Travel & Transport Blog

Never forget whole purpose of railways is to transport people and good from A to B. This sub-blog covers things like railway history, transport politics and book reviews.

Is anybody really surprised by the news that a survey by Passenger Focus has named Birmingham’s New Street station worst for ‘overall satisfaction’?. It’s always had the feel of an airport departure lounge attached to an underground car park, and the current rebuilding does nothing to solve its fundamental problems.

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Tim Hall | 2 Comments

National Rail Enquiries Fail

Posted on January 18, 2014 by Tim Hall

Arriva Trains 158 at Porthmadog

So, despite the fact the festival was way out in the sticks, I booked up for HRH Prog 2 at Hafon Y Mor near Pwllheli in March. It’s a six-hour train journey, but being a rail enthusiast I always treat the journey as part of the holiday when going away.

Then disaster stuck. First, construction work on Pont Brewit near Penrhyndeudraeth‎ damaged the bridge, with initial suggestions that the line would be closed for at least a year until the new bridge was complete, and rail replacement buses from Harlech.

Then the storms at the beginning of January damaged the line in multiple places, and from the extent of the damage to the sea wall it’s quite possible it will take several months to repair. Replacement buses are now in place from Machynlleth.

Unfortunately it’s impossible to find the timimgs of these replacement buses online. The National Rail Enquiries website shows trains running through to Penychain (the neareast stop to Hafan-y-Mor) with no mention of bus replacements by March. Ask it about the same journey for next week, and you get train to Harlech and bus from there (total journey time from Reading just over seven hours). Given that parts of the line will certainly be closed for at least a week, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that National Rail Enquiries is lying to me.

Alternative travel plans are not looking good either. The even organisers have arranged a shuttle bus to Bangor on Thursday and Sunday, but unfortunately weekend engineering work with multiple rail replacement buses turns any attempt to travel home via that route on Sunday into a nightmare. I’d advise the organisers of HRH Prog to schedule next year’s festival for Saturday and Sunday rather than Friday and Saturday to avoid a repetition.

And travelling the whole way by coach is a complete non-starter; National Express quotes an eleven-hour journey, and no gig is worth enduring eleven hours on board a coach.

At the moment the only advice I’m getting is “check your journey details closer to the time”, which isn’t really satisfactory.

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Ronnie Biggs was a criminal thug who destroyed the lives of two innocent people who were just doing their job. The people we must not forget are Driver Jack Mills and his secondman David Whitby, both of whom never recovered and both died before their time. Biggs and his accomplices were no folk heroes, and screw those who try to romanticise their crimes.

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Tim Hall | 1 Comment

First Sight of the Class 68

Posted on November 14, 2013 by Tim Hall

First sight of a completed Vossloh Eurolight for DRS undergoing testing at Valencia in Spain. Modern environmental regulations mean we’ll never get an equivalent to the roar of a “Deltic”, but it still makes an impressive sound for a modern loco.

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Simplified Rail Tickets?

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Tim Hall

Arriva Trains 158 at Porthmadog

The Department of Transport are considering simplified tickets for the rail industry.

Rail Minister Norman Baker has announced plans for a pilot scheme that could see all long-distance rail tickets sold on a single-leg basis and allow passengers to more easily “mix and match” each ticket type when planning a return journey.

Currently the government regulates the price of off-peak return fares, meaning train operating companies are able to price other tickets including off-peak singles more freely. This can lead to a situation where the cost of single tickets is similar to that of returns.

By regulating off-peak singles instead, passengers would be able to choose the most appropriate ticket for each leg of their journey. It could also help tackle crowding by giving passengers more choice over which service they travel on.

At the moment there’s a vast discrepancy in ticket prices between different operators. Some, notably First Great Western change just over hald of the return price for an off-peak single. Others change virtually the same amount for a single as for a return, which make your trip a lot more expensive if your journey is more complex than a simple out-and-back return. Arriva Cross-Country, I’m looking at you.

Yes, I do know you can buy far cheaper Advance tickets, but they require committing to a specific train, and often need to be purchased weeks or even months in advance. I remember trying to plan an itinerary for a circular trip from Reading to Bristol and Derby, and Arriva’s overpriced off-peak singles made it prohibitively expensive.

As with all of these things, the Devil is in the details, and we’re not going to gain anything if it’s just a cover for a substantial hike in the price of off-peak returns.

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George Osborne’s enthusiastic support of HS2 may just be a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day. Unfortunately Osborne is so discredited and so widely loathed by the majority of the British public that his stance risks undermining public support for the project.

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Tim Hall | Comments Off

HS2 – It’s not about speed, it’s about capacity

Posted on August 24, 2013 by Tim Hall

Intermodal freight on the West Coast Main Line

Good piece in the New Statesman by former Labour transport minister Andrew Adonis on why it would be an act of national self-mutilation to cancel HS2.

For the key justification is not speed but capacity. There will be an acute shortage of transport capacity from the 2020s to convey freight, commuters and other passengers into and between the major conurbations of London, the West Midlands, the East Midlands and South and West Yorkshire. Since there is no viable plan, let alone political will, to build new motorways between these places, or to dramatically increase air traffic between them, this additional capacity must largely be met by rail or Britain will grind to a halt. Rail is, in any case, the most efficient and green mode of transport for mass passenger and freight movements.

He goes on to explain how cancelling HS2 would be as short sighted as the 1970s cancellation of the Channel Tunnel (eventually revived two decades later) and the third London airport at Maplin Sands. The one “big project” that the 1970s Labour government didn’t cancel was the one that did turn into a massive white elephant: Concorde. Britain should not make the same mistake again.

Debates about the benefits of faster journey times to Birmingham, and whether or not business travellers work productively on trains, are beside the point. If the additional capacity is required, it ought to be provided in the most cost-effective manner.

This is something I’ve not seen a single opponent of HS2 address. Yes, there are still points up for debate over the route, such as why it doesn’t join up with HS1.

And like Adonis, I would dismiss that recent anti-HS2 report from the Institute of Economic Affairs. The IEA is a right-wing think tank that has long been anti-rail and pro-road; for them, the private car symbolises personal freedom and individual prosperity, while any form of public transport represents socialistic collectivism. Don’t forget they’re connected with the late Alfred Sherman, the ideological moonbat who wanted to pave over the entire railway network to convert them into roads. They are simply not to be trusted on this issue.

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So, another year, another 4.1% fare rise. Britain’s privatised railway is now the most expensive railway in Europe, with operating costs per mile significantly greater than on equivalent continental European networks. Privatisation added whole new layers of overheads, and the efficiency gains from “market disclipline” turned out not to exist outside the imaginations of ivory-tower ideologues. And the Tories want to do the same to the NHS?

Posted on August 13, 2013 by Tim Hall | Comments Off

In the aftermath of the terrible train crash in Spain, I’m seeing a lot of people who know nothing about railway technology trying to blame everything on the driver, and quoting things he’s allegedly said on Facebook as evidence. With the level of automated safety systems on high-speed rail, an accident of this nature is very unlikely though driver error alone; the investigation will almost certainly reveal some kind of technical failure.

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Tim Hall | 4 Comments

National Railway Museum under threat?

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Tim Hall

A lot of media speculation on the future of the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, and The National Railway Museum in York, hit by spending cuts as part of George Osborne’s misguided austerity programme. Christian Wolmar writes in The Independent:

The fact that there is even the remotest possibility that the National Railway Museum in York, along with the two other less well-known museums in Manchester and Bradford, could be closed is a scandal that must be nipped in the bud.

Jonathan Schofield in Manchester Confidential:

Maybe in the end this news from the MEN is shock tactics by the Science Museum Group; a call-my-bluff tactic of pure brinkmanship. Maybe they want to force the government’s in to giving them more money, or an attempt to push the museum onto the city council’s hands. Since the latter can’t even keep open Heaton Hall that is a non- starter. What is certain is that proposing something as blatantly unfair and desperate as closing all the Science Museum Group’s northern properties while keeping on the equally struggling London one looks shocking.

They must know this, unless they are absolute idiots.

I find it difficult to believe that either museum will actually close, although the introduction of admission charges is probably highly likely.

But given the out of touch sociopathy of this government, more interested in preserving the bonus culture of their cronies in the city than with the quality of life of ordinary working people, anything is possible.

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