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East Anglia Branch News - Snippets Issue 348 - 31/03/2022

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

Railfuture News Snippets 348 - 31/03/2022



On 18th March 2022, national rail passengers reached 80% of pre-pandemic levels, according to figures from the Department for Transport (DfT). This was the highest since 15th March 2020. The Railway Industry Association described the latest figures as being "hugely positive".

On Tuesday 8th March 2022 Greater Anglia ran its first 10-car trains between Cambridge, Bishop's Stortford and London Liverpool Street.

On 25th March 2022 it was announced that Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), Britain's largest rail operator, had been awarded a contract to continue operating services, which includes Great Northern and Thameslink, for the next three years (having operated them since 2014). This award was despite Govia's major shareholder, the Go-Ahead Group, having been given a £23.5m fine, just a week earlier, for its breach of trust over the neighbouring Southeastern franchise (it was stripped of the service as a result). GTR will receive a management fee of £8.8 million per year to deliver the service and could get an additional £22.9 million, which is linked to performance, totalling £31.7m (a predicted margin onf 1.85%). See Guardian article.

On 21st March 2022, Network Rail announced that it plans to build a £3.5m accessible footbridge at Royston station, with construction set to start in spring 2022 and complete by early 2023. The new footbridge will bring back a direct pathway between the two platforms, and two new lifts will provide a vital step-free route, instead of mobility-limited people having to use Old North Road. The original bridge was closed in 2020 after Network Rail found serious problems with the structure. See article.

The Eastern Powerhouse, a new business-led body to boost the economy of the East of England, was launched on Tuesday 15th March 2022 at Parliament. Chaired by James Palmer, the former Cambridgeshire and Peterborourgh Combined Authority mayor, who ensured that Soham station was reopened, it will speak out for the region, aiming to maximise its untapped economic potential. See article.

The first of a number of upgraded 'Direction of Travel' signs funded by the Bittern Line Commity Rail Partnership have been installed at Worstead station. Lingwood will be installed soon. These signs help people catch the correct service from single-platform stations.

Network Rail's Anglia Director, Ellie Burrows, has been appointed chair of RSSB's System Safety Risk Group (SSRG). She takes over from Steve Murphy, CEO of MTR UK.

The North Norfolk Railway (NNR) will resumme its popular Cromer dining trains in 2022 on selected Wednesdays and Thursdays from May to September. It will see the 'North Norfolkman' dining train run on the mainline from Sheringham to Cromer and back, in addition to making a return trip on the heritage railway's tracks to Holt. A hired-in class 20 train will be used at the Cromer end of the train, and one of the NNR's steam engines on the Holt end.

On Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Polar Express™ tickets for the Mid Norfolk Railway (MNR) went on sale, eight months beore the first trains, and some were immediately purchased. The impact of having to cancel the last fifteen Polar Express™ trains of 2021, because of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 (as mentioned in [Snippets 345]), had a dramatic impact on the railway's financial situation, so this will provide useful income, as will a wedding on 23rd April 2022 and various charters prior to the planned resumption of public train services on Saturday 30th April 2022.

National rail patronage figures released by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) in mid-March for the October to December 2021 quarter, found that the COVID-19 Omicron variant restrictions during that period failed to halt an upward trend in people going back to the railway, with passenger journeys increasing to 285 million (generating revenue of £1.7 billion). This was the highest total since January to March 2020, as the pandemic struck, and averaged 62% of pre-pandemic patronage. This most recent quarter saw advance tickets reached 95% of pre-pandemic sales, off-peak tickets but journeys made using season tickets fell from 34% in 2019 to just 17% in 2021 for the respective October to December quarters.

Governmnent statistics show estimates for modes comparing recent dates with those in 2019. Latest figures for GB transport usage from 1st to 14th March 2022 compared to 2019 are : train 70% bus 80% car 90% cycling 120%. Passenger train numbers have clearly increased since the beginning of February 2022.

According to the Fen Line Users Association newsletter, charter train operator UK Railtours will be running a special train from King's Cross to Watlington on Bank Holiday Thursday 2nd June to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. Passengers will alight there or a coach trip to Sandringham. The train returns from Downham Market later in the day.

Railfuture understands that the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA) was intending to review the latest Network Rail report on reopening the railway line to Wisbech at its board meeting in mid-March was going but the report arrived too late.

The mainline between Cambridge and Cambridge North stations was closed on Sunday 27 March 2022 to remove the last of the pointwork at the former Barnwell Junction, where line from Burwell, Fordham and Mildenhall once joined the main. The last remnant of the branch served a nearby petroleum depot, and the track was removed to create the Chisholm Trail (see photos of the track on Twtter.

Beth West succeeds Simon Blanchflower, who is retiring, as Chief Executive Officer of the East West Railway Company. She had been Regional South Managing Director at Balfour Beatty and Commercial Director for HS2 Ltd amongst other roles.

In [Snippets 343] the filming at Cambridge Station (disguised as High Wycombe) for the TV series "Slow Horses" (the name for washed-up MI5 spies), which is based on Mick Herron's spy thriller "Slough House"), was mentioned. The first six episodes begin streaming on Apple TV+ on Friday 1st April 2022 and a trailer can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9ZJChzPn0U. Cambridge, sorry, High Wycombe, station will not be included, as it is in the second batch of episodes, which are still in production.


STATIONS
Major revamp of Ely station building to be partly funded from GTR Passenger Benefit Fund

Keywords: [ElyStation]

As a form of compensation for past failings, the Department for Tansport (DfT) had required GTR to setup a Passenger Benefit Fund. Some of this money was allocated to the stations at Cambridge, Cambridge North and Ely, which happened to be managed by Greater Anglia. At Ely this funding has been combined to provide major improvements to the station forecourt and car park — there will be a wider concourse, with an extra door for both the main entrance and onto the platform; the ticket office will be moved to the left of the entrance, so that a gate line (at the DfT's insistence) can be introduced. The waiting room will be relocated and a 'changing places' toilet provided. In order to enforce ticket checks at the new gateline, fencing has appeared at the northern end of Platform 1, as the entrance/exit there will eventualy be locked shut (for staff use only in future). The southern end will have a large gate that will be locked whilst the ticket gates are in use, but expected to be open in the evenings.

On Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Greater Anglia (GA) opened a temporary ticket office in a portacabin next to the cycle parking, so it could close the the existing entrance and ticket hall to enable the works. GA hopes that everything will be completed in June 2022. In the meantime, there is a short-term loss of several car parking spaces and the electric vehicle charging points.

Greater Anglia introduces online virtual tour of Norwich station

Keywords: [NorwichStation]

Online virtual tours of stations are gradually being introduced by several train operators to help passengers plan their end-to-end journeys and minimise their anxiety. As well as encouraging more people to travel by train, an advantage for the operator is that passengers, especially those with accessibiltiy needs, may require less assistance from station staff or will know more precisely what they need to ask for. Greater Anglia has therefore launched an online virtual tour of Norwich railway station, which covers all public areas including the toilets, customer service desk, platforms and anywhere else that passengers might need to visit at the station such as car parks or drop-off areas. Detailed 360 degree photography has been used to map the station. Feedback was provided by members of Greater Anglia's Accessibility Panel, which is a group of disabled customers, during the development of the project and have been supportive of it.

The facility has some nice features. For example, 'autopilot' gives users the option of selecting their destination location within the station and being automatically guided to it or if preferred through a series of clicks. There is a spoken scene guide with closed captions plays on the home page at the station entrance. Future developments will look at incorporating British Sign Language videos.

Cambridge was the first GA station to go live in December 2021. The tours can be viewed at https://www.greateranglia.co.uk/travel-information/your-journey/virtual-tours and works on any device. There are plans to introduce it at Stansted Airport next, along with Colchester and Ipswich, which are in the Railfuture East Anglia branch area, plus Bishops Stortford, Broxbourne, Chelmsford, Shenfield, Southend Victoria in the London & South East branch area.

Public being consulted on new Beaulieu Park station near Beaulieu

Keywords: [BeaulieuParkStation]

At the end of March 2022 Chelmsford City Council launched a four-week public consultation on proposals for the new Beaulieu Park station on the Great Eastern Mainlline. The consultation, which includes passenger facilities plus environmental and ecological issues, will run until 20 April 2022. Although the station is just outside of the Railfuture East Anglia branch area, it may be very useful to people within the branch area, especially those in Colchester and Ipswich. More generally, it will also be interesting to see proposals compares with the planned Cambridge South station.

The proposed three-platform station at Beaulieu Park would be the first new station built on the Great Eastern mainline for over 100 years, and is part of a wider £252 million regeneration programme to transform road and rail infrastructure and support 14,000 new homes in the Chelmsford to Braintree corridor. The station design, which will include over 700 car parking spaces (5% designated as Blue Badge bays) and 500 spaces for cycle parking and storage, is being performed by Network Rail;s framework contractor, J Murphy & Sons Ltd, which was responsible for Soham station. Like Cambridge South, there will be new tracks, although in this case, the central loop line is intended to enable stopping services to call while allowing fast trains to pass through unimpeded.

Construction of the new station (see info at www.networkrail.co.uk/beaulieu) could begin in late 2022 and if so, then it could be open to passenger services in 2026.


GUIDED BUSWAY
BAM Nuttall claims Cambridgeshire County Council's claim guided busway has £87m worth of defects is wrong

Cambridgeshire County Council has taken BAM Nuttall, which constructed the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, to the High Court, in order to claim damages for faulty costruction. The council claimed in 2020 that on the balance of probabilities, the busway foundations would not meet the required lifespan of 40 years, saying "in particular the guideway sections, have extensive defects requiring it to be almost entirely redesigned, dismantled and reconstructed at an assessed cost of around £87 million". In its evidence, BAM Nuttall says the council's "allegations extensively amount to bare assertions... without explanation", according to a BBC news report.

In the 2021/22 financial year, the council said litigation costs related to the guided busway are expected to be £3.2m. The busway opened in 2011 after delays and financial rows and the county council settled a £36m dispute against BAM Nuttall in 2014.


Railfuture East Anglia Branch News Snippets 348 - 31/03/2022

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