Railnews Magazine May 2022 Back Issue

THE news that the RMT is preparing for a national rail strike by balloting 40,000 of its railway members leads Railnews for May. Industrial action is being proposed because the union fears for thousands of jobs as well as the effect of inflation on staff.

Elsewhere passengers were slightly hurt when a Lumo open-access train made an emergency stop, London’s Metropolitan Line trains are undergoing urgent safety checks after problems with wheels, the ORR has warned that the compilation of future timetables has reached a ‘crucial’ stage, and Network Rail is spending £2 million on cleaning off lineside graffiti.

A tram has tested the new West Midlands Metro extension to Edgbaston, but services are not expected to be restored anywhere on the network until late May, after cracks were found in some of the CAF trams, while an investigation has revealed that cracks in Hitachi bodyshells were caused partly by salt in the air.

Railway upgrades are continuing, and work at more than 500 sites was carried out over the early May Bank Holiday weekend, thanks to an investment of £70 million by Network Rail. The first refurbished and remodelled Avanti West Coast Pendolino has entered traffic, and Railnews has pictures.

A ‘Great British Railways Sale’ of more than a million Advance tickets, some discounted by as much as 50 per cent, has sparked controversy because the offer ends before the Platinum Jubilee weekend. Our feature Hot Topic asks if these tickets really are the bargains they are said to be.

In stations news, the contractor who will build three stations on Birmingham’s Camp Hill line has been named, and it has been decided that a station being built in Liverpool will be known as Liverpool Baltic.

Finally, GB Railfreight has named a locomotive ‘Glory to Ukraine’.