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If SWR and c2c are negotiated but the effective commencement date hasn’t been reached by the time Labour get in power, then they could be cancelled off and that would be that. The owning groups might try and bill the DfT for their wasted management time but I don’t think they would get very far...

Wiki has got this wrong. The remaining 10 privately run DfT TOCs are all on NRCs. Two of them (SWR and c2c) are on the old term+ contracts which had a fixed term and up to 26 periods extension. Those extensions have been enacted and the two contracts are now due to expire in 5/25 and 7/25...

The lawyers thing is a bit of a myth, perpetuated by the unions. There isn’t too much lawyering involved in the day to day railway. The key savings here are cutting out 14 TOCS having to team up their functions to transact with 1 NR. A good example of this is in train planning, which could...

ONS press release of 31/07/20 lists all the TOCs. If you google ONS rail classification, you should find it easily.

Yes they are, by the nature of the NRC. The TOC boards have autonomy of decision as far as their management functions go but the key decisions are now taken by the DfT. All DfT TOCs were reclassified as public non-financial corporations in 2020 when all the franchises were effectively...

That wasn’t the point I was making. The liability for the amount of lease cost lies with the DfT so they have to sign off any variation in any DfT TOC lease that could affect the price or the duration of the lease. TOCs have never had the freedom to do this alone, even pre-COVID. In the case...

The DfT have always had to sign off any new or increased rolling stock liability on the public purse. It’s got nothing to do with the classification of the expenditure.

Not exactly. Hitachi currently will not give you even numbers of vehicles on 80x sets - it’s the way they have configured the equipment in the cars. You can make 5, 7 or 9 car sets out of an 80x. Hitachi also are not currently offering extra cars to boost formations. They will sell you more...

Wasting public money isn’t a Criminal Offence - it is not something that can be tried in Court. Parliament is the ultimate body in charge of public finances.

That failed because the Mayor of London pulled the TfL funding mainly because he felt the benefits lay outside of London and his voters. HCC would never have had the finances to replace the amount needed. WBC even less. Redevelopment of the Watford Met Station site was in the business plan, to...

That’s the whole point of the tunnel and HEx. It’s on the RAB for the airport so they get their money through the fees from the airlines. What they get from punters using the service is very much secondary.

No, the PMO Steering Group meet monthly and all aspects are gone into. For each timetable period there is a dashboard by operator with all the key NR and Operator elements listed, specific reports on major recasts and forward looks on such matters as cascades. They usually look two timetables...

Quite simply, timetabling only, based on series of assumptions and constraints. An ESG should report about two years from a timetable introduction (in tune with how Part J works) and from about a year out you are only fettling a known outcome because all the Rights issues should have been...

Timetabling the ECML is all about hitting various locations at precisely the right time. You have various crossing moves that you have to time before or after, various connections to make and various slower trains you have to share your lines with. The more infrastructure you have at your...

There is unlikely to be a new franchise in 2027.

The service is not designed for the benefit of rail users more widely. It is designed to get people into Paddington and disperse from there, not necessarily by public transport for some of its more significant users. The most bizarre pick up I ever saw was when the gold leaf Hummer was about a...

And that is where it can go badly wrong. Those issues should never be part of an ESG remit. There are other groups that should consider them. Considering those issues at an ESG turns the ESG process into a bureaucratic nightmare where too many NR departments get involved and think they can...

We have discussed this many times before. The value of this service to Heathrow Airport Limited is not just as a passenger service - it is an airport facility which can be charged to airlines. The chances that these paths could just be taken off them are nil. HAL are serious players who operate...

It wasn’t four tracking all the way but re-instating on the up allows for more overtaking moves, which unlocks presentation times at Peterborough. Welwyn viaduct will always prove a constraint but the less points where the presentation time has to be fixed, the better. Where the DfT (and NR)...

Exactly this. LSL presumably had a contingent right under STP to operate in those paths. As soon as Avanti could operate the paths under their existing fixed rights, the LSL right would automatically fall away. The whole thing would have been handled by NR in the normal way.