East Midlands Railway cancels 20 fast services a day because of problems with its new trains

East Midlands Railways has admitted that its problems with its new trains have not all been caused by the recent hot weather.

BBC News reports:

A number of Intercity services, which run to and from London St Pancras, will be cancelled from Monday, while other services will have fewer carriages.

Will Rogers, managing director of EMR, said the performance of the Class 810 fleet had "fallen below the levels we and our customers expect" and that the timetable change was "necessary".

The Intercity services run between London and destinations including Leicester, Nottingham, Lincoln, Derby and Sheffield.

EMR did not say how long the timetable changes would be in place for, but said in a statement they would remain in place while "EMR works with the manufacturer, Hitachi Rail, to resolve disruption for customers as soon as possible".

And the Guardian adds more detail:

EMR is cancelling about 20 fast trains a day between London, Sheffield and Nottingham, while others will also be short-formed and are likely to be crowded. Its new class 810 fleet, previously labelled Auroras when their launch was heralded less than a year ago, have suffered from what EMR has called “performance and reliability issues”.

The operator also criticised Hitachi’s maintenance of the existing fleet that the Auroras were due to replace, the class 222 trains, which it said had “significantly impacted upon EMR’s ability to run a consistent intercity service”.

Interestingly, BBC News ran a story only yesterday under the headline:

East Midlands Railway cancellations – is it really just the hot weather?

In it, my best friend from school, now secretary of the East Midlands branch of the passenger advocacy group Railfuture, said:

"a bit more transparency" around a recovery plan and the issues the operator was facing would be helpful for passengers.

We are not without influence.

The 810 trains are bi-modal – they're able to take power from overhead wires but also have their own diesel engines. They were ordered on Chris Grayling's watch after the Conservative government cancelled its plans to electrify the whole of the St Pancras main line. The wires run out at Wigston, a few miles south of Leicester.

But it's not all bad news. We're getting new taller ticket barriers at Market Harborough station to stop people without tickets boarding the trains that aren't running.

Joseph Wright of Derby: From the Shadows exhibition comes home

After six months at the National Gallery in London, the art exhibition Wright of Derby: From the Shadows has come home. 

It's now being shown at Derby Museum and Art Gallery and will run there until 1 November.

Its billing on the Derby Museums website says:

Wright of Derby: From the Shadows is the first major exhibition dedicated to the British artist's 'candlelight' paintings. Join us as we celebrate and look again at his most admired works.

Illuminated faces gather around a variety of objects, from classical sculptures and scientific instruments to bones, bladders and animals. Through his unflinching scenes of people watching, Wright of Derby proposes moral questions about acts of looking. The strong light and deep shadows create drama, reminding us of great painters from earlier centuries like Caravaggio.

Challenging the traditionally held view of Wright of Derby as a figurehead of the Enlightenment, this exhibition contributes to the ongoing re-evaluation of the artist, portraying him not merely as a 'painter of light'. More than virtuoso scenes of dramatic light and shade, Wright of Derby used the night-time to explore deeper and more sombre themes, including death, melancholy, morality, scepticism and the sublime.

With over twenty works, including paintings, mezzotints, works on paper and objects, the exhibition explores both Wright of Derby’s artistic practice and the historic context of scientific and artistic development in which they were made.

Watch, along with the people he paints, as his scenes of spectacle and wonder unfold.

Wright of Derby: From the Shadows can be seen without charge at Derby Museum and Art Gallery, and you can also enjoy the large collection of his paintings that is always on show there.

Plan would see canal boats on the Derwent in the centre of Derby

With most of the low-hanging fruit having been picked, canal "restoration" projects now tend to involve the digging miles of new route. The Derby Canal is no exception.

This video illustrates plans the Derby and Sandiacre Canal Trust has had for years. They obtained planning permission for the scheme back in 2011, but funding it in the current economic climate will be a much greater challenge.

Still, it would be great to see boats on the Derwent in the centre of Derby.

How Derby became a major railway centre

Jago Hazzard on George Hudson and formation of the Midland Railway.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page. And why not subscribe to his YouTube channel? I know I do.

The Joy of Six 1435

"The real scandal here is the behaviour of the board. As Patrick Barwise and Peter York detailed in their 2020 book The War on the BBC, the British right has been trying to cow and weaken the BBC for decades, for both political and commercial reasons. But this time is different because the chief saboteurs were board members, chiefly Sir Robbie Gibb. On the Today programme, former Sun editor David Yelland justifiably described this week’s events as 'nothing short of a coup'. The call is coming from inside the house." Dorian Lynskey says the BBC is the biggest prize in the information war and the right may be about to destroy it.

Stacy Patton shows that Donald Trump is not the first US president to be accused of paedophilia.

"In 2024, Pershore and Thrapston became the first towns in the UK to twin their rivers, the Avon and the Nene, creating the Sister Rivers partnership. The idea is simple and scalable. Each town takes guardianship of its stretch of river, monitors it, and shares results, data, and strategies with its twin. Two councils, two communities, one purpose: to restore what regulation has failed to defend." Michael Chapman Pincher on a new initiative to protect our rivers.

Gordon McKelvie finds that historians must be alert to the dangers of AI and its potential to simplify, and ultimately impoverish, the study of the past.

"At one point the White Lady apparently benevolently watches over the father’s daughters as they sleep but she is revealed to be a form of predatory grim reaper when suddenly the silhouetted arc of a scythe she holds appears over their heads." Stephen Prince revisits White Lady, a lesser-known television play by David Rudkin that was broadcast in 1987

The Crow Inn has a guide to some of the best pubs in Derby.

Electrification of the Midland Mainline is paused yet again

Yesterday the news was full of stories about government investment in the railways: today we heard a familiar story in this part of the world. As BBC News reports:

East Midlands council leaders have said they are dismayed at the government's decision to indefinitely pause the northwards electrification of the Midland Mainline.

The London to Sheffield railway line has been upgraded to take electric trains as far as South Wigston in Leicestershire, but the Department for Transport (DfT) confirmed on Tuesday the further extension of the project was on hold.

The story goes on to quote the Grand Poobah of Leicester, Sir Peter Soulsby:

"Each pause damages confidence, makes delivery more expensive and pushes back the benefits for passengers, freight and the environment."

and Elaine Clark, chief executive of the rail industry body Rail Forum:

"Stopping Midland Mainline electrification makes no sense.

"It is a shovel-ready project that could deliver tangible benefits this parliament.

"It's a bad decision for the UK taxpayer and it's a bad decision for users of the Midland Mainline, with several of our larger cities now condemned to using diesel traction for the foreseeable future."

And for a rail project that would bring great benefits to the East Midlands but is probably even further away than full electrification of the Midland Mainline, see the proposal for a dive-under at Nuneaton, allowing a direct service from Nottingham and Leicester to Coventry again.

Alfred Rawlinson wins Bishop of the Day

Impressive though this headline from the Lancashire Evening Post (Tuesday 27 October 1953) is, it's his Wikipedia entry that has won Alfred Rawlinson, the second ever Bishop of Derby* (1936-59), this new award:

As an outstandingly biblical scholar, Rawlinson’s name appeared for several more senior bishoprics and, although he had the support of successive archbishops, his name was not forwarded to the Crown with the Prime Minister’s recommendation for appointment. The Prime Minister was the key figure in such appointments and Rawlinson was considered for vacancies at London in 1939, Bath and Wells in 1945 and Lincoln and Salisbury in 1946. 

The problem was that although Rawlinson’s academic prowess was greatly admired, his personal relationships, especially with his clergy, caused considerable concern. In 1945, for example, in recommending Rawlinson for Bath and Wells, Archbishop Fisher justified the translation because of Rawlinson’s reputation in Derby. ‘He dislikes his own Diocese and I don’t think they like him’.

* Before 1927, the Diocese of Derby was part of the Diocese of Southwell. 

Tracing the route of the lost Derby Canal

Another day out with Steve and friends for LeiceExplore, this time tracing the route of the Derby Canal, which was closed to navigation in 1964 having been unpassable for some time. There's a promise of more videos on this waterway to come.

I find the traces around Derby station particularly interesting, though I admit I've found that locomotive cab myself but failed to recognise the canal bridge next to it. And we should all mourn the loss of the level crossing of the Derwent.

The Derby and Sandiacre Canal Trust explains what was once to be found:

The Derby & Sandiacre Canal ran from the river Trent at Swarkestone and climbed through 3 locks to the Trent & Mersey Canal and Swarkestone Junction on the Trent & Mersey canal thence to Sandiacre on the Erewash canal, with a line to Little Eaton where it met a plateway. 

There was also a branch to the river Derwent in the city centre, which enabled boats to reach the Silk Mill and the mills and foundries further up the river to Darley Abbey.

If you explore the trust's site you will also find their plans for restoring much of this route.

Newspaper reports tensions between Lib Dem councillors and party executive in Derby

 

An investigation is under way into allegations made by the executive committee of Derby's Liberal Democrats, which has led to the resignation of committee members. The resigned committee has written and appealed to senior figures in the Liberal Democrat Party urging them to take control of Derby City Liberal Democrats "to avoid further damage to party reputation, as well as its mental and physical well-being of its members".

So Derbyshire Live (the website for the Derby Telegraph) reported earlier this week.

The paper says the committee's letter lists eighteen grievances and it prints seven of them.

Its report ends:

Derbyshire Live approached Councillor Ruth Skelton, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Derby City Council, who referred us to the press office at national party headquarters.

A press statement said: "There are investigations underway and we cannot comment pending those being completed."

Derbyshire Live has also approached the resigning committee for any further comment.

In defence of Peter, Jane and Ladybird's history books

As a video recently posted here went a long way to demonstrate, Ladybird Books were about the most progressive post-war publishers of children's books.

Yet misapprehensions about their publications abound. The other day someone on Twitter was convinced that Peter and Jane exclaimed "I say!" to one another.

The illustrator of these books, Harry Wingfield, explained their social position to the Guardian in 2002 when he was 91:

Wingfield is dismissive of claims in another national newspaper that the model for the real-life Jane has been unearthed in Shrewsbury. There was no real-life Jane. Or Peter, for that matter. Their images were forged from any number of photographs of local children, some taken on the new council estates that were springing up in the late 50s and early 60s.

"They were the sons and daughters of respectable workers," he says, "and they were well dressed. You didn't want dustbin kids. But they weren't as middle-class as everyone made out."

My mother taught me to read from these books before I went to school. We were living in a new town, Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, at the time, and nothing about them felt alien to me.

Ladybird's Adventures from History series is also controversial. Otto English, with his repeated use of the term "Ladybird libertarians" seems to blame it for Brexit. But Ladybird's market was local authority primary schools, not the prep schools that the proponents of leaving the European Union attended.

And L du Garde Peach, the man who wrote the bulk of that series, was no Tory, if only because he fought Derby for the Liberal Party at the 1929 general election.

David Perkins writes of him in History Today:

There was more to Peach than a mere producer of patriotic homilies. As a radio dramatist, he did not shy away from controversial issues, including war, the arms race, and pacificism: Patriotism Ltd (1937) was subject to BBC internal censorship and pulled from the air, a decision that was reported around the world; Night Sky (1937) sought to bring home the realities of modern warfare. Peach also wrote a play about the First World War with no men in the cast: Home Fires (1930). 

He became known, too, for hard-hitting radio dramas: Bread (1932) was a family farming saga of poverty and emigration from the agricultural depression of the 1840s to the Great Depression. Three Soldiers (1933) highlighted the predicament of ex-soldiers from the Great War who had been thrown on the dole. 

Several of Peach’s radio plays touched on racial issues. His stance on the subject was more nuanced than that of many contemporaries and his attitudes ahead of his time. In Ingredient X (1929) he wrote about the corporate exploitation of Africa, spurring a journalist to complain that the play was ‘Bolshevist in tendency’. 

In John Hawkins – Slaver (1933) Peach adapted Hakluyt’s 16th-century account of the notable voyages and made a point of showing how Hawkins – like other Elizabethan explorers – made profits from slave trading to secure the monarch’s support. In The Cohort Marches: An Episode of the Roman Occupation (1937), Peach recast contemporary issues of colonialism in the context of Roman Britain. 

You can watch a lecture on L. du Garde Peach by Perkins in the video above.

Following the old branch to Denby

The Beeching Report led to the closure of many branch railways during the 1960s. But for many years stubs of these lines remained open to provide access for good trains to industrial sites.

One such was the branch from Little Eaton Junction on the Midland main line a couple of miles north of Derby station to a coal-washing plant at Denby.

It is still marked in my 1978 Rail Atlas of Britain and was to survive until 1999. In fact the track was not lifted until 2011.

This branch represented the greater part of the former line from Little Eaton Junction to Ripley, which opened in 1855 and was primarily used for goods traffic. The passenger stations on the line closed in 1930.

This video follows as much of the trackbed as is walkable today, starting after Little Eaton and finishing short of Denby. As ever, it is remarkable how quickly nature reclaims its own.

You can see the site of Denby and Little Eaton stations in another video.

The Joy of Six 1030

"What happened on that Friday and in the days after, when police rounded up even more kids, would expose an ugly and unsettling culture in Rutherford County, one spanning decades. In the wake of these mass arrests, lawyers would see inside a secretive legal system that’s supposed to protect kids, but in this county did the opposite. Officials flouted the law by wrongfully arresting and jailing children." Meribah Knight and Ken Armstrong report a horrifying case from the US.

Jonathan Jones on the government's reliance on secondary legislation to drive Brexit and efforts to curb the Covid pandemic. He calls for a rethink on how such important laws on created.

Hadley Hall Meares detects his mother's influence in Prince Harry's exit from the royal spotlight.

"On the one hand, the old footage and the raw tapes were the closest we ever got to watching the Beatles work in the studio, meaning they’ve been pored over with Talmudic precision; on the other hand, so much of it is sloppy and half-assed, and it’s so tightly wound up in the group’s demise, it’s been hard to find much pleasure in listening or watching." Alan Light reviews Peter Jackson's Beatles documentary Get Back.

"I keep being drawn back to Derby. It’s a city where, for all the boarded-up retail premises and the shocking waste of the moribund Civic Centre, manufacture is at centre stage and new ideas take root – as they have done for centuries." Gillian Darley visits Derby's Museum of Making.

"Both of them wrote books that I hung on to, cherished, re-read, and both of them used history to tell stories for children of now." Fleur Hitchcock pays tribute to her "writing gods" Joan Aiken and Leon Garfield.

Department for Transport halts work on East Midlands leg of HS2

The Birmingham Post reports:

Work on the eastern leg of the High Speed Two rail line has stopped, the project's chief executive has admitted. Officials are busy preparing plans to extend the HS2 line north west to Manchester, but they have been told by the Department for Transport to halt work on the planned section between Birmingham and the East Midlands, and onwards to Leeds.

HS2 Chief Executive Mark Thurston said: "We wait to be guided by the Department on what we do with the eastern link."

It has been rumoured for some time that the East Midlands leg of HS2 is under review. And, as someone who has always found this project hard to love, I am not heartbroken at this news.

I know the arguments about HS2 increasing the capacity for regional services, it's just that they appear not to hold true here in the East Midlands.

As Jones the Planner blogged back in April 2013:

The HS2 business case claims that 80% of passengers from Nottingham will transfer from MML to HS2, and to help this heroic punt come true, hidden in with the small print, you find the assumption that direct trains from the new Nottingham Hub to St Pancras will be cut by half. Well, that will do a lot for city centre competitiveness, I don’t think. 

So actually Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield get a worse train service to their city centres, where most people want to be, than they do now - but great if you want to drive to a Parkway station. Leicester, a city of some half a million people will no longer have a mainline service as such. 

It is bizarre if not surprising that a project which started with the aim of boosting provincial cities should end up promoting plans which will hugely undermine city centres and urban economies and positively promote exurban motorway sprawl.

For this reason I would rather see money spent on the electrification of the Midland main line all the way to Sheffield and on local improvements, such as the proposed 'diveunder' at Nuneaton to allow a direct from Nottingham and Leicester to Coventry.

New hope of electrification from Market Harborough to Sheffield

Harborough FM, which these days provides the best local news service, reports that the government is again looking at the idea of electrifying the railway from Market Harborough to Sheffield.

A Department for Transport spokesperson has told the radio station:

"Enabling and design work is currently taking place to progress electrification of the Midland Mainline beyond Kettering to Market Harborough, as well as to enable the introduction of the new bi-mode trains to be introduced on the route in 2023.

"Further electrification of the MML to Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield is currently being examined by the Department and Network Rail, and is at an early stage of development.

"This work will be subject to the development of a satisfactory business case."

And earlier this week Construction Enquirer had news of a "market engagement day" for potential contractors for this work.

The Conservatives said during the 2017 general election campaign that the wires would reach Sheffield, even though Chris Grayling had also taken the decision to scrap the project.

Visiting Derbyshire during the 2019 campaign, Boris Johnson suggested that it might go ahead after all.

Our prime minister has a well-established habit of saying whatever will get him through the next 10 seconds regardless of its truth, but maybe he was not lying here.

The Joy of Six 1010

"Clarke roots his theories in the politics of the contemporary left and has identified three mythologies that need to be overcome if the party is to win power again. He terms these 'the Dark Knight', 'the Puppet Master' and 'the Golden Age'." Anthony Broxton reviews Chris Clarke’s book The Dark Knight and the Puppet Master.

Eric Levitz says the choice before us on climate change is techno-optimism or barbarism.

"Not only is parkrun exactly the kind of health intervention that local government should be pulling out all the stops to support, but it is also a source of company and community to many people who have ended up socially adrift." Isabel Hardman asks why the post-lockdown revival of parkrun is being delayed.

"Ballard, who was no admirer of England’s 'green and pleasant land' and was quick to embrace the cool promise of modernity after the war, nevertheless found worrying portents in the high-rise tower blocks going up in cities in the United Kingdom and United States." Phyllis Richardson on J.G. Ballard, tower blocks and dystopian dread.

Oliver Wainwright travels to Derby and its new Museum of Making, housed in an old silk mill beside the River Derwent.

Kaitlyn Tiffany looks at the popularity of conspiracy theories about celebrity pregnancies.

Peartree: The least used station in Derbyshire

Peartree lies a mile or so south of Derby station. Under its original name of Pear Tree and Normanton it was open between 1839 and 1968.

It reappeared with a streamlined new name in 1976 as part of the reopening of the Sinfin branch to serve the Rolls Royce works. This was not a success and the last train ran in 1993, though in theory you could present yourself at Derby station and demand a taxi to Sinfin North or Sinfin South until its official closure in 1998.

Peartree survived, though almost all trains from Derby to Crewe or Birmingham race through it without stopping.

The Sinfin branch gets a mention in this video, but there was another station between Peartree and Derby not so long ago.

Ramsline Halt, previously Baseball Ground Halt, was a single-platform station opened by British Rail in 1990 to serve the Baseball Ground, the former home of Derby County. Only four trains ever stopped there and it closed in 1997 when the club moved to its new Pride Park stadium.

Government looking at electrification north of Market Harborough

During the last general election campaign Boris Johnson blurted out a promise to electrify the whole of the Midland main line.

Under present plans the wires will stop at Market Harborough.

On Thursday the Nottingham Labour MP Alex Norris asked the transport minister Andrew Stephenson what was being done to keep this commitment.

Stephenson replied:

Further electrification of the midland main line is currently at an early stage, but it is being examined by Network Rail. The Department will continue to work closely with Network Rail on the development of a proposal for this, including approaches to advancing the delivery of electrification across the route.

That doesn't sound very committal to me, but someone has got very excited by it:

Midlands Connect Director Maria Machancoses has welcomed news that the government is for the first time in 3 years looking again at electrifying the Midland Main Line.

Maria called the news a ‘massive boost for the region’ and a key step towards a ‘Midlands rail revolution’ allowing us to be better connected whilst decarbonising the network sooner.

We shall see.

Cricket Badger: John Poysden's podcast on the art of slow bowling

Embed from Getty Images

This blog loves spin bowling - leg spin in particular. Back in the late 1980s I sent to see Sussex play at Derby just because they had a young Ian Salisbury in their side.

And one of my more prophetic posts comes from 2006 when Adil Rashid made his debut for Yorkshire:

Won't it be nice if yesterday turns out to have been an historic day in English cricket?

Mind you, I also have a label for Mason Crane.

Another Yorkshire leg spinner, Josh Poysden, has started a podcast to explore the art of slow bowling. 

He has posted eight episodes so far, with guest including Dom Bess, Matt Parkinson and Stuart MacGill.

Listen to Spin Badger here.

Call for more trains north of Corby

The Northamptonshire Telegraph has a report on a campaign for better rail services from Corby to Derby, Melton and Oakham.

It quotes David Fursdon from the Corby Rail Users Group:

"We have the infrastructure in place, track and signalling, we just need the political will and of course rolling stock to get this to happen.

"We have a Derby return service once a day and the Pie Train to Melton Mowbray and back but there's no reason why we shouldn't a better, more frequent service from Corby.

Exploring Mapperley Tunnel

Mapperley Tunnel stood on the Great Northern line from Nottingham to Derby, which closed to passengers in 1964 and to goods traffic in 1968.

Our guides show us what remains.