Category Archives: Transport

Northern’s new electrics hit the rails in the North West

05 Thursday Mar 2015

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Today was a bit of a red letter day for Northern Rail as their new electric train service between Liverpool Lime St & Manchester Airport started carrying fare paying passengers, 53 years after the overhead wires first reached the city when the West Coast Main Line was electrified. I took a trip across the Pennines to Merseyside to check out how it all went & I have to admit I was impressed. The ex-Thameslink Class 319s have received an internal refresh which has greatly improved their tired interior but what really stands out is their performance. These 4-car, 100mph EMUs are replacing 2-car 75mph DMUs on a route that has line speeds of 90mph. Leaving Liverpool Lime St you can be forgiven for not really noticing much difference – except for the absence of the vibration & noise of an underfloor engine. As the service stops at Wavertree Technology Park it doesn’t really get to stretch its legs but that soon changes. From just before Roby until our next stop at Helens Junction, we flew! The acceleration of the 319s is impressive & the trip was a rather exhilarating experience after ‘enjoying’ decades of fairly pedestrian diesel units that wheezed & rattled along the same route the electrics now glide over with ease. The performance was just as ‘electric’ as far as Newton-le-Willows where I swapped riding them for photographing them. Considering the trains have doubled in size I was surprised by how full they were already. Whether this was the first day effect or not I don’t know but two other electric services I saw were just as busy. I’ll pop back in a couple of weeks to find out. On my return I couldn’t resist stopping off at Rainhill station to grab a shot of a 319 passing the site of one of the most famous events in railway history – the Rainhill trials. Here, in 1829, Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’ reached the heady speed of 30mph. Now, Northern’s new electric service will be speeding past at 90mph. How times (eventually) change!

Here’s that picture at Rainhill; http://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/p755024368/h22d6177#h22d6177

The Pacer change hits Northern

27 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by in Hs2, Northern Rail, Railways, Transport

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Today the department of Transport issued the ITT (Invitation To Tender) for the new Northern Rail franchise which is due to start on April 1 2016. The ITT sets out the minimum requirements which must be included by bidders in their proposals. Not entirely unexpected was the ITT committing the franchise winner to withdraw all the 4 wheel ‘Pacer’ DMUs (class 142 & 144). Originally the DfT had resisted this idea due to the extra cost to the franchise (over £200m*) but Ministers have decided to override the DfT.

You can find the full ITT here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/northern-franchise-2015-invitation-to-tende

This means the BR built Pacers will be phased out of Northern service by 31st December 2019. However, it’s not the end of the road for them as they might just possibly be cascaded elsewhere – unless other ITTs (such as the future one for Wales) also prohibit their use. As it is, Pacers will remain in use with Arriva Trains Wales & First Great Western – for now.

Interestingly, the ITT also contains this:

‘5.4.2.2 The Department requires a Franchisee who will procure and bring into service, no later than 1 January 2020, a minimum of 120 new carriages that are capable of being used to operate Passenger Services on non-electrified routes. They must be designed with future demand and users’ needs in mind, with a clear focus on passenger comfort and with a thoroughly modern passenger environment and exterior look. These must be newly-built (not re-using components from existing rolling stock) and, unless the Bidder intends for them to be hauled by a locomotive, must be capable of operating under their own power for significant distances on non-electrified routes’.

Does this preclude Serco-Abellio from signing up to use Vivarail’s ‘new’ DMUs which would be converted from former London Underground D78 stock? Earlier this week I was chatting to Northern’s MD Alex Hynes who certainly can’t be described as a fan of the converted trains. He wouldn’t be offering them in any future ITT. The question now, is – would anyone else?

The announcement also pulls another rug from under anti Hs2 campaigners. They’ve always tried to suggest that Hs2 will suck investment money from the existing network. The Northern ITT has proved how hollow their claims were.

* A letter from Permanent Secretary to the DfT Philip Rutnam to Transport Minister Patrick McLaughlin asks for formal guidance on the issue of Pacer replacement. In his letter, Rutnam states the cost of Pacer replacement will be ‘just under £250m over the life of the franchise’. The letter can be found here; https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/407753/dft-permanent-secretary-to-sos.pdf

Hs2 Action Alliance & the art of telling porkies

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Hs2, Politics, Railways, Transport

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We’ve seen in the last few weeks how Stop HS2 have resorted to blatant deceit in their desperate attempts to breathe life back into their failing campaign, with a fabrication about major locations such as Runcorn, Preston and Wolverhampton losing all direct services to London. Whilst this fantasy has been well and truly scotched, one striking observation is that those anti-HS2 groups with some pretensions to respectability did not try to pick it up and run with it. Apart from the facts of the matter, as set out in Prof McNaughton’s presentation to the HS2 Hybrid Bill Select Committee, if even HS2 Action Alliance (HS2AA) won’t touch a scare story, we can be pretty certain that “scare story” is a bit of an understatement. And something tells me that this Amersham-based organisation is more than a little wary of the risk of being associated with Joe Rukin’s antics these days.

But even if HS2AA aren’t quite bosom buddies with Stop HS2 any more, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be hanging their head in shame, having form on this issue themselves!

Last year, a number of different local newspapers ran stories, identical apart from the name of the location in question, that their main town or city had a better train service in steam days than it would be left with after HS2. These identikit stories came from HS2AA, courtesy of their Director of Local Campaigns Peter Chegwyn. And of course one of these shock horror (insert name of location) stories featured Coventry.

Now, what is instantly clear is that Mr Chegwyn hadn’t done anything so basic as to check out what service Coventry did have in steam days. In 1957/8 (that is, the last year of a full service before the WCML was disrupted by electrification works), Coventry enjoyed a grand total of just eight express trains per day to London, of which even the best needed more than 1½ hours for a journey that now takes a couple of minutes over the hour. Nothing whatsoever, however crudely twisted, supports any suggestion that Coventry would revert to that level of service after implementation of HS2.

That it can only have come from the campaigners’ dirty tricks box is the kindest thing I can find to say. As tactics go, it’s not a bad one of course, as the instinctive response that Coventry would indeed have as good a service as in steam days hardly sounds very good.

But, as we now know, Professor McNaughton’s presentation clearly showed two limited-stop trains per hour to London. That’s as many trains in four hours as HS2AA imply it would have in a day. Clearly, it isn’t the three trains per hour that Coventry, essentially because it is on the way to Birmingham, enjoys today, but the question is what service is appropriate for a city of such a size and distance from London. And two trains per hour is the same as Bristol has now from its city centre station, Temple Meads.

As for speed, no doubt those trains will make one or two extra stops, at worst adding less than 10 minutes to the journey time, so again HS2AA’s comparison with steam fails. The average speed from Coventry to London, even with those extra stops, would be higher than from Bristol Temple Meads today.

But apart from contributing traffic to justify the service level, those extra stops, at major residential and employment centres such as Milton Keynes, are the up side for Coventry. It works in reverse as well. Birmingham should be a very convenient airport for the major business and residential area of Milton Keynes, but only one of the three Virgin Euston – Birmingham trains per hour calls at Milton Keynes. So on the way put you probably have either a lot of wasted time before your flight or a good chance of missing it, whilst on your return you risk waiting 59 minutes for a train home. But even if there might be only two fast trains per hour after HS2, when both stop at Milton Keynes the service effectively doubles, and a half-hourly service makes a pretty fair airport link.

Once the West Coast Main Line has these currently-neglected flows as its prime markets, the service between these major locations improves radically, for the benefit of workers, shoppers and leisure travellers alike. But that doesn’t make for cheap headlines.

The anti Hs2 campaign’s numbers don’t add up, again (social media edition)

22 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by in Hs2, Railways, Transport

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On their website, the High Speed 2 Action Alliance make the claim that ‘There are over 172,000 households located within 1km of Phase 1 of HS2, and at least the same again for Phase 2 – meaning over half a million people  impacted by these proposals’. Half a million – wow! – that’s a lot of angry people then, surely? They must be queuing up to protest about Hs2. I mean – if we add all those folks supposedly opposed to Hs2 for ideological or financial reasons, that must be over a million, yes?

Not a chance!

The truth is that, for all the various claims made by anti Hs2 supporters, there’s very little real opposition on the ground. I’ve illustrated this before in a previous blog where I looked at the death of their ‘action group’ network. https://paulbigland.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/the-anti-hs2-campaign-dying-by-degrees-pt1/

In this one I’m exploring their daft claims of mass support further.

One would think that with all these stout yeoman folk of England up in arms it would be easy to get huge groups of them together in protest. That’s certainly the impression the anti Hs2 mob try to give, aided & abetted by sections of the media who’re too lazy to fact check or who support them.

But where are these folks in reality? As they can’t be found in mass demonstrations or packed meeting halls up & down the land, perhaps social media will give a clue? Actually, it does, but it’s not a revelation anti Hs2 campaigners will like. Nowadays, social media is one of the easiest ways for those interested in a campaign to engage & show their support so you might be forgiven in thinking that Facebook & Twitter must be teeming with people outraged by Hs2. The problem is, the anti’s numbers don’t stack up here either. Don’t forget that not everyone following an anti group will be supporting their aims. Many folk will be doing it just to see what they’re up to. Their real support will be lower than the numbers I’m quoting (of course, this applies to pro Hs2 groups too).

Let’s start with the Twitter followers of the main anti Hs2 groups:

Hs2 Action Alliance (@hs2aa): 3,199 followers

StopHs2 (@stophs2): 4,112

I’ve also included both of StopHs2’s leaders.

Joe Rukin (@joerukin): 1,857

Penny Gaines (@penny_gaines): 399

51M (@51M_Hs2project): 610

The umbrella group Action Groups Against Hs2 (AGAHST) don’t have a Twitter account but they do have a supposed ‘Campaign Director’, Deanne DuKhan (@DuKhanD) who has a massive following of err, 654….

Still, surely they can do better over on Facebook can’t they? Wrong again. In 2011 it was estimated that over 30 million UK citizens had a Facebook profile, that’s double the number of UK Twitter accounts. And the scores on the anti Hs2 campaign’s doors?…

Hs2aa: 2,168

https://www.facebook.com/HS2AA?fref=ts

StopHs2: 6,415

https://www.facebook.com/STOP.HS2?fref=ts

51M: 393

https://www.facebook.com/pages/51m_HS2project/218611348167462

It’s worth noting that 51M’s FB account hasn’t been updated since the 1st June 2011.

AGAHST haven’t even bothered with Facebook but their derelict website (where they’re still plugging an epetition that closed in August 2012*) can be found here: http://www.betterthanhs2.org/who-we-are/

Now, what was that tosh about a ‘relentless’ & ‘growing’ campaign again? Whichever way you look at it, the one thing you can’t find is any real majority support for a campaign against Hs2 – anywhere – except in the imaginations of the dwindling number still opposing the project.

*Incidentally, that epetition got a grand total of 26,262 signatures.

UPDATE (10th March 2015)

Oh dear! At today’s Hs2 Committee hearing, Denham Against Hs2 Chairman Frank Partridge  let the cat out of the bag about the number of Hs2 ‘Action’ groups. The likes of Hs2aa are still pretending there are over 90. Frank admitted to the Committee that the real number is ’40 to 50′ – around half the numbers claimed! More proof (if it were needed) that the campaign’s been exaggerating the size of its activist base.

 

 

 

 

 

An example of how Hs2 will benefit the North

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Hs2, Railways, Transport

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I’m writing this whilst travelling on Grand Central’s 06:55 service from Bradford to London Kings Cross. I’m a regular user of their trains as they get me from Halifax to the capital in just over 3 hours. They’re comfortable with very competitive fares and have free wifi throughout the train. The West Riding services first started running in May 2010. In the early days passenger numbers were sparse, nowadays they can be full & standing – even in First Class!

Grand Central’s trains are popular with both business and leisure travellers as they offer the residents of Yorkshire a fast direct service to London that allows you to go there & back in a day if you want to. As an aside, GC regularly top the Passenger Focus poll as Britain’s highest-rated long distance train operator for customer satisfaction.

But, hang on – this is something the opponents of High Speed 2 say is what’s bad for the North. They claim Hs2 will suck all the economic life out of the North & only benefit the capital. This train (and me) are perfect examples of why this is nonsense. You see, for 25 years I lived in London. Now I live in Yorkshire – and the only way I can make that possible is by better rail connections between the two. A lot of my work is centered on London. If I don’t have easy access to it I have to move closer or move back. As it is now, I can command a London wage & transfer that spending power back home to Yorkshire. I’m not alone in this as the growing numbers of business travellers using Grand Central’s trains attest to.

So, next time you hear Hs2 opponents like Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman banging on about how Hs2 would be bad for the North, remind them of the success of Grand Central & how it’s allowed Southerners like me to move away from London – & bring our prosperity with us.

An ode to Joe (Rukin)

16 Monday Feb 2015

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A friend has just sent me this. It’s too good not to share with the world so, enjoy!

Joe Rukin told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one’s Eyes;
He hasn’t, from his Earliest Youth,
Had the least Regard for Truth,
And in what’s written by Joe Rukin,
Reality don’t get a look-in.
*************************************
Now, for his waffle we must pity,
The HS2 Select Committee.
They once, in fact, last Wednesday,
Knowing he’d have much to say,
On things that views are keenly sought on,
Interviewed Prof A McNaughton,
Who set out with alacrity,
The truth about Capacity.
“We can’t have that” cried Rukin J,
And scrambled into print to say,
From Runcorn, Stockport and Wilmslow,
No more London trains would go,
While Coventry would have none left,
And Wolverhampton be bereft,
(Well, actually he went on Twit-ter,
won’t that won’t fit).
But Joe forgot, the silly Clown,
That long ago had been set down,
The service pattern to be run,
By Trains on HS2 (Phase 1),
And what makes Joe sound rather comic,
Is all in “The Case (Economic)
For HS2”, where plain to see,
Is “Trains per hour for Stockport – 3”
Then “Wilmslow – 1”, and “Runcorn – 2”,
And something similar for Crewe.
***********************************
Well, if that sets Joe’s pants alight,
There’s more – the interesting sight,
Of PFMv4.3,
(Pron. Pee Eff Emm vee 4 point 3),
“Assumptions Report”, which shines a lamp on,
Trains per hour for Wolverhampton,
Now just one to London Town,
But as page 44 sets down,
(And surely this will tickle you),
These will be “cut” from one to TWO!
************************************
Lazy journos wanting free
Copy, have a friend in he,
Who only fools those silly men,
The IEA and Beleben.
But by the sensible and learn-ed,
Rukin and his gang are spurn-ed.

Shimbleshanks, with apologies to Hilaire Belloc

 

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Rail modernisation spells the death knell of the oil lamp & semaphores at Banbury

16 Monday Feb 2015

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One of the last outposts of traditional semaphore signalling has heard its death knell today. Siemens Rail Automation has been awarded a £40 million contract by Network Rail to renew life-expired signalling equipment from Leamington Spa to Heyford. This will see the signals & signalboxes at Banbury North & South replaced by Siemens’ Trackguard Westlock computer-based interlocking. The modernization will mean improved headways between Banbury and Aynho Junction, as well as a rationalised layout at Banbury Station to improve operational flexibility and minimise on-going maintenance requirements.

The project is expected to take 22 months.

Banbury has long been an oasis of former GWR lower quadrant semaphore signals, although some were converted to upper quadrant by BR. Some of the signals were still illuminated by paraffin lamps, a practice dating back to the dawn of the railways. Here’s a selection of pictures showing what will disappear:

http://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/p638949268/h5af7f476#h5af7f476

http://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/p638949268/h5af7f44c#h5af7f44c

http://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/p5959592/h53571a28#h53571a28

 

 

 

 

Posted by | Filed under Railways, Signalling, Transport, UK, Uncategorized

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A good example of the need for Hs2.

10 Tuesday Feb 2015

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I’m typing this on board a CrossCountry service from Manchester Piccadilly to Birmingham, a journey I do on a regular basis. The trip will take me 91 minutes on a cramped & not exactly environmentally friendly 4 -car Voyager. When Hs2 is built the same journey will take just 41 minutes on a modern, spacious, high-speed electric train, slashing a massive 50 minutes off the time. Currently rail only has around 6% of the travel market between the two cities. Imagine what slashing 50 minutes off the time will do to encourage modal shift from roads & encourage more people to travel between our major regional cities by rail?

It’s exactly these regional time savings those opposed to Hs2 hate folk drawing attention to. They prefer to focus all their attention on London. So, let’s ignore them & look at some other projected journey time savings.

Leeds to Birmingham will be down from 1hr58 to just 57m.

Newcastle to Birmingham will be down from 3hr14 to 2hr07.

Nottingham to Birmingham Interchange will be down from 1hr46 to just 32m.

Bristol to Edinburgh will be down from 5hr49 to 3hr21

Cardiff to Leeds will be down from 4hr07 to 3hr13

There are many more examples given on Hs2 Ltd’s website here:

http://www.hs2.org.uk/about-hs2/facts-figures/connecting-britain

Of course, it’s not just about intercity journey time savings. The line I’m traveling on is also heavily used by local, inter regional & freight services. When the West Coast timetable was speeded up in 2008 some stations around Stoke were closed or lost their services to clear paths for fast Virgin Trains services to Manchester. Between 2004 – 2008 Stone station lost its rail services entirely. Now it has an hourly service provided by London Midland. There’s no hope of improving this as the capacity (until Hs2 is built) isn’t available. Eturia station closed on 30 September 2005. It was demolished to allow the line speed in the area to be raised from 60mph to 85-90mph. Local rail services were sacrificed to allow faster & more frequent Intercity expresses to run (and not just here around Stoke but also elsewhere on the West Coast Maine Line (WCML). Hs2 will allow us to reverse this process by removing those capacity eating non-stop services. Instead, those paths can be used by those trains we need to encourage greater modal shift – local, inter regional & freight. Without Hs2, that will never happen.

Incidentally, 51M who offered a supposed ‘alternative’ to Hs2 would have seen further cuts to services around Stoke. To allow more expresses, they’d have closed Stone & other stations, withdrawn the local services and didn’t even think about freight. Some ‘alternative’

UPDATE.

Since I first published this earlier today. Richard Wellings of the right wing ‘Think Tank’ the Institute for Economic Affairs (in reality a lobbying front for various anonymous big business interests like the tobacco & oil industry) has tried to claim on Twitter that there’s no demand for better rail services between Manchester & Birmingham. What? Two of our top 10 major cities by population (& top 5 if you include the Greater Manchester area)? To try & claim slashing 50 minutes off won’t result in modal shift to rail suggests to me Wellings is no real economist – just an apologist for industries which are scared of the expansion of greener transport modes.

UKIP & the anti HS2 mob are at it again (aka stitched up like a kipper!)

08 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by in Hs2, Politics, Transport, UKIP

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My previous blog about UKIP & the anti Hs2 campaign both being a bunch of fantasists caused some squeals from the certain quarters. So, you can imagine my amusement when today’s events in the media only proved what I was saying.

The Sunday Times ran a piece on some politicians packing their Twitter accounts with fake followers. One of the folk featured was none other than UKIPs candidate for Aylesbury Chris Adams, who tweets as @_Chris_Adams. He’s often tweeted nonsense & downright deceit about Hs2. Today the Times revealed that Adams claimed 30,000 Twitter followers whilst following 25,400 others whom he claimed to have ‘checked manually’. Yet, within a day of the ST contacting him he’d removed 25,200 people, leaving him following just 200. How odd. Unsurprisingly, he soon started hemorrhaging followers! One is forced to ask, what is it about UKIP & fake numbers? If it’s not Romanians, it’s…

This tactic of packing your Twitter account with either fake followers or following accounts who guarantee to follow you back to make yourself look important & have influence seems to be common to the anti Hs2 mob too. I’ll highlight one of their more laughable Tweeters in another blog.

You have to wonder. If the anti Hs2 campaign really does have the genuine mass support they claim. Why do so many of them have to resort to faking figures?

 

 

 

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UKIP and the anti Hs2 campaign. Fantasists who are well suited

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Hs2, Politics, Railways, Transport, UKIP

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One of the many laughable claims from the anti Hs2 campaign is that there’s millions of people who will ditch all other political considerations & priorities to vote for any party that opposes Hs2. Antis try & pretend they have an army of supporters up & down the country who are ready to cause a political earthquake because of Hs2. Like their other claims, this one’s another load of hot air.

UKIP, being the cynical vote chasers they are have ditched their 2010 manifesto pledge to but not one but THREE high speed lines & come out in opposition to Hs2, hoping to hoover up all these votes that are supposedly waiting to be had. The problem is, they don’t exist. UKIP have been lied to by the anti campaign that doesn’t command anything like the level of support they claim & certainly doesn’t have a massive vote bank to hand to UKIP.

Evidence of this is all around us.

Firstly, let’s look at people’s main concerns. Here’s a recent Guardian poll that asked voters what issues most concern them:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/9/23/1411459719741/MoriIssues.png …

And where’s Hs2 on that list? Nowhere. It doesn’t even rate a mention. People have other prorities. The only people who really care enough to change their vote are some of the people who are directly affected because they live on the route of Hs2. But, many of these people aren’t that die-hard either.

Another good example is the supposed anti Hs2 ‘heartlands’ of Warwickshire & the Chilterns/Bucks.

In 2013 UKIP were confidently expecting they’d gain a massive amount of new Councillors as people voted for them to show their opposition to Hs2. So, how many seats did they win in Warwickshire? Not a single one! The biggest gains were made by Labour – a party that actively supports Hs2. In other areas (such as the North-West) UKIP didn’t even bother campaigning on Hs2, preferring local issues instead.

And in Bucks & the Chilterns?

UKIP did gain seats there. But it was clear that the ‘Hs2 effect’ was confined to the areas the route will actually pass through.

Interestingly enough, the picture for UKIP in the Chilterns has got worse, not better since 2013. In December 2014 there were elections for two Councillors in the Aylesbury Vale district (another supposed anti ‘stronghold). Both were won by, the supposedly unelectable Liberal Democrats!

http://www.aylesburyvaledc.gov.uk/news/2014/dec/liberal-democrats-win-gatehouse-southcourt-elections/

To add to UKIPs woes, both their rebadged former Tory MPs voted FOR Hs2 & one, Mark Reckless put Farage in the firing line by restating his support for Hs2 as a UKIP MP.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/11170215/Mark-Reckless-refuses-to-back-scrapping-HS2-in-first-public-split-with-Ukip-leader-Nigel-Farage.html

Farage was forced into admitting that Hs2 is not a ‘big ticket issue’ for the party.

2015 has got off to an even worse start as a Chilterns UKIP Cllr has defected to the Tories.

http://www.bucksherald.co.uk/news/more-news/updated-ukip-defector-i-m-not-right-wing-enough-for-party-1-6544468

This has exposed the fact that neither UKIP or the Tories are really that worried by the anti Hs2 campaign. It’s been clear for some time that anti’s have been writing political cheques they can’t cash by promising levels of support they don’t have. It seems that fact has finally dawned on UKIP too. The antis also seem to have quietly dropped their ineffective ‘no votes for you with Hs2’ as it scared no-one & didn’t persuade a single MP to change sides.

The forthcoming general election has the potential to be a disaster for the anti Hs2 campaign who’ve firmly nailed their flag to the UKIP mast. The party’s been battered in the media & the polls as their extremist tendencies, fruitloop membership & infighting has attracted negative attention, the idea that it will be in any position to deliver on its promise to ‘StopHs2’ looks more & more ridiculous as time goes on.