Editor’s Intro

THERE was plenty of warning of the snow and freezing temperatures that the storm dubbed the ‘Beast from the East’ (and its successor a couple of weeks later) was to bring to Britain. No matter how Network Rail and the train operators planned for the worst, there were some areas of the country where services…

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MAYBE the question should be how difficult is it, as an increasing number of passengers are finding the seats on the rising numbers of Class 700 and 800 trains entering service very hard. Having experienced seats on these trains – one on a 25-minute journey, the other for 90 minutes – I too am unimpressed.…

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DURING the Christmas and new year period, railways were very much in the news: not all of it was good. News of the decision by Transport Secretary Chris Grayling to terminate the East Coast franchise early gained a fresh set of legs, helped in part by some vociferous tweeting by opposition MPs, including one who…

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A NEW station at Kenilworth was due to open in December 2017. It has already missed two previous opening dates and now might open in February 2018 – more than a year late. The missed deadlines will come as no surprise to those who have closely monitored the project from its inception. Neither does it…

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IT’S difficult to put a precise value on what more than 60 community rail partnerships and 1,000 station adoption schemes have brought to both urban and rural lines. More than 3,200 volunteers, working regularly as individuals, or in groups, provide around 250,000 hours of work annually to promote, protect, improve, and transform railway lines and…

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THE past few months have seen a number of notable orders for new rolling stock, and while very welcome it raises a number of questions, not least what happens to that not-so-old rolling stock that will be replaced? There are great efforts being made to resolve some of the overcrowding on commuter services into London,…

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OLD Oak Common held an open day at the beginning of September – and what a magnificent event it was. However, the pictures of the wonderful array of locomotives (see p36) tell just part of the story. As someone who played a small part in organising the Eastleigh Works open day in 2009, I know…

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THE Government’s announcement it is to trial ‘platooning’, with as many as three wirelessly connected HGVs travelling in close convoy – with all acceleration, braking and steering controlled by a driver in the lead vehicle – has worrying overtones. While dubbed as a trial – and history shows ‘trials’ tend to become permanent – one…

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FOR those of us working within the rail industry, it was no surprise that the Government backtracked and abandoned key electrification schemes, preferring instead to employ bi-mode trains. The signs have been pointing to such a decision for months. It was all a question of timing – which unsurprisingly came on the eve of the…

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Welcome to the 120th anniversary issue of The Railway Magazine For a small team that is passionate about railways, who produce the magazine month in, month out, it’s a great milestone – one we are all very proud of. Little did I realise that when my first photograph was published in the December 1982 issue…

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