Railnews Magazine Dec 2020 Back Issue

THE bill for supporting passenger railways in England through the pandemic is set to reach £10 billion, Railnews for December reports, along with the news that more train operators have been reducing their services in response to Covid restrictions. Most of England was being placed in Tiers 2 or 3 from 2 December.

In other news, trains starting running on 3 November past the site of the fatal landslip derailment near Stonehaven in 12 August, in which three people lost their lives, a Welsh railway was able to partly reopen, also on 3 November, after almost three months of work to repair weather damage, while preventing weather damage in the future is the priority at Dawlish, where work has begun on the second stage of reinforcing the sea wall using an eight-legged jack-up barge known as a ‘Wavewalker’.

The final RAIB report into the deaths of two track workers at Margam in South Wales in July last year has made eleven recommendations, an inquest into the deaths of seven people who were on the Croydon tram which overturned in November 2016 has been postponed until 2021 because of the pandemic and, still with safety in mind, lorry operators are being warned that if their drivers disregard low bridge warnings the result of ‘bridge bashes’ can be a ‘hefty bill’ and even the loss of their licence.

On the engineering front, there was a warning that Crossrail might have to be mothballed without further cash, but the government is providing another £825 million, and the demonstrator vehicle in the Revolution Very Light Rail programme has arrived at the Quinton Rail Technology Centre at Long Marston in Warwickshire.

Finally, there are features and readers’ letters to complete Railnews’ comprehensive coverage of the railway industry and its people in the new December edition.