The aforementioned Andrew Needham is vice chair of Conservatives Protecting Rural England (Cheshire branch) and previously a conservative County Coucillor and Chair of the old County Council Highways Committee when it signed off the 2002 "traffic management" plan that ruined Nantwich Road.





And we can't have double decker trains because those marvelous Victorian entrepreneurs built our railways without thinking more than a few years ahead so the tunnels are too tight, the bridges are too low and the width of trains is too narrow (despite using the same track as most of Europe). Correcting all that (and raising the ovehead electrics) will cost as much as budling a new line, which is what they did when HS2 was built to link London to the Channel Tunnel. Longer trains are supposed to start this winter - but since the plan to alter Crewe station was killed off by Sunak there are going to be problems! And exactly where are the closed duplicate lines to Crewe which might be reopened?

"Allowing these land powers to lapse would lock in a permanent bottleneck north of Birmingham, the very problem HS2 was designed to solve".
1) double-deck trains
2) longer trains
3) reopening of some of the "duplicate lines" closed by Beeching
The trouble with these people running the railways is that they have a complete and utter lack of imagination. Instead, they prefer to run around like headless cickens

HS2 swallowed 69% of UK rail investment last year, ORR finds

Maybe NAISMITH should ask just exactly where did the Hs2 money go that was meant for the Midlands/Crewe leg.
Go look at Crewe Station,its a disgrace with tree's growing out the roofs.Total Disgrace.

This story is about a week old (in public, longer in parliament). And if local journalism is to have any credibility references to "north of Birmingham" need to be stoped, even if they come from hopless London based press officers who either don't know better or who are talking down for the benefit of other journalists who can't cope with geographical details. Huge amounts of money have been spent and work done "north of Birmingham" - the bit that we need is "north of Lichfield", which is well into Staffordshire.

The generally railway ignorant press went wild at the weekend about the Avanti "ghost train" story, the now famous 07:00 Manchester to London train which had been running with temporary permission but which Avanti was told to lose by the Office of Road & Rail because the gap in the timetable plan would be needed for something else in the new year. They can't provide a reliable 3 minute gap in the plan because the current railway is so overcrowed. They think that problem has gone away by withdrawing the demand, hopeful that reporters will go away and find something else to mock but there was prove from a government department of the need for the extra capacity that the new rail route would have provided.

If the plan is abandoned, meaning no HS2 or the Midland/North West alternative, then Connor Naismith must resign from Labour - and so should all the Labour councillors in CEC.