Great Western Coffee Shop

Check the current status of trains on the WCML: http://www.livedepartureboards.co.uk/virgintrains/summary.aspx?T=EUS&R=1 (http://www.livedepartureboards.co.uk/virgintrains/summary.aspx?T=EUS&R=1) Both Virgin and LM look to be having a nightmare. A familiar tale (still) and so common that despite 10 cancellations in the next hour (at 14:00) and most other trains delayed, the National Rail website doesn't even mention that there's problems...  :-\

I suspect that the National Rail site only posts-up information passed to it by the TOCs )

What a shambles, and no reasons whatsoever for these delays/cancellations!

Well, when you do an upgrade on the cheap what do you expect?

Since when has ^8.6bn been on the cheap?

I know 9 billion is a heck of a lot of money. But it clearly was not enough!

Hardly any of the equipment has been renewed. That's probably why I got stuck for 2 hours near Coventry - all the signals went from Rugby to New Street. I expect none of them were new or renewed. A lot of it was scaled back, and certain parts were not done. (e.g. Bletchley)

In the meantime it looks like Network Rail are having to re-do a lot of overhead wires, and fixing signals.

And I won't even start on how the whole upgrade only gives us 125 mph tilting trains - when we had MORE in the 70s.

and it wasn't spent very wisely.  When you subtract the compensation payments made to TOCs, the contractors profit margin, and the money spent on things like tunnel pressure relief vents for 140 mph running you end up with considerably less than 9 billion.

Well, I'm sure I'm being very nasty and vitriloic, as usual, but of course lots of new equipment was installed, not least the axle counters and points which keep packing up and causing many of the problems, plus signals and overhead wires.


More what? Does anyone know what this means?

Much of the equipment has not been replaced.


I meant the APT.

APT only ever ran in passenger service in the 1980s and how the odd working back then could be 'more' than dozens of timetabled 125mph tilt trains a day is beyond me.

I think you know what I mean.

perhaps I shouldn't have said "more", as the APTs never went above 125.

Presumably you'll have no objection if we refer to you as 'Humpty Dumpty' in future?  ::)

Let's look at ^9bn in another way...

Now, ^90k would not seem to bad a salary for Mr Average engineer in the "West Coast Hypothetical Railway", be he on the track, or someone who is making the axle counter in a factory...

In the roughly 10 year mainstream part of the project, he would earn ^900k

So for the ^9bn, you could employ an army of 10,000 engineers for 10 years to make the wire, string it up etc.etc.

Feel free to tinker with the figures...