'Great Train Robbery' protest held over Winslow Railway Station and East West Rail delays
Scores of protestors gathered to demonstrate outside Bletchley Railway Station to highlight the failure of the East West Rail passenger service to start running trains from the new Winslow station.
The rally, held on Saturday, was organised by East West Rail Action Group, a new alliance of residents that has been formed to try to bring pressure to bear to get the East West Rail passenger service up and running.
People came from Milton Keynes and Bletchley as well as Leighton Buzzard, Buckingham, Winslow.
At the protest co-founder Shane Barry, of Winslow, told demonstrators: “We are standing here at Bletchley today because we refuse to be taken for fools any longer. The tracks are laid. The line was handed over eighteen months ago. And at Winslow, a brand-new station has been sitting empty for nearly two years. Think about that: we are spending one million pounds a year on security for a building that not one single passenger can enter.
“The government called this a billion-pound investment.But for those of us living along these tracks, it’s just a billion-pound white elephant.
"Every night, we hear the freight trains. We hear them thundering through our towns, moving cargo for profit. The government knows how to move boxes, yet they claim they can’t find a way to move people. Why are we still waiting?”
The line was due to open in December. A dispute between operators Chiltern Railways, whose franchise ends in September, and the unions over having a guard on trains is partly to blame for the delay. Chiltern Railways’ franchise lapses in September and it becomes publicly owned. No start date has been given for the passenger service.
The Action Group has set up a petition here and aims to get enough signatures to earn a response from the Government.
The group is holding its inaugural meeting tomorrow in Winslow, St Laurence Room, Market Square, 7pm.
Meanwhile, Alan Francis, policy officer for Milton Keynes Green Party and former national Transport spokesperson for the party, has slammed the delay as “incredibly frustrating”.
He said: “The track and signalling between Oxford and MK Central has been operational for 18 months. But since that time no passenger service has operated because of a disagreement between the government and the unions. The line is used every day by freight trains and empty passenger trains for driver training and by occasional passenger charter trains. But no regular passenger service. The service to be operated by Chiltern Railways is intended to run every half hour each way with a journey time of about 45 minutes.”
He added: “The delay is the result of a long running disagreement between the government’s Department for Transport and the RMT trade union. The government wants a Driver Only Operation but the unions insist that there should be a second member of staff on board, variously known as the guard or senior conductor. This issue has been known about for more than two years but neither side has done anything about resolving the problem.”