• Reopening Birmingham’s Camp Hill Line: Reversing Beeching (FutureRail)
• South Western Railway (SWR) was nationalised on Sunday (Ian Visits)
• Crashes on 20mph & 30mph roads at ‘record low’ (BBC)
• The 200 year journey of Britain’s fastest locomotive (InterCity 225): Video (London North Eastern Railway)
• Improving disabled access to UK’s public transport ‘almost impossible’ (The Guardian)
• How France saved its public transit from catastrophe (SYLee)
• Train Daddy’s home: Andy Byford to return to NYC for Penn Station remake (Gothamist)
• Relief Map of Street Railway System in Pittsburgh 1910 (Transit Maps)
• The origin of land transport words: Video (Words Unravelled)
And if you missed it, remember to take a look at London Reconnections’ latest article: Becksploitation – Sydney’s Beck-style railway maps
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Nice to see the report on the Camp Hill Line reopening ( Reopening Birmingham’s Camp Hill Line: Reversing Beeching (FutureRail)) but I do wonder at the the thinking of the writer – ’80 years since the closure’ takes us back to 1945 (the official closure of the passenger service was I think 27.11.1946 although there had been a temporary closure since 1941). But to put the blame on Dr Beeching, whose Report is dated 1963 and whose recommendations could not be processed until months/years later, is very bad reporting. This is not the first time that I’ve had to correct reporting – our local newsletter put the blame for our local line closure in 1959 on Dr Beeching.
The Guardian’s “Improving disabled access to UK’s public transport ‘almost impossible’” is old stuff. Of course its ‘impossible’ if no-has realised by now! It will be impossible even by the end of the century. Its impossible everywhere too, not just on the railways, so there’s the question of accessible streets and accessible stations and if there is just the one and not the other, well impossible has to be the definitive word.
Why not the very recent news on the legislation that Network Rail can use in order to AVOID improving disability access? This legislation is almost ad infinitum to the concept of impossible and its a means of ensuring that impossible really does mean impossible and its really important because its legislation that apparently gives Network Rail powers to enforce the impossible.