The West Coast Main Line has been blocked by a landslip between Coventry and Rugby, and up trains are being replaced by buses on this section. Down Avanti West Coast trains towards Coventry are being disrupted, and London Northwestern trains are not running in either direction between Northampton and Coventry. Network Rail engineers have been clearing vegetation from the railway embankment at the site of the slip, so that the scale of the damage can be assessed. London Northwestern Railway customer experience director Jonny Wiseman said: ‘This landslip has resulted in a significant amount of earth movement next to the railway, meaning it is not safe to run trains through the area until Network Rail has completed emergency earthworks.’ Network Rail operations director Phil Barnes said: ‘“With one of the two tracks in this area closed to trains, a reduced service is running through the area and we apologise for the disruption.’ National Rail is predicting that the disruption will continue for at least the rest of the day.

Lines closed The lines between Southampton Central and Havant, Eastleigh and Portsmouth Harbour and also between Southampton Central and Portsmouth Harbour will be closed from today until Friday, while Network Rail engineers upgrade the railway in the Portsmouth and Fareham areas. At Portsmouth Harbour engineers will renew 1094m of track. They will also refurbish 592m of rails at Vernon Bridge and replace sleepers and ballast in the Fareham area, while signals will be upgraded between St Denys and Swanwick. Buses are replacing trains operated by South Western Railway, Great Western Railway and Southern. Service returnsHourly Transport for Wales services are returning between Chester, Runcorn, Helsby, Frodsham and Liverpool this morning. The number of daily trains on the route is increasing from 15 to 30, and they will be formed of new Class 197 CAF units built at Newport in south Wales. Services on the route were launched in 2019 and call at Liverpool South Parkway, for John Lennon Airport. Higher penaltyTransport for London is increasing the penalty fare for travelling without paying from £80 to £100, following a similar move by the Department for Transport on National Rail in England. TfL said it prosecuted 19,614 people for fare evasion in 2023, an increase of 56 per cent on the previous year. It estimates that fraudulent travel costs around £150 million a year. Revenue disputes can also be a cause of aggression by passengers, and all frontline staff have been equipped with body worn video.

Train productionSiemens says that four out of five new trains for the Piccadilly Line of London Underground will be assembled in West Yorkshire, rather than just 50 per cent. The company said it is in the final stages of fitting out its factory in Goole as part of its ‘rail village’ in which up to £200 million is being invested and up to 700 jobs created. Lines closed The lines between Southampton Central and Havant, Eastleigh and Portsmouth Harbour and also between Southampton Central and Portsmouth Harbour will be closed from today until Friday, while Network Rail engineers upgrade the railway in the Portsmouth and Fareham areas. At Portsmouth Harbour engineers will renew 1094m of track. They will also refurbish 592m of rails at Vernon Bridge and replace sleepers and ballast in the Fareham area, while signals will be upgraded between St Denys and Swanwick. Buses are replacing trains operated by South Western Railway, Great Western Railway and Southern. Service returnsHourly Transport for Wales services are returning between Chester, Runcorn, Helsby, Frodsham and Liverpool this morning. The number of daily trains on the route is increasing from 15 to 30, and they will be formed of new Class 197 CAF units built at Newport in south Wales. Services on the route were launched in 2019 and call at Liverpool South Parkway, for John Lennon Airport. Higher penaltyTransport for London is increasing the penalty fare for travelling without paying from £80 to £100, following a similar move by the Department for Transport on National Rail in England. TfL said it prosecuted 19,614 people for fare evasion in 2023, an increase of 56 per cent on the previous year. It estimates that fraudulent travel costs around £150 million a year. Revenue disputes can also be a cause of aggression by passengers, and all frontline staff have been equipped with body worn video.

The long-running battery train project on Great Western Railway is set to move forward this spring, when trial operation begins on a branch line in west London. GWR took over the development of battery units based on former London Underground trains when their innovator Vivarail went into administration at the end of 2022. Vivarail had been demonstrating the converted units for several years at its Warwickshire site. When the company failed GWR bought rolling stock and test equipment, and also employed some specialist staff who had been working at Vivarail. The tests on the Greenford branch will involve a short length of conductor rail at West Ealing station which is used to charge the batteries and is only live when a train is over it. The technology is dubbed FastCharge, because only 3.5 minutes is needed to recharge the batteries with up to 2000kW. Conductor rails and lineside battery banks have been installed at West Ealing in preparation for the start of the trials, which will not include operation in public service for now. GWR engineering director Dr Simon Green said: ‘This work has never been done before and we’re leading the way to help the Department for Transport and Network Rail understand what is required to roll out this technology. ‘Only now has there been a combination of battery capability and charging technology that enables a branch line train to operate to the same timetable as a diesel unit, and yet still charge safely and with minimal impact on the local grid power supply. ‘Our specialist engineering team have been working round-the-clock to ensure that this FastCharge system has been fully tested and that there will be sufficient charge for the train to operate to the timetable on the Greenford branch. ‘Each branch line will vary but this is an incredibly exciting innovation and I’m proud that GWR is at the forefront of the railway’s commitment to phase out diesel-only traction by 2040.’ Battery powered trains have been tried out from time to time ever since the nineteenth century, and British Railways experimented with the technology on the Ballater branch in Scotland between 1958 and 1966, using lead acid batteries. More recently, passengers were carried for several weeks on the Manningtree to Harwich Town line in Essex in early 2015, using an adapted Bombardier Class 379 unit. The branch is electrified, and the experimental unit recharged its battery rafts from the 25kV overhead. Battery trains supplied by Stadler last year are being used on Merseyrail, to bridge the non-electrified section between Kirkby and the new station at Headbolt Lane.

The Mayors of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands have set out three alternatives to HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester, which was scrapped by the Prime Minister last October. Andy Burnham and Andy Street announced their ideas at a joint press conference in Birmingham. They have been joined by former Network Rail chief executive and HS2 chairman Sir David Higgins to prepare proposals which would mainly be funded by the private sector. They have formed a consortium which includes engineers such as Arup, Skanska and Mace while they have also been able to brief transport secretary Mark Harper, who is keeping ‘an open mind’. Yesterday’s media event was staged on the same day that the Commons Public Accounts Committee had published a highly critical report about the remaining section of HS2 between London and Birmingham, describing it as ‘very poor value for money’ following the repeated cutbacks. Andy Street said the cancellation of HS2 Phases 2A and 2B to Crewe and Manchester was a ‘tragedy’, and that the West Coast Main Line and M6 had no spare capacity, which meant alternatives were needed. Andy Burnham said ‘doing nothing’ was not an option, because that would damage economic growth. He continued: ‘The country won’t be able to move in a timely way if we just do nothing,’ adding that relying on the existing rail and road links would leave the country with ‘a serious transport headache for the rest of this century’. The options are to build a new railway on the same alignment as HS2 but one designed for a lower maximum speed to reduce costs, to upgrade the West Coast Main Line, or to add new WCML sections, effectively bypassing bottlenecks. HS2 has been designed for 360km/h. Andy Street explained: ‘The key difference is obviously the question of speed. A lot of the cost in HS2, if you ask the design engineers, has come from this very uncompromising point about the speed.  Andy Burnham said it was ‘significant’ that ministers had given permission for HS2 and Network Rail to be involved in preparing their proposals.

Updated 13.15The Commons Public Accounts Committee has published a highly critical report about the latest developments at HS2, which it says is now ‘very poor value for money’ after Phases 2A and 2B to Crewe and Manchester were cancelled by the Prime Minister last October. The Committee says the remaining Phase 1 between London and Birmingham ‘will not be value for money, as its total costs significantly outweigh its benefits’. The Department for Transport had told the Committee that it was still better to complete Phase 1 – a calculation made by excluding the £23 billion spent to date, and including as a benefit of the project avoiding approximately £11 billion of remediation costs which would be incurred if the last section was also cancelled. The Committee has remained unconvinced, saying that it has been ‘left with little assurance over the calculations’. The Committee’s chair Dame Meg Hillier said: ‘The decision to cancel HS2’s Northern leg was a watershed moment that raises urgent and unanswered questions, laid out in our report. What happens now to the Phase 2 land, some of which has been compulsorily purchased? Can we seriously be actively working towards a situation where our high-speed trains are forced to run slower than existing ones when they hit older track? Most importantly, how can the Government now ensure that HS2 deliver the best possible value for the taxpayer? ‘HS2 is the biggest ticket item by value on the Government’s books for infrastructure projects. As such, it was crying out for a steady hand at the tiller from the start. But, here we are after over a decade of our warnings on HS2’s management and spiralling costs – locked into the costly completion of a curtailed rump of a project and many unanswered questions and risks still attached to delivery of even this curtailed project.’ Responding to the report, Lord McLoughlin, who chairs Transport for the North, said: ‘We know the North has huge economic potential, but poor connectivity is holding the region back. Transport for the North’s ambition is to close the productivity gap, decarbonise surface transport and improve opportunities for all. That requires transformational investment in our transport system, and none more so than in our railways. ‘The decision to stop HS2 at Birmingham is a missed opportunity for the North, and the country as whole. It wasn’t just the improved North-South connectivity it would have enabled, but the extra capacity it provided, both in terms of the new high-speed line and in the space freed up on the existing network to run more services. This would have benefited passengers and freight. ‘Transport for the North’s evidence shows those capacity and connectivity needs haven’t changed, and we need still need that transformational investment in pan-regional transport to support levelling up. We will continue to work with government to address these challenges and deliver the benefits citizens and businesses across the North need.’ Railway Industry Association chief executive Darren Caplan said: ‘Today’s report by the Public Accounts Committee raises many questions which remain unanswered, not least of which is how HS2 going to operate as a railway. Ministers urgently need to make decisions on this point and others to ensure both sunk and future investment deliver value for money for taxpayers and the railway. ‘It remains RIA’s view that the full benefits of HS2 can only be realised by building the full HS2. However, going forward RIA and our members are committed to working with the Government on the trajectory of future rail investment and how this meets long-term demand for rail capacity. It is imperative that options are kept open as the scope of work on this is developed.’

Transport for London has launched a consultation into a proposed extension of the Docklands Light Railway from Gallions Reach to a new station at Beckton Riverside, and then through a tunnel under the river to Thamesmead. A further section beyond Thamesmead is also possible, towards Erith. If the new line went ahead, it would echo plans to connect Thamesmead to a rail network which go back to the 1970s, when the second phase of the Fleet Line, which became the Jubilee Line, was intended to reach the riverside development. The latest proposal is connected with the building of up to 30,000 homes along the proposed route. TfL said alternative forms of transport, such as buses, would not provide enough capacity. It added that the scheme would ‘build on experience from 2009 when the DLR was extended to Woolwich Arsenal, tunnelling beneath the River Thames, with housing growth following in areas including Woolwich, Canning Town, and the Royal Docks’. Forecasts suggest that London’s population will have grown significantly by 2041, and that there will be at least an additional 800,000 jobs in the capital, which will create the need for more housing. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: ‘Although we have started a record-breaking 116,000 plus genuinely affordable homes and completed more homes of all types since any time since the 1930s, the demand for housing in London shows no sign of slowing down. ‘Extending the DLR will unlock huge opportunities for London, support tens of thousands of new homes, deliver new transport connections, and boost the economy, supporting the creation of thousands of jobs. Enabling the infrastructure needed for the capital’s growth is key to building a better, more prosperous London for everyone.’ The aim is to agree an affordable scheme by next year, so that construction can begin in 2028. The new extension could open in the early 2030s. The consultation runs until 18 March. The views of the public will then be considered as part of the preparation of an Outline Business Case.

A new offer of cheap rail travel was launched on 23 January, with the jaunty title of the ‘Great British Rail Sale’. It is a long time since the organiser of this announcement, the Department for Transport, permitted the phrase ‘British Rail’ to be used in connection with the modern railway, but it had to happen in the end. The Sale itself ran from 23 to 29 January, and offered ‘over a million discounted tickets’ to ‘destinations across England and Wales, as well as on cross-border trips into Scotland’, for journeys between 30 January and 15 March. It was surely rather strange that such an offer should come from a government department at all. In the old days the Ministry of Transport (as it then was) would never have done such a thing on behalf of British Rail, which may have been a state-owned corporation but was mostly allowed to run its own business – up to a point. So while the British Railways Board may have been forced to negotiate (often in vain) for capital funds, ministers and civil servants never sold tickets on its behalf. On the other hand, we are pleased to report in the February edition of Railnews (published Thursday) that legislation authorising Great British Railways is apparently going to make a first, timid appearance (for ‘pre-legislative scrutiny’, whatever that may be) in the present session of Parliament, but in the meantime our industry might as well be called Westminster Railways, and be done with it. It is certainly Westminster Railways which is behind the latest silly attempt to reorganise ticketing on LNER, which is (of course) state-owned. The new deal, which starts today, abolishes such things as ordinary off-peak returns, and makes it necessary for passengers to book ahead (even if only by five minutes) for anything except full-price Anytime travel. Booking ahead also means a compulsory reserved seat. If you don’t like the position you have been given by a blank bulkhead, facing backwards, tough luck. So much for the walk-up railway. If HM Treasury (which is the underlying controller of Westminster Railways) had sat up all night trying to work out how to put people off from travelling by train, it could hardly have done better than this.

Train services on a main line in the Scottish central belt have returned to normal today, after work to prevent rocks falling on the track. The £1 million project was carried out by Network Rail at Ratho, but while it was under way services from Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street, Bathgate, Stirling and Inverness had all been disrupted. Network Rail and its contractor QTS finished work last night in time for the start of services this morning. The four-day project involved removing more than 200 tonnes of rock and soil from the rock face, which is 100 metres long and and 10 metres high. Engineers have installed specialist netting and over 160 three-metre metal rock anchors above the railway to reduce the likelihood of stones falling during freezing weather. Scotland’s Railway route director Liam Sumpter said: ‘Our engineers have worked non-stop since Sunday night, removing tonnes of rock and installing new netting to help secure the area. ‘This project could not have been delivered without a short closure of the line, and we’ve completed it as quickly as possible to get our customers back on the move. ’I want to thank our engineers for their hard work and our passengers for their patience.’

Trains have started running again between Ebbw Vale Town and Newport, after a long project to upgrade the line so that it had enough capacity for Newport services as well as those to Cardiff Central. Deputy climate change minister Lee Waters is launching the new service today at Llanhilleth station. Thirty trains a day will now run between Newport and Ebbw Vale, after the Welsh Government lent £70 million to Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council to pay for infrastructure improvements, which included more passing loops. Lee Waters said: ‘I’m so pleased the service between Ebbw Vale and Newport is finally in place. It has taken a long time and required a lot of investment but the doubling of the frequency of trains will make a difference to all the communities along the route. This would not have happened without the Welsh Government stepping in with investment. ‘At a time when we are used to big infrastructure projects going over time and over budget we should applaud the fact this complicated project has been on time and within budget. My huge thanks to Blaenau Gwent council, Network Rail and Transport for Wales for working together to pull this off. Passenger services to Ebbw Vale restarted in 2008 after they had been withdrawn in 1962. Stations were reopened at Rogerstone, Risca and Pontymister, Crosskeys, Newbridge, Llanhilleth and then at a new park and ride site, Ebbw Vale Parkway. New trains are due to be introduced on the line in the spring.