Arriva to be bought by Deutsche Bahn

BBC News is reporting that the Deutsche Bahn is likely finalise a deal to purchase Arriva. The deal will be subject to Competition Investigation.
DB Operate the Wrexham and Shropshire Railway and Chiltern and the former EWS freight operator, Tyne and Wear Metro, London Overground. Arriva operate Arriva Trains Wales, Cross Country

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Grand Central in Bradford Monday 12th April

Grand Central brought their first test train into Bradford Interchange on Monday, photos from Paul Bigland available here.

Grand Central are planning their London service to start on May 23rd!

Huddersfield Area Signalling Delays

Due to a signalling problem in the Huddersfield area, train services are delayed by upto 20 minutes.
Transpennine and services between Ravensthorpe and Marsden are mainly affected

Lord Adonis – Lobbying Deal “Fantasy”

The Secretary of State for Transport, Lord Adonis of Camden Town, denied Stephen Byers’ claim that Byers had exerted influence when the Department for Transport was dealing with National Express over its problems with the East Coast franchise. Video in Parliament (BBC)

How will our architectural legacy be judged?

Not directly a rail article, but the Westfield development is a blot to many projects in Bradford including CrossRail. This article by Will Gompertz was tucked away on the BBC site about City Centre Architecture and the recession, where Bradford still has our hole, Leeds developers went ahead and did something:

BBC Website Link

John Poulson has a lot to answer for!

Level Crossing Abuse, (Atlanta USA)

Witness: Nothing Anyone Could Do | FOX 5 Atlanta | myfoxatlanta.com.

Click play bottom left of video (The video shows: News Coverage, Advert, Unedited footage).

A reminder! Nearly ALL level crossing accidents are caused by pedestrians or other road users, not trains!

In Bradford Council area we fortunate to have no major level crossings, the few level crossings that are in operation manual gate crossings on access roads. (The nearest Automatic Full Barrier is in North Yorkshire towards Cononley).

More on Level Crossing at Rail Magazine.

Network Rail Level Crossing video

Aire Valley Rail User Group AGM

AVRUG‘s Annual General Meeting will be held on: Saturday 10th April 2010 commecing 2pm at Saltaire Methodist Church Hall, Saltaire Road, Saltaire, BD18 3HJ (Google Map).

All Welcome!

Transport Direct Website

What is the point of a website that is “Connecting People to Places”, when the information it produces does not provide the most accurate information and makes public transport journeys appear longer than they actually are.

Transport Direct is operated by Atos Origin, funded on a non-profit basis by the Department for Transport, Scottish Government and the Welsh Assembly. They state: “Our aim is to provide you with all the trusted information you need to find the best travel option to suit your particular circumstances.

Planning my new route to work recently:

Planning a journey from Saltaire to Otley Transport Direct suggests a journey time of 1hour 15 minutes!

Planning this journey manually using a rail timetable and a bus timetable the journey is only 59 minutes, saving 16 minutes on the official website.

Driving would take 25 minutes according to Transport Direct.

This is not the first example of Transport Direct being unable to provide accurate journey information which is available in other on-line sources.

People will not use public transport if they believe the journey time is “excessive” and worse “wrong”.

Reference: Journey from Saltaire to Otley, 7th June 2010 leaving after 6:30 am. PDF: Transport Direct

East Coast Branding / Northern Short Trains!

£330,000 to rebrand “East Coast” – Read more …. Continue reading

Meetings – Apologies!

I had forgotten about Easter Monday! Therefore the next meeting of the Bradford Rail User’s Group will be the 12th April 2010 at “Bradford Community and Voluntary Service“, Bridge Road, Bradford.

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