Now some good news. Earlier on in the year I, together with East Norfolk Bus Blog put out an appeal for anyone with deep pockets to save the last Volvo Olympian ever built, First Yarmouth's 34110, from the scrap man. I had one interested party who after some consideration decided the costs were prohibitive, but Roy had more luck, and on Tuesday 34110 left Yarmouth for her new home at the Yeldham Transport Collection in Essex, where she will eventually (these things take time) be restored to her former glory. The full story can be read on East Norfolk Bus Blog, but Jamie Skinner, who at one point looked favourite to take on the task of saving 34110, has retained his interest and sent me some pictures of her leaving Yarmouth behind a stunning tow truck. Many thanks Jamie, and well done to you and Roy for achieving this. Appreciation to should go to Chris Speed and Danny Beales for organsing things from First's side, and for recognising the historical importance of the bus. A happy ending.
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| 34110 leaves Caister Rd for the final time pic (c) Jamie Skinner |
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| And sets off on her journey to Essex pic (c) Jamie Skinner |
I am off on my travels this week. On Thursday I'm setting off for Edinburgh where there is a huge amount I'm planning to do including travelling on the new Borders Railway, riding some new First E200 and E400 MMC's in Stirling and Glasgow, new Lothian Streetdecks to Edinburgh Airport, and finally popping up to Aberdeen (as you do) to ride the giant tri-axle hydrogen buses up there. Should be a good trip and provide material for a few posts. Incidentally my coach travel from Norwich - London - Edinburgh and back came to a grand total of £4.50 which is cheaper than a return from Wickham Market to Woodbridge. Not bad I guess!
Finally I have been somewhat glued to a new railcam I have discovered - in Holland. It is sited in the small town of Mierlo-Hout which is a few miles West of Eindhoven. Thee are three cameras sited by a busy level crossing and there is qute a variety of trains including double decker trains and plenty of freight heading to and from Antwerp and Rotterdam. It is also interesting to watch level crossing protocol with so many bikes around - very disciplined. You will need Silverlight to view the cam, and although I can view it using Firefox or IE I can't using Chrome so if one browser doesn't work try another. The site can be accessed by clicking here.
Renationalisation wouldn't make much difference, government just don't seem to agree to lengthy franchise in region so companies unable to invest. Can't blame them for lack of stock, as there's just nothing spare DMU wise. Same issues nationally as Government just seem to care about London and electric trains, which obviously unable to work on non electric routes.
ReplyDeleteSomeone who gets it. Renationalisation would be a step backwards, even though I don't agree with all the money going to specific people in the industry. Safe and competitive railways are good in private hands
DeleteI wonder how many people have worked for Anglia Railways, One, Nat Ex East Anglia and AGA and that is the problem. The same people move from company to company, so the branding changes but the people running the railways don't, and that doesn't help one bit. You are never going to get the investment needed to cover seasonal issues if therer is no return for that investment. I'm sure the fines for cancelled services are far less than the cost of overhauling old rolling stock to cover Autumn breakdowns.
DeleteAt least if the nation owned and ran the railways again then those given the responsibility of running them could be heard truly accountable, and we wouldn't have the "not enough time to invest" excuse all the time. Re-nationalsation doesn't necessarily mean a return to the bad habits of before. We are meant to be an intelligent species which learns from experience. In any case privatisation hasn't done much to stop the unions holding passengers to ransom either has it!
Longer franchises such as Scot rail are working, so when Anglia have a longer franchise I am certain we will observe some changes and investment
DeleteI think Anonymous may well be right. One problem when the Sprinters were built is that they replaced older units on a "1 for 2" basis or something similar. There should be some slack at weekends when services are less intensive, probably more so on Sundays than Saturdays. I remember that when the new East Suffolk timetable was proposed, there had to be a trade-off between hourly services on the Line and through trains to London - there couldn't be both. And I don't think a ramshackle and assorted group of Heritage units would work - quite apart from Disability issues.
ReplyDeleteWhether there are any locomotives and spare Mk. 2 coaches stored at Long Marston I don't know. Lots were sold to New Zealand and (I think) Ireland. The Mk. 3s were all snaffled by Chiltern as and when they became available. Northern Rail can't replace its Pacers as there's nothing to replace them with. And the Borders Railway will have taken up 2 or 3 170 units that Scotrail might have had knocking about. What we could really do with are some more Class 185 units.
Agree there. Also lots of DVT carriages and mark II and mark IIIs coaches sitting around in a scrap yard (can't remember where). None of the lease companies own them and government should encourage an overhaul to get them running again. Of course they'd need to be hauled by something, but at least they could these trains are a standby option.
DeleteThe 47s could even be used for the time being, though I've heard rumours that DRS will get rid after the rhtt season so I guess we will see
DeleteI heard that too somewhere but lets hope someone buys those if it does happen
Deleteand today,the 12.58 from Norwich to Lowie left 10 minutes late because an engine ran dry of coolant and shut down! my brother was on it to get back to wickham mkt.
ReplyDeleteFair to say the trains do well despite their age. Even their overhaul can't disguise the age though, and the units definitely need a day or two off per week to recover from the high usage!
DeleteAnd for that to happen more spare units are needed. Trouble is there aren't any and that is the whole problem.
DeleteThe only way I guess to change that is inherit stock from elsewhere. Perhaps more sprinters are available once the Wales valleys electrification has occured.
DeletePerhaps. But (a) everyone will be after them and (b) they will be at least 30 years old by then, so hardly in the first flush of life!
DeleteSomething just came to mind, and that is VivaRail's "D-Train" concept. If you haven't heard of this, let me tell you that it is a diesel-engine re-imagining of withdrawn LT District Line (full-size profile) stock. I know they are marketing it as the answer to the rolling stock shortage, and I believe they've got a prototype up and running. It's a bold (if desperate) concept, but I don't know how viable it is. There are certainly quite a lot of withdrawn units out there!
DeleteI think that is an excellent idea, Andrew. Those D-Trains would be ideal for the shorter Ips - Felixstowe, Sudbury - Marks Tey, and Norwich - Yarmouth/Lowestoft/Sheringham lines which would free up the other stock to increase capacity and reliability on the other longer lines. Might even allow through journeys on East Suffolk line again. Good thinking that man.
DeleteThere is to be spare pacers too although could not imagine those here somehow.
DeleteI can't imagine D-=Trains running onto the main line. Although they will have good acceleration (good for short journeys with plenty of stops) their lowish maximum speed will militate against train pathing.
DeleteUpminster too? transport for London service
DeleteDo any of us mere mortals understand the organisation of the rail network? There are many fingers in the pie, none of whom are "in control". The operators take all the flack, but the rolling stock is owned by (foreign-owned) companies set up for that purpose (I believe in the course of selling their "investments"), and of course the track by nationalised National Rail (run on commercial lines), whilst the Department of Transport and the Rail Regulator are in the background as a sort of Fat Controller specifying who gets what and what they have to do with it. So everyone waits on everyone else, or so it seems. And no-one is ultimately responsible for anything. You couldn't invent it. Well, I could, as one of those who used to write commercial contracts; but didn't. And with more reviews than the NHS, no wonder it's the same sort of muddle. Just look at the investment plans, if you can dignify them with that term. Some bus companies seem to take it as a sort of model to follow.
ReplyDeleteI can't see any end to the robbing Peter to pay Paul, though. There's too much bureaucratic inertia built into the civil service-devised system, for any innovation.
So you'rre behind commercial contracts? Do they come with brown envelope supplied??
DeleteI can tell you exactly how the rail industry is organised. There are two teams, one working for Network Rail and one for the Train Operating Company. Their sole raison d'etre is to claim as much delay compensation from the other as possible. A really clever one will be able to use a 2 min delay at say Chelmsford to create a snowball totalling well over 2,000 mins of delays to other trains as a result, and charge whichever side was deemed at fault. The rule of thumb is if it moves, ie trains, staff and passengers it is down to the Operating Company. If it doesn't move, so infrastructure - track, stations, signals, points etc it is down to Network Rail. The only exception I can think of is trespass, as rail security is down to Network Rail, and yes that includes anyone voluntarily leaving a platform at a station.
There maybe some who are still not aware that operating companies have to pay NR to use the tracks - that's as welll as huge amounts of taxpayers money subsidsing all the signal failures and faulty points. There are those who have called for operating companies to be responsible for the infrastructure in their patch, which is fine on lines where there is only one operator, but what about the ECML for example which has Virgin East Coast, Govia Great Northeastern or whatever it is now, Northern Trains, Grand Central, Trans Penine, and Scotrail passenger services all on it at various points. Then there's Colas, GBRF, Freightliner, DRS, Mail trains and other freight services, so who would pay for a points failure, cable theft or donkeys on the line? Who would charter companies pay to use the lines? So that wouldn't work. Having said that since the taxpayer is still paying for the upkeep of the infrastructure - twice really through firstly taxes and secondly through some of the the highest fares in the world shouldn't we just say to Hell with it and take everything back in house so the money goes where it's needed, the fares and ticketing system can return to a simple format where you haven't got to worry which tickets are valid on which operator's train, with different operators charging different fares for exactly the same joourney, and we know exactly who to blame and hold accountable. Or praise and reward.
I remember a top civil servant - he said he was a Private Secretary, so a real life Sir Humphrey letting rip at me one night at Canon Street because of the poor services and 1st class not getting checked enough (difficult when an 8 coach train of 2 sealed units you can't walk between). I actually felt sorry for the guy who was clearly at the end of his tether, but pointed out that I could tell my boss about his woes, but he could probably tell the Minister of Transport, which might stand a greater chance of achieving something. He had been so blinded with his annoyance he hadn't thought of the obvious. We became pretty good friends after that, as he was grateful I'd listened and given constructive advice rather than told him exactly where to go, which he admitted he probably deserved.
The railways have now been privatised for around 30 years, and has anything actually improved? Much the same rolling stock suffering the same problems on the same lines, and multiple cancellations due to not enough rolling stock. The signals still fail - when did semaphore signals fail - points still get stuck, leaves still fall and one flake of snow cocks up the entire network. What has privatisation actually achieved? Same problems and the whole industry still effectively funded by the taxpayer.
'The railways have now been privatised for around 30 years, and has anything actually improved?' Safety is up.
DeleteWould that not have happened anyway? Safety in all walks of life has improved - why would the railways have been left behind?
DeleteBut perhaps modern safety and delays/cancellations aren't entirely unrelated? Modern technology has huge advantages (not least speed and accessibility), but it's often less tolerant of vicissitudes than the bespoke technology of yesteryear. But we can't turn the clock back, however hard we try. (Well, apart from one hour every year).
Deleteat least there is a the plus side of technology
DeleteI got plenty of brown envelopes, thank you. Full of pieces of paper with printing (or writing) in incomprehensible jargon, mostly. Not that you could buy anything with it.
ReplyDeleteRail privatisation (apart from "dealing with" the Unions, that failed too) was based it seemed to me on two premises: firstly reducing risk to the private sector, who had to be induced to get involved (they didn't, in the early days it was a licence to print money), and minimising the cost to the taxpayer (that failed big time, post Railtrack). We all have examples where we aim for something and achieve the opposite (usually because we were after the wrong thing in the first place). Well, Government is no different. As granny used to say "Do in haste and repent at leisure" and "The road to hell . . .". I do feel sorry for anyone though who has to deal with the great British public, what are we good at, apart from moaning?
This area suffers, it always has, because in general it's not politically important. Politicians buy votes. They always have. Around here, they don't need to. Who in the Cabinet (of any persuasion) looks after East Anglia? We've had Charles Clarke and have now got Lord Heseltine (is he still around?). They have other things on their mind.
All that being said the rail inheritance was not a good one. Our Victorian forebears may have built lots quickly, but they didn't always build well. They were as prone to taking short cuts as any modern spiv, and as for for the twentieth century that could almost be described as the age of neglect.
I can be cynical too.
Yes perhaps if the economy was better in Norfolk or Suffolk then the politicians would actually care and train companies would invest.
DeleteOr maybe not. Look at the mess around what's grandly called "Greater Cambridge" (which is taking all our investment). As far back as I can recall the area covered by what used to be called the Government Office for the East of England was always the poor relation. We don't have anything approaching a metropolitan area (London excepted, and that's the problem). South of the Thames has the same problem.
DeleteYes, cambridge has too much investment and needs to be shared with other areas of the country in need. london will alway led.
DeleteI think maybe the Oxford to Cambridge proposed rail link is an example. Why?
DeleteThe PM lives near Oxford and it's convenient for a few academics and self-important people. But as we know to our cost we can't even look after the rail lines we've got already, which carry far more (ordinary) people. Why is Bedford more important than Norwich or Ipswich?
That being said I think there will always be a problem with the country having a north-south axis, and East Anglia being seen as the road (or rail) to no-where. Felixstowe port is about it. The much vaunted internet and telecomms revolution, supposedly essential to disperse wealth around the country, has yet to reach us too.