News from the East Anglian Branch of Railfuture, Edited by Martin Thorne and Jerry Alderson.
Railfuture News Snippets 233 - 29/09/2012
- RAIL ROUTES [all issues]
- Official approval for the Ipswich Chord
- Network Rail promises less disruption from Great Eastern Mainline engineering work in 2013
- Direct Norwich to Cambridge train route celebrates 10th birthday with nearly one million passengers annually
- ROLLING STOCK [all issues]
- TRAIN OPERATORS [all issues]
- GUIDED BUSWAY [all issues]
- Cambridgeshire County Council claims that the guided bus has taken 600,000 car journeys off the roads
- Cambridgeshire County Council faces £100m bill if it loses busway fight with BAM Nuttall as costs escalate yet again
- WEBSITES [all issues]
- PRESERVED RAILWAYS [all issues]
Railfuture jointly with ESTA will be conducting a footfall count at Halesworth station on 18th October to the comparison of usage before and after the hourly service is introduced. Anyone wishing to take part should contact Railfuture East Anglia branch chairman Peter Wakefield.
Patrick McLoughlin (a transport minister in the 1980s with responsibility for shipping) has replaced Justine Greening as Secretary of State for transport following David Cameron's Cabinet reshuffle at the beginning of September, becoming the eighth transport secretary in just seven years. In her editorial Rail Professional editor Katie Silvester wrote "If a private company had had eight CEOs in seven years, would anyone have any confidence in it? Probably not."
The Cambridge to Colchester Rail Project will be holding a public meeting to promote the routes rail reopening on 15th November at the Days Inn, Phoenix Road, Haverhill, from 10:30-11:30. The group will also man a stand in Haverhill High Street on 27th October, where they will be handing out information about their plans and seeking residents' views.
Friday 12th October sees the launch of the Community Rail Partnership for the Peterborough to Ely line, which covers Manea, March and Whittlesea Stations. The event at March Station with lunch at Fenland Hall in County Road starts at 11:00. The CRP has arranged for stopping of some trains to stop additionally at Whittlesea and Manea so that people from these two places can travel by train to attend the event.
Suffolk's first-ever rail conference, which aims to set out a vision for the rail service, will be held at Suffolk County Council's Endeavour House headquarters in Ipswich on Friday 26th October. Railfuture East Anglia branch officers will be present, along with about 100 representatives from local authorities, businesses and transport operators. The organisers, Suffolk County Council, are eager that some of their aspirations such infrastructure upgrades and an expanded rail network are included in the long-term Greater Anglia franchise, which the DfT is currently preparing to tender. Key speakers will include Ben Gummer, MP for Ipswich, and Railfuture president Christian Wolmar.
On the weekend of Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd October East Midlands Trains will be running trains between Norwich and Dereham as part of the Mid-Norfolk Railway's two-day celebration of the Diesel Multiple Unit. The MNR's construction of a shed to provide 19-metre x 70-metre covered accommodation is now in "full swing" according to the MNR website with a 2013 completion date planned for the £60,000 project.
Greater Anglia has also introduced a 10-journey ticket for football fans giving them a 25% on the cheapest day return ticket available (e.g. Super Off-Peak Day Return) to towns and cities on the match day. The aim is to encourage fans to get into the habit of travelling to matches by train.
The East West Rail project is now on Twitter as @eastwestrail, describing itself as a major project to establish a railway connecting East Anglia with Central, Southern and Western England. An email news subscription can be obtained from: http://www.eastwestrail.org.uk/e-mail-news-subscription/.
The c2c Managing Director, Julian Drury, will be speaking to the Cambridge University Railway Club on 9th November at 20:20 in in the William Thatcher Room, Fitzwilliam College. Non members are welcome.
Felixstowe TravelWatch will hold its Autumn Meeting at 14:30 on Tuesday 30th October at St Andrew's Hall in Felixstowe. The organisation has also been conducting passenger counts on almost 200 trains between June and August as part of its fight to keep a full passenger service in the face of threats from the Port of Felixstowe to take some paths for freight trains. The highest number of passengers was 217 on two-car service on 25th July (10:58 service from Ipswich), which would require at least four buses. The average number of passengers counted across all services monitored (in both directions) was 44.
The Fen Line Users Association AGM will be held on 17th November 2012 at the Good News Centre, St John's Church in King's Lynn. The venue is just across the station. This year's speaker is Steve Dunn of the Railway Mission.
Some fabulous aerial photos of the construction of the Hitchin flyover and diversion line, taken in September, can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/32297024@N08/8012212205/in/photostream/.
Cambridge County Council has recently published its revised proposals for the new Cambridge Science Park station in the form of a single-page plan. See: http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/6C21BE5A-AA82-4A62-9351-E2F5310B51FF/0/CSPsiteplanSept12.pdf.
In September the DfT published the contents of the agreement it had signed with Abellio for the Greater Anglia franchise - see http://www.dft.gov.uk/publications/rail-passenger-franchise-agreement-greater-anglia.
Greater Anglia has launched a new quarterly newsletter, which aims to keep passengers up to date with developments on its franchise so far and future improvements. It aims to improve face-to-face customer service by providing BlackBerrys to staff so they can provide better, more timely information to customers. It also extend opening hours at the Customer Contact Centre, and provide new information screens at some stations.
NENTA, the North-East Norfolk Travellers' Association, celebrated 30 years operating rail tours this month. Its website is http://www.nentatraintours.co.uk.
The Mid-Norfolk Railway will be operating Santa Specials over nine days this year between 1st and 24th December - for details see http://www.mnr.org.uk/calendar/events/santaspecials.
RAIL ROUTES
Official approval for the Ipswich Chord
Keywords: [IpswichChord]
As predicted in [Snippets 232], on 5th September Mike Penning MP, in one of his last tasks as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport, signed off the 1415-metre-long Ipswich chord that will link the East Suffolk line and Great Eastern main line just north of Ipswich goods yard. After completion in early 2014 cross-country freight trains carrying containers will not have to reverse at Ipswich when coming from or going to the Port of Felixstowe. This was the first rail scheme to be approved by the Planning Act 2008, rather than the more complicated Transport and Works Act, which is normal for new rail schemes.
The Ipswich Chord will be used by containers carrying the equivalent of, eventually, 750,000 lorry journeys each year. Most of those currently have to travel down the busy Great Eastern main line, through London and up the West Coast main line. The decision was, obviously, welcomed by Dave Ward, Network Rail's route managing director for East Anglia. Major works on this self-contained scheme should being before the end of the year.
NR Press Release: http://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/Press-Releases/
BETTER-FREIGHT-JOURNEYS-FROM-FELIXSTOWE-AS-RAIL-LINK-GETS-GREEN-LIGHT-1b5f/SearchCategoryID-8.aspx
Network Rail promises less disruption from Great Eastern Mainline engineering work in 2013
Keywords: [GreatEasternMainline]
Network Rail and Greater Anglia have, thanks to their 'alliance', reached an agreement to reduce the amount of disruption caused to passengers by engineering works on the Great Eastern Mainline between London and Norwich. Over Christmas there will be only minor disruption (unlike previous years). In 2013 there will be no bus replacements from the end of March until early October and only two Saturdays in 2013 will have all-day bustitution. Just seven weekends will be affected by planned 'disruptive' engineering work, compared to around 30 in recent years. Instead work will be done during the night, with trains at the beginning and end of the day replaced by buses. When just the Liverpool Street-Stratford section is closed passengers will be able to continue their journey on the Underground rather than by bus.
Press release: http://www.greateranglia.co.uk/about-us/news/2012/09/better-weekend-services-in-2013-with-less-disruptive-engineering-works-planned.
Direct Norwich to Cambridge train route celebrates 10th birthday with nearly one million passengers annually
The Norwich to Cambridge direct train service, reinstated in 2002 thanks to an SRA-awarded Rail Passenger Partnership grant, is ten years old. Mid-Norfolk MP George Freeman, who campaigned for better infrastructure in the county, will belatedly cut a cake at Norwich Station on Monday 1st October and birthday muffins will be handed out to passengers.
According to Greater Anglia nearly one million passengers use the line each year compared to 300,000 in the first year of service, which was deemed a success. Whilst the number of trains has not been increased, more seats have been added by operating three-carriage Class 170 trains instead of the original two-carriage version. Prior to the direct service passengers had to change trains at Ely. The Peterborough-Norwich Rail User Group is delighted with the patronage but feels that the carriage interiors could now do with a deep clean and the seats need re-upholstering. It has also complained about the lack of renewals at some of the stations and is unhappy about the reduced opening hours for the toilets, waiting rooms and booking office at Thetford.
The new Rail Manifesto produced by the region's MPs will be calling for half-hour direct services between Norwich and Cambridge, the eventual electrification of the line and improvements to Wymondham and Attleborough stations. The increased frequency will be possible once the rail bottleneck at Ely North Junction has been upgraded.
Press release: http://www.greateranglia.co.uk/about-us/news/2012/09/norwich-cambridge-service-celebrates-10-years.
ROLLING STOCK
Greater Anglia commences £3m upgrade to its rural train fleet
Greater Anglia has announced that it will be spending £3m to improve and refresh its nine two-carriage Class 156 trains - around £150,000 per carriage. The units are used on its rural services in Norfolk and Suffolk will have a complete interior overhaul, with new carpets and seat covers, CIS screens and automated announcements, and a deep clean. It will also comply with the European TSI-PRM legislation that comes into effect on 1st January 2020 by installing a universal-access toilet and two wheelchair spaces with "call for aid" buttons. The work will take just over a year to complete.
News article: http://www.greateranglia.co.uk/about-us/news/2012/09/work-commences-on-3-million-upgrade-to-greater-anglias-local-train-fleet
TRAIN OPERATORS
David Horne of East Midlands Trains gives presentation to Railfuture East Anglia branch meeting
At the Railfuture East Anglia branch meeting in Norwich on Saturday 29th September, the Managing Director of East Midlands Trains, David Horne, spoke for more than an hour giving a very positive and informative view of the his franchise, of which only one route actually runs in East Anglia. The summary below covers the whole franchise.
EMT is now five years into a 7.5-year franchise that began on 11th November 2009 and ends in March 2015. They have 2,032 employees and 88 stations with depots in Nottingham, Derby, London, Sheffield, Boston, Lincoln and Norwich (the only one in East Anglia). Whilst most of their revenue comes from the London-Sheffield route, this is also the most vulnerable to economic downturn. The Midland Mainline saw passenger numbers drop by 20% durnig the recession of the early 1990s, although this time it has suffered more from downgrading from first to standard class. By comparison, Norwich-Liverpool is less but more stable. EMT has lost about £65m over three years because of the recession, however, on its fourth anniversary it benefited from 'cap and collar' support.
EMT spent £30m on trains. In September 2012 it completed refurbishment of the Class 222 Meridian fleet (with the interiors completely refitted) even though the vehicles were only between seven and nine years old. They decided to standardise the Meridian fleet length on five- and seven-car trains rather than the four-, five- and eight-car formations they inherited. However, the arrival of some former Hull Trains has seen four-car trains return. It was pleasing that there was no corrosion on the outside of the trains. In June 2010 the last of the Class 158 was refurbished. One of its aims was to have a common passenger experience throughout their fleet, not just within a train class.
A new £20m depot in the east Midlands now supports 7-coach trains whereas previously they could only fit one end of a Meridian train and then had to service the other end the following night. It is now much more efficient as a train can be fully examined in a single night. The depot has its own wheel lathe so EMT no longer had to use an Arriva Cross Country one.
Punctuality across the franchise has gone from 87% at the start of the franchise to above 93% today. This puts it in 5th or 6th place for TOCs in Britain. Like much of the industry it is now focussing on achieving 'right time' punctuality rather than the within five or ten minutes 'on time' standard. A right time figure of 82% was achieved during the Olympics.
The new £28m East Midlands Parkway station, which has 850 car parking spaces, is just a few miles from the M1. They paid the Highways Agency £140,000 to erect eight road signs to the station. Its opening has helped to release car parking spaces at Nottingham and Derby stations as some people drive to the new station instead. It is being used as a rail head by Megabus coaches (also owned by Stagecoach) from Yorkshire with passengers transferring to the train there. It will also be used as a rail head for rail replacement buses during the six-week Nottingham station closure in 2013.
Corby, the other new station served by EMT, had 218,000 passengers in 2011/12 and should exceed 250,000 by the end of their franchise. It has been much more successful than the failed reopening from 1987-1990, which had no through trains, no through ticketing (because the council was funding it) and did not accept rail cards.
Looking at East Anglia, the Norwich-Liverpool service is 250 miles end-to-end and takes about five hours with towns and cities on the route having a combined population of more than seven million. Its services have achieved 90.5% PPM in the last 12 months (lower than the company average because of the long route length over which a single problem can magnify delays) and currently achieved 74% right time. The satisfaction rating is now 86%, up from 72% in spring 2009, which is partly thanks to a reduction in overcrowding that was possible when two-car trains on the route were expanded to four cars because of DfT financial support. There will be further strengthening from December 2012. Annual passenger numbers from Norwich are 67,000 to Peterborough, 33,000 to Nottingham, 20,000 to Manchester and 9,000 to Liverpool. Passengers travelling between Peterborough and Nottingham total 67,000.
In October 2012 work starts in rebuilding Nottingham station and in 2013 the 1967 signalling will be replaced forcing a six-week closure during July and August. The station is used by about 7 million passengers each year. Around 700,000 people will be put onto replacement buses but diversionary routes will be used wherever possible with buses used to get to Nottingham, e.g. from Grantham.
Other route improvements include the £280m Great Northern/Great Eastern 'joint' line upgrade in 2014 to take freight trains off the ECML and the abolition of manned signal boxes and crossing keepers will allow trains to run on Sunday mornings. Another is increasing the line-speed on the Midland Mainline from 110mph to 125mph in 2013/14, with electrification work starting in 2016 for a 2021 completion. The downside of electrification is the loss of diversionary routes on which all train crew can currently drive (e.g. north of Corby and Manton Junction) but electrifying other routes such as Grantham to Nottingham could help.
Mr Horne wanted to see faster services to match those on other routes, such as Newcastle-York where a class 158 takes 71 minutes for 3 stops, a First Transpennine Express class 185 Desiro takes 62 minutes also with 3 stops and a class 221 Voyager with better acceleration takes only 55 minutes albeit with just 2 stops. By comparison trains on the Norwich-Liverpool route rarely reach their maximum speeds. Norwich-Ely is 75mph (although there are some stretches of 90mph line) and Network Rail does not have plans to improve this, and did nothing beneficial as part of the resignalling. However, NR intends to increase Ely-Peterborough from 75mph to 100mph in the next 10 years. Peterborough-Grantham will stay at 80mph, whilst Grantham to Nottingham will leap from 60mph to 90mph again in the next 10 years, a period in which Nottingham-Sheffield will increase from 80mph to 90mph if funding can be found. Sheffield-Manchester will stay at 90mph and Manchester-Liverpool will have a minor improvement from 85mph to 90mph.
He would also like to see Derby station remodelled as there is a conflict with Cross Country trains and the service would be more efficient and resilient if they were separated from each other.
GUIDED BUSWAY
Cambridgeshire County Council claims that the guided bus has taken 600,000 car journeys off the roads
As explained in [Snippets 232], the patronage claims by Cambs County Council and the bus operators for the guided busway are highly dubious. Now the council claims that a survey of passengers that it jointly commissioned estimates that at least 600,000 car journeys were taken off Cambridgeshire's 'roads' (the roads are not named) by the guided busway in its first year, although the survey actually shows nothing of the sort.
The survey found that a quarter of the 855 travellers questioned had made their trip by car before the route between St Ives and Cambridge opened last year. The council have simply extrapolated that 25% value up to the full 2.5 million journeys, many made by pensioners who did not have cars, to become 600,000, assuming that their sample was statistically large enough to be fully representative. An error was introduced by failing to exclude from that extrapolation passengers using solely the southern busway route. Moreover, the claim that cars were taken off the road is incorrect in cases where people drove to a busway park and ride site.
Three-quarters of those surveyed said they had previously travelled by bus, 24% had previously driven, and 13% had shared a car ? with the total exceeding 100 per cent because multiple answers were allowed. The multiple answers generate yet another exaggeration and the council should have lowered the 24% if they intended too extrapolate it against the annual figures.
Passengers were also asked for their opinions of the busway: with 74% agreed with the leading question that it was quicker than driving and 78% agreed with the suggestion that it was more reliable. The Cambridge News asked Tim Phillips, chairman of CAST.IRON for a comment. He said that trains would have offered a cheaper and better solution, although he failed to point out that a train would have taken far car-kilometres of the road because rail journeys would be longer (such as to Stansted). Tim said: "There is serious overcrowding on peak-time services, meaning passengers from Longstanton, Histon and elsewhere have to watch packed buses glide past without stopping. The only answer will be dozens more buses and drivers, whereas a four-car train can take 390 people at a time with one driver ? I can only image the chaos that will ensue when Northstowe is built."
News article: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Guided-bus-takes-600000-car-journeys-off-the-roads-says-council-28092012.htm
Bus Survey: http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/7CEF7FC4-6E0C-4F51-A7E5-8D6D3714190D/0/BuswayusersurveySpring2012.pdf.
Cambridgeshire County Council faces £100m bill if it loses busway fight with BAM Nuttall as costs escalate yet again
Guided busway construction company BAM Nuttall has increased its claim for build costs from £151.5m to ?&ound;161.4m. The cost should have been just ?&ound;87m. If BAM Nuttall wins at the High Court in a hearing due to start in 2014, then Cambridgeshire County Council's total costs will be around £229.6m and it will have a funding shortfall of more than £100m.
News article: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/100m-bill-facing-taxpayers-if-council-loses-busway-fight-06092012.htm.
WEBSITES
Passenger Focus website is re-designed to cater for both rail and bus passengers
The http://www.passengerfocus.org.uk/ website has undergone a revamp, with a cleaner and brighter look, to cater for bus services as well as rail, giving equal prominence to both. It is now branding itself as 'the Passenger Watchdog'.
PRESERVED RAILWAYS
First scheduled walk-on trains between Norwich and Dereham since Dereham branch closed on 5th October 1969
Keywords: [MidNorfolkRailway]
For one weekend only, East Midlands Trains will be running some direct trains between Norwich and Dereham that anyone can board, just like a normal service train. A single Class 158 train will operate as a Charity Railtour, for £5 single between Norwich and Wymondham Abbey, and then a normal MNR ticket will be needed to continue the journey to Dereham. Normal Rail tickets, such as the Anglia Plus, will not be valid, and trains will not be stopping at Wymondham Mainline, primarily to avoid passengers joining with invalid tickets. On-board EMT and MNR conductors will sell both the mainline charity tickets and MNR tickets. The BBC and ITV are expected to be filming the trains at Dereham and Thuxton.
On Saturday 20th October there will be a single train out from Norwich in the morning which will return in the early evening, whilst on Sunday through trains leave Norwich at 0915 and 1355, returning from Dereham at 1220 and 1720 respectively. The Class 158 will be used throughout the day, running up and down the MNR's route. Because of the superior ride quality of the 1980s' train it should present the best possible journey experience over the MNR's jointed track.
These will be the last scheduled trains to use the semaphore signals at Wymondham, controlled controlled by Wymondham box before resignalling in December 2012.
In a statement the MNR said that it hopes "that one day in the future regular passenger services will be back in operation between the town and Norwich city."
Norfolk Orbital Railway group aims to raise money to purchase rail line into Holt town in "Return to Holt" funding drive
Keywords: [NorthNorfolkRailway]
The Melton Constable Trust, which is the registered charity behind the Norfolk Orbital Railway group, has negotiated an agreement to secure the land necessary to take the North Norfolk Railway from the its present terminus at High Kelling into and through Holt. It has now launched an appeal to raise the money to purchase the land (the estimated cost of the total land is between £200,000 and £250,000) and cover the substantial legal costs for the transactions with each of the private owners. Of course, it will need even more money to lay track back into Holt and build a station and facilities there.
The charity-supporting Big Give organisation (the biggest Challenge Fund in the country) has agreed to double the value of pledges towards the 'Return to Holt' land purchase. The group's first target is to obtain by 14 October 2012 pledges totalling £15,000, which do not have to be paid until January 2013. It then hopes to raise a further £30,000 in a '3-day donation frenzy' the run-up to Christmas. With further donations and grants it needs to raise about £120,000 by 1st December 2013. Pledges can be made at http://new.thebiggive.org.uk/pledge/themeltonconstabletrust.
Having a terminus in the town will obviously benefit the NNR substantially as it will increase the number of passengers, and create real journeys, not just for tourists. Although not behind the appeal, and not linked to it in any legal way, the NNR's Managing Director Hugh Harkett said that they fully supported the plans and would connect the new track to their own at High Kelling. In the meantime, the NNR will be focusing its efforts on remodelling trackwork at Sheringham to cope with increased services, the restoration of a platform canopy and buildings on platform 2 at Sheringham and rebuilding the education facility at Holt.
Railfuture news item: http://www.railfuture.org.uk/article1314
Appeal leaflet: http://www.norfolk-orbital-railway.co.uk/documents/Holt_leaflet.pdf.
Railfuture East Anglia Branch News Snippets 233 - 29/09/2012
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