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    Rail strikes discussion

    Well I'll tell you what then, you list some of these attributable lies - not hearsay or Media headlines but actual Government (and/or DFT) statements about the strike and the dispute. Forget obfuscation into Brexit, Rwanda or whatever and tweets by the Honourable Member for Little Beeching -...
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    Rail strikes discussion

    Your first point is naiive, so please don't bandy the word around. The Treasury is not the same as The Government. There is always a queue of Cabinet Ministers lined up to get more money for their particular briefs and almost all are disappointed, and in this case when there are calls for...
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    Rail strikes discussion

    All you are doing is illustrating the point WBB. I have worked in several industry sectors and the constant sense of grievance that you are illustrating is not typical in other sectors - it is increasingly out of step and in some ways it is now unique. The Ticket Office closure issue has been...
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    Rail strikes discussion

    I would happily support the current RMT pay demands if after it was granted we moved into an era of collaboration and constructive behaviour towards a better railway. I would look forward to more worker involvment and even representation on committees discussing not just operational matters but...
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    Rail strikes discussion

    I heard a lot of factually inaccurate nonsense on BBC's PM the other day, when (I think) Mr Lynch re-stated the tired anachronistic trope about £3bn of "Profits" leaving the rail industry. As it happens, Roger Ford did a forensic TOC by TOC, year by year analysis of this nonsense 3 months ago...
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    Rail strikes discussion

    Are you seriously suggesting that Care WOrkers would walk out of a Nursing Home and leave the old people to die? Or are you suggesting that they can carry on working and the RMT will act as Proxy for other sectors and strike on their behalf? I am not sure which scenario is more disturbing or...
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    Rail strikes discussion

    But mainly the current crisis is about shortages. In a global market it doesn't matter where the goods come from. You still pay the same price - look at the price of Brent Crude or North Sea Gas? Why is it now more than double what it was 18 months ago? There's no war in the North Sea. It is...
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    Passengers thanking Drivers

    Signal checks or slow running are always a pain for regular users so when a driver (or guard) updates the passengers with what the problem is and how long a delay might be it's greatly appreciated, and I always make a point of thanking them for it. Not sure if it's TOC policy to keep passengers...
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    Crossrail - Construction updates and progress towards opening (now expected 24 May 2022)

    Having worked (and managed) quite a few projects in my time I know exactly why it is fatal to plan for the latest date possible! You can almost smell the complacency when the pressure is taken off.
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    Passengers thanking Drivers

    I do if we are at a terminus and I have to walk past the front of the train. It's nice to be appreciated and a bit of friendliness doesn't cost anything.
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    Will the Queen be able to open the Crossrail Elizabeth Line?

    No, I didn't say that was the <only> reason for having a monarchy. I said that as Head of State the monarch has a symbolic presence that far outweighs the winner of a raffle. Don't try and use hyperbole - stick to what I said. Your lifetime's practice comment suggests you think I am in some way...
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    Will the Queen be able to open the Crossrail Elizabeth Line?

    And that is one of the reasons for having a Monarchy. Let one random person drawn from a hat open it and the other few thousand all feel that their contributions have been overlooked or passed over to the winner of a raffle. You get her Majesty to do it not only because she is the Head of...
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    Plans to reopen Totton - Fawley/Hythe (again!)

    Involved in what exactly? There is no plan, there is no solid proposal. There is no feasibility study that correlates and unifies all the various financial and technology constraints apart from the discredited Halcrow Report, which was a flawed hatchet job. (Why do trains need to run to Fareham...
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    Plans to reopen Totton - Fawley/Hythe (again!)

    As I said in the original thread, the frustration here is the lack of a single voice and clear leadership, as witnessed by the Okehampton reopening, which was driven by the three main parties working as a single virtual task force from its inception. WHat we have here is just and endless talking...
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    Small steps in the right direction for Freight in North Wales

    I believe crushed slate waste is now used as an alternative feedstock for scalpings - if so this gives a huge potential to send it all over the country and duplicate many existing aggregate flows.
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    Orion high speed logistics letting the train take the strain.

    Good post - I was doing the same thought experiment myself - imagining the scenario you describe and then realising the difficulties in accomplishing it. I believe it requires a world where the railways were still one seamless integrated organisation, so we have to go back to 1997, cancel...
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    Highland Council approves plan to take 9000 tonnes of timber off Caithness roads and on to rail network

    This is good news. I am not sure in what way the Georgemas trial could be deemed successful, as the news article infers. Georgemas demonstrated to interested parties that it was too labour and capital intensive to be viable as an operation, due in part to the need to load and unload from road...
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    Back to the bad old days’: swingeing rail cuts set alarm bells ringing

    I agree with this. In pursuit of winning (and keeping) new customers we should also start subdividing the non commuter business. Currently almost any non regular journey type is classed as "Leisure" whereas there are varying demand types. Community Rail Partnerships and similar seem to have...
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    Back to the bad old days’: swingeing rail cuts set alarm bells ringing

    You can't hold on to all of them. THis never works. Yes in theory the employer can refuse certain key workers but across an entire program the calibre of the staff wanting to move on will in general be in the echelon of better performers and those younger highy motivated employees that are...
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    Back to the bad old days’: swingeing rail cuts set alarm bells ringing

    Yes that's true, though you often turn a highly skilled, motivated ambitious employee into a resentful employee who no longer wants to work for you, and then leaves within a year anyway to work for one of the companies that offered him/her a position conditional upon taking redundancy. I have...

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