REDOUBLING GETS THE GO AHEAD FROM RAIL REGULATOR

[whole diary]

[Don]

And how can anyone can say DafT isn't considering electrification when ministers have (for the first time I can ever remember) actually made positive noises about it this year? I don't know where you've been recently.

Willc, you are forgetting that Daft is saying anything about electrification. 

All we have is a new set of ministers who have not yet been house trained.  I am sure that they will get there wings clipped at some stage and restore the status quo at the Department for Road Transport

[willc]

And how can anyone can say DafT isn't considering electrification when ministers have (for the first time I can ever remember) actually made positive noises about it this year? I don't know where you've been recently.

Willc, you are forgetting that Daft is saying anything about electrification. 

All we have is a new set of ministers who have not yet been house trained.  I am sure that they will get there wings clipped at some stage and restore the status quo at the Department for Road Transport

But the first person to say anything about electrification, months ago, was the previous Transport Secretary, Ruth Kelly, who talked about launching the biggest ever rail electrification programme in this country.

And Geoff Hoon is a regular rail user between London and his constituency (EMT^» (East Midlands Trains - about) route) while Lord Adonis was the CLPG^» (Cotswold Line Promotion Group - about) committee member for Oxford for a year in the mid-1980s when he was a student (he is also a past pupil of Kingham Hill School and long-time user of the Cotswold Line), so I think the civil servants may have their work cut out trying to re-educate them in the manner you suggest.

[Btline]

the track is being singled a little nearer to Charlbury than I thought.

So I take it that extra double track will be layed at the Evesham end to compensate for the cuts at the Charlbury end.

[willc]

the track is being singled a little nearer to Charlbury than I thought.

So I take it that extra double track will be layed at the Evesham end to compensate for the cuts at the Charlbury end.

No. As IanL said, this was always pretty much where the double track was meant to end anyway, on a dead level and pretty straight piece of the trackbed, before the line curves towards Finstock and the track starts to slew across the formation.