Given today’s date (4 July),


Readers air their views about the railway industry and Rail Professional


Email your letters to: editor@railpro.co.uk Fax them to: 01223 327356 Or post them to: The Editor, Rail Professional, 275 Newmarket Road, Cambridge CB5 8JE. Letters may be edited for length


one wonders if, had this side not been successful 235 years ago, we might be similarly ‘plagued’ with four track, 125mph railways, trains every few minutes, about to be electrified, and managed by the likes of Hopwood and O’Toole. Would that it be so! Michael R Weinman Managing director PTSI Transportation, and former Rail Professional columnist


Thameslink needs a rethink On 27 June we once again suffered First Capital Connect attempting to provide a service on its Thameslink route after some Network Rail infrastructure failed at Blackfriars. Still incredulous at the belief


Bicycles could be carried on the front of trams


Tim Shoveller provides a number of reasons that have led to Stagecoach maintaining a policy of refusing to carry bicycles in trams, and judging by the problems faced trying to load bicycles into Pacers in the rush hour on my local service they are good reasons. But is this the only possible solution? Last week in New York I was reminded that buses there, as in a number of other American


The US could do with a Mark Hopwood The article on First Group and FGW in the June 2011 Rail Professional made some valid points. However, from the perspective of an American who is well acquainted with First Group and First Great Western, some of the descriptors are not without irony. The characterisation of


‘ancient diesel trains and creaking infrastructure’ is amusing at the least. Granted, the FGW is not the ‘billiard


PAGE 12 AUGUST 2011


cities, have a bicycle rack on the front of the bus. It is lowered by the driver on request for the cyclist to hang his bicycle on it. Given the litigious nature of American society this procedure must be safe, or it would not still be available. I wonder if Stagecoach might consider this possibility? Clive Fletcher-Wood Bristol


table’ of years past, but I, and most of my colleagues, would have tears in our eyes if any route in the US was of this quality, and if we could have just a few of those letter- perfect HST sets. Or Class 165 DMUs! Our newest ‘high speed’ corridors, in Michigan and Illinois, will, when completed, have largely single track, good in part for up to 110 mph! Commercial speed when


new equipment is brought on line may approach 60mph. One understatement,


though: ‘Mark Hopwood


stepped in and completed the job: First Great Western is now well run.’ No, it is superbly run, by one of our industry’s smartest, most professional, and most decent managers. Like the creaking


infrastructure and ancient trains, any of us in US passenger rail would sell our souls for the likes of a Mark Hopwood (or better, six or a dozen of him). We have in the US intercity


passenger railway establishment perhaps a handful of managers who are in Mr Hopwood’s league. Out of several thousand!


the managing director has that FCC has turned a corner (Rail Professional, June 2010) I note that in times of disruption, First Capital Connect and Network Rail always make the same mistakes: n Stabling trains. What use are they in sidings in the peak hour? Why run a short- formed train in the peak?


n Trying to run through an area of disruption. There is the ability to reverse along the line, including at St Pancras. Try it!


n All stations service every 15 minutes. Come snow or sun, in times of disruption the default is to cancel half the trains and run the rest all stations. It’s like nobody realised there’s a good, demand-based reason, why five to six trains an hour are ‘semi-fast’ and four are all stations.


n No information: CIS screens freeze on data from several hours ago. Can it not be removed? At 22:00 who cares that the 17:34 was cancelled?


n Wrong stock locations: no inclination to cancel the


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