Great Western Coffee Shop

Tweet from Grant Shapps


Don't know why they need a competition - it should be obvious.   There's a welcoming town just 100 miles to the west of London which has had one of the fastest growing stations in passenger use over the past decade. A major electric substation is ready in place to provide power to main lines a few miles to the south and the north, and the locals are very friendly and positive about rail improvements.

Bit unfair to put others through the mill of a competition when that place wins hands down.

Very confused... as far as I am able to ascertain, the once and future home of railway excellence is more like 111km west of London. I'm not an expert on the US Customary system, but I think that's less than 100 miles...

So does this mean that Redland is or isn't in the running? 

Brunel, that excellent gentleman with enormous foresight, was looking to have his junction somewhat further to the west and in a location that would have avoided the need to bore through Box Hill. There is railway excellence in the town, including but not limited to braking systems and platform doors, as no doubt will be required on all stations within a few years, and the town is ready to step up to the mark.

120 miles from London - check

Fast passenger growth over past decade - check

Locals friendly and rail improvement-focused - check

Electric substation in place to provide power to main lines, and very close proximity to platform - check https://mobile.twitter.com/GlobalRailConst/status/903197047599374338

There can only be one candidate then...

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Suspect it will be located ‘oop north’….

Darlington might be worth a punt

Or a few miles away at Teeside Airport station.

Should the obvious choice not end up being selected, Derby has both the pedigree and a Conservative MP in an ultra-marginal seat.

I would favour anywhere reasonably central and with good rail connections, and minimal parking.
NOT London which is already crowded and therefore expensive.

Derby was my first thought. Or possibly York.

Wherever it goes it should use existing buildings. No need for an expensive new office block. The railways have plenty of under utilised real estate.

As it is Great BRITISH Railways, Shapps should team up with Gove, who is charged with maintaining the Union and have three offices - one at Cilmeri; one at Kinbrace and the third at Settle. Should improve the local employment and economies.  ;D  ::)

Derby, York, Rugby, are sensible possibilities. All somewhat central and rail served. Maybe Milton Keynes ? Or Birmingham,  perhaps Swindon, but might be a bit too "Western" in both senses of the word.
Not London or near London, too expensive. Not Plymouth as too far West.

Well done Lee beat me to it ....

So all those people who moved to Milton Keynes not long ago because Network Rail wanted an HQ would of course welcome the opportunity of disrupting their families again to move somewhere else!  Or might there be another exodus of skilled people from the railway industry?

I suspect it’s not big enough? Will need a national team of timetablers, not just a team of checkers, plus all NR staff. So many TOC timetabling staff will TUPE across & will likely need to relocate from their TOC-tower - the number coming in via TUPE will possibly exceed the numbervalready there, and those that don’t want to relocate will have plenty of replacements amongst Toc staffers

Why would they need to all travel to the same workplace? That's one of the big attitude shifts to come out of the pandemic: going to one place to work together now needs to be justified rather than being a near-universal assumption. The railways may be big losers commercially from that, but can't really ignore the impact on their own working practices. An of course the tools and techniques for doing it are now widespread and familiar.

So, a home for GBR could be ... a network, like GBR.

I would suggest that timetablers, for example, need to chat to other timetablers where their sections of routes overlapwith others, and that is far easier done face-to-face than over zoom!

Those of us who have been working over Teams or Zoom (other video conference platforms are available) for the last 18 months have found that a lot more can be done this way than we ever would have thought possible. In addition other platforms such as Miro Board have come on stream which make remote meetings even closer to the in person meetings. 

I couldn't agree more. Our charity has its monthly trustee meetings on Zoom. We have trustees in both India and New Zealand who are now much more involved in the running of the charity, and after each meeting closes we continue informally for 10/15 minutes or so when each trustee in turn tells us about their non-charity 'lives' and plans and thoughts and we just chat. That has made a huge difference, and made our board  (of 8 people) far closer than it ever was pre-pandemic.

Or, if you want a larger talent pool able to commute by rail rather than a tiny village (Cilmeri), Machynlleth, Perth and Derby.

I would agree with those saying that it doesn't need everyone to travel to the same place though. Head offices in Machynlleth, Perth and Derby, but does somebody writing the timetable for Devon and Cornwall need to go to head office? They could do that in Plymouth couldn't they?

There's another relevant objective for GBR, that of devolution and "levelling up". Obviously this sits rather uncomfortably with the main objective of unification and de-fragmentation, but then that's politics. So in that sense the central organisation should be as little as possible - and a lot of organisations of al kinds would say that's what they are doing already.

So, what's the absolute minimum core staff requirement for GBR? Presumably it's a Controlling Mind and the few Controlling Minders needed to keep it happy. That should all fit in a train - so why not?

GBR will be Train Operator lead that is the CEO will almost certainly be from a ToC.  Also you have to remember that MK only houses certain functions of Network Rail even as part of NR devolution some of the people that are now in a Region are based at the Quadrant; there are also other key central safety, engineering Ops functions that overtime may change.

The transition to GBR will be a progressive one, yes NR will get absorbed into it, that because it is relatively easy and quick to do being a single body.

MK never lived up to the original grand Ian Coucher scheme of being the single National centre from where everything was going to be run from, Mark Carne changed all of that with devolution and the Andrew Haines 'Putting Passengers First' has taken devolution further by putting the 'power' into Regions.

And finaly Network Rail HQ is not Milton Keynes it is in fact London


As for loss of skill and experience should be more with the "modernising" process currently happening in the industry this has a voluntary severance scheme which is open (in stages) to all, NR are currently going through this and many of the applicants are the more experience people

I disagree. I think the CEO is odds-on to be Andrew Haines, who has just been appointed head of the GBR Transition Team, and will remain as CEO of Network Rail throughout that transition.

Exactly. Taxpayer funded so the smallest necessary building in the most economical & practical location.

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My reading of the Williams-Shapps Plan is modified by profound doubts about the real reason for the document...and this reflects in the requirement for a new headquarters for Great British Railways.

A few senior civil servants in the Department for Transport (DfT) have mentioned in the past that it has been asked to adjudicate on matters that really should not be in its remit, for example, decisions on the type and number of coffee cup holders in a new, or re-built, fleet of trains. This type of activity does not sit well with the DfT's overall job of setting strategy and funding for the railways and, reading the runes, my interpretation is that the senior management of the DfT would like to hive off the 'day-to-day' railways functions performed within the DfT. Essentially these are the activities concerned with monitoring and control of the Train Operating Companies whether as franchises or state controlled operators; details of the infrastructure side have generally always been handled at arms length.

I see it as a move to reverse the decision to wind up the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) made by Alastair Darling in 2006 which transferred the franchising functions (after the 1993 Act initially performed by the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising) to the DfT. The effect was that more and more of the minutiae of railway operation required decisions to be made at the centre.

Not all of these were advantageous - think of the West Coast franchising fiasco; setting the frameworks for franchise bids but failing to check that the infrastructure could cope with the results; setting the rules for franchising the East Coast Main Line in such a way that it was uneconomic to run, not once but twice; trying to transfer so much risk to the potential train operators that most UK-based companies decided the game was no longer worth the candle; making timetable specifications part of the franchising contract and not being able to make quick decisions on contract changes which was part of the reason for the 2018 timetable melt down; having no plan fixed in advance for what it wanted out of the Great Western Electrification programme[1]; I won't mention the Intercity Express Programme...  ::)

As the body politic finds it so very hard indeed to say that it made a mistake I read the whole thing as a way for the DfT to get shot of the rump activities of the SRA so any future less than optimal decisions will not directly reflect on the Secretary of State. After all one of the main considerations in the Civil Service is 'Don't embarrass the Minister' and in future any awkward questions can be passed off to Great British Railways — 'Not me, Guv, try over there...'

So, basically, the train operating specifications and the infrastructure strategy will pass to the new body. Infrastructure is already devolved and day to day train operation always has been devolved for the past 180 years. So Williams/Shapps has in effect recreated the Railways Executive/British Railways and the top level organisation, the British Transport Commission/British Railways Board running trains, infrastructure, ships, hotels, workshops and a staff of half a million people, operated out of the Great Central Hotel at 222 Marylebone Road for many years.

Ships, hotels and workshops and most of the workforce are long gone - so all we need to look for is a smallish office building within walking distance of a station.

If the financial benefits being brought to a new location are seen as significant, then the headquarters staff is too big.


[1] This was in fact a logical decision as the National Audit Office strongly criticised the DfT's programme plan and handling of the West Coast Route Modernisation so it decided not to give another hostage to fortune and not have a plan at all for the Great Western.

I would urge not "over thinking" the location for GBR offices. For reasons already given I would favour anywhere reasonably central and with good rail connections, but not London.

Of much greater importance than location is what policies the new organisation will adopt. Managed decline like with BR? Or active promotion of rail  by better services, more capacity and other improvements ?

I think they should locate to somewhere that demonstrates the realities of present day long distance travel, somwhere with  travel on uncomfortable seats, awful trolley service and painfully slow stretches of track and the possibillity of winter storm damage. How about Plymouth?

It is a very tempting thought. If GBR managers had to put up with that sort of thing, I suspect that we would see significant improvements PDQ.
"Ironing board" seats have already been mentioned as a priority by GBR.