Magazine miscellany

Regular readers of my blog will already know that November's issue of Modern Railways carries the text of the speech by Adrian Shooter to September's 4th Friday Club. Also in the issue is:

• news of LondonMidland's test runs of the Class 350 Desiros at 110mph and the planned changes that the company will seek in its WCML timetables starting in December 2012...
• Roger Ford's despair at the 'procurement follies' of LondonMidland in relation to the Class 350/3 Desiro order
• news on the December 2011 timetable changes which sees only tweaks in the three companies timings... Chiltern's here; LondonMidland and Virgin not yet formally published...
• trackwatch details the work commissioned for Chiltern's Evergreen 3 project

Issue 682 of Rail (November 2-15) has The Fare Dealer (Barry Doe) still insisting that Chiltern's Business Zone is 'First Class' in all but name. Also noted is the impressive reliability of LondonMidland's Class 350/2 Desiros which work the Birmingham New Street - London Euston services intensively.

Finally, readers of my blog on Adrian Shooter's valedictory speech in September may have noted his admiration of the (LMS) Derby engineers. In fact, he lauded diesels 10000 and 10001 in particular. Thus I was intrigued today to come across this article by O S Nock in June 1961's issue of The Railway Magazine which shows that Adrian's praise was well-founded. Pity we lost the plot as an engineering country so badly subsequently...