Picket lines mounted outside tube stations in capital with another 24-hour strike planned for Thursday
Transport for London has encouraged people to work from home on Tuesday and Thursday as thousands of tube workers went on strike, crippling the capital’s transport network.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union said its members were “solidly supporting” the industrial action with picket lines mounted outside tube stations.
Continue reading...Harassment often goes unreported, meaning metrics don’t always convey experiences – especially for women and people of color
Around 9.30am on 15 January of this year, Michelle Go was waiting for a train at Times Square subway station. Go, 40, a senior manager at Deloitte, was on her way to work. As she was checking her phone, a man shoved her from behind as a train roared into the station. She was hit by the incoming train and killed.
Go’s murder prompted shock and outrage. She was of Asian descent, at a time when anti-Asian hate crimes have been surging across New York City, including in the subways. The chief suspect in her killing, Martial Simon, has two violent felonies on his record and a warrant out for allegedly violating his parole. He reportedly had a history of severe mental illness, including schizophrenia, and had cycled between hospitals and jails over the years; the New York Times reported he was unhoused. Although police said there was no indication that Go’s death was an anti-Asian hate crime, prosecutors said they were examining “every piece of evidence to determine if defendant’s actions were motivated by racial bias”.
Continue reading...Activists say bill being presented to parliament sanctions irreversible destruction of environment
A nationwide day of action against HS2 – involving banner drops, solidarity protests and a Twitter storm – is planned for Monday as the bill to expand the line beyond Crewe is presented to parliament.
Environmental activists say the bill will “sanction immense and irreversible destruction to the environment” and want to raise awareness of HS2’s “continuing ecocide, corruption and financial mis-management”.
Continue reading...Findings surpass experts’ expectations after buildings, wells, coins and wide road discovered
A wealthy Roman trading town, whose inhabitants adorned themselves with jewellery and ate from fine pottery, has been discovered half a metre below the surface of a remote field in Northamptonshire.
A 10-metre-wide Roman road, domestic and industrial buildings, more than 300 coins and at least four wells have been unearthed at the site, where 80 archaeologists have been working for the past 12 months.
Continue reading...Volunteer passengers will be aboard central TfL section of Elizabeth line as part of final testing phase
Hopes that Crossrail will open in central London in early 2022 – this time on schedule – have been boosted as the troubled £19bn scheme moved into its final phase of testing at the weekend.
The start of months of trial operations, which will involve thousands of volunteer passengers to test how the system will function, including in emergencies, was described as a “significant milestone” by Transport for London and the mayor.
Continue reading...Okehampton welcomes revamp of service connecting Dartmoor town to Exeter and beyond
In 1972, the people of Okehampton turned out in force to wish a fond farewell to the Devon moorland town’s regular passenger rail service.
The mayor, Walter John Passmore, carried a funeral wreath and his wife, Daisy, waved the green flag to signal the final train’s departure, just about managing a sad smile for the cameras.
Continue reading...Campaigners in Devon celebrate return of passenger trains after 50 years, a first step to reversing the Beeching closures
On the rugged northern edge of Dartmoor, a small army of workers in high-vis vests is readying Okehampton station to welcome the first regular passenger train since 1972. The canopies and picket fences are being repainted in the original dark greens and warm yellows of the long-departed Southern Railway.
It’s a historic moment for local campaigners, who have been fighting for decades to reconnect the Devon town to the national network and open up this lesser-visited part of the national park. “It’s quite extraordinary – almost unbelievable,” says Tom Baxter, 68, the secretary of the Dartmoor Railway Association, watching the painting from a gleaming green bench on the platform. “I used to travel on the line when it was British Rail and I was here when it closed in the 1970s. Local railways were seen as a bit of a nuisance at the time – they wanted to get rid of them.”
Continue reading...Number of injuries not yet known but rail services are suspended in the area
Emergency services have scrambled to respond to a collision of two trains near Salisbury on Sunday night, in a critical incident that left one train carriage derailed.
About 50 firefighters from Dorset and Wiltshire, Hampshire and Isle of Wight and South Western fire and rescue services are at the scene, which is close to London Road in Salisbury, along with Wiltshire police and Network Rail.
Continue reading...Number of commuter trips made in mid-October was just 45% of pre-Covid figure, industry says
The number of train journeys made by commuters in Great Britain remains at less than half of pre-pandemic levels, figures show.
The industry body Rail Delivery Group (RDG) said in mid-October the number of railway journeys made by those going to work was just 45% of what it was before the coronavirus crisis.
Continue reading...Industrial action abandoned as trade union leaders confirmed pay talks with ScotRail have been settled
Rail strikes planned for next week’s Cop26 climate conference have been abandoned after trade union leaders confirmed negotiations on a pay rise have been settled.
The announcement was made after talks between the RMT union and transport bosses on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Charges against six protesters dropped as HS2 was not carrying out work on the site at the time
Six environmental protesters who occupied a tunnel close to Euston station in protest against the HS2 high-speed link earlier this year walked free from court after charges in connection with the occupation were dismissed by a judge.
Daniel Hooper, 48, also known as “Swampy”; Dr Larch Maxey, 49; Isla Sandford, 18; Lachlan Sandford, 20; Juliett Stevenson-Clarke, 22; and Scott Breen, 47, faced charges of aggravated trespass at Highbury Corner magistrates court in central London for their 31 days underground in January and February of this year. A separate charge against Maxey of damage to a mobile phone was also dismissed.
Continue reading...India’s tiny train has puffed up the Himalayas since 1881 but now the world heritage site is under threat
“Darjeeling ko sano rail, hirna lai abo tyari cha / Guard le shuna bhai siti bajayo” (Darjeeling’s dainty train is all set to chug off / Oh, listen to the guard blowing the whistle): generations of children in Darjeeling have grown up hearing these lines from a Nepali nursery rhyme. Serenading the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR), it depicts the close relationship between the “Queen of the Hills” and local people.
However, that relationship has become strained after the Indian government decided to hand over the running of the railway – listed by Unesco as a world heritage site – and oversight of the land adjoining the stations to a private company, threatening jobs and livelihoods.
Continue reading...The cause of the accident was not immediately clear and federal safety authorities will investigate
At least three people were killed on Saturday afternoon when an Amtrak train that runs between Seattle and Chicago derailed in north-central Montana, toppling several cars onto their sides, authorities said.
The westbound Empire Builder train derailed at about 4pm near Joplin, a town of about 200, Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams said. The accident scene is about 150 miles north-east of Helena and about 30 miles from the border with Canada.
Continue reading...Holidaymakers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland look to take advantage of late summer sun
People seeking a bank holiday getaway in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are being warned to avoid major roads before 7pm as holidaymakers look to take advantage of good late summer weather forecast for much of the UK.
The RAC estimates that 16.7m leisure trips are planned between Friday and Monday, with the south-west predicted to be especially packed.
Continue reading...Jim Steer responds to an article by Simon Jenkins that said the high-speed rail link was of little use to the north, and Mark Sullivan hopes the West Midlands gets the transport hub it rejected a decade ago
Simon Jenkins’ latest piece on HS2 (Depleted and unwanted, HS2 hurtles on as Johnson’s £100bn vanity project, 30 July) repeatedly mischaracterises both the case for, and the benefits of, a rail project that will transform connectivity in the UK.
He talks as if services will only go from London to Birmingham, stating confidently that “Britain’s new high-speed railway will not – repeat: not – get to the north of England”. But this is simply untrue. Construction work on the Birmingham-Crewe section is now under way, and detailed planning and consultation prior to a parliamentary bill submission is under way for Crewe-Manchester. HS2 services will reach Edinburgh, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds and more than a dozen other cities across the country.
Continue reading...Rail industry resists calls from passenger groups to release data on risk of contracting Covid on trains
Train operators have been urged to release research showing the risk of contracting Covid on trains, with the chances now believed to be substantially higher than the figure publicised by the rail industry last year.
The industry-funded Rail Research and Safety Board (RSSB) said in July 2020 that the risk was just one infection in 11,000 average journeys in Great Britain.
Continue reading...A French start-up aims to run ‘hotels on rails’ from Paris to 12 cities across Europe, including Edinburgh, from 2024
Less than a decade after Europe’s night trains appeared to have reached the end of the line, a new French start-up has announced plans for a network of overnight services out of Paris from 2024.
Midnight Trains is hoping post-Covid interest in cleaner, greener travel will generate interest in its proposed “hotels on rails”, which aims to connect the French capital to 12 other European destinations, including Edinburgh.
Continue reading...At least 38 people killed and up to 20 passengers trapped in wreckage of derailed Millat Express
Two express trains have collided in southern Pakistan, killing at least 38 passengers, as rescuers and villagers worked to pull the dead and injured from the wreckage.
Up to 20 passengers were still trapped in the wreckage of the Millat Express train, said Umar Tufail, a police chief in Ghotki district in Sindh province, where the collision occurred before dawn.
Continue reading...Bethan Roper, 28, of south Wales, was killed travelling home from Christmas shopping trip in 2018
A woman died after she was struck by an overhanging tree branch when she leant out of a train window as she travelled home after a Christmas shopping trip, an inquest has heard.
Bethan Roper, 28, who worked for the Welsh Refugee Council, sustained fatal head injuries while a passenger on a Great Western Railway (GWR) train travelling at about 75mph.
Continue reading...A conductor, who was not qualified to drive the train, sat in the driver’s seat during his three-minute absence, in breach of the rules
A driver on one of Japan’s shinkansen bullet trains is facing disciplinary measures after he abandoned his cab to go to the toilet while the train was carrying passengers and travelling at 150km/h.
The 36-year-old driver, who has not been named, reportedly had a stomachache and asked a conductor to take his place while he went to the toilet.
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