The Department for Transport has revealed that it will set up a new publicly-owned railway operating company before Great British Railways has taken over. The new company will be a subsidiary of DfT Operator Limited, which has been taking control of operators as they are renationalised.

FirstGroup’s National Rail Contract for Great Western Railway will be renationalised on 13 December, after Chiltern Railways has returned to public ownership on 20 September.

Class 175s will be running on a Cornish branch line from later this month. The units, built by Alstom some 25 years ago and cascaded to GWR from Transport for Wales, were already planned to be used on services on the Devon and Cornwall main line, and also on the branches to Barnstaple and Okehampton. But GWR has now announced that the units will be used for the first stage of Mid Cornwall Metro, which goes live on 17 May and will mean a doubling of frequencies to hourly between Newquay and Par.

The Government has rejected concerns voiced by the Commons Transport Committee in its report on skills in transport manufacturing. The Committee had warned that skills gaps are posing ‘significant challenges’.

David Statham is leading the new FirstGroup TfL concession for London Overground, which started on 3 May. He was most recently commercial director for First Rail, and before that was managing director of Govia’s Southeastern until it was renationalised in 2021.

The RMT has claimed that Network Rail’s ‘Modernising Maintenance’ programme and reductions in staffing were the real cause of major disruption at Manchester Piccadilly after 400m of overhead wires on the station throat had been damaged earlier this month. Services at Piccadilly had to be suspended after a wire had broken on the morning of 16 April, and did not return in full until 11.00 on the 19th, after engineers had worked day and night to repair the damage.

The government has refused to amend the Railways Bill to clarify the relative powers of the transport secretary and Great British Railways. The Commons Transport Committee had said that the proposed law should be changed to iron out ‘potential tension’ between the DfT and GBR.

Younger adults aged between 18 and 34 are putting themselves at risk when using level crossings, according to the results of a survey released by Network Rail today. Eight out of 10 of those who responded claimed to know what they are doing when they need to cross a line, but at the same time it appears that ignorance is bliss. Distraction is the greatest danger. This includes talking to companions (28 per cent), wearing headphones (26 per cent) and using a mobile (24 per cent).

Plans to reopen the former Midland Railway main line to Manchester have taken a step forward with the submission of the Peaks and Dales Line Feasibility Study to the Department for Transport.

Underground drivers who belong to the RMT walked out at 12.00, and Transport for London is warning of ‘severe delays’ on several of those lines which still have a service. The Mayor of London is calling for a ‘swift resolution’ to the dispute, which involves the introduction of a four-day working week.

A non-executive director of DfT Operator has been dismissed only days after he warned a Parliamentary group that the trains being ordered for HS2 will reduce the number of seats on the London to Manchester route. Chris Gibb, who has been at the DfT’s subsidiary company since 2020, was speaking on 13 April, when he told the All-Party Parliamentary Rail Group that the answer to this capacity problem would be a second fleet.

Transport for London is warning that Underground services will start to be reduced from mid-morning, as RMT drivers prepare to walk out for 24 hours from midday. A second 24-hour stoppage is planned from midday on Thursday, and more have been called in May and June. The dispute is about proposals to offer a four-day working week to Underground drivers, who would work longer over the four days but have three days off a week.

The RMT has accused Transport for London of ‘reneging’ on promises to ‘negotiate in good faith’ over proposals for a four-day working week. The union said the first of two pairs of strikes are set to go ahead from midday tomorrow until midday on Wednesday. The second walkout this week is planned between midday on Thursday and midday on Friday. TfL described has the walkouts as ‘completely unnecessary’.

Network Rail has revealed that more than 400 metres of overhead wires were damaged by a train outside Manchester Piccadilly on Thursday evening, which led to all platforms being closed so that engineers could carry out repairs. Network Rail declared the station ‘fully open’ again at 11.00 today, although it warned that some changes to services were still possible for a while.

A fault with the overhead wires at Manchester Piccadilly is expected to cause many delays and cancellations today, which are also affecting trains to Manchester Airport. Wiring on the station throat was damaged yesterday morning, and trains only started to return to Piccadilly at 07.00 today.

Two sites in Derby have made the final shortlist for a new Great British Railways HQ. They are city centre brownfield site Becketwell and Midland House, an existing railway building opposite Derby station. Three other candidates have been ruled out.

New plans and images for East West Rail have been unveiled, including the possibility of running up to five trains an hour between Oxford and Cambridge. The trains will be longer, and several stations will be rebuilt or gain additional entrances, while discontinuous electrification is likely, so that hybrid electric/battery trains can be used. The new plans are part of a further round of consultation which has been launched today by the East West Railway company.

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.