In The News: 13th July

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The rail industry is bracing for full nationalisation as private forecasts show passenger numbers will not return to pre-pandemic levels for at least five years.

That’s according to an article in The Sunday Telegraph which reads that the predictions, circulated among train operators, make it almost impossible for the railways to remain in private hands without significant taxpayer support.

Last month Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said they were moving to a ‘different type of railway’ and ‘different types of contracts’, when he was quizzed as to what will happen when emergency measure agreements with train operating companies ends in September.

Northern’s new trains are celebrating their one-year anniversary and have clocked more than five million miles of customer journeys.

And, more than five million journeys have also been made using the new trains – a £500m investment in rail in the north of England.

95 new trains are currently available for customer service with the full total of 101 expected on the network by the end of the year.

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Transport for London is testing the use of temperatures cameras with train and bus operators Abellio, Metroline, Arriva, Stagecoach and Go Ahead.

In an article in today’s Daily Telegraph, it says the cameras use an infrared technology to pick up small changes in body temperature from a distance.

While not a substitute for a test, they have been used as a first-line check to see if someone has an unusually high temperature and, should then be recommended for a coronavirus test.

Finally, and HS2 has uncovered Iron Age murder victim and timber Stonehenge-style formation during excavation in Buckinghamshire.

During the excavation, archaeologists discovered a skeleton of an adult male buried face down in a ditch with hands bound together under his pelvis.

A large circular monument of wooden posts 65 metres in diameter with features aligned with the winter solstice, similar to Stonehenge, has also been discovered.

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Photo credit: Northern

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