13 February 2025

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Editorial Extra



Railnews Archive






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Railnews Archive


The archives of Railnews tell many stories, some of which are still relevant today, including the mixed fortunes of Eurostar, the discontented state of industrial relations, the future of railway reform and the status of HS2.

Here you can download features and front pages which sometimes put today’s problems into perspective. More resources will be added soon.



2010-03 RN157 The night that Eurostar collapsed

The Independent Review into the disruption of Eurostar services in the week before Christmas 2009 was published on 12 February 2010. This feature looked at the results of one of the most searching inquiries ever carried out into a railway crisis in which no-one was injured, but which touched the lives of more than 100,000 people.

2012-04 RN182 McNulty Report govt response

The Government responded in March 2012 to the often controversial recommendations made by Sir Roy McNulty in his ‘value for money’ report. A new DfT Command Paper, entitled ‘Reforming our Railways’, left many questions unanswered, but the main message was that the railway industry is now taking a new direction, in a bid to save up to £3.5 billion a year.

2012-10 RN188 Ten years of Network Rail

3 October 2012 was the tenth birthday of Network Rail, which took over from Railtrack on 3 October 2002. To celebrate the anniversary, this feature looked back at the events which led to the creation of Network Rail, and suggested that we had come a long way in the first ten years.

2012-12 RN190 Railfreight fights back

Railfreight was on the ropes in the 1990s, because when the Government privatised the railways it decided to sell freight outright, to sink or swim. This feature uncovered some encouraging signs of progress.

2014-09 RN211 1914 recalled

A special front page for Railnews, as it might have looked in September 1914 after the outbreak of the First World War.

2015-06 RN220 Railway unions – the long battle

A dispute between the RMT and Network Rail nearly caused the first national rail strike for more than 20 years over the Bank Holiday weekend at the end of May 2015. But the railway industry only agreed to recognise unions just over a century ago, after a long battle to allow railway workers and managers to negotiate on equal terms. This feature recalled the chequered history of industrial relations down the line.

2014-05 RN207 HS2 gets go-ahead

MPs voted by a majority of 411 for HS2 to go ahead on 28 April 2014. Their vote came at the end of the debate on the Second Reading of the HS2 Hybrid Bill, authorising the building of Phase 1 between London and the West Midlands. The chairman of HS2 David Higgins suggested that this stage of the project should be enlarged to include the section between Lichfield in Staffordshire and Crewe. Amersham MP Cheryl Gillan, a former minister and one of the project’s most vocal opponents in the Commons, had proposed that the scheme should be stopped, but her motion was defeated by a majority of 401. Now that the landmark Second Reading had been achieved, this feature looked at the prospects for HS2.

2014-12 RN214 Eurostar at 20

International trains have run between Britain and the continent for many years, but ferries were essential to carry their passengers – sometimes still on board their trains – across the intervening sea until the 1994 opening of the Channel Tunnel changed the situation forever. Now it became possible to board a train in London and travel straight through, alighting in Paris or Brussels within three hours or so. But the new Eurostar trains still had to navigate the existing British network as far as the tunnel portal at Folkestone, adding around 45min to the journey. A new high speed railway between London and the Tunnel opened in 2003 and 2007 had transformed the service, and Eurostar was now poised to begin its third decade with a new fleet and a larger network.

2019-05 RN267 Franchising in free fall

A row over pensions caused four franchise bids to be rejected in the Spring of 2019, but the private sector had been getting more cautious over bidding for rail franchises for several years. The man in charge of the DfT’s Rail Review had also been sending out signals that rail franchises were no longer fit for purpose. This feature looked at how the system had been heading downhill.

2020-04 RN278 The first Covid lockdown

Was your journey really necessary? The front page of an emergency edition of Railnews dated April 2020, after Covid-19 had triggered the first national lockdown.








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