The Rail Delivery Group has launched a commuter rewards website at nationalrail.co.uk/commuter offering passengers ‘free hot drinks, mindfulness, course upgrades, music streaming, audiobooks and more’. Partners include FutureLearn, The Mindfulness App, Pure and Greggs.
The Office of Rail & Road has awarded Europe Economics a contract worth up to £0·4m to assist with the preparation of internal papers on policy, economic and financial issues relating to the 2023 periodic review.
On January 24 Go-Ahead Group said it had been advised that Deloitte required additional time to complete the audit of the company’s results for the year ended July 3 2021; publication is now expected to be before the end of February. As a result, trading in Go-Ahead’s shares and corporate bond remains suspended.
Network Rail has awarded Balfour Beatty Rail the Wessex P-Way Track Minor Works (Maintenance) Lot 1 Inner DU contract, and Sonic Rail Services the Lot 2 Outer DU contract, with a total value of £19·5m excluding VAT.
Stauff is supplying specialist clamps, flexible hose assemblies and other fittings made in Sheffield for the Aurora trainsets which Hitachi Rail is building for East Midlands Railway.
Sustrans, Brookgate, Cambridge City Council and the Greater Cambridge Partnership have awarded a £530 000 grant to Greater Anglia to improve security, signage and accessibility at Cambridge station’s Cycle Point cycle parking facility. This will include enhanced CCTV, secure access and more accessible areas on the ground floor. Plans were developed in consultation with the Cambridge Cycle Point task group, and the funding comes from a £3m fund set aside by Active Travel England to improve cycling infrastructure around stations.
HS2 Ltd has signed up to the Rail Supply Group’s Work Pipeline Visibility Charter and has introduced new measures to enhance the visibility of supply chain opportunities. This will enable tier two and three suppliers to access the same level of technical information as tier one businesses bidding for HS2’s key railway systems contracts, which have an estimated combined value of over £3bn and cover track, overhead catenary, mechanical & electrical, telecoms, power and signalling.
The Crossrail station at Canary Wharf has been transferred to TfL; nine out of 10 central stations have now been transferred ahead of the start of services.
Great Western Railway and CrossCountry have each awarded £30 000 to local projects run under the aegis of Gloucestershire Community Rail Partnership to promote Gloucestershire as a rail destination for culinary and hospitality experiences. A series of trails will be created to encourage people to travel by train and sample the offerings of local businesses.
Morgan Sindall Infrastructure has appointed Carole Bardell-Wise as Safety, Health, Environmental & Quality Director, with incumbent Martin Worthington due to retire later this year. Bardell-Wise was previously Executive HSE director at Crossrail Ltd.
Rail Forum Midlands has launched two supply chain events for 2022. The first will be an introduction to the extensive changes that Wabtec UK has been undergoing, to be held in Derby on February 23. The second is a Hitachi-Alstom High Speed Supplier Engagement Conference on February 28.
The public have been invited to vote on a name for a station to be built on the site of the former St James station in Liverpool which closed in 1917. To avoid confusion with James Street station, the local authority and Merseyrail have come up with three options: Liverpool Baltic, Liverpool Parliament Street and Liverpool Riverside. Votes can be cast until 17.00 on February 18 at https://newliverpoolstation.commonplace.is/
Chairman Paul Priestman is to leave design consultancy PriestmanGoode at the end of March, being replaced by Nigel Goode.
MacRail Systems has appointed Adam Crago as Managing Director, replacing Tim Westwood who will be retiring in the spring after three years in the role. Crago was formerly Operations Director, having joined MacRail as a Control Room operator 12 years ago.
FirstGroup has appointed Claire Hawkings as an independent non-executive director. She previously held senior leadership positions with BG Group and British Gas. She is currently a non-executive director of Ibstock, James Fisher & Sons and Defence Equipment & Support, and will provide expertise in sustainability strategy, governance, business transformation, commercial transactions, performance management and energy transition.
