The Illustrated NorthernWeeklySalvo
Incorporating Slaithwaite Review of Books, BikkiRail, Weekly Notices, Tunnel Gazers’ Gazette.Descendant of Teddy Ashton’s Northern Weekly.Contains no Isinglass
No. 150 July 13th2014 150th Memorial Issue (Obviously)
Salveson’s weekly diatribe of railwayness, Northernity and secessionist nonsensefromUp North. Read by the highest officers of state, Brechtian punks,Chartists, cat-spotters, discerning sybarites, pie-eaters, truculent Northerners, members of the clergy,the toiling massesand sundry others
The next Salvo will appear round about Monday August 5th
Whosaid, it, about what and where? (see back page)
“....Maybe you should consider buying a British cycle instead. Pashley Cycles has a model with a Brooks saddle and Reynolds steel frame...”
What sort of railway do we want? Give us Eee by gum
“We live in an amazing country full of wonderful people and incredible places. It should be everyone’s right to get around it: to travel to and from our home or work, to see the people we love and all the beautiful places we want to explore. Our railways should be accessible to all, no one should be put off from travelling. Trains and stations should be beautiful, reflecting the special place in our hearts for a public realm in which we feel free to travel as equals. We need a publicly owned and publicly accountable railway system that puts the needs of people and the environment first. So let’s make it happen together”. No, not Salvo in expansive mode but the opening statement from Compass’s ‘All on Board Campaign’, launched last week. I signed it, along with some 35 other lumanaries. Needless to say, the media, and advocates of the privatised railway, dismissed it as a backward-looking call for a return to state ownership. And I’m sure many of the signatories would like that. Personally, I don’t. Regular Salvonics will know that the official Salvo party line is for a new form of public ownership based around social enterprises involving users and workers. That sounds more like real public ownership to me, rather than a London-based bureaucracy with its ‘board’ of the great and the bad deciding what’s best for the rest of us. For local and regional services we need smaller, not bigger and remote, units (e.g. Merseyrail being as near as you’ll get to an ideal size and shape). InterCity is different and we need a publicly-owned InterCity UK which includes partners from the Scottish and Welsh governments as well as our Department for Transport, with user and employee representation. The nearest you’ll get to that is Switzerland, with its single federally-owned SBB and a plethora of small, community-owned railways superbly integrated with buses. Don’t tell me it doesn’t work. A new railway needs to be driven by 3 ‘Es’ - entrepreneurial; ethical; enthusiastic. We’ve already got the staff to deliver that, but they’re struggling within an unsuitable and expensive framework.
Le Tour causes Yorkshire press angst
Which is a good moment to move oop North to the much-improved Yorkshire Post. But it doesn’t always get it reet. On Saturday it carried a number of letters from disgruntled Le-Tour bound rail travellers who had to wait a long time for overcrowded trains or not get on the train at all. The editorial put the boot in as well, backed up by a piece from YP staffer Tom Richmond who suggested the directors of the train companies ‘were nowhere to be seen’ during the weekend. Does he know all of Northern’s directors personally? I know most of them and unless they are bare-faced liars (which I somehow doubt) they spent very long hours alongside their colleagues helping to move the huge crowds at Harrogate, Huddersfield, Leeds and Sheffield. They, and all Northern, Network Rail and TransPennine Express staff worked extremely hard – and as one railway - to respond to the biggest challenge they’ve ever had to face. I think they came out of it with shining colours and most passengers I’ve spoken to agree. If you are part of a crowd of tens of thousands and you all decide to go home at the same time, the reality is that you’re going to have to queue. It isn’t something I’d like to do and I’d probably have gone off for a meal or a pint and wait for the queues to die down. Obviously not everyone can do that, especially people with kids. But we don’t have a massive supply of surplus trains just waiting to be drafted in to meet major surges of demand. Northern and TPE hired in a lot of additional stock (to the delight of diesel loco enthusiasts who took up valuable space)and were able to strengthen many services at the expense of other routes in some cases. But there are limits and the measures that the railway industry put in place, with inevitable problems, worked. The North’s railway community deserves congratulations, not ill-informed attacks.
The North Connected
The Landor conference on ‘The Connected North’ at the University of Huddersfield on Friday was – by all reports I’ve seen – a resounding success. The speakers were lively, varied and stimulating – even if not everyone agreed with what all speakers were saying. But I’d count that as a positive. The morning keynote was delivered by Peter Wilkinson, head of Franchising at the department for Transport. I’ve got to know Peter quite well over the last few months and I’ve great respect for his passion and radicalism – not words you normally associate with a civil servant. But many delegates weren’t expecting what they got, and were blown away by Peter’s speech. Previous issues of The Salvo have been critical of some aspects of the consultation document on the new Northern franchise, with its talk of ‘trade-offs’ including booking office closures, reductions in ‘lightly-used services’, driver-only operation and other nasties. Peter challenged the audience to respond with strong arguments backed up by evidence – and if there were some suggestions that were unacceptable, to ‘chase them out of the room’. His stress was on quality and a a winning bid that would ‘be the best economic solution’. And it was clear that ‘economic’ didn’t mean ‘lowest cost’. His speech caused a few surprises, including his warm advocacy of ‘open access’ operations such as Grand Central, and his support for a progressive devolution of power and funding to a more regional level. As he stressed, this is a journey, not a single ‘big bang’ (or even whimper). He also spoke positively about Woodhead Tunnel and its potential future as a railway. Several community rail partnership delegates were pleased with his strong endorsement of their work – “not frivolously nice to have” but central to the new franchise. He also raised some interesting ideas about passenger trains carrying high-value goods and parcels, which has been suggested by The Salvo at various times in the past, with predictable howls of disdain from ‘the experts’. Well guys, the cranks – or visionaries - have taken over the footplate, at least for the time being. Make the most of it while it lasts and get in some good strong ideas to the consultation on Northern/TPE. You’ve got until August 18th.
The North Un-Connected
I had the pleasure of meeting up with friends from the European ‘Citizen’s Rail’ project in Burnley last week. We gathered at the brand spanking-new station building at Manchester Road and were entertained by a wonderful performance from children of Padiham Green School – telling us about the history of the line and also their research on the constituent cities and regions making up the Citizen’s Rail project (Plymouth, Heerlen, Aachen, Nantes, Burnley). What a great way to encourage a greater understanding of the world! And we enjoyed some local food provided by the school, including Chorley cakes, Bury black puddings (also loved in Aachen) and even some bottles of Moorhouses’ ‘Witches’ Brew’. We adjourned to Burnley Town Hall and I gave a short presentation with a few ideas about station development (using powerpoint, please note). I decided to head back after lunch, with a choice of two routes: via Manchester or via Halifax. The latter would normally be quickest, taking 2 h 10min for a journey which, if I was a crow, would be about 25 miles. However, the 1312 to York via Halifax was cancelled so I had no choice but to take the 13.12 ‘the other way’ and change at Blackburn and then Bolton (or Manchester if you really wanted to). All three trains apart from the last one (see below) ran to time and the journey took me....3 hours and 35 minutes. This involved a wait of around 40 minutes at Blackburn and 50 minutes in Bolton. To add insult to injury the stopper to Slawit and Huddersfield was ‘put inside’ at Stalybridge to allow two late-running TPE services to pass. I’m not impressed with our new timetable which seems to be getting on for unworkable. Anyway - result, a seven minute late departure which then delayed subsequent TPE services behind us. On the plus side the poor connections allowed me to stroll around Blackburn, doing a bit of shopping in the market hall (they do a nice ‘tasty Lancashire’ cheese) and similarly in Bolton, though the market hall doesn’t open on Wednesdays. Be warned. So a long journey by any count. Roll on the new service from Burnley to Manchester Victoria but lets’ hope those trains connect with my Slawit service. Yes, I hear you say, you can’t connect with everything but if we had a pattern of half-hourly instead of hourly on busy, well-used local trains, this wouldn’t be an issue.
Just like the old days on The Penistone Line
The evening before the conference saw the revival of an old TR&IN tradition which I always used to do for my conferences: a pre-conference social. It can be a bit grim if you travel on your own to a conference and have to stay at an unfamiliar town or city overnight. So why not organise something that delegates can come along to, meet other colleagues and have an enjoyable evening? So on Thursday night we had a run down the Penistone Line on the 19.18 off Huddersfield. We were entertained by The Good Egg band, whose railway ancestry goes back to the early days of Penistone Music Trains. They were ably assisted by fraternal delegates from Passenger Focus (thank you Martin, on fiddle and Alistair of Steer Davies Gleave on accordion). On arrival at Silkstone Common we adjourned to The Station Inn where mein hosts Julie and Mark laid on a sumptuous feast. The band played on - and were still playing on the return train, full of happy delegates. Further discussions continued on arrival back in Huddersfield at The Head of Steam and other local bars of fine repute.
Where now for railways in The North?
I did an afternoon slot at the conference, picking up the theme of ‘Where now for the railways in the North?’. In typically lazy fashion I didn’t do a highly-polished powerpoint presentation but relied on picking up what had been said during the day – above all by Peter Wilkinson – and melding it into a 15 minute rant. The following is based on said rant and developed (and trimmed) a wee bit.
We’ve got a huge opportunity in the next few weeks to influence the future shape of railways in the North – and the North’s economy – for many years. Not just the life of the franchise (be it 7,8 or 9 years) but most likely for decades. It’s important e think beyond our own parochial interests and put forward some well-argued strategic approaches, refusing to accept ‘trade-offs’ that amount to dis-investment, but being open to new ways of doing things which will help the financial bottom line.
Let’s start with stations. My old friend John Hummel used to say that it would be absurd to imagine local petrol stations as being places where you could only buy petrol. So why do station ‘booking offices’ only sell tickets? If they are going to survive in the internet age, with some tickets being purchased by other means, they have to change. Away with ‘booking offices’ – bring on station ‘community hubs’ where you can enjoy a range of facilities, buy the sort of things you’d get in a convenience store. Safety and security ‘come naturally’ with this approach, not enforced by hideous CCTV cameras. We should be talking about bringing people back to stations, not de-staffing them. Where there’s no station building – no problem! Bring in a prefabricated building, connect it up to services and get a local small business (maybe a social enterprise) to run it.
Resist losing highly-committed staff who run ‘booking offices’ at smaller stations – the Poyntons, Handforths and Lostocks of this world. Instead, empower them. Tell them they can sell other products and make the ‘booking office’ into a local shop. Change the ‘shape’ of the booking office to allow that. Let the station staff take a portion (and a big one) of the profits on what gets sold. Even more radical, trial the handing over of the running of stations to small co-ops of staff who are willing to give it a go. A lot will be scared of the risk but I suspect that some will be up for it. By building up stations as small businesses there is the chance of longer opening hours and more staff employed – not less. Involve the community as well – sell local produce, provide what meets local needs.
We need to get much, much better at integration. Long waits of 45-50 minutes for connections on ‘obvious’ flows (e.g. Burnley – Blackburn – Manchester) aren’t acceptable and depress rail travel. If we just see local train services as a nuisance that get in the way of longer-distance services, they will never prosper. There’s lots we can do to promote better bus/rail connections. Why not specify certain key flows in the franchise which the operator will be required to provide – either directly or by sub-contracting – a feeder bus link? The sort of locations which would benefit include Holmfirth, Keswick, Fleetwood, Bacup, Coniston – and I’m sure readers can offer plenty more. Community transport operators should be part of the mix.
We’ve got to get new trains for the North. Here’s an idea: build them in the North. It’s interesting that Euskotren, owned by the Basque Government, made absolutely sure that the ne trains it was procuring for the regionally-owned line would be built in the Basque country. And they did it within EU procurement rules. We should do the same. (Re-open Horwich Works! Or maybe develop the Newton Aycliffe plant to build regional trains as well as high-speed stuff). Rail North is talking about setting up a company to own its own trains. Great – give the Roscos a run for their money and bring down costs of train leasing. Don’t scrap pacers – re-configure them for tourist routes with lots of space for bikes and luggage. When I was at Northern we came up with a re-designed Pacer concept which could safely accommodate about 20 bikes and could be tagged on to the back of a conventional unit.
It’s good that the Northern prospectus flags up the possibility of a service on the Ashington Blyth and Tyne route. It desperately needs a passenger service and we need a vision – hopefully it will be there in the ‘Long term rail Strategy’ when finally launched in the Autumn – for new routes and new services. Lets’ look at better east – west links via Wakefield and Castleford, for example. For the longer term, I agree with George: let’s build HS3 – but look at a range of options, and not expect too much of the already congested (and slow) Diggle route. Woodhead must be part of the mix.
The franchise itself has got to be – as Peter and DfT colleagues stress – of i a different kind, acting in a way that will be really transformational. I’m glad that Serco and Abellio are going their separate ways – I don’t think joint ventures work. But why not look at partnerships with smaller entities – co-ops and other social enterprises – which would really add value to a more conventional bidders’ approach. We need to combine the conventional commercial skills which are well-honed by the ‘usual suspects’ with creativity, social responsibility and sheer bloody enthusiasm. Listen to what the civil servants are saying – the usual sort of bid will fail. Look at ways of freeing up creativity and responsibility at all levels. Northern is a huge franchise covering a massive area. Decentralise. Give local managers – and all employees – real responsibility to try things, make mistakes, do things differently.
And the decapod in the shed: paying for it all. To start with, the North doesn’t get its fair share of spending on transport anyway so I reject the idea that we are subsidy junkies. But OK, lets’ find ways of generating more income. I’ve said endlessly that Northern is generally poor at revenue collection. Tightening up on that will help. Look at new products which make money – heritage railways are pretty good at doing this. Be more entrepreneurial. On-train staff could do more and we need to have a debate about what the future role of a conductor should be, with a change of emphasis from operational to commercial. There are all sorts of good reasons for keeping a second person on the train and passenger security is a critical one. I’d be quite happy to hand over responsibility for opening and closing doors to the driver if it can be done safely, allowing the conductor to get on with passenger assistance.