Another week that’s begin very much glued to my office chair – but at least my nurse’s uniform has been consigned to a cupboard for the foreseeable future! Dawn’s feeling a lot better and my brief fear that I was the next in line to go down with the lurgi appears to be unfounded. To add to the joy the latest storm has passed and we’ve even had some sunshine today.

Even so I’ve been confined to barracks as I’ve spent the day sat in front of a keyboard type-swiping. I’ve been kept occupied writing my next article for RAIL magazine which is on the High Speed 2 and East -West rail interface around Calvert in Buckinghamshire. My previous scribblings on the former Woodhead railway around Manchester and Sheffield will be published in the next edition of the mag which will hit the news stands on the 13th December.

I’ve a few more office-based bits to finish off tomorrow, after that I’m looking forward to getting out and about again. It’s been a torrid time on the railways this past week due to power and train failures along with a new timetable that’s seeing reduced services and overcrowding on some routes. Just what you don’t need in the run-up to Christmas. I’ll be blogging from my travels as later in the week I’ll be heading to London on one (if not both) of the affected routes. Oh, and there’s still the Trans-Pennine Route Upgrade (TRU) work to catch up on…

But, for now I’m going to leave you with today’s picture. which was taken on the former Woodhead railway route at Beeley wood near Stcoksbridge on the 25th October. This abandoned freight line has bee included in Rishi Sunak’s ridiculous ‘Network North’ con job masquerading as an ‘alternative’ to HS2. From a transport and economic perspective it a cross between a dead-duck and a turkey. There’s only one reason I can thank of that the line was included. It’s located in the ‘Red wall’ Penistone and Stocksbridge constituency of Miriam Cates MP, a socially conservative evangelical Christian Brexiter Tory (Oh, God… Ed) who won her seat in 2019 but will very much struggle to hold it. Funny, that…

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