Mr Chris Hyomes has kindly forwarded these pdf articles on what is happening in our Northern England areas. Others will be in future newsletters, which are filling fast.
All enquiries via our Northern Area Rep: Mr Chris Hyomes, 10 Tythe Barn Road, Knottingley, West Yorkshire, WF11 9BU, E. chris.hyomes@hotmail.co.uk
Please feel free to visit our Northern Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/
The next ERTA Newsletter will be out 2nd November. Thank you.
BTW, if anyone likes an excuse to visit the Northern Area and take some 'today' photos of the remaining route and features/landscape with word doc captions for us to use in a mini report we are doing on Woodhead, please do deliver freely to richard.erta@gmail.com It has loads of text, but a few photos would help beef it up! Sooner we get them, quicker we can send the report out in the New Year. If wanted, you will be acknowledged and thanked for your contribution. Suggestions welcome as per any review of the report or appendix additions to bolt-on if you wish to have that submissions considered. I retain the right as editor whether to include, but with your permission, may put some on Blogspot or Facebook for digest by wider audiences as well.
Although I started my campaigning career with a threatened railway (Bedford-Bletchley) and got into restoring bits of it (East-West Rail), I have grown to consider that we need a nationwide plan for all sorts of different reasons to both get Britain moving and cut emissions at one and the same time. Rail is the answer to a chunk of transport and logistics needs and we do need more of the 'right type of railway' people and businesses can easily access and afford to engage with. Far from that currently, shambles is the word in some cases, yea many cases, but campaigning arms are essential to both highlight but also come up with solutions, ideas and suggestions to make things better. That may even include renationalisation but having more say to power of what and how we want our railways.
Privatisation is argued to have been conceptually botched originally and has been a half-way house ever since. Profits going out of transport to shareholders and others, contrasted with spiralling prices, aggro in industrial relations and still Government finding £40 billion new roads and a mere £500 million for Rail Reopenings. HS2 is a different project and kind of railway and so, whether £100 billion or not, whatever the laudations or disbenefits, not ERTA's focus or endeavour, rather local rail links for local people and goods by rail is our focus. Some in ERTA love HS2, others have reservations as per Brexit! So our stance is neutral as an association. Suffice to say, if we had Woodhead reopened, would we really need HS3?
Any new administration of whatever colour, will need ready answers and give leadership and direction. One answer is not to find new money, but follow the environmental call for a more sustainable platform for transport and tweak money allocated to new roads to reopening local railways instead. That cuts emissions, that saves land, that is good for efficiency potentially. It would be a win, win as per the success blazed in Scotland and Wales, whereby the majority of rail reopenings have exceeded expectations in social, economic and environmental gains terms. It is time for England to catch up! For futher details email richard.erta@gmail.com - pdf articles et al and to join our email news loop.
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