0518 Hrs GMT London Thursday 8 January 2009: KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! Even the Daily Mail, which has been a Big Business Crossrail scam-backer via the London Evening Standard, echoes our analysis …What has been our analysis? That the Brown-fronted Blaired regime that has been used to serve the interests of Railways-linked Big Business conglomerates and assorted touts and self-seekers, has been behaving irresponsibly in making huge sums of public money available to them without any scrutiny, audit or accountability. This has been PREDICTABLY causing waste of resources and lack of standard. Thus the ECONOMY in the event is suffering. And op course passengers and the public.…The latest debacle shows that Brown must stop Crossrail and AT LEAST have it DEMOCRATICALLY scrutinized via parliament and in public and by the people at all stages before the £16 to £18 Billion is spent on it [at 7 January 2009 prices]Otherwise more horror stories – that is scandals of waste, lack o safety and too much inconvenience and related and avoidable mishaps – on how scandalously irresponsible Crassrail has been … bound to emerge.… But we would prefer the provisions be safe, secure and economical and relevant to the public than be able to again say WE HAD TOLD YOU SO [To be continued]
KHOODEELAAR! quoting from the web site of the London DAILY MAIL media group Thursday 8 January 2009
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Rail bosses blamed for ‘rush job’ as 100,000 commuters caught in travel chaos
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 2:34 AM on 08th January 2009
Britain’s busiest railway was in meltdown today with trains in and out of Euston brought to a virtual standstill.
More than 100,000 commuters were urged not to use the West Coast mainline to and from London after power lines collapsed, bringing major disruption for the sixth day in a row.
Network Rail was slammed by passengers and train operators. It was accused of reopening the line ‘too soon’ after a £9billion rebuilding programme.
Passengers queue for buses at midnight in the freezing cold as the West Coast mainline power failure left people stranded for hours at the station
The chaos on the West Coast Mainline during the past three working days has cost businesses a ’shocking’ £38 million, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has said.
Virgin Trains boss Sir Richard Branson was said to be ‘incandescent with rage’ following the repeated fiascos.
Hundreds of passengers spent two hours stuck on freezing trains last night after power lines north of Wembley collapsed when an express passed under them.
The collapse brought services to Euston to a halt. All Virgin and London Midland services were cancelled and only London overground services to Watford were operating – leaving tens of thousands of passengers stranded.
The failure astonished rail industry insiders as it was the third time the line has been brought to its knees in less than a week.
Meltdown: Virtually empty departure boards greeted commuters arriving at Euston Station this morning
A Network Rail spokesman said: ‘We don’t know anything at the moment, but we’re not ruling anything out.
‘My guess is that it is an awful trail of coincidences.’
The BCC questioned Network Rail’s decision to bring forward the deadline of its West Coast Mainline upgrade last year. ‘We believe the recent disruptions have occurred because this vital project was rushed,’ it said.
The BCC said completion of the line’s multi-billion-pound upgrade should have been a smooth ride into the New Year, adding that the disruption had cost businesses nearly £13million a day this week.
Director general David Frost said: ‘There is no excuse for the huge amount of chaos this rushed upgrade to the West Coast Mainline has caused travellers.
‘Businesses have lost a staggering £38million in just three days because Network Rail has again failed to adequately deliver.
‘Network Rail must ensure that there is a rapid and effective improvement in the reliability of the network.’
Fiasco: The sequence of troubles that have plagued Network Rail
On Friday a light plane crash beside the railway in Staffordshire brought down overhead power lines, resulting in disruption all weekend.
On Sunday evening, just as services were supposed to be recovering, more power lines came down close to Watford Junction, causing disruption to Monday morning commuters which lasted all day.
And last night another problem with power lines, this time north of Wembley, caused all services to be suspended and today’s trains to be badly hit.
Network Rail promised a full-scale inquiry. The taxpayer-funded body faces paying out tens of millions of pounds in compensation to Virgin Trains and London Midland.
The situation is a massive embarrassment to NR, which had welcomed the £9billion rebuilt West Coast mainline in December, when a new timetable with 1,100 more services each week came into operation.
Virgin, which held crisis talks with NR yesterday to try to resolve the problems, is now considering withdrawing the new timetables and going back to the old ones while the problems are sorted out.
Virgin Trains boss Sir Richard Branson is said to be ‘incandescent with rage’ following the fiasco, which has stopped all its services to Euston today
Last year chairman Sir Richard Branson made a public appeal to NR to delay implementation of the new timetables, which followed the upgrade, until May to allow further testing of the line.
A source close to Sir Richard said: ‘NR was warned, warned, warned this would happen. We asked for further time to allow the line to ‘bed down’ following all the rebuilding but no-one listened. This whole sorry fiasco is down to NR.’
All Virgin services to Euston were being stopped at Milton Keynes and all London Midland trains were stopping and starting at Hemel Hempstead.
Coaches and buses were running between Euston, Watford, Milton Keynes and Hemel Hempstead – adding hours to journeys.
Anyone heading for Birmingham was advised to use Chiltern Railways from Marylebone.
By late morning, Virgin was able to run four trains per hour from Euston and hoped to increase this to six by mid-afternoon. London Midland was also running a modified service.
CABINET MINISTERS CAUGHT UP AS THEY HEAD TO LIVERPOOL
Cabinet ministers were caught up in the rail chaos as they headed to campaign in Liverpool.
Gordon Brown and senior colleagues are attending a major Labour Party event and then hitting the campaign trail.
One official said: ‘We were heading up on the West Coast Main Line but now we are looking at other arrangements.’
Mr Brown is travelling by a different line because he wants to stop in the Midlands. But most of the Cabinet, including Chancellor Alistair Darling and senior ministers David Miliband, Jack Straw and Ed Balls, had been expected to travel by the West Coast line.
Tomorrow, ministers will attend events in the North-West before a Cabinet meeting in Liverpool.
Downing Street spin doctors had highlighted the fact that Mr Brown would be on the train with ordinary passengers. The three-day tour is intended to show Mr Brown engaging fully with people and listening to their problems.
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In due course we will discover that in order to cut costs, NR used low specification materials and inadequate designs for the overhead power system. No doubt it will take a Freedom of Information Act application and protracted arguments to get the truth revealed.
You simply do not see this sort of fiasco on the continent.
Alan, Worcs – Spend some time in Munich and then decide whether trams are truly 17th century. The Anglo-Saxon culture is too car-centric. More fool us in contrast to the Continent.
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Euston is a tatty mouse-ridden shopping arcade masquerading as a railway station. Trams & trains can work, just not here in the UK. So although my time in Munich made me a devotee of rail transport, sobering experiences around GB has made me realise that if you really want to make that meeting or catch that flight then go by road and don’t even think of travelling over the weekend. Sad but true and I hate to admit it as much as I’d like to refute claims by the anti-rail mob.
- Sean, Swansea, 07/1/2009 12:11