At the end of January, everything supposedly changed. No, not Brexit, but Nexit, the much-heralded demise of Northern, with the Department for Transport taking control with its aptly named Operator of Last Resort. Anybody in the North of England who may be tempted to believe that the men from the Ministry will be their saviour should think again.
These are the people who have brazenly blamed everybody else for the current state of the railway across the North including Network Rail, which we should remember it has owned for more than five years. You don’t need to be a forensic scientist to trace the initial causes of the 2018 timetable meltdown, the multiple failures to deliver infrastructure improvements or the inability of train operating companies (TOCs) to meet Persons with Reduced Mobility (PRM) requirements, and thus the late withdrawal of Pacers, for which the Minister had the cheek to remonstrate with the industry. And who was it that gave TOCs just a fortnight’s notice over Christmas of the need to provide largely non-existent PRM compliant buses for rail replacement services (p26, last month), and has delayed approval of power upgrades at the northern end of the East Coast main line (p12, …
