Visit to Nuneaton PSB

Last Thursday I went on a visit with other members from the local Railway Correspondence & Travel Society (RCTS) branch to Nuneaton Power Signal Box (PSB). The photo above is a close-up of the station area on the Panel. This is an Entry Exit Panel with the signaller setting the route by pressing or pulling the buttons (I can't remember which!) shown. Once the route is set the track circuits light up in green. When occupied by a train, they turn red and the small rectangular boxes that appear blank in this view will be populated with the 4 character alpha-numeric description of that train.


Nuneaton Box was opened in 1963 and will be abolished at the end of August 2008 as part of the West Coast modernisation programme with control moving to Rugby Signalling Control Centre (SCC). Other boxes to be abolished include Coventry, Rugby PSB, Bletchley and Watford - all of these with the exception of Coventry which has already closed, will be abolished in the next 4 years. Already the two lines nearest Nuneaton PSB are controlled from Rugby SCC and these serve the cross country route from Leicester to Birmingham New Street.


The view above shows the full extent of Nuneaton Panel. The station area is to the left of the Panel, with the West Coast mainline across the top of the Panel and a continuation of the four main running lines shown at the bottom. The area of control fringes with Rugby to the south (around Brinklow) and north to Tamworth. The Panel also controls the branch to Coventry (roughly centre in this picture - the two lines diverging from the WCML). The original box ended approximately where the clock is in this view, with an extension added later. The Panel itself also includes an extension, for control as far Colwich but ultimately this was never realised.


Seen on the evening were the usual diet of Virgin Pendolino's and London Midland Desiro's as well as Cross Country 170s on the Birmingham-Leicester axis. Freight wise it was more interesting with Scotrail 90024 piloting EWS 92004 and almost unique 60007 in the defunct Loadhaul livery. There was some drama a little later with a report that train 1V71, a Cross Country Voyager was on fire at Birmingham New Street. Needless to say New Street was evacuated and Virgin Pendo's made additional stops at Nuneaton as a result. The incident couldn't have been serious as 1V71 was on the move a short while later heading ECS back to Central Rivers.


It was a thoroughly interesting evening and fascinating watching trains on the move both on the Panel and from an excellent vantage point in the PSB.

West Coast progress?

A Virgin Pendolino at Crewe on Saturday 5 April 2008

The West Coast Main Line through Milton Keynes is in disarray yet again this evening. Hardly a week goes by without some incident or a complete blockade over a weekend. Back in March there was the serious incident of two containers being lost from a freight train near Cheddington. Worryingly the fact that the containers were missing was not discovered until the train had reached Rugby! One can only imagine of the serious consequences if this had happened during the evening peak rather than in the early hours of the morning.

Today's disruption is apparently due to signalling problems in the Bletchley area, which is resulting in a much reduced service - two London Midland all-stations services between Euston and Bletchley with a third train an hour running to Northampton while Virgin West Coast is reduced to running one train an hour between Euston and the North. The National Rail site also says that the Bletchley to Bedford branch has been suspended, although London Midland indicates that trains are terminating at and starting from Fenny Stratford. Alternative routes suggested by National Rail include Paddington to Reading for CrossCountry and stations to Brimingham and the North, St Pancras to Leicester for stations to Birmingham or St Pancras to Sheffield for Transpennine services to Manchester! None of those seems a particularly attractive option.

This disruption comes after the WCML through Milton Keynes was closed over the weekend - only on Saturday was a reduced train service operating as far north from Euston as Bletchley, with no trains at all yesterday or Sunday.

A few weeks ago while on my way back from Birmingham New Street services were again disrupted due to signalling problems at Bletchley and at the beginning of April the wires were down at Rugby, again throwing the West Coast timetable into disarray. The most severe delay I witnessed on this occasion was a Glasgow-bound Pendolino, 4 hours late from New Street!

None of this really is good enough. Of course it is expected that things will go wrong from time to time but the number and scale of disruptions recently seems to be a cause for concern. Interestingly these recent spate of incidents all seem to have occurred in or near where engineering works are taking place.

Already I understand that Virgin has pushed back its proposed Very High Frequency (VHF) timetable from December 2008 to May 2009 due to concerns that engineering work will not be completed at Rugby on time. Whether this timetable will prove robust remains to be seen and one can only wonder at the chaos that would ensue if a similar incident occurred as that today at Bletchley when VHF is running. As I understand it the turnarounds will be cut to as a little as 20 minutes, which seems optimistic even assuming everything is running on time! Also, Virgin are short of one Pendolino set, following the write-off of 390033 City of Glasgow following the crash at Grayrigg last February. I've read in the railway press that Virgin want to keep on standby the Class 90-hauled Mk3 set, presumably to cover for a non-available Pendolino.

Work at Milton Keynes seems to be progressing well. My walk home takes me across the WCML to the south of Milton Keynes Central and I noticed this evening that sleepers and rails were being laid on the alignment of the new fast line, which will form a new down fast while the existing down fast will become a reversible loop. Despite these changes it seems unlikely that Milton Keynes will see any additional Pendolino's stopping as the new loop will allow stopping services to be platformed while fast services can proceed unimpeded through the new Platform 6. On the slow lines side, the bay, which is currently Platform 1 will become a through reversible slow, while the current Platform 2 will become the terminating line with a new bay and Platform 2a. This is being provided for the possible extension of Bedford to Bletchley services to Milton Keynes and the possible restoration of through services to Oxford via Bletchley and Bicester. The works at Milton Keynes are due for completion before the end of 2008, with I believe commissioning of the new track and signalling to take place over the August Bank Holiday weekend. Further works are envisaged in the Bletchley area but these are not critical to Virgin's VHF service and will not be completed until August 2010.

In summary it seems that it could be at least 2 years before the major engineering phase of the WCML is completed in the Milton Keynes area and only then might we see a return to a normal level of service seven days a week. One thing which I am particularly hopeful for is the restoration of early Sunday morning services as currently the first southbound train is the ex-0930 from Bletchley. I seem to remember when I first moved to Milton Keynes there was a much better Sunday service than currently, although I don't have a timetable from the period to prove it! Of course, that was before the major phase of works on the West Coast got into full swing.

Another public relations disaster

On the day that the Office of Rail Regulation fines Network Rail for engineering possession over-runs at Christmas, the Chief Executive of Network Rail is at Buckingham Palace collecting a knighthood for 'services to transport.' Further irony or worse timing is hard to conceive and of course the media loved making a deal out of this. It unfortunately feeds into this prevalent media-led idea that our railways are mismanaged and unfit for purpose. There is rarely, if ever, any good or positive news about the railways.

At the same time as ORR was slapping its fine on Network Rail it was also warning that the upgrade works to the West Coast Main Line could slip into 2009. Network Rail has admitted that its something like 2 weeks behind schedule and is seeking further possessions over 13 weekends, if I remember correctly, during the summer. This is in addition to the Bank Holiday closures and the major works being undertaken at Easter. It seems that we are still a long way off from that seven days a week railway that Network Rail have recently been promising.

It is not hard to see the amount of work that is going into the WCML upgrade, it can be seen everywhere, especially I note around Milton Keynes Central and Rugby. Both stations and their approaches at the moment resemble building sites and there still seems to be an awful lot of work to be completed before either will be ready for Virgin's Very High Frequency Timetable from January 2009. It is a real concern that the works might not be finished in time as undoubtedly it will make the presumably ever-more weary travelling public wonder when they will see the benefits of these disruptions.

For those living in Milton Keynes the misery is likely to continue a good deal longer. There are suggestions that less rather than more Virgin services will call from the timetable change, although a new through service to Birmingham will be gained on London Midland and also a service via the Trent Valley to Crewe. However, even when the project at Milton Keynes Central is completed, there is still remodelling and signaling works to be undertaken at Bletchley, which are not scheduled for completion until August 2010.

So, it seems like it could be a long drag, to pardon the pun, until we see any real improvements on the WCML and anything like the seven-days a week railway, Network Rail have promised for so long.