Rail investment call as renationalisation moves ahead
The West Midlands Trains National Rail Contract held by Transport UK Group will come to an end at 02.00 on Sunday morning, when the individual brands of West Midlands Railway and London Northwestern will be taken over by the state. The change will be the latest in a series of renationalisations which began with LNER in 2018, but transport campaigners are warning that renationalisation must be supported by greater railway investment.
Train services in Devon and Cornwall are set to be disrupted by floods into next week, Great Western Railway has warned, as forecasters predict more rain to come. Network Rail said engineers have inspected the Barnstaple and Okehampton lines and found sections where the ballast has been washed away. Specialist divers will be carrying out underwater inspections of the structures, but they can only enter the water once the levels have dropped. The Met Office has issued yellow warnings of rain for Devon and Cornwall today.
An overhead line fault near Salford Quays in Manchester is expected to disrupt Metrolink services on the Eccles line until further notice while repairs are carried out. TfGM said there is no service between Eccles and Pomona.
A branch in West London will become the first GWR route to be served by a battery train on 31 January. Saturday services on the West Ealing to Greenford line will be provided from now on by the specially converted Class 230 unit, which was originally part of a D78 stock Underground train before it was bought by engineers Vivarail.
Transport for London has unveiled an ambition to take over the Great Northern inner suburban services between Moorgate, Welwyn Garden City and Stevenage, by including them in the Overground network. The proposal has been outlined in the draft of TfL’s latest Business Plan which will be considered by the TfL Board on 4 February.
Euston station in London is back on the high speed agenda, after the first of two tunnel boring machines began its subterranean journey from Old Oak Common to the Euston Road. This section has been mired in a controversy which was even greater than over the rest of the project, because when the previous government paused work at Euston it left a desolate worksite. The government now says the section between west and central London will be ‘essential to unlocking the project’s full economic potential.’
Train services in south west England are not expected to return to normal before the weekend, National Rail has warned. Storms Ingrid and Chandra, which GWR described as ‘back to back’, have caused severe flooding in parts of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, while after heavy seas had damaged a sea wall, a sinkhole measuring 8m by 3.5m appeared near the railway between Dawlish and Teignmouth. Network Rail engineers have been carrying out emergency repairs overnight.