Broken & Late Ltd: Britain's Railways

[Tubby Isaacs]

"In house" didn't have to make franchise payments. Stagecoach/Virgin have overbid spectacularly. £3.3bn paid for 8 years.

[Ginger Yellow]

Eurostar have just told me they are absolutely still working hard towards a Spring 2018 launch of their London-Amsterdam service which is great news.

I thought that thing was supposed to open in 2016. I remember being surprised it wasn't operational for my Amsterdam trip earlier this year.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Looks like December 2016 was the plan, then some trains end of this year. But seems like these plans for Spring are fairly solid.

[Snake Plissken]

Isn't the usual thing to take on a 10 year franchise, take the money up front, promise to pay the money over the last few years and then mysteriously be unable to afford the repayments and hand it back?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Not sure what the schedule of payments is. But I expect the government would see that one coming.

I don't think there are many British franchises left.

[Fussbudget]

Sounds like Snake is on the money. From the article that Levin linked to:

The train operator, a joint venture led by Stagecoach with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, had pledged to pay £3.3bn to run the service until 2023 when it was reprivatised in 2015 after six years in public hands.

Instead, Vtec is likely to pay a fraction of that sum, with the bulk of payments due in the final years of the franchise.

The firm signalled that it also expects its payments for the next three years to be cut. In the first full year of operation, it paid £204m. Shares in Stagecoach jumped 12% on the news.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I think it's more likely a new contract they've just renegotiated, isn't it?

BBF reckoned they'd not find it easy to do that, IIRC. So it's probably not as cushy as it sounds, more that they overbid for the contract, which makes everybody look silly.

[Tubby Isaacs]

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Not so long ago, rail policy was about how many lines and stations should be closed. Now it's Dr. Beeching in reverse, with @transportgovuk looking at where lost lines can be reopened to connect communities and support jobs and housing

Or they stuck out a load of flannel in the morning because the embarrassing news about East Coast was coming in the afternoon?

I'm not convinced they're all that far advanced with reopening ideas. Would be delighted if they were.

[San Bernardhinault]

I believe that every single year of my adult life, they've been about to reopen the Oxford to Cambridge line.

[ursus arctos]

I was going to say that I recall hearing that in 1976 . . .

[Tubby Isaacs]

It wasn't even recommended for closure by Beeching. An extra, courtesy of the Wilson Government.

Due for reopening in 2024, after much slippage.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Strange article.

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/...-a8082771.html

Nominates his 6 lines for reopening, then gives them all shitty marks out of 10.

Harsh on the Borders Line too. A few corners cut that are causing problems, but public finances were pretty austere at the time. They got it done.

[Lang Spoon]

Borders line should surely benefit from the fabled long hoped for cascade once the 385s finally run on Scotrail electric lines, and the bigger longer diesel trains are available for Embra-Fife Circle/still diesel Strathclyde lines, type routes, and the refurb’d HSTs on the (off grid) intercity lines. Then more sprinters or the like for Northern Highland/Borders type periphery.

Would only make sense to goto England, making another link froum Carlisle to points north (and a direct link to Embra) but making so much single track was pared to the bone decision making by the Scottish Govt. I wouldn’t mind so much but road schemes never suffer quite the level of revised value engineered plans. Now the cutbacks make extending the line much more difficult (the story of every Scottish/British public works scheme I can ever remember, outside the Big Smoke). Should have made all road bridges over the line double track capable, but nah. Now it would struggle to cope with volume.

If that Indo writer is the proto older than student InterRail expert I think I can remember from the Travel Show on BBC2, he is being very harsh in the traveler numbers being out of whack. They grossly underestimated folk commuting from the Borders, and tourist numbers going all or most of the way down. But they grossly overestimated its commuter use (for now) from Greater Edinburgh satellite burbs. But those numbers even pretty much balance out. Speccy snide Simon cunt.

[Tubby Isaacs]

They probably saw Network Rail overspending coming, and thought, fuck we'd better make some cuts.

Borders Rail works really well with people on holiday in Edinburgh. Is that going to work with Carlisle?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Wow. Per the French rail regulator, 31% of lines are carrying 1 percent of services.

That's Beeching-era like. I'm not sure I give some of those lines very long. Other less than encouraging figures here.

https://www.thelocal.fr/20171123/the...-is-struggling

[ursus arctos]

They'll get to that right after they increase the engineers' retirement age from 52

[Lang Spoon]

They probably saw Network Rail overspending coming, and thought, fuck we'd better make some cuts.

Borders Rail works really well with people on holiday in Edinburgh. Is that going to work with Carlisle?

Aye, suppose until Network Rail becomes devolved they will always liable to fuck up any Scottish Govt/Transport Scotland plans for rail transit.

[Lang Spoon]

And surely Carlisle needs better connections to a city fairly close by? such a large town (city really by Scottish standards) would almost certainly have rail transport to an Embra sized city a similar distance away most anywhere in the EU. Hell, once the economies of the border regions were much more closely interlinked. Partly cos of decent rail transport. Sigh.

[Lang Spoon]

And not everything has to be for the benefit of tourists. Even if they didn’t travel much farther than Melrose (10 mins from where the line currently terminates at Tweedbank), locals would probably have reason/find new reasons to travel south/north. Sell Carlisle and surrounds as “Hadrian’s Wall Country” or somesuch bollocks. If you build a heavily subsidized interactive child learning friendly visitors centre, they (possibly, maybe) will come.

[Fussbudget]

Yeah, I found it a bit irksome that the list Tubby linked to seemed more about where the writer fancies going on holidays than about lines who would most benefit people actually living there. Pickering FFS.

[Tubby Isaacs]

And surely Carlisle needs better connections to a city fairly close by? such a large town (city really by Scottish standards) would almost certainly have rail transport to an Embra sized city a similar distance away most anywhere in the EU. Hell, once the economies of the border regions were much more closely interlinked. Partly cos of decent rail transport. Sigh.

Judging by those numbers from France, Carlisle Francais might have a line to Edinburgh, but hardly any trains on it. It wouldn't be a very fast route if it's reinstated. I think it's got to have another justification to be a priority, hence I mentioned tourism. I stayed at Carlisle to do the Settle Line, so I'd be up for it. Or maybe a lot more homes built along the route. It's more likely it'll get extended a couple of stops from Tweedbank.

[Kevin S]

Am I being thick here? Carlisle has a direct service to Edinburgh that does the journey in about half the time it would take to drive it, no?

[Kevin S]

You can pretend you're on it, if you like...

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

And not everything has to be for the benefit of tourists. Even if they didn’t travel much farther than Melrose (10 mins from where the line currently terminates at Tweedbank), locals would probably have reason/find new reasons to travel south/north. Sell Carlisle and surrounds as “Hadrian’s Wall Country” or somesuch bollocks. If you build a heavily subsidized interactive child learning friendly visitors centre, they (possibly, maybe) will come.

Hey ey, we're a city full stop, no need to caveat it, and we have plenty of direct connections to Edinburgh - the trains even go straight there these days instead of splitting at Carstairs [edit - beaten to it by Kev]. There's already a new Hadrian's Wall visitor centre but it's a long way from Carlisle and a right adventure on public transport.

Unconnected to the supposed reverse-Beeching announcement, there was a fairly detailed thread about this on the Carlisle United message board last week. I can't remember all the details but there was a lot about how in theory it would be a useful alternative route for the network for when there are works on the main line but in practice the amount of single tracking on the line would make it impractical.

It would have the dubious benefit of enhancing the mix of Saturday afternoon drinkers in Carlisle, we already get groups from west Cumbria, Dumfriesshire and Northumberland getting hammered on £2 pints and spending the resulting 'savings' on suggestively named cocktails in the posher bars before getting the last train home. I don't think there'd be an awful lot of traffic in the other direction, but it would open up a bit of the country that's a mystery to even those of us who live this close to it.

Plus my kids' granddad owns a bit of land right up to the old track, so they could be quids in once the CPO's start flying around.

The local reverse-Beeching wet dream of choice round these parts is of course the Penrith-Keswick-Cockermouth-Workington line, but that's never going to happen.

[Kevin S]

Pulling us back to Fenland, and ignoring the Varsity line, the rebuilding of a station at Soham is the Reverse Beeching needed here. Still looks like another five years before we get anywhere with it though. Then if we are playing fantasy choose-your-own-services, I'd run a Cambridge-Stowmarket Bury St Edmunds via Ely service (Cambridge - Ely - Soham - Bury St Edmunds - Stowmarket)) which would provide a great variety of connections and serve lots and lots of students.

Edit - actually, turning round at Bury would be fine - a GEML connection probably wouldn't be necessary as there are other services from Bury to Stowmarket.