said there was. The ORR, after doing...

One of the lines of enquiry you might consider is finding out who owned the house at the time he lived in it. A lot of miners lived in “company houses” so that could possibly narrow your search even further.

Your assumption would be wrong. The senior FG rail team meet on a much less frequent basis than that and when they do meet, the discussions are high level, not really going into detail. So the OA MD will not have much level of detail about what is currently going on at Avanti and vice versa...

The shift from air has largely been because of Lumo. The cheaper end of the market was being priced off rail and it was, for that end of the market, increasingly difficult to get a seat anyway. Lumo has knocked off plenty of air punters. It doesn’t really have LNER in its sights, it’s not...