Yep, today’s the start of a new month, not that there’s been much of a change, as we’ve had yet another storm warning! The only discernible difference is that the days are starting to get longer. I’ve spent much of the weekend scanning yet more old railway slides from 1990, which you can find in this gallery on my Zenfolio website. The latest batch of 60 are from Bristol and also the Tinsley loco depot open day, held on a dismal Saturday in September. Here’s a sample, featuring Bath Rd depot in Bristol – another place that’s long-gone.
BR Class 47 locomotives dominate this view of Bristol Bath Rd depot as the shed provided motive power for cross-country services from the South-West up to Birmingham and beyond, as well as passenger locomotives for the main line to London Paddington as well as servicing freight engines and local diesel multiple units.
As I mentioned in my last blog. I’m back in Bristol tomorrow for an ACoRP (Association of Community Rail Partnerships) conference. The programme shows that it’s going to be a busy event spread over two days but no doubt I’ll have some time to blog/tweet about what’s going on, as well as catch up with some old friends from the world of community railways.
To get to Bristol in time means the pair of us are up at sparrow-fart in the morning, so this isn’t going to be a long blog. I’d hoped to have time to compose one about the collapse of the StopHs2 campaign, but that can wait for another day! It’s not as if there’s anything going on with them anyway. They’ve been very quiet on social media since the Government announced the fact HS2’s been given the green light. Mind you, they’ve also been inactive in the real world too. Their ‘direct action’ campaign at Harvil Rd and Cubbington wood has been completely ineffective at stopping HS2. The penny finally seems to be dropping that they’ll never have the numbers of people on the ground they need. There’s only a couple of dozen regulars and a few ‘weekend warriors’ – who’re especially useless and HS2 Ltd don’t normally work at weekends so there’s nothing to stop! The fact that having a bunch of voyeurs’ watching you make fools of yourself on Facebook isn’t going to stop Hs2 seems to be slowly sinking in too – hence this rather revealing post of one of their Facebook pages.
I’ll blog about this in detail when I have the time. Right now it’s time to pack a suitcase…
Finally, after weeks of waiting and all sorts of political shenanigans’ and uncertainties the announcement has finally been made. HS2 is going ahead.
To be honest, it wasn’t much of a secret, or a surprise. The final decision’s been slowly leaked to the media over a number of weeks – as have dissenting views (not that they mattered).
Today, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the news. To be fair announced is hardly the right word. Those who thought the Government were ashamed of their decision were completely wrong-footed. This was no apologetic slipping out of unpopular news, this was a full-bore celebration with a fanfare and 21 gun salute. Johnson stood at the dispatch box and made a meal of it. This was bombastic, bellicose Boris in full flow. And, for once, he actually seemed to have some idea what he was talking about, because he wasn’t announcing vague plans for yet another bridge. This was the culmination of 10 years of planning, re-planning and co-operation between people on a huge scale. There was plenty of detail to be had – and Johnson made the most of it. Why wouldn’t he? He has an 80 seat majority and HS2 has huge cross-party support. It’s simply not a contentious issue and he desperately needs something like this to celebrate to take everyone’s mind off what comes next in the EU negotiations.
You could see that the penny was dropping with some of his back-benchers (old and new) as it became clear his Government were going full-tilt for HS2. Those ‘newbies’ who have ambitions but who represent constituencies on the route are starting to realise that opposition to HS2 could severely limit your career – especially when opposition is futile. Of course, for a few of the old hands like Chesham and Amersham MP Cheryl Gillan – whose career is already over – it’s not so much of a blow, but then she didn’t even bother turning up. The announcement also contained another gem. As I predicted in a blog back in August last year, Phase 2b of HS2 is to be re-aligned and merged with ‘Northern Powerhouse Rail’ (always an unwieldy name) to be rebranded “High Speed North”.
This is clever on a number of levels.
For a start, HS2 is now the project that’s already got the go-ahead and it’s a railway between London and Crewe (because phase 1 and 2a have been merged). It isolates the StopHs2 ‘campaign’ from the North. Why? Because the anti HS2 campaign was always based on phase 1, the railway from London – Birmingham. It’s where their grassroots and groups (like Hs2aa and StopHs2) were.
What do they have on the rebadged “High Speed North”? Nothing.
They have a tiny bunch of MPs who’re opposed – most of whom are newly elected and easily neutered as they have ambitions – and little else. In contrast, the North has massive political and business support for what was HS2 but is now clearly a Northern project that will deliver far more than HS2 could do in isolation. Don’t forget that 50% of the new ‘Northern Powerhouse Rail’ tracks would have been HS2 tracks. So, how many Northern MPs are now going to be brave (or foolhardy) enough to say “I oppose HSN” And why would Southern Tory MPs who’ve been outflanked on HS2 phase 1 put their own government at risk at the next election by opposing HSN when they no longer have a dog in the fight?
I could write more as I’ve not even touched on the Oakervee review yet, but I’m going to save that for another day. All I’ll say is that the review has made fools of much of the mainstream media. Why? Because they fell for the spin and briefings from Lord Berkeley that the cost of HS2 had risen to £106bn and they ran with it. In fact, the only refence to that figure in the Oakervee report is to dismiss it, not to endorse it.
StopHs2 is dead. Is anyone going to be stupid enough to try and rebrand it as “Stop High-Speed North”?
– but not today, despite the earlier claims of the BBC. Right now, she’s sucking throat lozenges, preparing for the final act which (if I’m right) will be next week.
The stage has been set by leaks to the media that the Chancellor and Midlands MP, Sajid Javid has thrown his weight behind building HS2 as the economics stack up for, not against the project. As Javid is a very Senior member of the Government and the man in charge of the money, this is hugely important. We’ve also seen a chorus of ‘get on with it’ from many of the new intake of Tory MPs in the North, much to the chagrin of Northern antis, who tried to pretend the ‘newbies’ were all against the project.
Whilst the announcement may not dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ in relation to Phase 2b of HS2, it will certainly mean there are no more questions over phase 1. Not only that, but from what I’ve been hearing, the phase 1 contractors are expected to hit the ground running. Whilst the project’s been delayed awaiting the political go-ahead, they’ve not been kicking their heels. They’ve refined their work plans and are keen to crack-on with them.
This will be the death knell of StopHs2 which has always been a phase 1 based campaign. It renders them completely irrelevant. Oh, there might be a few isolated protests due to local Nimbys and ‘Extinction Rebellion’ but they’ve already shown they’ve neither the numbers or the muscle to actually stop the work continuing. The idea they’re puffing that ‘Middle England’ will turn out to ‘protect’ the countryside and stop HS2 is pure bluster. They’ve fallen for their own social media spin and the numbers of voyeurs who watch their futile antics via Facebook – but who’ll never do anthing more than send ‘thoughts and prayers’.
Also, the law on these protests has tightened up since the heady days of “Swampy” and the road protests of the 1980s-90s. How many of these middle-class, middle-aged (and over) protesters are prepared to collect a criminal record other than ones by Max Bygraves or Des O’ Connor? They may protest while it’s felt the project hasn’t got a formal ‘green light’, but how many will still bother when it has and the full weight of the construction companies with thousands of men and hundreds of machines move in?
In the meantime, the froth will continue for a few more days, but I think even most antis have worked out how this is going to end. A few die-hards are still blustering on Twitter and Facebook from their armchairs, whilst the reprogrammed pro-brexit trolls spout absolute garbage, sometimes in incomprehensible ways like this.
“Beachams”? I think it was trying to refer to Beeching, but it got lost in translation!
I wonder how Joe Rukin’s job hunt is going? Not very well by the look of it. he’s reduced to recording this incoherent and rambling video from his bunker! The hilarious part is he’s asked his supporters to forward this car-crash to the PM! Bless…
Here’s the first of what may well become a new feature. Guest writing from friends and readers of this blog. The expression “rail expert” is terribly overused. Most of the time it’s used to refer to journalists like myself who may know about the railways. We wouldn’t dream of using it of ourselves, because the more we know, the more we realise how little we know. However, I think that if anyone can be classed as an expert in his subject it’s William, so I commend this blog to the house! William sent this to the Lords Economic Committee in response to Lord Tony Berkeley’s recent evidence to said committee.
Yesterday, you took evidence from Lord Berkeley to the effect that the business case for HS2 should be based only on 14 trains per hour (tph), as the nominal capacity of 18 tph on the HS2 trunk route is impracticable. He is wrong.
First, consider the theory, because if the theory doesn’t work there is no further argument. Taking into account realistic braking rates, the minimum time separation of trains at 360 kph can be calculated to be less than 120 seconds. For this calculation, please refer to my article in the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers journal ‘IRSE News’ for May 2019. More detailed modelling reflecting local features and constraints shows that this can increase to around 130 seconds. But it is clear that a flow of well above 18 trains per hour is possible on this basis.
Counter intuitively, though, the plain line headway at full speed in open air is not the binding constraint on capacity of the route. The highest headways arise in slow speed areas around stations particularly where approached through tunnels. The first implication of this is that the top speed of trains is irrelevant to capacity in practice, as raising it further would not create a new binding constraint, nor would reducing it ease a binding constraint.
The second implication is that it is these slow speed areas that need to be considered when assessing feasibility of the proposed capacity. HS2 has a technical standard that headways should be generally 120 seconds but not above 150 seconds. Modelling shows that even in the slow speed areas, 150 seconds technical headway is achievable. This is significant, as the International Union of Railways (UIC) guideline on practical exploitation of theoretical capacity is 75% for a dedicated high speed railway at peak periods. 150 seconds multiplied by 18 trains per hour gives precisely that figure. So using real data for the worst headways and the guidance of an international body, 18 trains per hour is feasible.
At this point, please note that, contrary to the evidence of Lord Berkeley, the HS2 business case is based on only 17 tph, with one further path pencilled in for possible future use. So the business case is even more robust in this respect.
That’s the theory. The issue then becomes whether the planned HS2 service can be operated reliably in practice, particularly in view of the risk of late handovers from the conventional railway. Frankly we can’t know until we try it, and that is no more or less the case for HS2 than for any other railway, but in accepting that one must also recognise that there is always management action possible to influence reliability, and that identifying a risk effectively means identifying where management action needs to be focused. One must also consider how robust HS2 can be expected to be in the face of such imposed delays, and the answer is – more robust than a classic railway.
The two big risks to service performance in the face of imposed delays are a) fast trains ending up following stopping trains once trains are running out of order, and b) conflicting moves at termini as the planned pattern of arriving and departing trains degrades. In the case of HS2, a) can be dismissed instantly, as there are no fast and stopping trains on the trunk route – all trains are running at the same speed, and all stopping only at the one station at Old Oak Common. If a later running train has to squeeze in to the flow, the consequent delay will decay over the next few trains. Moreover, the train that finds itself following a gap left by a late train can speed up in open air into that gap, thus allowing the delay to be eroded both before and after the late train. Then, b) is mitigated by the Euston track layout, which incorporates features that preserve robustness. Prime amongst these is a grade-separation in the station throat that makes the layout effectively two half stations handling half the service each, and so removes most of the scope for conflicts between out of course trains. Moreover, within each half-station, a platforming pattern that steps across from arrival side to departure side means that a later-running arrival will not normally create a conflict, as it will be in parallel with any later departure. For trains presenting seriously late, the option of turning back from Old Oak Common exists and has no parallel on the existing railway.
Lord Berkeley’s suggestion that 14 tph should be the maximum is based on two things:
The UIC calculation outlined above, except that he has wrongly and inexplicably applied the 75% factor twice, first to reduce the theoretical 24 tph at 150 seconds separation to 18 tph, then again to reduce that 18 tph to 13.5 which he approximates to 14 tph;
Evidence given many years ago, primarily to the Commons Transport Select Committee, by representatives of the French railways that they consider 14 tph or thereabouts to be their practicable maximum. Astonishingly, no-one ever asked them why! What feature of their railway sets this limit? From my argument above, I think it is unlikely to be the technical headway at full speed, unless a considerably less-than-state-of-the-current-art signalling system was in question. Where HS2 is constrained to 18 tph, as above in the slow speed areas, it is in effect like any other railway, many of which operate 18 tph now
I contend that the view expressed to you by Lord Berkeley yesterday is unfounded both theoretically and in practice. Please do not hesitate to contact me to discuss these issues further if this is helpful to you in reaching valid conclusions.
The sorry saga around the HS2 go-ahead announcement continues, with the BBC now claiming the Government will make the call tomorrow (Thursday). This rather contradicts the majority view from various informed sources that the announcement won’t be made until AFTER the UK formally leaves the EU, which is 11pm this Friday. The latest informed source I’ve spoken to reckons that the announcement will either be made Tuesday or Thursday next week, or at the end of February, due to the Parliamentary timetable. Personally, I suspect the latter date will be sailing close to the wind as March is the month construction needs to start without penalty payments bumping up the construction price – as confirmed in the latest NAO report into HS2.
Whatever the truth of the matter it’s clear that the announcement is imminent. Not a single source I’ve talked to considers there’s any real chance the project will be cancelled. Politically and economically, cancellation is a non-starter. The sooner this decision is taken the better.
Meanwhile, the froth around HS2 continues in the media, with column inch after column inch of speculation, spin and outright fiction. It’s certainly keeping the pundits busy anyway!
But what of the StopHs2 campaign? It goes from farce to worse. Poor Joe Rukin has made a fool of himself yet again in this overwrought post on the Stop Hs2 Facebook page. A wildlife expert he clearly isn’t. Look at the reply to his Badger sett claim!
Meanwhile, the Harvil Rd protest appears to have collapsed. In contrast to the previous barrage of tedious Facebook posts and self-indulgent videos on the Colne Valley Facebook page there’s been nothing for days. No-one seems to be doing anything that even merits a boring video, much less actually stopping any work on the ground – and this is their oldest and biggest protest camp! Instead, we’ve been treated to more over-long and tedious ‘livestream’ videos from the latest ‘camp’ which is on Welsh Road just outside Offchurch, Warwickshire. Here’s a link.
What it shows is a handful of mostly middle-class protesters completely failing to stop the cutting down of trees and hedgerows alongside a road. It’s all a bit of an expensive pantomime as contractors erect Heras fencing to protect protesters from themselves as they stupidly (and pointlessly) try and place themselves in harms way and then film it – as if it’s HS2’s fault they’re daft enough to get where they are! The contractors and police display the patience of saints as the protesters wind themselves up, spouting more and more nonsense about the project, the law – and the countryside. And what have they stopped? Nothing.
The irony is the guy who’s filming this and who constantly boasts about all the ‘hearts’ being posted on his feed are worse than useless. It’s nothing more than voyeurism. Those armchair warriors won’t do anything other than massage a few protesters egos by telling them how they’re ‘with them in spirit’ and other suchlike tosh. It’s about as useful as sending “thoughts and prayers” but this is the nature of protest in the smartphone age it seems! The protesters video drags on interminably, with the same ridiculous statements including all the old favourites about “HS2 only saves 20 mins”, “no-one will use it”, “it’ll be obsolete in 10yrs” – wibble, froth wibble. After a while, the police beef up their presence at the site (adding yet more expense) whilst the protesters try to argue everything that’s being done is ‘illegal’. It’s like arguing about angels on heads of pins. Opinions don’t trump legality so the protesters are on to a loser from the very start. What’s actually depressing is just how ignorant and misinformed they are, but then the likes of StopHs2’s Joe Rukin has been filling people’s heads with nonsense for years…
Eventually, after 2 hours filming, the video ends and we’re saved from more middle-class angst, pointless arguments and misinformation.
Did it stop the tree felling and hedgerow clearance? Did it heck as like! The protesters own video admits they’ve failed to stop 3/4 mile of tree felling and hedgerow clearance! A tiny delay is not stopping anything. The irony, this pointless exercise will have cost a pretty penny in security and (probably) police overtime. Yet one of the things the protesters are complaining about is the cost of building HS2. The very costs they’re adding to with their futile protests. Here’s the later video which shows how the protesters wasted their time.
Away from pointless protests there’s been action on the political front which has ramifications for HS2. Today Transport Minister Grant Shapps announced that the Northern rail franchise is going to be taken back of Arriva and run by the DfT’s operator of last resort (OLR). Well, I say ‘action’ but this move had been widely trailed and has hardly come as a surprise. You can find a copy of Shapps Statement here.
The implications for HS2 comes in this, the admission that the issue is as much about infrastructure as anything else.
“The vast majority of Northern’s trains pass though Leeds or Manchester”? The two Northern cities that HS2 does so much to relieve rail capacity in! I’ve no doubt Northern leaders will be pointing this out to Shapps. With such an admission, does anyone seriously think the Minister is about to announce the cancellation of HS2 when doing so will just add to the problems?
I’ve had another busy day at home scanning yet more old slides, whilst also preparing to move on to other activities this week. Tomorrow will see me back on the rails as I head to a press event at Barrow Hill near Chesterfield. All will be revealed in tomorrow’s rolling blog. In the meantime, if you want to have a look at the latest batch of Brazilian travel pictures, visit this gallery. If you want to see more of the vintage railway pictures from 1990, click on this link.
In between scanning pictures I’ve been keeping abreast of the world news and antics of social media. The health scare in China’s certainly having an impact on the world’s financial markets. The UK FTSE Index lost 2.29% of its value today, which is wiping out most of January’s gains. Not much fun if you’re an investor…
Still, social media provided some unintentional light hearted moments thanks to the latest shenanigan’s by the tiny bunch of StopHs2 protesters. They’ve been very quiet recently since their main protest camp at Harvil Rd was broken up as most of it’s been evicted, leaving them with nothing to film to bore social media with. But today they staged a comeback – of sorts, only not at Harvil Rd. A new camp has been started to ‘protect’ some trees and hedgerows that are being removed from along a road on the route at Offchurch, Warwickshire, but it’s all been a bit of a farce. Their ‘camp’ is a handful of tents but most of the land is already occupied and fenced off by contractors, so the work is continuing unhindered. StopHs2 have tried to make a meal of it on their website as their grandly titled ‘campaign manager’ Joe Rukin turned up to film earlier today. You can find the videos here on the StopHs2 website, but I can assure you you’re not missing much if you don’t bother!
As you can see from this screengrab, the handful of protestors are kept away by fencing which is looked after by security and police officers. Try and get in and you’re nicked – which three protesters were! The worksite continues for quite some way, which means the protesters are totally overstretched as there’s so few of them. Quite how any of this is meant to stop Hs2 is a mystery. If they can’t even stop minor work like hedgerows being removed they’re really going to struggle when the heavy equipment arrives!
No doubt farces like this will continue for a while yet, but they’ll achieve nothing. The protesters problem is that they’ve relied on social media for so long they’ve forgotten one simple thing. Twitter trolls and their fake accounts don’t exist in real life. They won’t turn up to protests, and neither will the ‘keyboard warriors’ on Facebook! The hastily reprogrammed pro Brexit bots that are keeping the #hs2 hashtag busy on Twitter are worse then useless when it comes to the real world…
Right, it’s time to say goodnight. I’ve got to be on a train at 07:20 in the morning, so watch out for tomorrow’s rolling blog, which will feature a rail vehicle of a type never seen in the UK before…
This morning the NAO released their latest report into the HS2 building programme. Like most NAO reports, it’s a solid piece of work that details dispassionately the project successes, failures and the challenges it faces as the UK cracks on with the biggest civil engineering project in Europe that’s going to be under construction for (potentially) the next 20 years. You can find the full report here.
Needlesss to say, the media and social media is already full of froth from people who’ve never even read the report, or at best, have skim-read its conclusions. No doubt some journo’s will trot out their usual trite appelation to claim the it’s a “damning” report (it isn’t. The NAO don’t do ‘damning’, they do sober assessments). You’ll also see ridiculous numbers North of £100bn bandied around, numbers that never appear in the NAO report at all and that have no official recognition. It says a lot about the febrile state of UK journalism that many (including the BBC) will regurgitate this spin. Nowadays it seems even supposedly respected organs like the BBC are merely parasites who lazily feed off other sections of the media to report what they say, rather than do some real research to report the actual facts.
So, what DOES the report say? Nothing that new, or earth-shattering. It’s simply an update on previous NAO reports that have highlighted the complexities and challenges of the HS2 project from its inception.
The report notes that the expected savings HS2 Ltd hoped to make haven’t materialised. Instead, there’s been an increase in costs for almost everything (bar the new trains themselves) – for multiple reasons.
These increases include mundane stuff like greater costs in moving utilities (cables, pipes etc) away from the route – which is hardly surprising as I don’t think any major project hasn’t suffered from this. The report also notes that significant costs have been added in the petitioning process by the Hybrid Bill Committee placating NIMBYs. Here’s what the report says, in their own words.
The irony? The NIMBYS who insisted that HS2 must be buried in tunnels or deep cuttings so they didn’t have to gaze upon it will be the same people who’ll now be screaming about the cost of HS2 rising! The rising costs and the reasons for them are summed up rather neatly in this table.
The report also details that costs have risen because the contractors recruited to deliver the construction of the project were expected to bear more of the financial risks than is usual – but that this is now being addressed.
What does the report say about the actual cost of HS2? Not unreasonably, it reports that this is still a figure liable to change, as is the timescale for opening. Here’s the details.
Note the final costs for the whole of HS2 are in the range of £65-88bn (including contingency). NOT £106bn! Of course you can guarantee much of the media will only use the higher of those two figures, whilst others will still insist on using the fictitious figures of £106-108bn which have no validity whatsoever. They’re certainly aren’t official figures.
What does all this do to the expected benefits of HS2 which are crudely calculated on a Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR). Here’s what the NAO say.
Until the figures are updated in the revised business case, HS2 is now regarded as poor value for money, but not so poor as StopHs2 claim, as they’ve invented a 60p in the pound figure, whilst the NAO say it’s 1:1.4! No surprise there then! Of course, as this is an NAO report, there’s a lot of things it doesn’t cover. What these bare figures don’t do is look at what would happen if we don’t build HS2. What would be the costs of the rail gridlock that would lead to, and how would we meet our targets to cut carbon emissions when we’d no loner have the means to get modal shift from road/air to rail? These are crucial matters, but not within the purview of the report. Neither will it mention that the OECD recommends that baseline infra investment is 5.5% of GDP annually for an economy with aspirations to growth. We have only spent this amount twice since WW2 leaving us woefully behind other developed (and developing) countries when it comes to infrastructure.
It doesn’t talk of the wider political aspects of building HS2 or the merits of doing so, such as the Governments aims of rebalancing the economy. That’s not the NAO’s job either – although that won’t stop some of the more bizarre claims and speculation from the pundits.
What we can see from the report is a sober assessment of where the HS2 project has got to so far and the challenges it faces over the next few years as it goes from design to (finally) construction. A decision to go-ahead will be made next month. The report assumes construction will begin in March 2020.
This won’t be the last report the NAO do on HS2. They’ll be keeping an eye of the project right through to completion when they’ll then look at the question of value for money. Their reports always make interesting reading as they’re authorititive and free of hyperbole or politicking. Now, watch how the media spins it…
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Today’s been another one where I’ve been tied to the office as I’ve continued to make inroads into scanning my old slide library in order to get them onto my Zenfolio website. Mind you, it does free up an awful lot of physical space too – and now they can be seen by anyone and I can access them anywhere!
Yesterday I added another batch of old rail pictures from 1990. This morning I was up at Sparrowfart to start scanning more travel pictures from Brazil, this time from the Island of Fernando de Noronha which I was lucky enough to visit in 2002. I have to say it’s been one of my favourite Islands. It’s pretty unique and (at least in those day) unspoilt. It’s now a world Heritage and conservation site and the main reasons to go there are to enjoy the wild coastlines, beautiful beaches and the flora and fauna. I must admit, scanning these pictures is really giving me itchy feet! Anyway, here’s a link to the gallery. I’ve still plenty more pictures to add and I’ll alternate them with the railway shots.
Here’s a selection of both as a sample.
In 1990 this scene was nothing out of the ordinary. Now… On the 12th May 1990 one of the two shunting engines that acted as Euston station pilots trundles around the entrance to platforms 15-18. These were used to shunt mail trains – one of which can be seen through the arch, stabled in the Downside Carriage shed. These engines would also be used to swap coaches in/out of rakes used on the main-line expresses in the days before we had fixed formation trains like the Pendolinos, although most of the day they sat idle. Now, this whole area is being swept aside to build the new HS2 station. The pilots are long-gone as mail trains disappeared from Euston back in the late 1990s. The carriage shed was demolished last year and the site is where the new HS2 lines will emerge from the tunnel from Old Oak Common to enter the new HS2 station which will be built here and to the left of the picture.
This is the stunning island of Fernando de Noronha off the North-East Coast of Brazil. It’s a fascinating plce with a rich history, beautiful beaches and abundant wildlife. This is a view of Moro do Pico, at 323 metres tall it’s the highest point of the island.
Whilst scanning archive pictures I’ve also been keeping abreast of various news. Originally I thought I might need to take a trip down to London today to visit the latest national StopHs2 protest, but as I predicted the other day – it’s turned into a damp squib that wasn’t worth bothering with. If it had happened it would have been the first national StopHs2 demonstration since 2004. As it is, the Stop Hs2 website lowered expectations yesterday when they published this excuse.
“On Wednesday, Elizabeth Cairns and Matt Bishop invite you to join them in Parliament. This event will NOT be happening in Portcullis House, no matter what Facebook says, and there is no rally in outside Parliament either. Stop HS2 will also be launching our latest briefing for MPs that day, but that is a separate thing, so sorry for any confusion as the two things got a bit mixed up!”
Really? So what WILL be happening? Not a lot it seems. This is a classic example of someone writing cheques they can’t cash. I don’t think Ms Cairns actually understood what this entailed. Hence this…
“I’m asking people to come as individuals, to use your democratic right to visit parliament, lobby your MP and make your voice heard. I will be there with my family from 11am and plan to stay in the public spaces (st Stephens hall) peacefully as long as I am able to be there and welcome anyone who wishes to join me.“
OK, so no-one’s actually made an appointment to see their MP then? By the way, here’s today’s Order paper. Somehow, I think many MPs may have better tings to do…
Later, this video appeared on Facebook. Apparently, all of 6 MPs were lobbied and that was a ‘success’. Excuse me if I’m underwhelmed! Meanwhile, back in the wider world, Grant Shapps, the Transport Minister has yet again confirmed that an announcement on Hs2 will be made next month.
Daft anti HS2 stuff aside I was saddened to hear that today, yet another of the Monty Python team has passed away. We lost Neil Innes at the end of last year. Today, Terry Jones joined the choir invisible after battling a rare form of dementia since 2017. There’s so much that I could write about this subject, but this isn’t the blog to do it in. Suffice to say I feel so much for Terry’s family. It’s an awful thing to happen. Dementia and mental illness rob you of the person you loved. It takes their essence and leaves a husk. Personally (having experienced lost a for few loved ones in my time) I think it’s one of the worst things to have to cope with. My heart goes out to them, but I’m also grateful that Terry (and Neil) have left us all with so many happy memories – and a huge amount of laughs!
Today’s been yet another mixed bag where I’ve been keeping a wary eye on the world whilst keeping occupied scanning a selection of old slides – both rail and travel. I was up early in order to get another selection of travel shots from Brazil under my belt. That particular album’s coming along quite nicely now as I’m 2/3 of the way through the first folio and I’ll soon be starting on the selection from the island of Fernando do Noronha. Meanwhile, here’s a sample of one of today’s images from Olinda in Pernambuco state. It’s an incredibly colourful old town with some fine old buildings. You can find the rest of the Brazilian pictures here.
In order to add variety I’m simultaneously scanning some old rail shots from 1990. The idea will be to swap between rail and travel so there’s always something of interest to someone. of course, the railways looked very different in 1990 as privatisation wasn’t even on the agenda at that time.
In those days Euston was still dominated by electric locomotives – as this picture shows.
From front to back are 86205, 86406, 86414, 86228 and 87014. 6th May 1990.
I was passing through Euston to head on up to an open day at Bescot locomotive depot just outside Birmingham. The depot put on a good show with a large variety of locomotives on display, including some withdrawn examples like 47901 here in the foreground. The weather was ideal for such an event and I certainly chewed through some film that day!
I’m still scanning the Bescot shots which you’ll be able to find in this gallery when they’re all done.
Whilst I was busy scanning the media was full of the latest leak about HS2 and a supposed ‘draft’ of the Oakervee report. Initially reported in the Financial Times the story was soon picked up by other outlets including the BBC. The leak was an odd one as it seems to have come from within government. It was soon clear that it was more spin than fact, as Andrew Sentance (one of the Oakervee Committee members made clear to the BBC. here’s how it was covered on Twitter by the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones..
Sentence also had this to say (via the BBC).
Yet again HS2 gets caught up in political games in Downing St. Mind you, HS2 isn’t the only mixed message coming out of No 10. There’s also the whole farce around Brexit the economy and promises made by Johnson to car makers before the election that have already fallen by the wayside. Let’s face it, when you have a Prime Minister who’s been sacked twice for lying you can hardly trust them, can you? Johnson may have an 80 seat majority but it’s becoming clear that his government isn’t coherent or clear in purpose. Improving the UKs infrastructure post Brexit is meant to be one of their big ideas, but the message is already riven by briefings and counter briefings, such as on HS2, which suggests a Government that’s less than united. It would be very interesting to know who in Government is briefing against HS2. Cummings?
Northern and Midlands leaders and several MPs have reacted with fury to these games by Downing St, demanding the the Oakervee review’s published so that there can’t be any more spin about its contents. We will have to see if they get their wish anytime soon…
Away from the shenanigans in Downing St it’s clear that the Harvil Rd protest has fizzled out again. Despite a few dozen Extinction Rebellion supporters and StopHs2’s Joe Rukin pitching up to make a few self-congratulatory videos claiming they’d ‘retaken’ Harvil Rd (they hadn’t) most of them had already drifted off by Sunday. It’s now business as usual as a visit to the ‘Protect the Colne Valley’ Facebook page will show. The flow of Facebook videos has dried up and work to clear the site continues pretty much unhindered.
The traditional day of rest has been anything but for me as I was up at 07:30 this morning in order to scan yet another batch of old travel slides which I’d set up in readiness the night before. This selection were from a trip to Brazil and I’m making good progress getting through the two albums which have been sitting in the archives since 2002. Many of them have never seen the light of day since but now they’re appearing on my Zenfolio website in this gallery. So far I’ve managed to scan all the pictures from Rio de Janeiro. Now I’ve moved on to the historical town of Olinda in Pernambuco state before the next batch which will be of the fantastic island nature park of Fernando de Noronha. Here’s a couple of samples from today’s batch.
The quiet streets of the old town which has a rich history and some fascinating old buildings. Looking at the style of the building there’s several countries in the world that you could be in, this just happens to be Brazil. .
Hopefully I’ll have this albums fully scanned in a couple of weeks, then it’s time to move on to another set of old railway slides. On Saturday we visited Dawn’s parents who’ve been keeping many of the albums in safe storage for me. I’ve now dug out four albums of rail images from 1990 to 1992 so this next batch really are stepping back in time, nearly 30 years in fact!
Besides rooting through the archives we’ve both been busy with more mundane chores around the house which was rather frustrating as the day had started as one of those perfect frosty winter mornings with wall to wall sunshine, but there was no time to drop everything and head out for a ramble as we’ve both got too many things to do. The law of Sod often guarantees that there’ll be perfect walking weather on the weekends you’re busy, then it’ll be raining cats and dogs when you’re at a loose end…
Never mind, I’m hoping to get out a couple of times this next week although the weather looks like a mixed bag.
Talking of the weather I noticed that it put a bit of a damper on the latest instalment of the saga that’s the StopHs2 protest at Harvil Rd. There was meant to be three days of protests at the site starting last Friday, but it’s not exactly caught the media’s eye. That’s because only a few dozen people turned up on Saturday and many of them were day-trippers. Quite how these weekend warriors are meant to stop Hs2 is a mystery as the vast majority of them will have faded away by Monday after making their video’s and pretending they’ve actually achieved something. Then it’s back to business as usual with contractors continuing work on the site. It’s all pretty pointless, all the protesters are doing is wasting time and money, but that’s life.
Apoarently, despite the fact the tiny area still available to the protesters resembled the Somme, the group that dress up in red to pose in order to attract media attention were there. Quite what the point is has always been unclear.
“I say Prime Minister, I’ve just seen a tiny group of protesters dressed in red sheets pretending to be Marcel Marceau whilst stood in a muddy wood. It’s made me realise we don’t need HS2 after all and we should scrap it” – said no MP, ever…
Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking towards an announcement from Government about Hs2 getting the final go-ahead. Expect that next month.
Apparently, there’s meant to be a StopHs2 rally at Parliament on Wednesday, but it doesn’t seem to be gaining much interest. Somehow I can’t see the Metropolitan Police cancelling any leave over it, or coach firms suddenly being inundated with bookings to ferry the demonstrators to London. We shall see…
Paul Bigland 