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East Anglia Branch News - Snippets Issue 195 - 14/09/2009

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News from the East Anglian Branch of Railfuture, Edited by Martin Thorne and Jerry Alderson.

Railfuture News Snippets 195 - 14/09/2009



The next branch meeting will be held on 26th September 2009 at Chapel Field Methodist Chapel, Chapelfield Road, Norwich, NR2 1SD. Steven Ashling, who worked for Network Rail's East Anglia region and is a director of the North Norfolk Railway will be giving a personal talk about the local railway infrastructure, its strengths, weaknesses, problems and prospects. Mr Ashling will also discuss the North Norfolk Railway's project to reinstate the level crossing at Sheringham, which he has been closely involved with. For details of the venue see http://www.bertrams.freeserve.co.uk.

Branch chairman Peter Wakefield thanks Railfuture members for the offers of help to perform a station count at Downham Market on Thursday 17th September. A full schedule of counters has now been drawn up to cover all trains that day.

From 1st October First Capital Connect will be switching its 'Park and Pay By Phone' service to use RingGo. Their website is http://www.ringgo.co.uk.

March Street Pride, together with Friends of March Station and people performing Community Service will be holding another vegetation clearance and tidying up session at March station on Saturday 19th September from 10:00 until 13:00. At the last session at the beginning of August 2009, 24 people were in attendance including NXEA's Area Manager for stations between Elsenham and Whittlesea who also pitched in. Even March's Mayor turned up.

Susan van de Ven, who is the Liberal Democrat councillor for Meldreth on South Cambs District Council is in the process of setting up a user group for the stations between Cambridge and Royston, i.e. Foxton, Shepreth and Meldreth.

Virgin are offering customers who take part in the £15 weekend upgrade the chance to be entered into a competition to win a cab ride in Pendolino. This gives passengers extra impetus to upgrade by offering a very unique, money can't buy prize. The idea came from a driver at Preston, as part of the company's 'Getting more commercial' initiative.


STATIONS
New £45m station near Chelmsford is proposed

A public exhibition for a new 4,000 home development near to Chelmsford has been shown to nearby residents. After this consultation the proposals will be submitted to Chelmsford Borough Council. The proposals include a new £45m railway station to open by 2015. With 1,400 car parking spaces it should relieve pressure on road congestion and car parking at Chelmsford station, along with two passing loops to allow passenger trains to overtake freight trains.

Downham Market station will have footbridge to replace barrow crossing

Keywords: [DownhamMarketStation]

Network Rail intends to construct a £1.5m footbridge at Downham Market over the two electrified lines. The present ungated barrow crossing, which has red lights that are frequently ignored by passengers and is one of the highest risk crossings on the rail network, will be closed. The footbridge will be to the north of the level crossing (to avoid a high footbridge because of the OHLE) but this will necessitate a longer walk. In addition, a small garden are will be lost. A planning application has just been submitted and if passed the footbridge will be in use by summer 2011.

Waterbeach station improvements continue

Keywords: [WaterbeachStation]

Brand new waiting shelters have been erected on both platforms in the last month, with the 'up' one replacing an inadequate bus shelter and the 'down' replacing a vandalised shelter of the type used at Cambridge station. There are now four benches on each platform (as there are on all Fen Line stations) and a replacement ticket machine on the 'down' platform is to be installed once the new CCTV system is working, which is planned for September.

ESTA analyses responses from Lowestoft station relocation survey

Keywords: [LowestoftStation]

ESTA has started to analyse the results of its on-train survey during the week of 10th-16th August, when passengers travelling to or from Lowestoft were asked a number of questions to establish whether they would find it easier, or more difficult, if the station were moved 450 metres inland. 785 questionnaires were completed, which represents more than a thousand passengers, since many were couples or families. Not surprisingly in a peak holiday week, more people were travelling to, than from, Lowestoft. ESTA expects that the second part of its survey, which begins on 20th September, is likely to cover more business, commuter and student traffic. ESTA plans to issue a report later this autumn. The survey has received financial support from Railfuture, to which ESTA is affiliated.

Proposal for "Cambridge Gateway Link" to Cambridge station avoiding Station Road

Keywords: [CambridgeStation]

The proposed Cambridge Gateway Link road into Cambridge station would allow buses, pedestrians and cyclists to travel from the Hills Road/Brooklands Avenue junction to the railway station without using the congested Station Road. Whilst this will be good news for rail users, controversy has arisen because an application has been made to knock down 127 and 127a Hills Road, plus part of the garden of the Earl of Derby pub.


RAIL FRANCHISES
Richard Bowker speaks about National Express' withdrawal from the East Coast franchise

According to an article in the Daily Telegraph, Richard Bowker claims that said he spent months trying to negotiate a deal Department for Transport to extricated National Express from its £1,400m East Coast contract (running a management contract before handing the franchise back), while allowing the group, for a fee, to retain its East Anglia and c2c services. He claims that on 1st May 2009 (when Geoff Hoon was still Transport Secretary) the two sides signed an agreement to work towards a deal by the end of that month. However, the DfT then took the deal off the table. Prior to succeeding Phil White as NX Chief Executive, Richard Bowker had run Partnerships for Schools, a government body overseen by then education minister and now Transport Secretary Lord Adonis.

At the moment there is still no date for the government's company to take over running the ICEC service, although it is certain to occur before the end of the year. Meanwhile it is reported that Lord Adonis has now offered a deal to Stagecoach on c2c and East Anglia in return for about £100m.

Stagecoach issues response on takeover of NXEA and c2c franchises from National Express

Following the financial difficulties of the National Express group, primarily caused by the NXEC rail franchise and a Spanish acquisition, the group has been the subject of a takeover bid by a consortium consisting of CVC Capital Partners and the Cosmen family. This would see the group broken up with the UK rail and bus (but not coach) businesses being sold off. Clearly this would affect the NXEA and c2c franchises, which the DfT has considered (but is probably not legally able) terminating. On 3rd September Stagecoach has confirmed that it is in exclusive discussions with the consortium to take over the two franchises, though not the failing NXEC one.

If successful, and if its own shareholders agree to the takeover, Stagecoach will have to make a payment to the DfT, which can veto changes of ownership of TOCs. The DfT has not yet confirmed that the performance conditions that must be met for the '7+3' East Anglia rail franchise to be extended from 2011 to 2014 have been satisfied.

East Anglia train operators all fall into the bottom half of the performance league table

All four train operators serving East Anglia have punctuality performance (as measured by the Public Performance Measure) for period 5 (26th July to 22nd August 2009) less than the average of 94.0% trains within five or 10 minutes (depending on service) of scheduled arrival time at their destination. The figures (for all services run by the operator) are:
* National Express East Anglia: 93.7%
* First Capital Connect: 93.2%
* East Midland Trains: 92.8%
* Arriva Cross Country: 91.0%

Good news for NXEA is that a recent mystery shopper exercise conducted at Norwich station awarded 100% for customer service, information provision and cleanliness.


EAST WEST RAIL LINK
Lord Adonis meets representatives of East West Rail consortium and asks to know how he could help to make it happen

Keywords: [EastWestRail]

On 2nd September representatives of the East West Rail Consortium along with Phyllis Starkey MP and Evan Harris MP met Lord Adonis, Secretary of State for Transport, at the DfT's offices in London to discuss progress on the western section of the East West rail link.

Lord Adonis said that in his view the project was a great scheme had he wanted to know how he could help to make it happen. The Consortium representatives explained to him that there was potential to obtain around £50-60m of contributions from private developers for new housing but contributions could not be levied on housing projects that had already received planning consent. However, the transport component of the Regional Funding Advice is another potential source of funding, and the rail link has been identified as a regional priority by the Regional Transport Board, and the Consortium stressed that government support for the scheme would help to secure this funding. Network Rail's Great Western Route Utilisation Study has recognised the importance of reopening the line between Oxford and Bletchley and envisages utilisation of the Bletchley to Bedford route for freight connections to the Midland Mainline.

The cost of the western section would be reduced by £60-70m if the Chiltern Railways Evergreen 3 project, which proposes a high-quality route from Marylebone to Oxford, goes ahead.

The meeting agreed that further work needs to be conducted by 2013 in order to include the scheme within Network Rail's contractual 2014-2019 Control Period 5 funding for schemes. The Consortium intends to develop a fully-costed programme leading to a 2014 start date.


RAIL DEPOTS
Whitemoor Yard expansion to create track material recycling centre

Keywords: [WhitemoorYard]

On Thursday 17th September Cambridgeshire County Council is expected to support phase two of Network Rail's Whitemoor project, the creation of a national track material recycling centre. The council would then write to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government recommending that permission be granted.

The £30 million scheme on 62 acres of land already owned by Network Rail will see 16 new sidings and two loco sidings in addition to the existing 18 kilometres of sidings created for train maintenance, and would turn Whitemoor Yard into a world-class depot, which will be used to dismantle, clean and recycle sleepers, rails and fastenings for reuse. The majority of used sleepers and all contaminated track ballast are currently sent to landfill. There will also be a switch and crossings recycling shed which will store, process and weld useable parts.

The March recycling centre will serve most of this side of the country. For comparison, Westbury railway yard (in NR's Western Region) is another new track materials recycling centre, which will cost £8m and handle 25% of Britain's track. It and has already received council permission and should be open by spring 2010.


RAIL FREIGHT
First GBRf moves highest-ever number of containers from Felixstowe port

Keywords: [FelixstowePort]

First GBRf moved a record 2,140 containers from at Felixstowe during the week of 22nd-28th August 2009, which broke its record of 2,091 set a week earlier. These figures are up a third on the 2008. The freight company has been operating at the port for seven years, and has just celebrated its tenth anniversary.


GUIDED BUSWAY
Relentless bad news dogs the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway

The lean news period of mid-July to mid-September, when Parliament is in recess, has seen as series of critical news reports in the Cambridge News and Hunts Post newspapers. These have focused on delays in the busway's opening, disruption caused, embarrassing incidents (a cow on the track causing a 'moosense'), questions about the quality of construction and broken promises from the public inquiry back in 2004.

The latest revelation, which was discovered by the opposition Liberal Democrats who have always opposed the busway, is the inability to provide inter-available ticketing from day one, supposedly because the smart-card technology is not yet in place. Section 4.67 of the Transport Assessment submitted to the public inquiry stated "An inter-operator ticketing system is proposed which will enable passengers to **catch the first CGB service that arrives** irrespective of operator. This will be a major benefit over existing services where passengers are restricted to a single operator." However, passengers have to buy tickets from machine at the busway stops as on-board payment is not possible and this means that passengers may wait at the stop as a bus passes them because their ticket is not valid. It is understood that both the bus operators have been ordered to paint their buses the same colour so passengers will not even have time to purchase a ticket for the correct bus before it arrives.

Whilst passengers may be able to use the northern section, built on the former Cambridge-St.Ives railway line, from November 2009, there is still no planned opening date for the link from Cambridge railway station to Addenbrooke's Hospital whilst work on the Trumpington cutting, leading to Trumpington park and ride, is making slow progress owing to issues with drainage and a major gas main running under it. Work has started on the route south of Hobson's Brook with a ditch being dug for a few hundred metres southwards for drainage. Meanwhile, track has been laid from just south of Cambridge station to well beyond Long Road bridge to the start of the spur to Addenbrooke's Hospital, and the tracklaying machine is now making its way up the new busway bridge over the mainline ready to work on the bridge during a planned railway possession.


PRESERVED RAILWAYS
Mid-Norfolk Railway takes a steam train to Hoe to promote the extension and encourage sleeper sponsorship

Keywords: [MidNorfolkRailway]

Sunday 30th August 2009 was an important date in the Mid-Norfolk Railway's history as it saw the first steam train reach Hoe Level Crossing since March 1962. After a day pulling passenger trains between Dereham and Wymondham Abbey, the steam locomotive was used to push a train of goods wagons to Hoe where a small welcoming committee was waiting at the level crossing gates. This was just a one-off and has led to useful publicity in local newspaper. The MNR hopes that reaching this latest milestone will encourage its supports to consider sponsoring a sleeper - see http://www.mnr.org.uk/help/sleeper.

Uses with a Yahoo login can see photos of the steam train at Hoe on the following: http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/mnr-workingmembers/photos/album/1675638860/pic/list.

The MNR's current project, which will open well before the link to Hoe, is the passing loop at Thuxton station. This will allow an hourly service to be run. There is now a dedicated website, run by volunteers, to inform both MNR members and the public about what is going on in Thuxton - see http://www.thuxtonloop.org.uk. One of the most recent activities occurred on 9th August when Norwich Crown Court judge Peter Jacobs ceremonially laid first brick on Thuxton signal box, which was recovered from East Winch.

The MNR has recently opened an Online Shop at http://www.mnr.org.uk/shop where DVDs, souvenirs, clothing, books and pamphlets can be bought. Enquiries can be sent to 'shop(AT)mnr.org.uk'.


WEBSITES
More enhancements to the Accessible UK Train Times website

Users of the http://www.traintimes.org.uk Accessible UK Train Times website will know that it is possible to bookmark a URL for specific journeys. Now it has been enhanced to specify it not to ignore overtaken trains. Just add "/overtake=1" to the end, for example: http://www.traintimes.org.uk/stevenage/kgx/overtake=1.

Rail Management magazine is no more, whilst Keeping Track becomes the Rail Hub

Following a lighting strike that affected the office in Dunstable where the Rail Management online magazine was written, it has been decided evaluate what the magazine was achieving along with the 'keepingtrack.co.uk' website. It has now been relaunched as http://www.railhub.co.uk.

Website for the Ireland's National Rail Users Organisation

The Rail Users Ireland website http://www.railusers.ie is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the railways of the Irish Republic. Ireland's National Rail Users Organisation is the equivalent of Britain's Railfuture, and is also an EPF member. Their well-designed website has sections on Passenger Issues, Passenger Information, Newsletter and Campaigns.


Railfuture East Anglia Branch News Snippets 195 - 14/09/2009

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