Govia Thameslink Railway was renationalised at 02.00 yesterday morning, and the RMT has accompanied the reform by calling for all railway staff to be employed in-house. The union has been running a campaign to end ‘outsourcing’, when staff such as cleaners are employed by a third-party contractor.

Govia Thameslink Railway will be returned to the public sector at 02.00 on Sunday, in the next stage of the government’s renationalisation programme. The Department for Transport said the changeover would mean that eight out of 10 journeys would then be provided by public operators, with only Chiltern Railways, Great Western Railway, East Midlands Railway, Avanti West Coast and CrossCountry remaining in the private sector for the time being.

Thunderstorms have damaged signalling in west Wales and north west England, and many trains are delayed. Meanwhile, National Rail has warned that temperatures may exceed 30 degrees in some areas again today.

Record temperatures are delaying trains again today. South Western Railway is warning that some trains have been cancelled, particularly on the routes between London, Winchester, Southampton, Bournemouth and Weymouth, and also to Aldershot and Haslemere.

The man who was CEO of DfT Operator until recently has returned to the private sector. Robin Gisby, who had been in charge of the company which owns renationalised passenger operators has become chairman of InterCity Rail Freight, which is developing methods to revive the railways’ parcels traffic using passenger trains.

The government has unveiled a new ‘mass transit taskforce’, which the Department for Transport says is intended to ‘tackle barriers to delivery of mass transit systems across the UK, supporting economic growth, jobs and new homes’. New schemes could include buses, light rail and trams.

A Class 387 unit operated on Southern by Govia Thameslink Railway was being unveiled in Great British Railways livery at Brighton on Thursday. The details reveal that the former operators’ names may be set to be continued by GBR, because the unit bears the words ‘Great British Railways Southern’. Up to now the fate of the private sector brands had been uncertain, but the new livery appears to resolve that doubt.

A ‘short term’ approach to railway infrastructure procurement is increasing costs, delaying completion and holding back investment and innovation, according to a new report from the Competition and Markets Authority.

Wales says it is being short-changed by the ‘reset’ of HS2, which has been announced by transport secretary Heidi Alexander. She is cutting the maximum speed to 320km/h in a bid to save money, but the Welsh Government has accused ministers at Westminster of denying Wales a ‘fair share’ of funding.

Transport secretary Heidi Alexander has announced that the maximum speed of trains on HS2 will be 320km/h, instead of 360km/h. The cost of the line is now expected to be somewhere between 87.7 million and 102.7 billion pounds. The transport secretary said she was setting out plans for a ‘fundamental reset’ which was intended to complete the project as soon as possible.

Passengers on West Midlands Trains are being advised to travel only if they must between 21 and 23 May, because of industrial action by members of TSSA. The dispute is about payments for rest day working, which the union says are not in line with the pay for members of other unions.

The RMT has suspended this week’s Underground strikes, after talks with TfL made progress. The RMT said: ’At the eleventh hour the employer has shifted its position.’

The introduction of summer timetables on National Rail involves significant changes to train services, many of which are new or improved.

Transport for London is warning that Underground services are likely to be badly disrupted next week, as the RMT stages another two 24-hour strikes of drivers in the continuing dispute over a proposed four-day week. The union says the proposals are opposed by its members, while TfL says the plan is strictly voluntary.

Campaigners in Aylesbury are calling for a section of the former Great Central main line to be upgraded to passenger standards, so that their town will be connected to East West Rail. The Aylesbury Action Group says the Aylesbury spur from Claydon Junction is not merely a proposal for a future railway, but 18km of ‘shovel-ready’ infrastructure that remains the ‘vital missing link’ in the East West Rail project.

FirstGroup will be launching its open access Lumo service between Stirling and London this month. Access rights were granted by the Office of Rail and Road in March 2024, but more recent applications for other routes have not succeeded.

Cambridge South station will open to passengers on 28 June, the Department for Transport has announced. Trains will start calling then at the 250 million pound station, and there will be an official opening ceremony the following day. As many as 20 trains an hour will be calling during the peaks, and the DfT is predicting that it will attract 1.8 million users a year.

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.