News from the East Anglian Branch of Railfuture, Edited by Martin Thorne and Jerry Alderson.
Railfuture News Snippets 19 - 23/11/1999
- RAIL INVESTMENT [all issues]
- AIRPORT LINKS [all issues]
- RAIL ROUTES [all issues]
- RAIL FREIGHT [all issues]
A reminder that the branch meeting will take place on Saturday 27th November 1999 at 14:00 at Little St. Mary's Church in Cambridge. A representative from WAGN will speak.
RAIL INVESTMENT
Anglia Railways praised for delivering new rolling stock
Keywords: [AngliaRailways]
Anglia Railways has been praised as one of only three firms to meet an upgrade deadline. In November 1998, rail operators told deputy PM John Prescott they would bring in 500 new carriages within the year. Only 93 have started running. Anglia railways, which ordered 24 new carriages, has won praise as the last of those comes into service next month.
AIRPORT LINKS
Stansted airport Transport Forum has own Railway Working Group
Keywords: [StanstedAirport]
The Stansted Airport Transport Forum has its own Rail Working Group headed by Julian Drury, Head of Business
Planning WAGN Railways. The Working Group consists of the following organisations:
* BAA Railways
* BAA Stansted
* WAGN
* Central Trains
* Railtrack
* County Councils
* Government via SSRA/DETR
Heathrow Airport is also represented. The are two missing organisations. Stansted Airport has a large through put of cargo but no one on the Working group represents freight interests, also Anglia railways which provides a Rail-Air Link bus service from Colchester is also not represented.
RAIL ROUTES
Petition by the Cambridge-Haverhill-Sudbury Reopening Campaign supported by the public
The petition at Haverhill for this reopening has now reached 5,000 signatures. The aim is to collect 10,000 signatures. St.Edmunsbury Borough Council have voted for £5,000 towards a feasibility study and hope other local authorities will also contribute towards this feasibility study.
RAIL FREIGHT
Freight in crisis
The following appeared in the "Commercial Motor" the main trade paper for the road industry. Rail freight is in crisis with industry experts warning that is is about to lose its brief window of opportunity to snatch business from road hauliers.
With only 3 or 4 years before the government is expected to sanction 44-tonne lorries on UK roads for domestic work - strengthening the cost advantage road generally holds over rail - customers worried by the lack of capacity for rail freight are questioning the point of any future rail.
Sarah Crockford, rail freight expert at the Freight Transport Association, says customers which have conducted rail-freight trails, as well as "existing very, very large users of rail freight", could be about to decide against any further investment in rail sidings.
Uncertainty is further emphasised by last week's lambasting by Railtrack by Rail Regulator Tom Winsor: he has threatened to take sanctions against the track and signal owner if it continues to fail to produce track investment plans for ending freight bottlenecks on the WCML. A failing rail-freight sector would disappoint hauliers keen to work in this area. Road to rail consultant Stuart Chandler accuses Railtrack of "turning of a lot of potential customers" by dumping plans to develop the Piggyback scheme, in which 4M high trailers could have been switched from road to rail.
Railfuture East Anglia Branch News Snippets 19 - 23/11/1999
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