FROM THE RAILWAY MAGAZINE ARCHIVES
Armed raiders on Irish railways
DURING the past few months, much havoc has been wrought on the railways in Ireland by armed raiders, but the destruction of the railway station at Sligo has appealed most strongly to popular imagination in Great Britain.
Before saturating the buildings with petrol and mining the walls, the wreckers coupled up seven powerful engines and sent them headlong under full steam. The locomotives crashed through the massive concrete sea wall and one plunged into the sea.
YEARS AGO
FEBRUARY 1973 More steam routes for 1973/74
A FURTHER 460 miles of line has been allocated by British Railways Board to the operation of steam trains in 1973 and 1974, in addition to the 300 miles of line authorised in 1972.
Additional routes are: Kyle of Lochalsh-Dingwall-Inverness (78 miles); Dundee-Ladybank-DunfermlineCowdenbeath-Thornton-Dundee (91 miles); Filey-Hull (44 miles); CarnforthLeeds via Keighley and Shipley (64 miles); Barrow-in-Furness-Sellafield (35 miles); Guide Bridge-Dore (35 miles); Oxford-Worcester-Hereford (85 miles); Tyseley-Stratford-on-Avon, via the
North Warwick line (22 miles); Hatton/ Lapworth (on the already authorised Birmingham Moor Street-Didcot route)Stratford-on-Avon (nine miles). Rail plan for Foulness Airport
A CONVENTIONAL railway is to be built from a terminal near King’s Cross to the third London Airport at Foulness, Essex, a distance of 56 miles, it has been announced by the Minister for Transport Industries.
YEARS AGO
FEBRUARY 2003
Bowker warns of major cuts
THE good times are over. That was the grim message to the rail industry at the end of 2002 as Transport Secretary Alistair Darling and SRA chairman Richard Bowker both announced that there will be no more financial honey pots, no more blank cheques.
Said Darling: “Sadly, there have been people in the industry who looked at the Government’s £60bn 10-year plan and said: ‘Oh good, here are unprecedented sums of money, so perhaps costs don’t matter any more’. In future, the Government will look very, very carefully at projects to ensure that we get value for public money. It is very easy to spend money and get no real improvements at all. Richard Bowker and I are determined that will not happen again.”
The Transport Secretary was undoubtedly referring to infrastructure schemes such as the West Coast upgrade, which at £12bn is so scandalously over-budget that it has cost more than the entire Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
The penalty for years of profligacy is twofold: Firstly, genuinely-needed projects may now have to go on hold indefinitely. Secondly, train operators are being told to allow for cuts in subsidies of up to 20% when pitching for renewed franchises.
SWT gets its first ‘Desiro’
CHRISTMAS came early for South West Trains when it took delivery of its first Class 450 ‘Desiro’ unit for testing on December 16/17.
Each of the units built at Siemens’ Vienna plant undergoes a series of acceptance tests at Wildenrath test track before movement through the Channel Tunnel to Willesden yard and delivery to SWT’s Bournemouth depot.
Initial testing was expected to be carried out at night between Wareham and Weymouth from January 14.