Railnews Magazine August 2015 Edizione posteriore

The upheaval at Network Rail continued to dominate railway industry news in July, with the transport secretary under pressure to confirm that he had not known about the problems with financing some electrification schemes until June – well after the general election. The crisis at Calais caused concern to many, including railfreight operators and Eurotunnel, who warned that breaches of security there and interference from would-be migrants were causing major delays and problems for international trade. The 24-hour Underground strike in London in early July caused the capital to slow down, but not stop. Railnews was in the City of London to record some of the effects for a special picture feature. Our main feature also stays in London but goes under the streets to look at the progress which has been made with Crossrail and similar schemes, and traces an ancestor of today’s east-west line back to a key report produced in the 1940s. Another major engineering scheme is pictured on the back page – this is a record-breaking bridge for a future high speed line, now under construction in Spain. Find out, too, how much the Department for Transport’s franchising programme has slipped again, and join us in paying tribute to Neil Harvey, a major and much-missed supporter of the railway industry for many years.