Click here to listen to the latest rail news on Wednesday, 8th July 2026.
InTheNews: The latest rail news on Wednesday, 8th July 2026
A clear pathway to devolve rail services and infrastructure that benefits Welsh passengers has been set out by Deputy Minister for Transport, Mark Hooper.
Wales makes up around 10 per cent of the British rail network by track length yet has received only 1.5 per cent of total UK rail investment over the past 15 years.
As promised in its 100-day plan, the Welsh Government is now taking action to change this with negotiation talks with the UK Government underway to secure fairer funding, stronger decision-making powers, and better services for passengers.
Mark said: “For decades, the UK Government has admitted it has failed to invest in the Welsh rail network and instead allowed it to decline. Our ambition is to change that— we have a vision of a devolved rail network, where rail services are designed around the needs of our people, our communities, and our economy.”
East Midlands Railway has announced plans to suspend numerous services this week as temperatures are expected to soar.
An article on the BBC website says the rail operator cancelled some services on Tuesday as several trains required repairs due to “heat-related issues”.
Regional services between Nottingham and Worksop, and between Nottingham and Leicester, will be suspended from 12:00 BST on Wednesday, while the schedule for Thursday and Friday is “under review”, EMR said. It added rail replacement buses would be running.
Customers have been urged to only make “essential journeys” for the rest of the week, check their journeys before they travel and to expect disruption.
HS2 has completed its first ‘green’ tunnel, an 880m cut-and-cover tunnel at Copthall built by SCS (Skanska, Costain, Strabag) using 1.2m cubic metres of material excavated from nearby Northholt tunnel.
An article on The Construction Index says it was originally planned as an open cutting, but engineers opted for a cut and cover design.
The decision enabled the Northolt tunnel material to be kept on site – negating the need to transport it elsewhere by road in an operation that would have resulted in around 100,000 truck movements.
It is the only ‘single bore’ tunnel on the new high-speed line and its cavernous size is engineered to accommodate the forces generated by 200mph passing trains.
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