LNER is back

[luckymucklebackit]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44142258

The East Coast main line is back in Public ownership, with LNER as the branding. So that is LNER, GWR and Southern, LMS next?

Jim

[glencairn]

Locomotives in Apple Green perhaps?

Glencairn

[21C1]

Teak painted coaches as well

[Mountain]

We already have GWR. I didnt know we had Southern.

[luckymucklebackit]

We already have GWR. I didnt know we had Southern.

We also have a London and North Western apparently (just without the "and")

[b308]

Inevitable in view of their overbid for the franchise, they should be fined, not bailed out.

[Bufferstop]

Try to fine them they'd point out the bits of the contract NR have failed to deliver/,complete on time and the arguments would go on indefinitely. The bidding process was like the West Coast one chaotic and unfit for purpose. Privatisation has been a total failure in terms of its purpose ( to save the country lots of money) whilst a fantastic success for the railways themselves, new trains, new stations, new customers and massive new unintended subsidies.

[MickleoverTestTrack]

Passenger numbers have risen dramatically since privatisation, this is not in doubt. What I want to know is how the proponents of privatisation can be so sure that privatisation was the cause of this. Surely in a world where more people are on the move than ever before by every form of transport and there is more concern over environmental impact, it is impossible to definitively say what the cause of the effect is?

The reason the 91 fleet was as small as it is was that the OHLE supply north of Doncaster isn't capable of delivering the power for a full electric service, BR funded the electrification of the ECML themselves with nowhere near the investment it really should have had. As far as I can make out, politicians and civil servants brought about the Hitachi fleet but haven't given Network Rail the funds to upgrade the ECML electrics to supply the power for them. The likelihood from here is the Hitachi fleet will come in with many services running on diesel north of Doncaster making them slower and less efficient than the old fleet.

The whole thing is becoming more of a monumental mess the more politicians and civil servants interfere.

[burnie]

I am unsure whether this is a good thing or not, this government are currently running the NHS into the ground by under investing in it, will the ECML suffer the same?

[b308]

Try to fine them they'd point out the bits of the contract NR have failed to deliver

As far as I was aware NR haven't been doing much on the ECML, they've been fouling up elsewhere! So just for once the blame can lay firmly at the doors of Virgin and Stagecoach for overbidding...

[b308]

I am unsure whether this is a good thing or not, this government are currently running the NHS into the ground by under investing in it, will the ECML suffer the same?

Just like they did in BR days under every Gov since 1948... Also they did the same with no investment when they last took over ECML...

[stuartp]

Try to fine them they'd point out the bits of the contract NR have failed to deliver

As far as I was aware NR haven't been doing much on the ECML, they've been fouling up elsewhere! So just for once the blame can lay firmly at the doors of Virgin and Stagecoach for overbidding...

Power supply upgrades, grade separated junction at Werrington, station layout changes at York and Doncaster, four-tracking at Huntigdon etc allowing greater service frequency on the core route and additional destinations off it so about two dozen more trains a day and increased revenue growth.

But see here: https://www.parliament.uk/documents/com ... 1-2018.pdf

... especially this bit :

"At the point the East Coast Franchise was bid for and awarded, the East Coast Connectivity Fund was at an early stage of development and funding for delivery had not been committed to individual projects. Furthermore the ECCF had no specifically defined outputs in terms of of quantum of increased capacity... Network Rail was not asked to endorse the final assumptios used by the successful East Coast bidders at the contract award stage. "

So in other words the DfT has let the franchise based on a set of assumptions made about an (at the time) unfunded and unscoped set of unspecified improvements. And then blamed everybody else.