Rail grabs the headlines

It’s certainly been a busy month regarding major news stories affecting our railways. Perhaps the biggest story is the publication of the Government’s Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) on November 18, just after the last issue of Railways Illustrated closed for press. The IRP saw a number of new initiatives suggested to improve the rail network and journey times, but it was the axing of the planned HS2 route to Leeds that grabbed the headlines, with the IRP attracting much criticism from officials in the West Yorkshire city and other areas in the north. Also in terms of HS2, Hitachi and Alstom have been named as jointly being awarded the contract to build the train fleet for the high speed route, with much of the construction work scheduled to take place in the UK, as well as the creation of jobs to support the huge train building contract.

A couple of openings making headlines this month include the reinstatement of regular passenger services on the Dartmoor Line between Exeter St Davids and Okehampton. The opening of the Werrington Tunnel dive-under, near Peterborough, now routes freight services beneath the East Coast Main Line, is also a welcome development, helping to increase capacity on the busy route and improve journey times.

With the emergence of the Omicron variant of coronavirus, the UK Government stated that the wearing of face coverings is now once again mandatory on public transport and in shops, although these rules were further tightened in early December in the face of the increased and rapid spread of the new variant in the UK.

Even after restrictions were relaxed earlier in 2021, rail operators continued to encourage passengers to wear face coverings when travelling by train.

From my own experience travelling over the past few months, it seemed that only a relatively small percentage of train users were still complying with these requests.

Any discussions surrounding Covid-19 restrictions are always divisive between those who believe there should be no restrictions at all and those who think we should act much more cautiously.

I generally avoid making comments about Government health policies, but making face coverings mandatory on public transport is almost impossible to enforce effectively and just has the potential to put public-facing railway staff in confrontational and potentially dangerous situations.

Again, from personal experience in my previous role before becoming your editor, I have seen first-hand just how difficult it is for frontline on-board staff to encourage passengers to use face coverings. If they challenge passengers, they can be subjected to abuse, intimidation, and threats; if they don’t challenge, this can generate complaints from other users who think the rule-breakers are being allowed to get away with it. The situation puts our rail staff in a complete lose-lose situation.

Whether we like it or not, there is a small percentage of passengers who won’t wear face coverings when travelling by train. This isn’t because they are exempt from wearing them due to health conditions, but because they simply don’t want to – or refuse out of principle.

Unless these rules can be properly enforced, they are completely pointless. The British Transport Police is far too busy to have a chance of responding to every incident due to limited resources and the sheer size of the geographical area it is responsible for.

Local police forces will often not respond to an incident on the railways due to this being the responsibility of BTP, so the thin blue line is often very thin indeed.

It’s a difficult situation for the rail industry to deal with, and most operators are choosing – sensibly, in my opinion – to ask staff to remind passengers of their responsibility when it comes to the wearing of face coverings, but not to get themselves into confrontational situations that may place themselves, or other passengers, in danger.

In this issue, Gordon Kirkby speaks to Graham Harris, a preservationist who has bought various locomotives over the past two decades, but has faced several setbacks over the years in his quest to restore those in his fleet.

The plight of some of Mr Harris’s locomotives, such as 20169 and 37042, has been the subject of much speculation over the past few years, so it is great that we are able to give the owner a chance to tell his story and update Railways Illustrated on his plans for the future. Our cover photo this month, depicting the final hours of a locomotive being disposed of at the now-closed Vic Berry’s scrapyard in Leicester, is as atmospheric as it is sad.

For almost 50 years, Richard Lillie has visited most of the railway scrapyards in the UK to photograph locomotives and other items of rolling stock either awaiting final disposal, or in the process of being scrapped.

In pursuit of his hobby, he has amassed an astonishing collection of images, of which in this issue we present a small selection and find out why he finds scrap photography so fascinating.

Over the past few months we have had some truly outstanding submissions to our monthly 10 Pictures photographic feature.

However, at the risk of upsetting the people whose work has been published in our previous issues, I think the selection in this issue from regular Railways Illustrated contributor John Hales is my favourite of all those published to date.

John’s submission captures so many aspects of the hobby and the atmosphere that makes railway photography so interesting. From the emails we exchanged when he first made his submission, it is clear that he put a lot of thought into his selection – and the results are stunning.

Also on a photographic theme, Martyn Hilbert presents the first part of two features focusing on the self-contained Merseyrail network. Martyn has photographed and written extensively about it, and his features are designed both to explain the system and the services that operate on it, as well as giving some inspiration and guidance to some of the best photographic locations to be found around the network.

We also take a look at some of the excellent winning entries in this year’s National Railway Heritage Awards, which were revealed in a glittering ceremony in London on December 1. My grateful thanks to Robin Leleux for providing an excellent summary on the winning entries, which celebrate some of the outstanding work that goes on around the country to restore, celebrate, and respect our rich railway heritage.

Thank-you to readers who got in touch after the publication of our special 40th anniversary of the end of the Deltics issue last month. Most of the feedback was generally positive, but I did receive a couple of emails from people who felt too much space was dedicated to just one type of locomotive. I’m sorry to anyone who didn’t enjoy it, but overall the issue was very well received.

As ever, I welcome any comments, suggestions and constructive criticism on any aspect of the magazine. If there is anything you would like to suggest or comment on, please email me at rieditor@mortons.co.uk