RSSB to phase out signal post telephones
The era of telephones at signals is coming to an end, the RSSB has announced. They were originally provided so that train crews could communicate with the nearest signal box without walking down the line, but they are now being replaced by GSM-R cab radios or specialist portable devices.
A leaked government review of the plans to build tram lines in Leeds has concluded that buses would be cheaper. The Labour mayor of West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin had promised to get ‘spades in the ground’ by 2028, but the project has been pushed back into the 2030s after the Cabinet Office and the Treasury carried out an audit in September.
A West Midlands passenger service which was withdrawn as a wartime economy measure in January 1941 is running again. Although the closure of the Camp Hill line in Birmingham was originally said to be temporary, it was confirmed by the LMS in 1946. The line itself has continued to be used by through traffic.
The Government has outlined plans to help local councils make seamless travel on trains, trams and buses easier, but one transport campaigning group has warned that a truly integrated national transport system should be the long-term ambition. Other measures announced by the Department for Transport today include a new Google Maps partnership so that passengers can track rural buses and ‘Mini-Switzerland’ Peak District trials.
An interim chief executive has been appointed at the Office of Rail and Road to replace John Larkinson, who was at the centre of a controversy during the autumn of last year when the ORR proposed to withdraw the popular 07.00 Avanti West Coast service from Manchester to London from January, replacing it with an empty stock working which would still have departed from Piccadilly each morning with a full crew.
The exhibition train which has been touring Britain in celebration of Railway 200 is nearing the end of the line, as its last few calling points are announced. The ‘Inspiration’ train started its tour last summer at the Severn Valley Railway, and has since welcomed thousands of visitors. It is currently at Minehead on the West Somerset Railway and will then visit Cornwall for the only time by going to Newquay between 6 and 11 April.
Frustrated residents in the Buckinghamshire town of Winslow are setting up an Action Group, as there appears to be no end in sight to the deadlock which is preventing scheduled passenger trains running between Oxford, Bletchley and Milton Keynes. The restored section of line between Bicester and Bletchley was completed in 2024 and approved by ORR inspectors in October of that year, but so far the only trains have been freight workings and test runs, apart from one or two passenger charters.