Network Rail Training Centre

A new rail training centre has opened in Doncaster. It's on the site of the former National College for High Speed Rail which closed in 2023 due to low student numbers. Network Rail took over the site near the Lakeside development last year and will use the facility to train their staff. The official opening is a few weeks away but training sessions have already started and I was given a first look.

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Baby Abduction

I headed to Barnsley this week on a very troubling story to do with an attempted abduction of a baby. Police are appealing for information after a man grabbed a baby from her mother's arms on a train in Worksop. Detectives investigating the attempted abduction of the baby have released a CCTV image of a man they say can help with their enquiries.

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Train Strikes Live Leeds Railway Station

I reported live from Leeds railway station on the train driver strikes.

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Barrow Hill Roundhouse live

I was lucky enough to be sent to Barrow Hill Roundhouse in Chesterfield to report live on a spectacular new video projection art work with live brass band showing 150 years of railway heritage! As you can see I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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HS2

Opponents of the HS2 rail project in Yorkshire have welcomed a damning assessment of the scheme by one of the key people appointed by the government to review it. Lord Berkeley, who's a long-standing critic of HS2, says costs are out of control, the economic benefits are overstated and further delays are inevitable.



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Train Station from Hell

Since starting as a journalist at ITV Yorkshire, I've been doing some reporting on the Calendar programme (covering Yorkshire and Lincolnshire). I was recently sent out to cover a story about one of the country's most dangerous train stations.

The Sorry State of Public Transport in Britain

The More Train Less Strain campaign group that's been in the news this week has made me consider the state of public transport.

For years I've defended the service; proudly telling my friends how I use the trains every week to go north, south, east and west. It was worth it because it's better for the environment, it's safer and you can read on the journey. But now I've turned and can officially say I am fed up with the train service in Britain. In fact I'll take it one step further and say fed up with public transport in Britain.

Thanks to the recent price hikes, I now have to pay £50 return (now more expensive buying 2 singles) with a railcard from Cardiff to Sheffield.

How can a Labour government (let's have a historical perspective on this and remember what a Labour Party stood for) have done so very little to improve public transport? Having used public transport in Finland, Spain, Holland, Germany etc I don't understand why ours is so much worse. While the privatisation of public transport in the 1980s and 90's is partly responsible, the Labour government seem to have done nothing to sort public transport out.

I've pledged not to get a car until I really need one but the state of public transport edges me closer and closer to joining the rest of you on the roads. The fact is, it would often be cheaper for me to drive than to take the train - it definitely would from Cardiff to Sheffield and back, for example. How can this be the case under a Labour government with the current state of climate change?