For all those of you who have been wondering what I was going to say next, here is the missing ending to last month’s piece on the future of Alstom’s Asfordby test facility, BR’s former Old Dalby test track.
Yet Network Rail is the only player in a fragmented industry able to take on the responsibility. Asfordby is the test of Network Rail¹s claim to be more than an infrastructure operator.
Now onwards to this month – on the bookstalls Friday if you are not a subscriber.
February Informed Sources
Franchising: buy now pay later
Railway costs – struggling with the unknowns
Network Rail plans a steady state railway
Railways in hock
Golden Spanners won the hard way
This month’s Informed Sources came together on three consecutive days in December.
On Tuesday 13 December wDfT Rail announced that first Group had won the Greater Western and Thameslink/Great northern franchises. And what a difference a decade makes
Back in the dawn of privatisation, the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising (OPRAF) would give each franchise award the Public Relations works. First there would be a briefing for the national media, followed by separate session for the hard core transport press.
Facing us would be the OPRAF Assistant Director with the team that had done this splendid deal for the taxpayer. With them would be the Directors of the winning bidder.
After the deal was explained, we railway dogs would ask pointed questions, query where the money was coming from to achieve the declining subsidy profile and generally be awkward. Given that nine of the 25 franchises subsequentlt had to be rescued I clearly wasn’t awkward enough: but we live and learn.
Incidentally I missed something at the Virgin Cross Country franchise award announcement all those years ago. Richard Branson announced that Virgin would introduce tilting trains: what I missed was everyone esle on the top table going rigid because it wasn’t in the Virgin bid that had won the franchise. That’s an exclusive revelation snippet for e-Preview readers.
Anyway, the accepted view is that Transport Secretary Alistair Darling was appointed as a political ‘safe pair of hands’ to take the railways out of the public consciousness. And we are certainly seeing the New Labour media machine working to this negative remit.
Nowadays when DfT Rail announces a replacement franchise, a press release and atatement to the Stock Exchange are issued at 07.00. No press conference, and certainly no premium profile – just the total sum.
DfT Rail have told me that the profile cannot be released until the unsucessful bidders have been debriefed. Guess what? When one of the unsuccessful bidders saw my graph of the Greater Western subsidy/premium profile in Rail Business Intelligence he asked if he could have the actual numbers.
You’ve got it – DfT don’t release that information in the debriefing.
I reckon that the whole aim of this delaying tactic is to decouple analysis of these weird and wonderful profiles from the press coverage.
And, in this month’s columns I have great fun deconstructing the Integrated Kent and Greater Western profiles. IKF is for cynics, Greater Western for the admirers of Baron von Munchhausen. It truly is a fantasy world.
Depot life
Wednesday that week brought a restoring draught of reality, with a visit to East Ham Depot, home of the Golden Spanner winning Class 357 Electrostars. I was the guest of Bombardier and c2c and the visit showed that what counts most in train reliability is continuity, a relentless attention to detail all day, every day, plus a long term commitment to continuous improvement.
You’ll find a report on East Ham at the end of the column as a reward for slogging through some intensive analysis of Network Rail’s financial prospects
That emerged on the Thursday at a briefing by the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) on the first big announcement of the Periodic Review 2008 (PR2006). Now I appreciate that this will be heavy going and that other magazines don’t bore their readers with it, but PR2008 will determine the shape and funding of the railway from
So we all have to take PR2008 very seriously indeed, because if the railway community doesn’t understand what is going on, the forces of reaction in Government will have a field day, to the disbenefit of the industry. And as
Within the main analysis of Network Rail’s finances there are two subsidiary stories. The first reports that Network Rail’s Business Plan is based on zero increase in passenger train miles (train miles note not passenger miles) from 2008 onward. The second (‘Railways in hock’) reveals that Network Rail will be paying £1 billion interest a year on its debt in 2009.
That makes a cut in railway support even harder to achieve.
One last thing. Would you believe some clever clogs/sad wonk found an error in a 9 column/32 line table in ORR’s 74 page document? Modesty forbids etc.
Roger’s ramblings
This time of year is always slightly disorienting on Modern Railways since publishing on the fourth Friday of the month preceding cover date means that the January issue comes out at Christmas and the February issue is the first of the new year and written while everyone is struggling back to work.
So there hasn’t been much professional rambling to report this month, However, on 16 January the Railway Division of the IMechE had a cracking evening meeting on life extension of IC125. This filled the main lecture theatre and resulted in a lively debate which also embraced HST2. With the GNER board also due to receive recommendations on re-engining its HST power cars this week, expect Informed Sources to revisit this subject in the March Modern Railways.
And, assuming DfT Rail finishes de-briefing the unsuccessful Thameslink/Great Northern bidders in time, there should be another subsidy profile to wonder at.
Finally the day you receive this ORR is due to pronounce on Grand Central’s proposals for an open access service to the north east. Either way, sparks should result.
So no shortage of material – although I’ll try to keep regulatory reporting to a minimum.
Work in progress
Well, some progress in that DfT Rail released the 2002 Letter Agreement which rescued the Virgin franchises in response to my Freedom of Information Act request. I’m still absorbing it.
Well, that’s it for another month, except to say that the latest version of my timetable for PR2008 is in the Analysis pages of Alycidon Rail. Not much else new in Alycidon Rail this month, as Modern Railways’ Editor has borrowed my webmaster to develop the new Fourth Friday Club Website.
Which reminds me that the first Club meeting of the new year is on 27 January when the guest speaker is
Roger