The branch will be holding its next meeting on Satirdsy 20th June at Ipswich Institute Reading Room and Library, 15 Tavern Street, Ipswich, IP1 3AA. Jonathan Denby of NXEA will be the speaker.

On Friday 5th June, following the local and European elections, Geoff Hoon, MP for Ashfield and Secretary of State for Transport, was reported as having resigned from the cabinet. He has now been given a role liasiing with the EU. Transport minister Andrew Adonis has been promoted to Secretary of State for Transport, whilst Sadiq Khan (whose father was a former London bus driver) has been promoted to Transport Minister. He made his name as a human rights lawyer before becoming an MP.

ESTA will be conducting two 7-day-long on-train surveys to ask passengers for their opinion on the proposals to move Lowestoft Station further inland. The first is 9th-15th August, timed when holidaymakers will be using the train, with the second on 20th-26th September for the commuter and leisure market.

Railfuture now has some speakers lined up for the Corby Reopenings conference on 14th November 2009. The first to confirm are Corby Borough Council, ACoRP chairman Peter Roberts and TravelWatch East Midlands.

FCC has now introduced a train information service on Twitter. It is believed to be the first British train operator to do so. For more info see: http://www.firstcapitalconnect.co.uk/Main.php?iCmsPageId=463.

On Sunday 21st June the Mid-Norfolk Railway will be holding a Classic Transport Day. In addition, they hope to have up to seven vintage buses operating services to County School Station acting as a 'rail replacement' bus service. Departures will be approximately every 45 minutes. Details at http://www.mnr.org.uk.

For the year ending 31st March 2009 FCC saw passenger revenue growth of 8.6%. This is higher than its ScotRail (7.9%) and Great Western (6.1%) franchises. By comparison NXEA saw 3.8% year-on-year increase for the first quarter of 2009.

On Saturday 13th June Britpop band Blur played at the goods shed at East Anglia Railway Museum at Chappel and Wakes Colne to a capacity audience of 150. This was a return to their first ever venue.

SouthEastern have finally revealed the timetable and supplemental fares for their trial HS1 service, which starts on 29th June. See: http://www.southeasternrailway.co.uk/index.php/news/news_items/view/94.

The Bluebell Railway has introduced a "Tenner for the Tip" fund to help pay for the extraciton of land fill rubbish from Imberhorne Cutting on the line to East Grinstead, which is making good progress. A certificate will be provided in return for a £10 donation. See http://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/funding/2009/tenner.html.

For this introduced in pioneering eco-friendly light-weight rail vehicles, a video of the Parry People Mover vehicle on the Stourbrdge Town branch can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r98GS4LAIl0.

RAIL PERFORMANCE

Train punctuality for year 2008/09 is best since privatisation

Train punctuality reached an average 90.6% across Great Britain for the year to March 2009, which was the best since privatisation (in 1996), and the best since records began in 1992. Performance for 2009/10 is expected to be even higher, with April 2009 reaching 93.5%.

In the branch area First Capital Connect reached 91.1% (7th best of the 19 TOCs) and National Express East Anglia came 9th with 90.47%. The NXEA figures are broken down by route types (alough not individual routes) as follows:
* Mainline (Liverpool Street - Norwich) = 87.19%
* Metro (Liverpool Street - Shenfield) = 90.11%
* West Anglia = 92.77%
* Stansted Express = 88.84%
* Rural = 92.32%.

NXEA are particularly impressed by the figure for the rural services, where individual lines have reached this level before, but not the average of all of them.

Note: trains are considered ontime if it arrives at the final station within 10 minutes of scheduled time for Intercity services and 5 minutes for provincial and commuter services. The latter represent the vast majority. Part cancellations - where a train is started or terminated short, or if it misses out stops are counted as severe delays (20+ minutes late) for the purposes of the Passenger Performance Measure (PPM) so TOCs can't improve their performance by missing stops. However, timetables on many routes have a generous dwell time at one or more stations on the route (especially the penultimate one) to provide recovery time.

BBC News item: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8067945.stm.

RAIL ROUTES

ATOC's "Connecting Communities" proposes reopening March-Wisbech line to passengers

ATOC has recently published its "Connecting Communities - Expanding Access to the Rail Network" report, following year-long investigation into all towns with a population of more than 15,000 that are not directly served by rail. It visited each of them, including inspections of disused or dismantled rail routes as part of the exercise. ATOC has excluded those towns too far away from the network that could not be realistically reached, and others only a short distance away from a rail head, leaving a list of 14 schemes recommended for further investigation. It should be noted that the ATOC report is concerned with increasing access to the rail network rather than increasing its connectivity.

The existing 7-mile-long March-Wisbech branch is the only line proposed in East Anglia, where the cost of reinstating a passenger service is estimated (indicative cost) at just £12m - much lower than had been claimed - giving a revenue-based benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR) of 1.1:1, or 1.8:1 if capital expenditure is excluded. Crucually, these BCR values do not include any wider benefits, such as regeneration. ATOC's anlaysis of the Wisbech branch is as follows:
* Stations: Wisbech Town; possible additional park and ride station adjacent to A47
* Population: 26,500 (50,000 in wider station catchment area)
* Catchment area: a station at Wisbech would also serve a wider catchment area of villages and towns such as Long Sutton, to the north between the Peterborough – Spalding and the Kings Lynn lines
* Current rail access: via March, ten miles, Downham Market, 12 miles, or Peterborough, 20 miles. * Proposed link: single track line, using the former freight line which remains in-situ. 7 miles long from March Whitemoor Junction. Eight level crossings required
* Formation: intact to freight terminal, about 600m from Wisbech town centre. New station site required on formation of line
* Train service: hourly Wisbech – March – Peterborough, new service proposed. Could be linked with Cross Country's proposed extension of Birmingham – Leicester service to Peterborough
* Notes: signalling alterations required at March to avoid conflict with Network Rail’s Whitemoor depot.

ATOC also looked at reinstating a regular passenger service from Dereham-Norwich using the Mid-Norfolk Railway's line from Dereham to Wymondham. It estmated a cpital cost of £30m, but found a poor BCR of 0.4:1, or 0.7:1 excluding capital expenditure.

Under the "Other potential link lines" section it has considered the March-Spalding route for freight (to avoid Peterborough). This line and Bishops Stortford-Braintree-Colchester have been scoped for physical feasiblity but were not evaluated (i.e. no BCR was produced).

Document: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/15_06_09_atoc.pdf.

RAIL FREIGHT

Additional freight train from Felixstowe as shipping moves from southampton

Freightliner has commenced running its 21st train service from Felixstowe. It is a 24-wagon train, which will operate to Birmingham International Freight Terminal at Birch Coppice and is expected to remove 20,000 lorry journeys from the roads annually. The train has been introduced following the transfer of Maersk shipping from Southampton to Felixstowe.

GUIDED BUSWAY

Anti-busway voters throw out Cambridgeshire County Council's cabinet member for transport

At the County Council elections on 4th June there was a major shock in the Cottenham, Histon and Impington ward, where Conservative Matt Bradney, who had been steering the party's transport policy and was the public face of the guided busway scheme, frequently appeairng in the media gto promote it, lost his seat to the Liberal Democrates. This was the only seat lost by the Conservatives. David Jenkins, leader of the Lib Dem group on the county council, said "In the case of Matt Bradney, I don't think the guided bus was irrelevant in what happened. There is still a lot of resentment about the scheme."

According to Councillor Roy Pegrum, who is reponsible for the busway project, they expect to get 3 million journeys in the first 12 months. That works out at 8,250 a day assuming seven days a week, or 10,000 a day assuming usage on six days a week (with Saturday and Sunday combined equalling the Mon-Fri daily average), which is half of the 20,000 day target in 2019 after Northstowe has been built - 50% of eventual patronage in year one is truly incredible for any public transport scheme.

The last concrete beams have now been laid on the northern section (former St.Ives line), with nothign yet laid on the southern part, which is seriously behind scheule with no opening date even announced. The busway is becoming a regular headache for the County Council. This was not helped when a lorry driver recently drove along the busway and posted a report with photos on his blog. This led the Cambridge News to conduct a survey about safety fears. A day before the poll was due to close on 15th June, with 632 votes recorded, 45.1% felt the busway would not be safe.

St.Ives complete: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_home/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=425527
6-minute video of journey: http://www.chrisrand.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/17/aboard-misguided-bus
Lorry on busway: http://www.roadtransport.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?search=busway&IncludeBlogs=22
Busway construction photos: http://davidcharlesworth.fotopic.net/p57989404.html
List of news articles: http://www.castiron.org.uk/newsarticles.

PRESERVED RAILWAYS

Whitwell and Reepham Railway obtains entertainment and alcohol licence

On Thursday 28th May the Whitwell and Reepham Railway Preservation Society (WRRPS) has been awarded a permanent premises licence by Broadland District Council for the former Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway (MG&N) station. It is now allowed to sell alcohol seven days per week, show films, have live music, play music and put on plays. Although it had applied to stay open until 00:30 and 01:30 at the weekend, its hours will be restricted to 22:00 following concerns raised by neighbour.

The station staged a one-off beer festival on its Grand Reopening weekend. It now intends to open a bar in the station building, show history on nostalgia films about railways and have live music on the platform including a brass band once the track is put track back into the platform.

The railway has plans for a Santa Special and a breakfast passenger service offering Bucks Fizz.

Special journey by rotarians on Mid-Norfolk railway raises £1,100 to help improve the line

According to the Wymondham and Attleborough Mercury on 18th June the Rotary Club of Wymondham arranged a 'fish and chip special' train journey for 120 people on the Mid-Norfolk Railway. Along with a raffle it raised £1,100 for the railway, which is currently trying to raise funds to comple a passing loop at Thuxton.