In The News | 11th January 2023 | Latest Rail News

Click here to listen to the latest rail news on Wednesday, 11th January 2023

InTheNews: The latest rail news on Wednesday, 11th January 2023

Business Secretary Grant Shapps has set out plans to enforce minimum service levels during strike action, including for ambulance staff, firefighters and railway workers.

The article on the BBC website says that under the bill, some employees would be required to work during a strike and could be sacked if they refuse.

Mr Shapps said the aim was to protect lives and livelihoods.

But unions said the proposed bill was “undemocratic, unworkable, and almost certainly illegal”.

A pay offer of 10 per cent could be tabled by ministers in a bid to reach a breakthrough with the RMT rail union, it has emerged, according to an article on the Mail Online.

Sources said Whitehall officials were looking into whether the existing 8 per cent offer over two years to workers for 14 train companies could be improved.

Rail minister Huw Merriman is understood to have left open the possibility of an extra 2 per cent being found during a meeting with RMT boss Mick Lynch earlier this week.

East Midlands Railway (EMR) is working with engineers from the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) to create a simulation tool that will help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its depots.

The project, made possible by the Network Rail Performance Improvement Fund, has seen AMRC engineers work closely with EMR operations staff to record the rules, processes and timings of train movements to develop a representative model of its Nottingham Eastcroft depot.

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Happy birthday to the Tube, the world’s first and most famous underground railway.

Yesterday marked 160 years since the first Tube journey took place between Paddington and Farringdon stations, on what was then the Metropolitan Railway.

Transport for London says a series of activities will be held throughout 2023 to mark the anniversary.

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Photo credit: Transport for London

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