Railnews Magazine November 22 Edición anterior

THE delay to the legislation authorising Great British Railways has dismayed some observers in the rail industry, but the hold-up has been blamed on a lack of Parliamentary time this year.

A late-breaking story is featured in the November edition of Railnews too – the sudden cancellation of three RMT strikes which came on the afternoon of 4 November, less than 12 hours before the first had been due to begin. It took several days for timetables to recover.

The number of people travelling by train has been continuing to rise, in spite of industrial action, but there is growing discontent in the north of England about the poor quality of train services, with Transport for the North chair Lord McLoughlin saying: ‘It’s completely inexcusable that communities in the north are having to experience such a dire level of service. It requires an urgent intervention as it’s undermining businesses and holding back economic growth.’

There were more problems in the region during October, but these were caused by the derailment of a cement train on the approach to Carlisle. One wagon plunged into a river, and the lines to Newcastle and Skipton are likely to be blocked until later this month.

Progress is continuing on signalling, and one new development is the retrofitting of a Class 387 Eurostar with ETCS, in preparation for digital signalling on the southern section of the East Coast Main Line.

In other news, the first Class 196 unit has carried passengers on West Midlands Railway, the Elizabeth Line station at Bond Street opened on 24 October and Eurostar services from Amsterdam have been reprieved now that a new temporary check-in centre has been found. The original is going to be lost because of construction work at Amsterdam Centraal.

Railnews for November is out now.