UK rail industry news
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Rail Business UKTransPennine Express aims to get more out of its fleet
UK: TransPennine Express is seeking to achieve higher levels of performance from its fleet, its Fleet, Safety & Service Delivery Director Paul Staples explained when Rail Business UK recently visited Arwick depot. The operator says it is also ‘anticipating great things’ from the trial conversion of a Hitachi trainset to battery hybrid power.
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Rail Business UKAI project aims to prevent level crossing safety incidents
UK: Purple Transform has been awarded Innovate UK funding to develop and trial the use of artificial intelligence to alert staff to potential safety incidents at level crossings. The Levelling Up Crossings project will use Purple Transform’s proprietary SiYtE machine vision and learning platform to scan ...
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Rail Business UKUK railway news round-up
This week’s round-up of business news from the UK railway industry.
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Rail Business UKHaigh gives the go-ahead for Shadow Great British Railways
UK: Secretary of State for Transport Louise Haigh has given the go-ahead for the creation of a Shadow Great British Railways, ahead of the future primary legislation which will be needed to create Great British Railways as an arm’s length body overseeing both train services and ...
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Rail Business UKScotRail to replace inter-city HST fleet
UK: ScotRail is to procure trains to replace the ageing High Speed Train fleet used on routes between Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness, the Scottish government announced on September 3. ScotRail’s procurement and fleet teams are working with its parent body Scottish Rail Holdings, Transport Scotland ...
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Rail Business UKBill to take passenger train operations into the public sector makes progress
UK: The Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill received its third reading in the House of Commons on September 3, as the first major piece of legislation to pass through the Commons under the recently-elected Labour government. The bill would end the award of passenger train ...
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Rail Business UKFive in the running to supply new TransPennine Express fleet
UK: Invitations to negotiate have been issued to five potential manufacturers of new trains which will enable TransPennine Express to move away from largely diesel operation as its core Leeds – Manchester route is electrified. ‘We will be assessing the bids later this year’, reports Fleet, ...
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Rail Business UKStation safety campaign draws on behavioural science
UK: Avanti West Coast is using posters and signage to make station facilities such as lifts, stairs and handrails ‘speak directly to customers’ as part of a ‘Take care. Get there’ safety campaign. The approach has been developed with Richard Shotton who applies findings from psychology ...
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Rail Business UKTransPennine Express Newcastle – Edinburgh local services to continue
UK: The Newcastle – Edinburgh service operated by TransPennine Express under contract to Transport Scotland will continue after December 2024, despite the end of Scottish government funding. The service introduced in December 2021 comprises five Newcastle – Edinburgh trains per day, plus two additional trains between ...
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Rail Business UKGB Railfreight opens £2·5m locomotive maintenance facility
UK: GB Railfreight has opened a £2·5m facility at Tonbridge in Kent which will be used to maintain Class 73, 69 and 66 locomotives. It complements GB Railfreight’s existing sites at Doncaster and Peterborough, and will be operated by partners including EMD, Wabtec and St Leonard’s ...
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Rail Business UKInterview: ‘There’s more to do but we have made excellent progress’
UK: TransPennine Express is ‘making moves in the right direction but we’re under no illusion there’s still much more we need to do‘, the operator’s Managing Director Chris Jackson tells Rail Business UK.
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Rail Business UKMerseyrail Class 507 EMUs bow out
UK: August 26 marked the first day of the operation of eight-car formations of Stadler Class 777 EMUs on Merseyrail services to Southport, as well the first day in almost 46 years when no Merseyrail services were operated by a Class 507 EMU. The last day ...
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Rail Business UKUK railway news round-up
This week’s round-up of business news from the UK railway industry.
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Rail Business UKTrack access charge waiver aims to attract new freight to rail
UK: Infrastructure manager Network Rail is to waive track access charges for new flows in an effort to encourage new freight traffic to rail.
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Rail Business UKNine start-ups selected for rail innovation programme
UK: Nine technology start-ups have been selected from more than 100 applicants to joint the Future Labs innovation programme run by Southeastern, Northern, LNER and TransPennine Express with specialist company L Marks. Chata.ai enables organisations to harness their data through proactive self-service analytics, allowing users ...
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Rail Business UKPay-as-you-go to be extended to 47 more stations
UK: Pay-as-you-go travel using a contactless bank card or device is to go live at a further 47 c2c, London Northwestern Railway, Southeastern and South Western Railway stations from September 22. This will not impact existing ticketing options or the availability of traditional season tickets, and ...
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Rail Business UKDouble rail’s modal share in a decade, urges Labour transport review
UK: The Rail & Urban Transport Review led by former Siemens UK CEO Jürgen Maier has published a report into at how rail infrastructure could be delivered ‘better, faster and more cost effectively’.
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Rail Business UKNetwork Rail looks at TOPS replacement options
UK: Network Rail is undertaking market engagement on the possible replacement of its TOPS mainframe computer system originally procured by British Rail from the Southern Pacific Railroad in the USA in the early 1970s. The ’complex, command-driven’ Total Operations Processing System was designed to provide real-time information ...
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Rail Business UKBuckinghamshire HS2 viaducts make progress
UK: The EKFB joint venture of Eiffage, Kier, Ferrovial Construction and BAM Nuttall has made significant progress in the construction of two major viaducts on the section of High Speed 2 it is building in Buckinghamshire.
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Rail Business UKTinted window film to reduce train air-conditioning needs
UK: TransPennine Express is trialling two tinted window films which it hopes will reduce solar heating and thus lower the energy used by train air-conditioning systems. The operator expects the film supplied by Aura Brand Solutions to block more than 30% of solar energy and 99·9% ...