Any Other Business

Network Rail’s performance is poor enough to test an archbishop’s patience, writes Martin Vander Weyer

The archbishop and I — not having been formally introduced — confined ourselves to an exchange of despairing glances. We were at Doncaster, in the buffet car of the 19.13 from York to King’s Cross, listening to a series of apologetic but hopelessly uninformative bulletins about how long we might be delayed by a signal failure at Finsbury Park. ‘The driver says it’s a waiting game, there’s trains queuing in front and behind,’ was the announcer’s best shot. To add insult to injury, the buffet could not even provide the saintly Dr Sentamu with his preferred tipple — which, I can exclusively reveal, is Guinness.

This cameo of frustration took place on the eve of last week’s announcement by Network Rail that it aims to sharpen its act by hiring 200 more maintenance engineers and making less use of outside contractors for essential track and signal work.