Countdown is on for next renationalisation
Another former franchise is to pass back to public ownership on Sunday morning, when Greater Anglia will be taken over by DfT Operator.
One of the operators which wants to operate open access international trains between London and continental Europe has named a train builder and a leasing company as its partners. Gemini Trains says it is working with Siemens and Rock Rail so that it can run services between London, Paris, Brussels and Cologne.
Network Rail has published details of engineering work which is scheduled to take place over Christmas and New Year, disrupting services on some lines. Network Rail’s chief network operator Helen Hamlin said: ‘The period between Christmas and New Year is the quietest on the railway and it’s the best time for us to do the major projects that will take longer than a night or a weekend to complete.’
Railway services are returning to normal this morning after a weekend of high winds brought by Storm Amy. Trains in England and Wales are no longer disrupted although some lines were blocked by fallen trees for a time, but no services are expected to run today north of Dingwall to Kyle of Lochalsh, Wick or Thurso.
The RMT is calling on Transport for London not to renew a cleaning contract which involves more than 2000 staff. The union claims that the Mayor may have been misled by his advisors at TfL, who had told him that it was too late to halt a re-tendering process.
A Caledonian Sleeper service is to start calling at Birmingham International from January, connecting the West Midlands with the Scottish Highlands. It will be the first major change to a sleeper route since the Night Riviera between London and Cornwall ceased to include a separate sleeping car for Plymouth 20 years ago.
The first of a fleet of 54 new trains for the Docklands Light Railway has gone into service. The five-car trains, built for Transport for London by CAF at Beasain in Spain, have been delayed by more than a year because of compatibility problems with the DLR’s existing control systems, but TfL said it now expected the full fleet to be in service by the end of next year.