News from the East Anglian Branch of Railfuture, Edited by Martin Thorne and Jerry Alderson.
Railfuture News Snippets 279 - 30/06/2016
A decision to award the Greater [East] Anglia franchise was meant to be made in June, but following the political upheaval after the EU referendum vote and the changing of the political guard at the DfT a decision on which bid to accept has yet to be made. The government must make the "right decision" when awarding the now delayed East Anglia franchise, the Great Eastern Mainline Taskforce has said.
On Monday 27th June the 2,850-space multi-story cycle park at Cambridge station was officially opened. Railfuture East Anglia branch was present at the ceremony.
Network Rail will be holding public consultations on 130 level crossings in East Anglia that it believes "should be closed or modified." In North East Cambridgeshire, for example, it wishes to close 11 of them including ones at Whittlesey, Eastrea and March on the Ely-Peterborough line and several at Littleport and Little Downham on the Fen Line. Some of these are controversial according to a newspaper article in the www.elystandard.co.uk.
The Meldreth, Shepreth and Foxton Rail User Group now has a new website - see http://meldrethsheprethfoxtonrail.org.uk.
Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) will be holding a Great Northern Meet the Manager session at Welwyn Garden City station on 13th July 2016.
Network Rail says that the fully integrated traffic management functionality at its Romford Rail Operating Centre (ROC) will be delivered in November 2016. See: http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/Rail-News/romford-roc-to-have-fully-integrated-tms-by-november-but-no-date-set-for-wales-yet.
The ESTA autumn meeting will start at 14:00 on Saturday 15th October 2016 at St John's Church Hall, St John's Street, Woodbridge. The guest speaker will be Therese Coffey, MP for Suffolk Coastal. She has taken a keen interest in local transport matters since being elected in 2010.
The East Suffolk Lines Community Rail Partnership has funded the performance of music on certain East Suffolk Line trains and stations. The first was on Easter Saturday and was repeated on 11th June.
On 23rd June 2016 the Mid-Norfolk Railway's station at Dereham Station was used as a Polling Station for voters in the EU referendum. This is a good example of how heritage railways play a role in their community.
ROLLING STOCK
Improved passenger experience promised through major fleet replacement on Great Northern routes
Keywords: [TSGN]
Govia Thameslink Railway is promising passengers on its Great Northern route that they will be begin to see the investment of three classes of new new trains during 2016 and 2017, which will replace approximately 75% of the current fleet, moving from one of the oldest fleets in Britain to one of the newest.
Twenty-nine nearly-new 110mph Class 387/1s trains (which have two-by-two seating, power sockets and free Wi-Fi) that have been running on Bedford-Brighton Thameslink since late 2014 are being transferred to Great Northern and will enter service on Peterborough and Cambridge routes out of King's Cross from autumn 2016 replacing Classes 317s and 321s that are 28 and 35 years old respectively. The use of Class 387s (also used by c2c and Great Western Railway) is a change of plan, as GTR had intended to use 17 older Class 377 trains instead.
Brand new Class 700 trains, built by Siemens at its Krefeld factory in Germany, will begin on Great Northern passenger services from summer 2017, as more trains arrive, having been gradually introduced onto Thameslink services from summer 2016 (the first Class 700 train carried fare-paying passengers on 20th June 2016 between Brighton and London Bridge - mainly 12-car, rather than eight-car, units will be introduced first to reduce overcrowding). Stakeholders and the media had been invited to Blackfriars station for the ceremonial unveiling of the Class 700 on 24th May. The new trains have wider walkways, wider doors and passenger information screens displaying real-time service information.
On Great Northern the Class 700s (a few of which are stabled at Hornsey depot) will initially run from King's Cross but from 2018 when the link to the Thameslink route is opened the services will be extended through London to the south coast. None of the 115 class 700 trains, which will have all been delivered, tested and commissioned by the end of 2018, will run north of Cambridge North station.
Great Northern's 'inner' services that run out of Moorgate will have a complete fleet replacement starting in December 2018 with brand new Class 717s replacing the current 40-year-old trains. Drivers need approximately eight days to learn how to drive a new train, which is in addition to familiarisation courses. The downside is that this means drivers are taken off passenger services for the training, and because of a lack of drivers this can lead to trains being cancelled.
Half of Great Northern's four-car Class 365 units, which date from the mid-1990s, will be retained, and will be refurbished in a £30m programme, an average cost of £1.5m per unit, or £375k per carriage. The Class 365s were given a minor refurbishment (partly for accessibility reasons) in the final days of First Capital Connect but whilst looking cleaner it made them less passenger friendly: carpet was replaced with lino and most of the seating bays of four replaced with airline seats. This reconfiguration created more space for disabled users.
STATIONS
New cafe opens at Beccles station
Keywords: [BecclesStation]
In early June 2016 the official opening of the new cafe at Beccles station was performed by Jenny Kirk of BBC Look East. It has been funded by grants, councillors' locality funding and local businesses, while others have donated furniture, pot plants and pictures. It is staffed by volunteers from 06:45 to 15:00 on Monday-Friday and 10:00 to 15:00 on Saturdays. Very sensibly an information screen showing the departure times and real-time status of trains is provided within the cafe. This is a good improvement on the East Suffolk Line. On the negative side Lowestoft station shop closed at the end of May pending a new tenant being found.
Railfuture East Anglia Branch News Snippets 279 - 30/06/2016
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