Monthly Archives: October 2015

Calder valley freight resurgence.

26 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in Calder Valley, GBRf, Railfreight

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It’s hard to imagine now but a century ago the Calder valley line would have been a main freight artery carrying hundreds of thousands of tons of coal for use within the UK and for export via Liverpool docks. Now, the traffic has disappeared (along with all the collieries) with just a single coal train running on the route. In fact, freight traffic of all sorts has dried up. On weekdays between 06:00 and midnight the following services traverse the valley.

Preston Docks – Lindsay empty bogie tanks (runs as required Mon – Fri)
Immingham-Fidlers Ferry loaded coal hoppers & return empties (runs as required between Tues-Fri)
Scunthorpe – Pendleton steel slag in bogie hoppers & return empties (runs on a Friday only – as required)
Seaforth – Tinsley empty steel train (runs on a Friday only – as required)

However, all this is about to change, thanks to ‘King Coal’s’ replacement – wood chip biomass….

Energy giant Drax has signed a deal with port owner Peel Ports which will see Liverpool handle up to three million tonnes of wood pellets a year. The pellets, which are a by-product of the commercial forestry and saw-milling industry will be imported from North America.

All of the wood pellets will be sent to Drax by rail from Liverpool as the biomass terminal will include its own rail loading facility and storage capacity for 100,000 tonnes. The cost of the new terminal is estimated at £100 million and the facility opened this month. It will become fully operational from July 2016 when it will be able to facilitate up to ten train loads of pellets to be sent to Drax per day.
A three year contract to run the trains has been won by operator GBRf.

The route taken will be a circuitous one from Liverpool via Warrington, Northwich, Altrincham, Stockport and Rochdale, then via the Calder Valley and on to Wakefield & Knottingley to Drax.

Here’s a report from the Liverpool Echo on the opening of the terminal & first train.

On their Facebook page GBRf announced that “initially 13 trains per week will run, increasing to 23 trains per week sometime in mid 2016” The trains will be using some of the 200 high capacity biomass wagons that Drax purchased in 2013. These have a capacity of 116 m3, which Drax says is nearly 30% more than other UK wagons. The payload of the wagons is 72 tonnes with a gross laden weight of 102 tonnes. The wagons are capable of being hauled at 75mph.

As a precursor to this service one train a day (each way) is already running Monday – Thursday. Some 50 kt of biomass will be moved from Liverpool to Drax over the next few weeks, although this will be carried in GBRf’s own biomass wagons. The empties run from Drax to Liverpool overnight with the loaded service passing through the Calder valley each evening (passing Sowerby Bridge at 2235).

The new flow is a welcome reversal of the fortunes of freight in the Calder valley, let’s hope more services follow.

I’ll add some illustrations of the wagons & trains as soon as I can. Right now WordPress seems to be playing up & won’t let me!

Here’s why the anti Hs2 mobs Twitter campaign’s a joke.

22 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2aa, Social media, StopHs2, Twitter (and how not to use it)

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Having utterly failed to make any impact in the real world the anti Hs2 campaign’s increasingly become a cyber campaign that’s almost totally reliant on social media to try and get its message out.

Their problem is – they’re mostly shouting at each other.

I’ve long said that their daft & desperate campaign will be an object lesson in how not to do it and here’s another of their masterclasses.

Having failed to gain much of a following on Facebook (see here) Hs2 antis have increasingly fallen back on Twitter. There’s a certain logic to this. In theory, it’s easy to pretend there’s a lot of support for your aims. Setting up a series of accounts that feed off each other to all retweet the same rubbish seems like an attractive idea. The difficulty is there’s obvious pitfalls that the ignorant or unwary can fall into – and the anti Hs2 mob do that every time!

Take today’s example. Let’s welcome the anti Hs2 mobs latest sock puppet account: @CotyHS2

This anonymous account was created today. Straight away it started to follow folk and amassed 15 within a few minutes – all of which are other anti Hs2 accounts. Here they are:

Hs2 coty

Some other anti’s started to follow back almost straight away.

coty 2

One of the first was the IEA transport ‘economist’ Richard Wellings who’s a bit of a tart. He’ll follow anyone to try to make himself look more important and influential. If you don’t believe me, take a look at his Twitter bio.

It’s so obvious that this account is nothing but an anti Hs2 mob propaganda tool and not a real person it’s positively painful.

How will any of this Stop Hs2? It won’t. Not in the slightest. Instead you have a campaign that spends most of its time ranting (pointlessly) at each other – whilst convinced they’re actually achieving something. It’s the political and campaigning version of this;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfBG0d5Oj3c”

This is why campaigners should never fool themselves into thinking a fiddled social media strategy is going to influence anyone. It’s nothing better than mutual masturbation. It might give them a warm glow but the people they think they’re influencing aren’t stupid. They have the ability to analyse metrics that show the anti Hs2 campaigns reach is tiny – and mostly ranting at itself rather than influencing outsiders.

After five years the anti Hs2 mob still haven’t learned the lesson but campaigns that follow them will ignore it at their peril.

Of course, if you want another example of a social media disaster, look no further than the StopHs2 Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/STOP.HS2?fref=ts

It has less than 7000 followers. Many of their comments are priceless. Does this look like an energetic & focussed campaign with a clear strategy & political will? They wish! Instead it’s a wonderful insight into the soul of their campaign, which consists of a few bewildered folk who have absolutely no understanding of the issues & simply can’t understand why no-one is taking them seriously. They remind me of the Duke of Wellington’s famous quote “I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me”.

Their problem is, the ‘enemy’ aren’t frightened by them in the slightest…

Travel blog: Northampton.

19 Monday Oct 2015

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I don’t think I’ve explored Northampton for around 20 years. It’s so long ago I don’t really remember that much about it, so today’s sojourn was a bit of an eye opener. It started well. I arrived at a railway station that’s seen £20m invested in a new split level building that’s replaced an old, cramped 1960’s structure. This simply couldn’t cope with the level of passengers the line’s seeing nowadays. I was similarly impressed with the new complex that housed my hotel & a Vue cinema. The warning signs began when I took the hotel lift & noticed the large dents in the doors. Had the Incredible Hulk stayed here and got annoyed or was this the aftermath of a ‘normal’ Saturday night in an Ibis?

My room’s pleasant enough, although it would have been nice to have TV channels that broadcast more than than a little box that says “no signal” but – hey ho – the wifi’s fine & that’s more important.

I thought it was very kind of the staff to leave an ironing board & iron on the landing outside my room until I tried to bring it in and realised the iron is wired in to a socket and it ain’t going nowhere. Maybe in the morning I can strike lucky & slip a couple of quid to someone in the queue to do my shirt.

After dumping my kit I wandered into the town which has some lovely Victorian buildings. The weather was rather magical too. Heavy clouds parted long enough to allow the dying rays of the sun to floodlight old buildings like All Saints’ Church which looked sublime,as you can see from this picture…

DG231954. All Saints' church. Northampton. 20.10.15.

I was even more impressed with Northampton Guildhall which is a stunning Neo-Gothic building dating from 1861. Sadly, other bits of the town haven’t worn so well – and I’m not just talking about the buildings. Considering this is a county town well within commuting distance of London (hence the new station) there’s far more vagrancy than I’ve seen in many towns in my recent travels. I always try & explore places I stay to get the feel of them but this one reminded me more of Lincolnshire. Why? Well, it’s ethnically mixed and it’s these people who seem to be doing all the work. Many workers I came across probably have Polish, Patois or Punjabi as their first language. In contrast, the town’s monuments were draped with a variety of young & old derelicts & the lost who were overwhelmingly white.

I struggled to find a decent real ale pub to find here (another black mark) so ended up in a Lloyds No 1 Bar (the local Wetherspoons was more like a drop-in centre than a pub). The bar was quiet but with a mixed clientele – apart from two pissed middle aged blokes – one of whom was loudly trying to convince everyone within earshot that ‘they’ had made it illegal to call the Union Jack by that name and anyone carrying it would be arrested by the police. Monday night in Northampton eh? After that I decided discretion was the better part of valour and retreated to my hotel to type up these experiences.

Tomorrow I’m looking forward to talking about a very different time. The official opening of the new rail college. I’m sure that will be a much more positive experience!

The anti Hs2 mob plumb a new moral low to exploit steelworkers

19 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2aa, Rail Investment, UK steel industry

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I thought the anti Hs2 campaign couldn’t find any more of the barrel-bottom to scrape but their cynical attempts to exploit the steelworkers has proved me wrong.

One might have thought a campaign to stop the biggest civil engineering and railway construction project in the UK and possibly Europe would have the integrity, morality and PR nous to steer clear from trying to link stopping Hs2 with saving UK steelworkers jobs – but this is the anti Hs2 mob we’re talking about. Morality & integrity went out of the window years ago…

First out of the traps was the main Chiltern Nimby group, Hs2aa with a tweet of such breathtaking stupidity it spawned this blog.

Obviously, they’re so ‘concerned’ about the UK steel industry they didn’t even realise Redcar isn’t the country’s last steelworks.

We’ve had a number of people jump on the bandwagon since then. Here’s a sample of some of their tweets.

DR Kate

bullivant

DD steel

So, what do a Bucks Doctor, A Devon Reiki Master and a Camden ‘activist’ have in common? Well, you can bet your bottom dollar it’s not the welfare & jobs of UK steelworkers. If they really were so bothered about steelworkers they’d be campaigning FOR Hs2 to be built and for the steel to do it to be produced in the UK – but hell will freeze over before they do that.

Their level of intellectual & moral bankruptcy says an awful lot about the anti Hs2 campaign – as does their efforts to defend their cynical exploitation of others misfortunes for personal or political reasons.

The sooner their increasingly unpleasant campaign is put out of its misery, the better.

More doom & gloom for the anti Hs2 mob…

17 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2aa

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Now the party conference season is over I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the anti Hs2 campaign to see if they’ve made any headway after touting themselves around the various conference venues. StopHs2 made some daft claims about how ‘busy’ their stalls got which was contradicted by people tweeting pictures like this.

stophs2 stand

So, let’s see if any of their claims are backed up by any statistics. Of course, the answer is – no. Their social media campaign’s still a disaster. Take a look.

stop hs2 scores 17 oct 15We now have eight months worth of figures to analyse which show that – not only is their campaign failing to reach people, in some cases it’s still going backwards. The usual caveat applies – not all followers are supporters, many are there just to keep an eye on them. Here’s a breakdown that shows how many more people each of them have reached in 8 months.

scores 2There’s a wonderful irony in the fact that the most successful, Deanne Dukhan has pretty much abandoned tweeting about Hs2 & moved on to other things. This isn’t much of a surprise. Deanne was Campaign Director of the woefully inept AGAHST (Action Groups Against HS2) which ceased to exist. You can find their abandoned website here. I’m still keeping her in to provide a useful contrast.

To say these numbers are woeful is an understatement. Look at Stophs2. After eight months they’ve only reached another 337 people on Twitter and 281 on Facebook. The numbers show there’s been absolutely no improvement after the party conferences – which have proved to be a waste of both their time & dwindling resources.

The Facebook stats are of particular interest as it’s Facebook that has by far the biggest audience with 30.3 million users in the UK compared to Twitters 13.8 million.

Away from social media the news is even worse. Bucks County Council leader Martin Tett has effectively admitted the 51M campaign is dead and buried. With the earlier demise of AGAHST this leaves just StopHs2 and Hs2aa and neither of them are getting anywhere. One can only speculate how long their campaign can survive like this.

Martin Tett finally buries 51M & their Hs2 ‘alternative’.

14 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by in 51M, Anti Hs2 mob, Martin Tett

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The past couple of days has seen Bucks Country Council leader Martin Tett giving evidence to the Hs2 Hybrid Bill Committee. What the evidence has shown is that he’s finally killed off the unsuccessful & financially wasteful 51M consortia of Councils and their equally unsuccessful ‘alternative’ to Hs2. To be honest, it was a mercy killing. 51M have effectively been on life support ever since the Hs2 Hybrid Bill passed second reading with a stonking 411 majority. Here’s their Facebook page which hasn’t been updated since June 2011. Tett and Bucks CC were the power behind the 51M throne & their major funder. How much this has cost local taxpayers was documented in a great bit of investigative journalism by Jon Harvey, a Labour Councillor in Bucks.

What’s also gone unnoticed by those opposing Hs2 is that Tett has inadvertently strengthened the case for building Hs2 with his evidence on building new homes in the area surrounding Milton Keynes and Bletchley.

You can read a newspaper summary of his evidence in the Bucks Herald

The article says that 31,000 new homes are planned to be built in Bucks and “these include building an extension to Milton Keynes and Bletchley, creating a new settlement of 4,000 homes – or both”.

This means that many of the people would benefit from the capacity Hs2 releases on the West Coast Main Line (WCML). Network Rail have previously pointed out how Milton Keynes is an important beneficiary.

Of course other stations on the WCML in Bucks also benefit from the capacity released by Hs2. You can find more details in this Network Rail document.

This is yet another big setback for the anti Hs2 campaign as it’s clear concerted opposition to Hs2 from Councils has collapsed. Even Tett is (late in the day) trying to make the most of things. This is leaving the anti Hs2 campaign increasingly isolated & irrelevant. Of the four groups leading the campaign against Hs2 (51M, AGAHST, Stophs2 & Hs2aa) only two are left. How long before the next one folds?

The Bow Groups ‘fresh thinking’ is anything but.

12 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2 Bow Group, Railways, Transport

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The Conservative Bow group are currently touting a ‘new’ report which claims we shouldn’t be building Hs2 but reopening old lines instead. The problem is, this report is neither new (it came out in August) or the ‘fresh thinking’ the group use as their slogan.

The report seems to have only one function which is to say “anything but Hs2”. The reports main premise is that whilst the railways clearly need new capacity, this can be provided by reopening old railway lines. How? They never say. Instead, they quote a few examples of lines that have reopened (the Borders railway being one) or lines that they suggest could (BML2). What they fail to deal with is what happens to trains from these lines when they rejoin existing routes. For example. New platforms had to be provided at Edinburgh Waverley to allow the Borders railway to use the station. Edinburgh had old platforms to allow this to happen. Most stations don’t. So, what do you do then? The Bow group have no idea.

The report also ignores the recent fall in performance & punctuality that has been linked to an increasingly crowded network. Put simply, the railways are that busy with extra trains there’s little room for the timetable to recover during times of disruption. The Bow groups ‘solution’ would be to make this worse.

Here’s the group talking about the capacity question.

bow group

How, exactly, can this be achieved “through the use of existing lines”? The Bow group don’t even attempt to justify this claim. There’s no explanation at all on how this can (supposedly) be done which makes this report worse than useless. It’s all very well making such assertions but when you can’t even justify them – what’s the point? The obvious question – how would running more trains in/out of our existing termini relieve congestion – is completely ignored. You might as well claim Heathrow doesn’t need a 3rd runway because planes can take new and different routes to get there! The best the group can do is say “the logistics of merging the flow of trains from a re-opened line into existing timetables is a large job in itself.”

So what’s their answer to this revelation? They don’t have one. That’s hardly surprising when you look at the references for this report. The group haven’t talked to anyone who understands how the railways work. Instead, they quote from the likes of the IEA and articles in the Daily Mail rather than Network Rail, timetable planners or signal engineers.

Clearly, the only point to this report is to try & cast doubt on Hs2, not to seriously address the issues of capacity & congestion on the UK’s railways. If this muddy mélange of sources and assertions without answers is “fresh thinking” then we really are in trouble.

The anti Hs2 mob parade their bigotry

11 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Bigotry, Hs2, Islamophobia, UKIP

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There’s always been a deeply unpleasant side to the anti Hs2 campaign. It’s not just their willingness to lie and deceive, it’s the darker side. This manifests itself in their xenophobic & racist tendencies and willingness to use threats & intimidation. A good example of their bigotry has surfaced on the Facebook page of ‘Yorkshire doesn’t buy Hs2’

hs2

This unpleasant little group group appears to be run by UKIP supporters. Of course UKIP have been heavily involved with the StopHs2 campaign as (cynically) they saw it as a way of snatching votes. UKIP dropped its 2010 manifesto pledge to build three high-speed rail lines as they’d been conned by the anti Hs2 campaign into believing there was mass opposition to Hs2 & so lots of votes to harvest by opposing Hs2. Of course, the reality was very different & UKIP failed to gain a single seat in any area that Hs2 will pass through. Despite the general election humiliation, it’s clear UKIP & the StopHs2 campaign are still working together through groups like this. Not that it’s doing them much good, this Yorkshire group only has around 250 followers. Truth be told, there’s bugger all opposition to Hs2 in Yorkshire. There’s only a couple of anti ‘action’ groups in the county, neither of which are very active.

Rather typically, when I drew attention to this bigoted nonsense there was a deafening silence from anti Hs2 campaigners. Not a single one condemned it. Instead, one of the usual suspects (fond of resorting to bigotry himself) tried to accuse me of faking it, which is rather stupid when the post is still displayed on this groups Facebook page for all to see!

DD bigotry

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about what this says about the anti Hs2 campaign, its members and their tactics…

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible…

08 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by in Work

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My apologies for the lack of blogs recently. This has been due to a couple of factors. One was my hectic schedule at the excellent ACoRP awards last week & the volume of pictures it generated. The other was far less enjoyable: My laptop gave up the ghost.

I’d been meaning to upgrade it for some time but never had the downtime where I could do it. Sadly, a software update caused major problems that it didn’t recover from. The bugger is – this happened just before a data backup…

The poorly machine was on a service contract so it’s being looked after & refurbished by PCWorld. This left me with Plan B – an older Sony Vaio which has kept me going (ish) for the past week. Then, yesterday – this arrived.

20151007_091049

I have to say I’m rather impressed with the Dell XPS13 – although it’s been a slog to upload all the software & get it photography ready & able to take on the road. This has left me little time for blogging as I’ve also got a business to keep running. After all, something had to take a back seat…

Now I’m almost there – so expect blogs to start appearing again.