Journal Live - Blog Central

The Trainspotter's Lament

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:46:57 +0000

Where are all the female trainspotters?

Why isn't there an equal balance of genders at the end of the platform?

Why didn't I meet Heidi? Why, when I was younger, was Heidi associated with a sugary fifties film that had something to do with cowbells, yet now she's MD of a TOC?

55 degrees North

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:11:44 +0000

I've always thought that this was a very clever new name for the building that most of us grew up knowing as Swan House. It tells you exactly where Newcastle is; it harks back to the Tyne's importance as a seafaring port; and it got me thinking about how we might be able to "trade" ourselves out of the recession.

Could do better?

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:07:58 +0000

While residents the length of the West Coast Main Line are enjoying their new, high frequency train service, what new services has North East England seen this December?

Haydon Bridge has an extra four trains a day.....

.... err, that's it.

Still, let's not get too downhearted... Northern Rail are doing their bit with extra Sunday trains from Alnmouth to MetroCentre. As a result, Acklington, Widdrington and Pegswood have a better Sunday service for these four weeks than they do on weekdays....

Sadly, It's a pity about Northern's publicity leaflet. Because they've forgotten that return trains call at Morpeth...

Fares please!

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:57:13 +0000

When did you last have a free train ride?

Now, I'm not suggesting for one moment that anybody who reads this blog might try to avoid paying their rail fares. In fact, I bet you've got on your train with the coins at the ready, jangling away in your pocket.

Here in the north of England, many of our trains are what used to be called 'paytrains'. Stations are unstaffed and you buy your ticket from the conductor on board the train.

Increasingly, though, overcrowding means that at busy times the poor employee is simply unable to work his way through the train between stops, before he has to scurry back to the rear cab to release the train doors.

This isn't fare evasion, or avoidance. Most people want to pay their fares. It's a revenue collection failure.

How will you spend yours?

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:14:56 +0000

How is the UK's large and diverse transport industry going to benefit from today's tax cuts and contribute to turning around the economy?

Now that's a good question. Here in the UK, our government is pinning its hopes on a Keynesian "spend, spend, spend" approach. That's all very well, but some people consider that it was our propensity to hit the shops, fuelled by rising house prices and the availability of cheap credit, that got the Western economies into this mess in the first place.

Splitting headaches?

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:20:43 +0000

I'm not the first, and I'm sure I won't be the last observer of transport matters to be perplexed and bemused by the mysteries of UK railway ticketing.

Today, Jill and Julia are travelling home to Prudhoe from Jill's parents, just to the south of Sheffield. In the past, I've managed to get train tickets for around ÃÂ£30. When I went on-line to buy tickets a few weeks ago, the best price I could get was ÃÂ£64.50.

So instead I looked at splitting the journey into sections. Jill doesn't mind changing at Doncaster, so first I managed to get Doncaster to Newcastle tickets from National Express East Coast's own web site for just ÃÂ£33.35 - and their First Class ticket was just coppers more than Standard! Jill will buy on-train tickets for the Northern Rail services between Kiveton Bridge and Doncaster, and Newcastle and Prudhoe, bringing the total cost of the journey to ÃÂ£45.35, almost twenty quid cheaper - and with a fair chunk of First Class travel, too!

And while we're busy tightening our belts, here's a good way of saving money on refreshments for the journey. The Bite discount card gives a 20 per cent discount on purchases from selected food and drink retailers at many of the country's railway stations. You can easily save a couple of quid every time you buy a coffee and sandwich...

Q: What do you do in a recession?

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:58:13 +0000

To Poland to mark the first birthday of the opening of the country's first deepwater container terminal at the city of Gdansk. It's an impressive facility, capable of handling deepwater container vessels and capturing a significant part of the Baltic's container traffic. Funded by an Australian bank, its modular design makes it a relatively simple task to expand as container traffic grows. DCT Gdansk realise that they need good connections to the rest of Poland, so they've already built a rail link and are campaigning to improve nearby roads so that lorries can quickly travel into the hinterland.

A: You plan for the upturn! Infrastructure investment creates short- and medium-term construction industry jobs and gives us renewed or expanded infrastructure such as port facilities, railways and roads so that the transport industry is well placed when the world economy takes a turn for the better. It's classic Keynesian economics, and a point that hasn't been overlooked by the chancellor. So, let's hope that next month's pre-budget report contains some real, new investment, and not just a "re-announcement" of spending already committed.

Water, water, everywhere?

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:25:19 +0000

While parts of the North East are still drying out, I was wondering if anyone has given any thought to the export potential of this most prolific natural resource?

While we've been trying to get rid of our surplus rainwater by allowing it to run off into our rivers and the North Sea, other parts of Europe have been facing near-drought conditions. Barcelona, in particular, is having a tough time.

There's a water pipeline that connects Kielder to the Tees, via the Tyne and the Wear. The pipe was built to take the stuff to the steel and chemical industries on Teesside. It can't be that difficult to put the water into tanker ships and send it off to the parched Spanish mainland and islands.

Now you may think that desalination of seawater might be more efficient, but apparently not. There simply aren't enough hours of sunshine in Spain to power a plant of the size needed. Shipping is an affordable way to carry drinking water around, and to, the Med. So, as we've got more of the wet stuff than we can ever use, perhaps we could see it making a valuable contribution to the region's exports in the not too distant future.

It's so bracing!

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:17:43 +0000

It must have seemed like such a good idea at the time. East Midland Trains, under pressure to provide extra seats between Nottingham and Skegness on summer Saturdays so that Midlands holidaymakers could reach the nearby Butlins holiday centre without using cars, took the innovative step of hiring in two locomotives and five carriages from West Coast Railways, better known for running enthusiasts specials.

Flying Jackets

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:45:57 +0000

On holiday in Italy a couple of weeks ago, Jill I treated ourselves to new leather jackets. We took the retailer up on their offer of delivering them to our hotel, to save lugging them around Florence for the day.

The jackets didn't turn up.

I left contact details with the tour rep, explaining that we would be back home by 1530 BST on the Sunday. At exactly 1530, the retailer rang, full of apologies. The jackets turned up via DHL the following Tuesday. Now, presuming that they couldn't be dispatched from Florence on a Sunday, that means they were probably sent first thing Monday - so that's not bad going!

Mostly it's "when things go wrong" that the transport industry makes the headlines. But it's pleasing to note that, more often than not, as our goods and people wing their way around the globe at various speeds, things usually go according to plan.

On a separate note, just in case you're not aware, there is an email scam doing the rounds. Emails claiming to be from a courier unable to deliver a parcel should be deleted unopened - they contain a trojan in an attachment that's harvesting computer details....

A quiet revolution

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:48:01 +0000

The transport industry tends to just quietly get on with things. Yet while it's getting on with the task of moving people and goods around the world, there could be a revolution going on.

The signs are that we could be seeing a considerable amount of what's known as Modal Shift.

Flying back from our holiday, other than the three of us in our seats, each adjacent row had only two seats taken. It looks as if the credit crunch has really impacted on tourism this year, with more people opting to holiday at home and forgoing the annual flight to the sun.

Restores your faith in human nature...

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:20:52 +0000

I was having a really good morning. Up in good time, so out of the house at a leisurely pace. Onto the bike, posted a letter for Jill, then started descending the hill from Prudhoe. No traffic, whizzed round the roundabout, down to the station. Level crossing barriers up, nothing coming towards me on the single-file bridge over the river. Looked down - I was doing 24mph as I rattled over the bridge (speed limit - 10mph!). Up the short incline, left, and following the river west.

Got to my 'half way tree' (six miles) and only 26 minutes gone. Climbed past Styford onto the old A69, and flew down the hill into Corbridge. No oncoming traffic at The Angel, straight across the junction, and stopped at The Corbridge Sandwich Shop in the square - only to find that I hadn't fastened shut my pannier, it was open, and my wallet wasn't inside.

Had a missed call on my mobile from a number I didn't recognise, so rang it. It was a railwayman. My wallet had been found by the signalbox in Prudhoe, and had been handed in.

Managed to set up a line of credit with the sarnie shop (!).

Got to the office and have had another call, this time from the signaller at Prudhoe, to let me know she has my wallet.

So, my thanks to the person who spotted my wallet, to the railway staff for it's safe keeping, and to the Corbridge Sandwich Shop for letting me pay for today's lunch tomorrow.

Spend, Spend, Spend

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:48:57 +0000

Politicians love making announcements. And who can blame them? After all, if people don't know what you're up to, how can they know what a good job you're doing?

And there's nothing better than transport infrastructure schemes to bring out our MPs to make announcements. After all, these usually involve big dollops of money, and what better way to measure a politician's success than by looking at how much he or she has managed to secure for his or her department?

Take, for example, last week's announcement (or was it a non-announcement?) that the Tyne and Wear Metro will get about ÃÂ£300 million for improvement work quite soon, and a similar amount by 2018 for replacement trains. Didn't that cheer us all up!

But did the government have any choice?

Taxi!

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:45:30 +0000

I know that taxi rides in the South East and Thames Valley are expensive, so no surprise there.

We were down in Reading for a silver wedding anniversary celebration. Having driven (three of us from Prudhoe, and collecting the in-laws from Sheffield, and a niece later, so there were up to six of us in the Zafira), we had decided to use a taxi from the hotel to the party. The cab (a Transit-type minibus) that turned up to collect five of us was on time, but as we turned onto the M4 I realised that its clutch was slipping. However, the driver managed to coax it along, and all was well. Our return journey, for six people, wasn't.