The unveiling of a plaque on March 1 officially completed the North-West Multimodal Transport Hub project, with bus services and active travel facilities integrated with trains at Derry~Londonderry in the city’s former Waterside station which was brought back into railway use in 2019. The £27m project was funded by the EU’s INTERREG VA Programme (€23·5m), Northern Ireland’s Department for Infrastructure (£7·4m), Derry City & Strabane District Council and — reflecting the Hub’s cross-border and regional role — the Republic of Ireland’s Department for Transport.
VolkerRail has taken delivery of two B 66 Matisa tampers as part of a ‘significant’ investment programme to enhance its plant division, which now includes 14 on-track machines.
On March 10 FirstGroup said its open access operations Lumo and Hull Trains have experienced stronger than anticipated passenger demand during the winter. The First Rail division has also benefited from the settlement of one-off claims relating to prior reporting periods.
ORR statistics show that 4·5% of planned trains were cancelled during October to December 2022, the highest since recording began in 2014. Of these cancellations, 51·6% were attributed to operators, 27·1% to infrastructure and network issues and the remainder to external incidents such as severe weather or ill passengers. Only 62·3% of station stops were reached on time, 5·4 percentage points worse than the same period the year before, though still 2·9 pp higher than pre-pandemic in the same quarter of 2019.
Trenitalia c2c has appointed Stuart Browning as Head of Safety & Environment. He joins from Govia Thameslink Railway, where he was most recently Head of Operational Improvement for Thameslink and Great Northern.
Northern is installing 230 Infotec display screens at 93 stations, along with 175 speakers for public announcements. Most of the screens have white LEDs, while full colour screens will be installed at some larger stations including Bolton, Bradford Interchange and Sunderland.
Neil Bennett has stepped down as Chairman of Rail Operations Group. He remains Executive Chairman of Nexrail Leasing.
Trackwork Ltd has taken delivery of two more Komatsu PW160 road-rail vehicles which are available for hire. They are fitted with the heavyweight toolbox side option to lower the centre of gravity and improve lifting duties, and are permitted to work next to lines that are open to traffic.
Daisy Chapman-Chamberlain has joined Oxford to Cambridge rail project promoter East West Railway Co as Innovation Manager. She was previously Rail Knowledge Transfer Manager at Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Network.
Free sanitary pads and tampons for passengers are now available from dispensers at Birmingham Snow Hill and Moor Street stations, following on from an initiative at New Street last year. It is funded by Network Rail in partnership with the West Midlands Grand Railway Collaboration of train operators.
Tony Miller has succeeded John Robinson as the Railway Mission Railway Chaplain for London South and Southern.
South Western Railway is to install publicly accessible automated external defibrillators at all 154 staffed stations on its network.
Tide Graphic designed the new livery for the 2 km Cairngorm funicular railway, which reopened on January 26 following significant engineering works. The livery is based on ‘iconic and dynamic animals who live on the mountain and who represent the summer and winter seasons’.
