Route director Network Rail has appointed a new route director for its North & East route. Jason Hamilton will take over from Matt Rice, who is leaving after four and a half years to join train operator Northern. Jason is in his 16th year at Network Rail and most recently he has been a part of the East Coast route’s executive team as route programme director (works delivery). He has previous experience working for Network Rail in major projects on the Great Western and South East routes, as part of the Crossrail Programme. Cornish contract Infrastructure consultants AECOM have been awarded the contract to prepare detailed designs for Mid Cornwall Metro. The firm has already completed an initial engineering design. Mid Cornwall Metro, led by Cornwall Council, Network Rail and Great Western Railway, will create a direct rail link between the county’s north and south coasts, serving four of Cornwall’s largest urban areas – Newquay, St Austell, Truro and Falmouth/Penryn. As part of the work, AECOM will design an additional passing loop on the Newquay branch and also a second platform at Newquay, upgrading the station’s infrastructure and installing signalling. Newbury improvements The redevelopment of Newbury station in Berkshire has been completed. Three business growth units at the station are now offering new employment opportunities.The wider upgrade of the station began in 2018, and has included new ticket gates, a footbridge with lifts, 300 cycle spaces, a multi-storey car park, cycle hubs and improved access for people on foot. The ticket area includes an enlarged waiting room, a café and toilets.

Siemens is investing £100 million in replacing its rail infrastructure centre in Chippenham, which was previously owned by Westinghouse, with a new factory. All 800 staff at the present site will be transferred to the new factory when it is open in 2026. Siemens described its investment as ‘groundbreaking’, and said it intends to create a ‘cutting-edge rail infrastructure manufacturing, digital engineering and research & development centre’ at SouthPoint Business Park in the Wiltshire town. The next generation of conventional and digital rail signalling and control systems for British railways will be built there, according to the company. The changeover from old to new will not interrupt production, it added. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who is due to unveil his Budget proposals in two days from now on 6 March, said: ‘This new commitment from Siemens is a big boost for Britain’s world-class manufacturing sector and shows our plan for the UK to be the best place to invest and grow a business is working. ‘This digital technology will improve the safety, reliability and connectivity of our railways and drive sustainable opportunities in higher-paid jobs and exports – as part of our plan to grow our economy.’ Rob Morris, who is joint CEO of Siemens Mobility in the UK & Ireland, said: ‘This £100 million investment is a strong commitment to Chippenham and our country. Siemens Mobility’s Chippenham site, along with our 30 sites across the country, has been transforming rail travel and transport in Britain – and it will continue to do so with cloud-based rail technology connecting the real and the digital worlds, digitalizing rail. We are very excited to soon start construction of one of the most sophisticated rail factories, digital engineering and R&D sites in the UK, supporting local jobs and skills for the future. There’s a piece of Britain in everything we build.’ Siemens added that its new factory is being constructed ‘with the latest standards for highly efficient production, while the offices are designed to provide a modern, welcoming work environment to enable better collaboration and innovation for the UK railway. The interior will be modelled to account for the “new normal” with many open and collaboration and meeting spaces, better facilities, relaxation areas and improved technology. The site will be designed to blend in with its surroundings, and undergo an ecological assessment aiming for a 10 per cent net increase in biodiversity through the planting of native plants and the creation of wildlife habitats.’ Chippenham has been associated with railway signalling and associated technologies since the end of the nineteenth century, because the first works in the town was opened by signalling contractor Evans O’Donnell in 1897. Later, it was acquired by the Westinghouse Brake & Signalling Company.

The potential deadline for the closure of the Alstom works in Derby had been 31 January, and on that day rail minister Huw Merriman wrote to train manufacturers and operators, setting out plans for new or refurbished rolling stock, although the letter was not published until 22 February (writes Sim Harris). The main projects he listed as ‘current live competitions’ covered four operators, three of which are nationalised: Northern (up to 450 units or 1,000 vehicles), South Eastern (‘core order’ between 350 and 570 vehicles, with option for another 70) and Transpennine Express (29 units with option for another 26 – 174-330 vehicles). The only private sector operator in his ‘core’ list is Chiltern: (20-70 new or converted units – ‘nominally 90 vehicles’). Indicative contract award dates in each case are 2025, except that South Eastern could be December this year. Delivery dates range between 2027 and 2029. He also mentions further possibilities, such as Great Western replacing its Class 15x and 16x fleets, or orders from the devolved governments or open access operators.  At the end of February Alstom said it was still in discussions with Government about Derby, but whether Mr Merriman’s list influenced the postponement of closure is a matter for conjecture. We may also wonder about other details of this announcement. Consider: the letter was dated 31 January, and although it was not published then copies were apparently sent to the Railway Industry Association and the Rail Forum, as well as rolling stock builders and train operators. Mr Merriman’s text included a reassuring message: ‘The information in this letter is not confidential and may be freely shared.’ Mr Merriman himself was unusually modest about his rolling stock plans, and did not refer to them in the Bradshaw Address on 20 February, although he did talk about new passenger service contracts which are out for tender, and include ‘risk and reward’ clauses ‘designed to encourage growth’. Nobody else accepted his offer to talk about his new train proposals either. There is no trace of statements, press releases and so on from either RIA or the Rail Forum, and yet RIA in particular is often vocal about the lack of updates to the DfT’s Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline document, which was published in March 2018 and last revised in October 2019 which, as it pointed out, was ‘one year into CP6’. We will move from CP6 to CP7 at the end of this month, and yet nothing more has been said by the DfT. The four proposed rolling stock orders set out in the list of ‘current live competitions’ add up to around 2000 vehicles, which would be worth at least £4 billion. Great Western, and so on, would be on top of that. Worth a headline, you would think, in the general media, although let’s hope any reports would not have claimed that the Government was going to invest this money. As Railnews readers are well aware, under the present arrangements that would be a matter for the ROSCos, although the operators (mostly owned by government in this case) would be nominally liable for the leasing costs. Unless the structure has changed by the time these possibly mythical new trains appear, the liablity for the leases would really rest with the Treasury. But this is not the core point. Why was this letter written at all? If the polls are right, there will soon be a change of government, and if the Labour Party takes over it has said that it would renationalise the passenger railway, although new rolling stock would still be needed. And why did this letter make such a gentle landing? It may have given the Alstom works in Derby a little longer at least but, apart from that, perhaps no one in the industry believed it was worth discussion.

Regulated fares on most National Rail routes in England and Wales will rise by 4.9 per cent on Sunday, but fares on Transport for London and Merseyrail have been frozen, while the Mayor of London has announced that peak fares will not be charged on Fridays from 8 March, the day which has become the quietest for commuting. The suspension of peak rates is a trial which will run until 31 May, and has been agreed by National Rail operators for journeys on their trains within the TfL area. Scotland, meanwhile, has abolished all peak fares until June at least, but following an ‘extended freeze’ for season tickets and flexipasses, all ScotRail fares will increase by 8.7 per cent next month. TfL said its experiment with Friday fares would be ‘keenly watched by major cities looking to bounce back after the pandemic’, including public transport operators in other countries, who are also feeling the long-term economic effects of the lockdowns. Dutch Railways, for example, has warned that it will have to make ‘a significant increase’ to domestic fares in the Netherlands next year, because revenue has not returned to pre-Covid levels. The Government said its decision to keep the National Rail rise to 4.9 per cent was a ‘significant intervention’, because the increase is ‘considerably below’ the 9 per cent of last July’s RPI, which usually the basis of fare changes the following year. However, Michael Solomon Williams of the Campaign for Better Transport said: ‘Travelling by train is always greener than driving, and it’s getting even greener as more rail routes are electrified. It is often quicker too, but what we now need to do is to ensure it is also cheaper. Next week’s rail fare rise will do little to address the rising cost of rail travel, so we urge Government to expedite rail reforms to help make trains more affordable. Businesses can also do their bit to reduce transport emissions by having a “rail first” travel policy and encouraging employees to take the train when travelling with work.’

Another landslip is causing disruption, this time on the Chiltern main line from London Marylebone to Aylesbury via Harrow-on-the-Hill and Amersham. The slip, at Stoke Mandeville, is the latest in a series of earthworks problems which have affected trains in Kent and on the West Coast Main Line recently. Another slip has closed the railway which connects Bradford Forster Square with the Ilkley line, and the only station on this link, at Baildon, is expected to be closed until 18 March. Engineers from Network Rail closed one line north of Stoke Mandeville two days ago, in reaction to a track defect. An inspection of the area has now revealed that the embankment is moving. Network Rail said some 5,000 tonnes of material has slipped along a 20 metre section of the embankment after persistent heavy rain had weakened the earth beneath it. Emergency repairs will involve installing 120 specialist nine metre ‘soil nails’ to stabilise the area. To complete the work Network Rail engineers will close both tracks between Aylesbury and Amersham from 1 to 4 March, and buses will replace trains between Amersham and Aylesbury Vale Parkway. Infrastructure director Adam Checkley said: ‘I’m really sorry to passengers and local people affected by the landslip at Stoke Mandeville which is causing disruption to trains between Aylesbury and London Marylebone via Amersham. ‘Our major repairs will allow us to safely reopen the railway as quickly as possible and I want to urge passengers to check www.nationalrail.co.uk for the latest travel advice.’

A tunnelling machine on HS2 has completed a 16km journey by breaking through at the North Portal of the Chiltern Tunnel. The journey of TBM Florence has taken 2 years and 11 months, travelling at about 16 metres a day, but a train will travel through the tunnel in a few minutes when HS2 is open between London and Birmingham. Florence, which weighs in at 2,000 tonnes, has excavated 3 million cubic metres of material during the journey, which will be used to restore a grassland. Florence is one of 10 machines excavating 51km of tunnels, and was the first to be launched, in May 2021.  Two identical TBMs were used to create the twin-bore Chiltern Tunnel, which stretches from the South Portal near the M25 to South Heath in Buckinghamshire. A second TBM, named ‘Cecilia’, is almost at the end of its trip in the parallel tunnel, and is due to break through in the coming weeks. Rail minister Huw Merriman said: ‘This ground-breaking moment for HS2 demonstrates significant progress on the country’s largest infrastructure project, with “Florence” paving the way for faster, greener journeys between London and Birmingham while supporting hundreds of jobs and apprenticeships along the way. ‘Today’s breakthrough of HS2’s longest tunnel highlights the momentum behind the project and the achievement is testament to the hard work and dedication of the 450-strong team helping deliver the line that will transform rail travel for generations to come.’ Each TBM is an underground factory designed specifically for the geology of the Chilterns. Having bored another few metres each day, the TBM then lined the new section with precast concrete segments. Four similar TBMs are being used for the London approach tunnels, while another two will work on Birmingham’s Bromford Tunnel. Preparations are also underway for the launch of two more machines to excavate the Euston tunnels, although the fate of the terminus at Euston is still undecided and the first London terminus for HS2 will almost certainly be Old Oak Common. The breakthrough came a week after HS2 had published new research claiming that high speed rail will boost the West Midlands economy by £10 billion during the next 10 years. HS2 Ltd executive chairman Sir Jon Thompson said: ‘Today is an incredible day of HS2 and I’d like to thank the hundreds of people who’ve worked so hard over many years to make it happen. Once complete, HS2 will dramatically improve journeys between our two largest cities and also free up space on the existing main line for more local trains. ‘We’ve still got a lot of work to do, but historic moments like today really underline the huge amount of progress that’s been made and the fantastic engineering skills we have on the project.’

Cabinet meeting Siemens hosted Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and members of the cabinet at the Goole Rail Village in Yorkshire. The ministers had visited the north of England to hold a cabinet meeting, which was held in the Components Facility building at Goole. Before the meeting, the Prime Minister met Siemens Mobility’s UK & Ireland joint CEO Sambit Banerjee and spoke to a group of apprentice engineers and technicians about the construction of Piccadilly Line trains, which are being assembled at Goole for Transport for London. Budget message The Government must make long term funding certainty for public transport and active travel in city regions a priority in next week’s Spring Budget, the Urban Transport Group said. In a letter to chancellor Jeremy Hunt, the group of transport authorities said transport investment is key to ‘securing sustainable economic growth and good social outcomes for millions across the country’.   On the watch Northern is installing 86 new CCTV cameras at Manchester Victoria station. The operator said it will improve CCTV coverage at the station, including the entrance, concourse, two footbridges and platforms 1 to 6. Regional director Craig Harrop said: ‘We already have thousands of cameras at stations across our network and on board our trains but we are adding more with this £750,000 investment.’ Canal drained Network Rail engineers have completed a nine-day programme at the only sliding canal bridge in Britain, which is at Keadby, near Scunthorpe. They have worked around the clock from 17 February until the early hours of yesterday to strengthen one of the canal’s walls and remove rails and track equipment so that they could be replaced. A 24.5 tonne pre-cast concrete slab has been installed on the canal’s north wall to strengthen it. To do this, the engineers had to drain part of the Stainforth and Keadby canal using a limpet dam, a structure positioned on the side of the canal wall which created a water-tight seal so that the repairs could be carried out.

Landslip disruption Unstable earthworks are blocking or delaying train services between Twyford and Reading and between Rainham and Sittingbourne. Two of  the four running lines on the Great Western Main Line have been closed near Twyford because of the ‘state of some trees’ at the side of a cutting, believed to be Sonning, where unstable earth has been reported. Services are being delayed or cancelled because only two lines are open. Stopping trains are the worst affected, said GWR, which warned that the problem is ‘not easily resolved’. Meanwhile, Network Rail engineers discovered a 40 metre crack in an embankment at Newington on Friday night, and the line between Rainham and Sittingbourne will be closed for at least seven days while repairs are made. Southeastern said ‘limited’ bus services are running to replace trains. Cash for northern transport The Prime Minister is announcing a budget worth £4.7 billion for transport schemes outside big cities in the north of England, which he said will use money released by the cancellation of HS2 to Crewe and Manchester. Labour has criticised the announcement, which follows last autumn’s ‘Network North’ programme. Labour described it as a ‘back of a fag packet plan’ which included ‘reannouncements of projects they promised a decade ago’. Disputes settled in London and Northern Ireland Unite the union says it has reached agreement with London Underground over pay for its members. They have accepted a pay increase for 2023 of between 5.8 and 11 per cent, and the lowest paid grades are getting the largest rises. However, Unite has warned that ‘significant industrial issues’ remain, and that several other disputes are continuing with Transport for London. In Northern Ireland, a three-day strike by train and bus staff at Translink has been suspended after Unite, GMB and Siptu said they would put an improved pay offer to their members. The walkouts would have been staged tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday. Go-Ahead Group denies sale report The Go-Ahead Group, which possesses a majority share in several British passenger rail contracts including Govia Thameslink Railway, has denied a report that it could be up for sale. Canadian pension fund OPTrust has stakes in Go-Ahead’s owners, Australian Kinetic and Spanish Globalvia, and the Sunday Times claimed that OPTrust had hired investment bankers to explore a potential sale. The chief executives of Go-Ahead and its owners said the reports were ‘misleading’ and created an ’incorrect impression’.

Governments usually behave as if they will be in power indefinitely, which may explain why a ‘draft’ Rail Reform Bill has been published. Bills receive three ‘Readings’ in the Commons: the first is a formality, and the second is the opportunity for a full debate. If the Bill passes this time it goes to ‘committee stage’, in which a group of MPs can take outside evidence and propose amendments. At the end there is a third reading, after more debate, and then the Bill goes to the Lords, where the process is repeated. Finally, if all is well the Bill receives Royal Assent and becomes law. In other words, a Bill is usually taken apart under a strong light, although if time runs out there can be a ‘guillotine motion’, which is designed to save time and, bluntly, cut the cackle. On this occasion, however, the Government thinks that the Bill needs ‘pre-legislative scrutiny’, which accounts for its draft status. After due consideration, it would have to start at the beginning, with a First Reading. We do not know the result of the next election. At the moment, it is being reported that the Conservatives are set to lose. If that happens, this Bill will be lost with them. Labour has said clearly that it intends to put the passenger railway back into public ownership, and the simplest (and cheapest) way to do that is to let the present contracts run to their expiry dates. Does this draft Bill tell us much about the Government’s railway reforms? It is a short Bill, just 32 pages. It confirms that there would be a Great British Railways, which would take over the awarding and management of passenger contracts from the transport secretary. It calls these contracts ‘franchises’, which is a word we haven’t seen for a while, but says nothing about the form these franchises will take. In particular, there is no indication of the degree of commercial risk operators will be expected to tolerate. We remember how a number of the first-generation franchises fell off the rails because their losses became too great, ranging from Connex South Eastern in the early days, through GNER (Mk2) and National Express East Coast, to Virgin Trains East Coast. It is also a matter of record that the market was becoming cool towards rail franchising, and this was demonstrated by an increasing shortage of bidders after 2012, when the Intercity West Coast competition had to be cancelled because the Department for Transport had got its sums wrong. More recently, the DfT fell out, apparently irreversibly, with Stagecoach and Virgin in a dispute over their responsibility for railway pensions. These days Virgin sells tickets for other peoples’ trains, while the only railed vehicles still run by Stagecoach are Sheffield trams. Reassuring the market is going to be quite a task, once the present system of collecting the operators’ revenue and paying their costs comes to an end. If it does not, the status of the private sector will be reduced more or less to consultants, who – it may be hoped – will come up with some good ideas from time to time. On the other hand, if they do not benefit from introducing innovations, why should they bother? Even so, there is still some enthusiasm in the the private sector. One insider remarked recently that his managing director is tired of the DfT, and ‘wants his train set back’. We do know that this Bill keeps Network Rail and converts it into GBR by giving it extra responsibilities, but apart from that most of the details have yet to be revealed. It is now up to the electors. They will decide in due course what tomorrow’s train set will be like. 

The publication of the Government’s draft Rail Reform Bill has been given a broad welcome by much of the rail industry, although there have been some exceptions. The House of Commons Transport Committee has announced an inquiry in which it will scrutinise the details of the Bill, which sets out the basis for setting up Great British Railways. This would be the public name for what would be legally known as the Integrated Rail Body, or IRB. One revelation is that the IRB will not absorb Network Rail, as had been thought. Instead, Network Rail will become the IRB and take over various functions, including the awards of passenger contracts which have been made by the transport secretary since the Strategic Rail Authority was abolished in 2006. Such a change will need primary legislation, and this draft Bill starts to pave the way for that, but Labour has expressed doubt that this Bill will ever become law, because the party says that it would gradually renationalise the passenger railway in England by not renewing contracts when they expire, as has already happened in Scotland and Wales. The audience at the Bradshaw Address in London last night heard from rail minister Hue Merriman and Labour’s shadow rail minister Stephen Morgan. Speaking at the event, which is organised by the private sector lobby group Rail Partners, the group’s chief executive Andy Bagnall told the speakers that, ‘without actual legislation to create Great British Railways, the central tenets of the Plan for Rail are in the sidings’ and that ‘we don’t agree that a public monopoly is the best way to fix the industry’. Railway Industry Association chief executive Darren Caplan said: ‘Last May, RIA and 70 of our members wrote to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak about the need to take the establishment of Great British Railways forward. So whilst we would have wanted a full Transport Bill providing for GBR progressing already, it is good that the Government is at least taking this preliminary step towards unifying track and train, and developing a “guiding mind” and a long-term plan for the railway. ‘At a time when rail demand is showing a steady and continuing upturn, and with the RIA-commissioned Steer Report published just this week reporting that passenger numbers will grow between 37 per cent and 97 per cent to 2050, the Government needs to accelerate the legislative process without delay.’ Silviya Barrett from the charity Campaign for Better Transport said: ‘We welcome the publication of this draft bill, which is a much-needed step towards long-awaited rail reform, now we need to see it move swiftly through to the next stage. In the meantime, we urge the Government to move forward with changes that do not require legislation, including meaningful reforms to ticketing that deliver actual benefits and better value for passengers.’ The chairman of the House of Commons Transport Committee Iain Stewart has also welcomed the publication of the draft Bill. He continued: ‘Proposals to set up Great British Rail as a guiding mind for the rail sector have been broadly supported, and legislation to get these important reforms on track has been long awaited. The Transport Committee will soon launch an inquiry to scrutinise the draft Bill in detail and without delay. We will welcome views from across the sector, and will look to complete our work in good time before Parliament’s summer recess.’ Alex Robertson, who is chief executive Transport Focus, warned that ‘Passengers will judge these reforms based on whether they deliver more punctual, reliable services and better value for money. They also want to know who is in charge, so today’s step towards setting up Great British Railways is welcome. ‘We look forward to playing our role in making sure passenger interests are at the heart of how the changes are implemented.’ However, RMT general secretary Mick Lynch was not enthusiastic, saying: ‘This bill in its current form will do nothing to address the 30-year long decline in our railways since privatisation. ‘The government's priority is to support privatised companies so they can continue to extract huge profits and pay dividends to wealthy shareholders.’ TSSA general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust said: ‘The Tories are once again trying to rearrange the deck chairs after 14 years of their repeated failures.  ‘The draft Rail Reform Bill is completely inadequate. It does not address the damage that privatisation has done to our railways and infrastructure. It does not offer the fundamental changes that we need to deliver a fair deal for passengers and transport workers. The Conservative Government are simply on the wrong track. ‘The only way to sort out the mess unleashed by the Tories’ botched privatisation of our railways is public ownership, full stop. Thankfully, Labour is now committed to this, which can't come soon enough.’