In Passing

The Times made a bit of a muddle of its reporting that the Office of Rail and Road has approved Great North Western Railways’ application to run open access rail services between Blackpool and London. The trains will initially terminate at Queen’s Park in north London because Network Rail says there isn’t the capacity to accommodate them in Euston, which is to be remodelled to accommodate High Speed 2. The Times, however, told readers: “In future Great North Western hopes to run services into Luton, but this depends on being granted slots by Network Rail, which is working on plans for the new HS2 line into that station.” Luton? Do the paper’s hacks still handwrite their stories and pass them to a typing pool?

Defence chiefs have been making an empassioned plea for more funding in recent months, and the rudimentary state of the army’s logistics is revealed by the following tender notice issued by the Ministry of Defence: “Provision of maintenance, inspection and repair of railway locomotives, rolling stock, jacks and ass.” The notice was actually abbreviated at an unfortunate point – the “Ass” being “Associated Lifting Equipment”.

Retired footballer Sol Campbell is hoping to win the fight to become the Conservative candidate in next May’s London mayoral election but he needs to try harder if he’s to be seen as the ‘man of the people’. Writing in the Evening Standard about the need for more electric cars in the capital, Campbell admitted that he is a recent convert to the technology. “I was unsure myself before I bought an electric car,” he says, before revealing in an aside that he’s the owner of a BMW i3. These retail for £25,000 – after, of course, multi-millionaire Campbell has benefitted from the Government’s £5,000 Plug-in car grant.

Since Serco took over the Caledonian Sleeper franchise this spring, there has been a steady trickle of horror stories of trains breaking down in the middle of the night and taking hours to be rescued. So some travellers may have had a wry smile on reading the operator’s latest press release: “Award-winning acts from the Edinburgh Festival are taking centre stage on board the Serco Caledonian Sleeper, giving guests the chance to get up close and personal with comedians and variety acts.” It could be a long night.

The DfT is holding a seminar on 23 September to mark the 50th anniversary of the National Travel Survey, looking at how personal travel has changed, how the NTS has informed policy, and future challenges. Tickets are available via http://www.nts50.eventbrite.co.uk 

But hurry – places are limited!