Click here to listen to the latest rail news on Thursday, 17th March 2022
InTheNews: The latest rail news on Thursday, 17th March 2022
Rail firm Govia has been handed a £23.5 million penalty over the Southeastern franchise scandal, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced.
An article in the Independent says the company – a joint venture between Go-Ahead Group (65%) and Keolis (35%) – deliberately concealed more than £25 million of historic taxpayer funding relating to High Speed 1, which should have been returned.
Its operator, London and South Eastern Railway Limited (LSER), ran Southeastern services from 2006 until it was stripped of the franchise in October last year due to the serious breach of its contract.
A Go-Ahead spokesman told the paper “we accept this penalty and since these events came to light, our corporate governance procedures have been enhanced and the group is under new leadership”.
The UK government has announced its biggest ever sustainable, civil infrastructure deal to help finance a new high speed electric railway line in Turkey to decarbonise travel, with major contracts awarded to British and Turkish businesses.
The EUR2.1 billion green financing will be guaranteed by UK Export Finance (UKEF), through its Buyer Credit Scheme, with Credit Suisse and Standard Chartered structuring and coordinating banks arranging the transaction.
This is the first UK-supported rail transaction in Turkey for over 160 years, and forms part of Turkey’s plan to transform high speed rail in the country.
The minister responsible for HS2 has raised concerns about the rate at which costs on the project are growing.
An article on Building.co.uk says that in his six-month report to parliament yesterday, Andrew Stephenson said HS2 had used up an additional £500 million of its £5.6 billion contingency fund since his last update.
He said: “HS2 Ltd has drawn £1.3 billion of its £5.6 billion delegated contingency, meaning £4.3 billion remains. Contingency drawn to date reflects an increase of £500 million.”
DB Cargo UK is trialling the use of ‘combi-consists’ to increase capacity, improve customer service and drive up efficiency.
The idea was to run a unique jumbo train from Belmont Yard in Doncaster to Barking, East London. It carried a mix of wagons for two completely different types of customers.
The train comprised two sets of empty wagons – 21 x MBA wagons for Ward Recycling and 18 x JNA wagons for FCC Environment – with an isolated DIT (dead-in-train) locomotive – in the middle.
Photo credit: DB Cargo UK
