Rail (UK)

Benefits of the brand

WHAT’S your favourite ever train livery? That might sound like a fun but trivial question. But perhaps it’s more important than that. In the last 50 years, businesses have learnt to better appreciate how vital marketing is to the success of most...

TOP 10: Rail’s locations for the small screen

Art and design special

THE Department for Transport has finally revealed its branding for Great British Railways. It is somewhat predictable, and derided by many design critics. But our expectations were never that high, it could have been worse, and the public reaction has...

HERITAGE AWARDS: landmarks restored

Edinburgh tram-trains

NO PEAK: ScotRail to change life decisions

MERRIMAN: How Reform has got NPR all wrong

HS2 shifts up a gear

Civils to be completed in four years as reset starts to take effect

Eye on the future

■ Decarbonisation ■ Nationalisation ■ Digitalisation

The longest train

WE’VE been celebrating 200 years of the modern railway in RAIL all year. Just about every issue has covered some aspect of its history or some comment on what has shaped today’s railway, and how it has shaped everything else. But now that we’ve reached...

Railway ambitions

REGIONAL transport investment is back on the agenda, as many of our cities weigh up the prospects for having control of their own transport destinies - from the purse strings right down to the infrastructure. For two of our nation’s biggest cities,...

A new-look RAIL

JUST as our railway is about to get a new look, courtesy of the government’s nationalisation policy, your RAIL magazine receives a makeover too. You may not have noticed it right away from a glance at our cover. It’s still the RAIL brand you’re...

300 civil servants are leaving DfT for DFTO

New pipeline plan in full

■ Portishead passengers in 2028 ■ Midlands Rail Hub go-ahead ■ New stations in South West

STATION INFLATION

Does Soham boast the UK’s priciest platform?

Here comes the sun

I’M writing this at the opening day of Rail Live, our annual exhibition and seminar at Porterbrook’s Long Marston Rail Innovation Centre. The sun is shining, thousands of visitors are streaming in, and everything seems good for rail right now. For an...

ORR on fare enforcement ■ Seconds from disaster ■ Cyber threats

The open access conundrum

‘WHAT if' questions are always impossible to answer with any confidence. The possibilities can be endless, which is what makes them so useful as story lines. What if the Allies had lost the Second World War? What if JFK had survived the assassination...

A definitive role for Derby

AROUND this time last year, Alstom’s historic Derby works reached crisis point. It risked closing forever unless it secured some more orders - and quickly. In the end, the orders were promised, the plant was saved, and there was celebration all round....

Planning rail projects better

RAILWAY infrastructure never stands alone. It interacts with the wider transport infrastructure and shapes the landscape around it. It affects roads, rights of way, local wildlife, people’s residences, and much more. Inevitably, investment in rail...

Accident training: “We want it as chaotic as possible”

Open Access special

■ Cleethorpes-KX direct ■ Cross-country routes ■ NR objects to Paignton ■ Virgin revises plans

MIND THE GAP

30 stations selected for upgrade but still waiting after 6 years 50 more added last year that will have to wait…how long?

Making rail great again?

THE one thing everyone seems to like is the oneness. Track and train as one. One mind directing. One railway under one name. Government publicity for the consultation document, A railway fit for Britain’s future, leads with public crowd pleasers. To...

How to own public ownership

OUR current minister for rail is unusual for a minister of anything, in that he’s not worked his way through the political ranks, but has instead come up through the institutions as a specialist who actually knows his portfolio thanks to a whole career...

EWR: a tale of two cities

MY first flat in London was in an area made affordable because it had “no Tube”. In those days, most buyers looked to be near an Underground station, and North London areas such as Islington were much trendier than east London areas such as...

Tickets pleas! A need for change

IS an all-rail pass a possibility? Or a pipe dream? Our cover of just two issues ago led on train operating companies’ further moves into open access, and how it could offer them a new life after nationalisation. The cover image showed the Prime...

BEHIND THE SCENES: Fast-charging battery trials

Mail’s role in rail freight

ROYAL Mail’s decision in July to retire its mail trains was bigger news than it might have been for any other freight customer of the same size, for three reasons. Firstly, it seemed to be travelling in the wrong direction for rail freight in general,...

RAIB focuses on low adhesion

The railway of the future

INNOTRANS, the world’s leading rail innovation and technology show, filled every available square inch of stand space and length of track at the Messe Berlin in Germany for four days last month. The event underlined the global forces shaping the...

Three ways to connect Midlands to North West

ScotRail to replace InterCity 125 HSTs

Labour’s blueprint for rail

AS soon as Labour gained power at July’s General Election, it seemed keen to show that moving fast and fixing things was not an empty statement, and that trust in the railway as a future growth enabler was not a dream that 15 years of stagnation had...

SUMMER HOLIDAY SPECIAL

Lessons from the scenic routes of Europe Improve WiFi for family-friendlier outings

The best of today’s railway writing from …

Ben Jones “Experts agree that the most reliable way to keep costs in check is to have a long-term programme of electrification that builds and retains the skills and experience necessary to deliver it effectively.” Feature, 28-33 Christian...

Can Labour allow rail mail to fail?

ROYAL Mail’s decision to end its involvement with rail from October 10 (see Network News, pages 10-11) seems inevitable. Most of us might have been forgiven for thinking that it fizzled out a long time ago. Discussing how to keep the remaining 3% of...

First look at new Avanti ‘805s’…