A Transpennine-Express class 802 No. 802207 has derailed at Heaton T&RSMD. The cause of this is currently unknown, however we can deduce that this happened around 01:00 today, as the unit arrived at that time working 5E51 from Newcastle Station.
It appears to have suffered damage to its nose cone, causing that end coach to be at that 45° angle it currently stands at.
This has caused a number of cancellations and delays around the North East, with ECS moves unable to run.
(More information to follow)
Photo: unknown credit
Article by: @pendolino_pete
ASLEF calling for urgent changes to improve railway safety
The most notable change is the withdrawn of class 43s by August 2023 across the entire rail network, and that the ORR should conduct an immediate industry review of crashworthiness
standards of all rolling stock in service
today and insists that classes of train or
locomotive that do not meet minimum
standards of crashworthiness be
modified or be given a timescale for
withdrawal.
“Going forward, there are regular reviews of
the crashworthiness of legacy rolling
stock to take into account the 'state of
the art' at the time of the review, and the
introduction of any new cab equipment”
ASLEF also require drivers to have secondary impact protection, which will include seatbelts.
Article by: @intercityswallow
The Sir Nigel Gresley Locomotive Trust has announced that the running in trials will be held at the Severn Valley Railway.
It is unknown when the running in will take place as the locomotive is yet to have the overhaul finished and related static tests completed.
The plan is for the locomotive to head by road from Locomotive Services in Crewe to the SVR where a series of trials including light engine and loaded test runs will take place.
Following this the locomotive will return to Crewe to be apart of LSL's pool of locomotives for the Saphos tours.
Durham Council have unveiled plans for the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
The celebrations will be split across multiple sites, including Stockton, Darlington and Shildon. This will have artefacts and locomotives from the era spread across.
To travel between these sites, it is planned for some regular services to be hauled by steam instead of the generic Northern DMUs. It is planned for 60103 Flying Scotsman, 60163 Tornado and 2007 Prince of Wales to haul these trains. They will run a shuttle from Stockton to Shildon, calling at Darlington en route.
As this is in early planning, everything could change before the event in 2025
Today it was announced that a joint venture of Alstom and Hitachi would build HS2's first train fleet. The fleet will consist of 54, 656 foot long high speed trains with a maximum speed of 225 miles per hour (360 km/h)
These trains will operate from London Euston to destinations such as Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and Crewe, as part of the UK's future High Speed network.
The trains will be initially constructed at Hitachi's Newton Aycliffe facility, before final fitting and testing can take place at Alstom's (formerly Bombardier) facility at Derby Litchurch Lane. Construction / maintenance for the bogies will take place at Alstom's facility in Crewe, part of the original BREL Crewe Works.
The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) have released their Estimates of Station Usage for 2020-21. This time period spans from April 1st 2020 to March 29th 2021, which are coincidentally around key dates in lockdown easing relating to travel restrictions. Such messages like “Essential Travel Only”, which were in force for at least 2/3 of the time period, have had extreme effects on passenger stats. The majority of stations have dropped in registered usage by over 80%
Great Britain’s new most used station is Stratford (London), recording 13,985,162 passengers in the year. London Waterloo, the previous holder of this title for multiple years before, was 4th in the rankings with 12,214,626 entries and exits.
Rather unsurprisingly in all cases, Scotland’s most used stations were Glasgow Central (5,325,090), Edinburgh Waverley (2,957,732) and Glasgow Queen Street (2,299,020) and Wales’ was Cardiff Central (1,975,462), with second place Newport (543,356) over 3.6 times lower. England’s most used were all in London, with Stratford, Victoria, London Bridge, Waterloo and Liverpool Street all in the top 5 with between 11 and 14 million passengers in the year.
The Welsh stations of Aberech, Llanbedr and Sugar Loaf all recorded 0 passengers in the time period, along with Beasdale in Scotland and Stanlow & Thornton in Cheshire. The same is true of Sampford Courtenay on the Okehampton line, but that has since closed. Those 6 stations, quite obviously, represent the least used in each of the countries of Great Britain. The previous overall least used station with 42 entries and exits, Berney Arms, recorded 348 passengers, the biggest percentage increase of any station in this time period.
Article by: @dans.trains
Photo by: @railwayswithcharlie
The Island Line has finally reopened, after nearly 10 months. The works and testing started after the line closed in early January 2021, and it was planned that the closure would last for 4 months, until April 1st of the same year.
However, delayed infrastructure work because of the pandemic pushed the opening date back 6 weeks to mid May, but software issues on the new fleet of Class 484 trains forced this to be extended to today. There have also been problems around flooding during the works.
The works that closed the line included making the line ready for the new fleet of Class 484 units, as well as adding a new passing loop at Brading. This extra bit of track would enable trains to run at a 30 minute frequency rather than the fairly complicated 20 minute then 40 minute gap in services. A 30 minute frequency enables more connections with the Wightlink Ferry, linking Ryde to the mainland of Great Britain via Portsmouth.
The closure also enabled the delivery, testing and trial running of the Class 484s. These 2 car units have been converted by Vivarail from London Underground D-Stock, but this part of the upgrade project was also met with delays contributing to the later than scheduled reopening.
The Island Line runs on the Isle of Wight, connecting with the boat to Portsmouth in the town of Ryde. It then goes through as far as Shanklin on the old route to Ventnor, with a connection at Smallbrook Junction to the Isle of Wight Steam Railway. It is a sub-brand as part of the South Western Franchise, currently run by South Western Railway, a FirstGroup (70%) and MTR Corporation (30%) joint venture.
2 projects on the Isle of Wight are being looked into after being successful in the Restoring Your Railways Fund bidding process. These routes are Shanklin to Ventnor and Smallbrook Junction to Newport.
Article by: @dans.trains
Congratulations @harrison_class_458 your photo has been featured, use #ukrnfeatures or #uk_railfeatures to have a chance of having your ph
43061 and 43075 will be the first Class 43s to be scrapped not involved in an incident, the power cars powered by Paxman VP-185 engines were used by LNER on hire from EMT for the remainder of their life.
They will not be the first class 43s to be scrapped, 43173, 43019, 43140 and 43173 have all been involved in severe rail incidients and have since been scrapped, the most recent being 43140 after the Stonehaven Derailment.
The power cars will work from Long Marston to Sims Newport Docks on Wednesday, and will be dragged. The power cars also have a TDO (Total Destruction Order) on them meaning no parts can be sold from the power cars.
Photo: @sr170407
Article: @intercityswallow
Locomotive Services Limited and Intercity Tours have announced that the Deltic Delight tour due to take place in December has been postponed.
Originally planned for the 1st December, numerous setbacks with the overhaul of the locomotive has meant that the tour on this date was no longer viable, with no replacement Deltics available either.
55022 will be gaining two overhauled engines (672 and 618) which are still off site being repaired by a external contractor. Engine 618 will not be ready until Spring 2022.
The locomotive still needs to be repainted and have test runs completed before the viability of running a tour is considered.
The proposed new date for the Deltic Delight is the 26th August 2022.
Photo: @beanao3104
Article: @jacob_swinburn
It has been announced that 60009 Union of South Africa has been permanently withdrawn from service due to boiler issues.
John Cameron's A4 has been at the East Lancs Railway since September 2020 living out the remainder of the extended boiler ticket after being extended in March 2020.
The loco has been hauling services between Heywood and Rawtenstall for the past year. But in recent months, the condition of the loco has got considerably worse, with it only running on 2 cylinders for the last few months.
It has been announced today that there has been a discovery of a boiler tube issue has meant that the loco has been pulled from service.
Due to the boiler ticket expiring in January it is thought that the loco will not be returning to service for the remainder of the year
43049 has been repainted into Intercity Swallow
The power car now owned by LSL has been repainted into Intercity Swallow for charter trains, the power car powered by a Paxman VP185 engine. It is also thought 43047 will be repainted into either Intercity Swallow or Executive
The power car nameplate “Neville Hill” and 43047s temporary nameplate 43047 “Paxman” recognising the 25 years the VP185 engines have been working on the Midland Mainline. Both of these have now been removed.
The UK Government Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps MP, has announced that the running of Southeastern services will be handed over to government control.
After a series of investigations, it has been found that £25 million of payments to the Government had not been declared. This is not acceptable in the franchise agreement and is described as "a serious breach of good faith".
The changeover from Govia control to the Operator of Last Resort will take place at the planner end of the franchise, with the Department for Transport taking ownership on Sunday 17th October.
Nothing will change for ticket fares and services being run, as it stands.
Image:@intercityswallow
A low speed collision has taken place on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, involving 20142 and coaching stock.
The incident took place at 10:32 this morning at Grosmont station.
The Rail Accident Investigation Board (RAIB) have announced that they will look into the event. This will involve making sense of what happened, why it happened and what can be done to prevent it in the future.
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Ex-EMR 43274+272 have received Colas Rail branding.
The two Class 43s have been transferred to Colas rail from EMR to begin replacing Class 37s on PLPR test trains, providing that Colas win the contract to continue the test trains.
It comes after a successful after VP185 engined 43050+43060 made appearances last year on a PLPR test train in England.
Photo credit: @penyghentproductions
Article by: @big_c_cameron
66796 has been unveiled in a brand new HS2 livery.
The striking Blue and Green livery is branded with HS2 and their motto of "it's cleaner by rail".
Photo credit: Modern Railways
Article by @jacob_swinburn
