So the small bit of investment that the GEML has been given is being used to refurbish Chelmsford Railway Station. This station is right next to where I work (M&S Simply Food on Duke Street) and I do at times look at the station to see if I can see any more work being done on it.
The refurbishment was announced last year, to bring it more up to date, made bigger and make passenger flow a lot easier. They started the refurbishment in February and progress has been slow to say the least. A couple of extensions have been built including a new stair tower an a smaller extension directly opposite M&S, these have gone up 6 or 7 layers of bricks at a time with no activity for a couple of days then 6 or 7 more layers of bricks, I'm no builder, but even I think that's a bit slow, even allowing for the mortar to dry.
For the past couple of weeks, I have seen even less activity, just a bunch of contractors wandering around, talking and not really doing a hell of a lot. Then yesterday I heard a rumour, the rumour consisted of the suggestion that work was on hold until after the V Festival (weekend of 16th/17th August). Given the fact that V Festival brings people to Chelmsford in the thousands, a lot of whom travel to V Festival via train. To come to Essex's only City via a station that is in a shambles will not be a good experience. Temporarily, gone are the stations 3 entrances, we now only have 2, as one is blocked off because of the new stair tower and adjoining steel work, which is probably not even half way completed.
Today, the construction manager came into M&S to buy some lunch, so I thought I'd ask him about the station. He informed me that the station would take most of the rest of the year to complete, then when I asked him about why I hadn't seen a lot of work being done, he told me that most of the current work was being done behind the hoarding and across the other side of the road, pointing at where Chelmsford's new CyclePoint is. So rather than concentrating the main station building, which I thought would have been a priority, they're concentrating on viaducts underneath the railway between the CyclePoint and the Bus Station, something customers won't see or have access to, nor is it part of the actual station. OK then!
Jonathan Denby Lying About Re-branding on Live Radio
So, people who regular listen to BBC Suffolk in the morning might have listened to Mick Murphy interview Jonathan Denby, the Head of Corporate Affairs at Abellio Greater Anglia and a fella from Network Rail. Mr Denby is one of the managers from GA that went to the meeting in Westminster on Monday.
I have a lot of problems with his interview and Jonathan's answers, but lets just concentrate on a couple, shall we? The man is a liar, he avoids questions and tries to deflect blame whenever he's given half a chance. The main thing I want to talk about on my blog is the fact that a caller asked him about the new logo.
Some of you might be aware that when Abellio won the franchise in 2012, the company was simply called Greater Anglia, together with a simple grey and red logo. But not to long ago the parent company, Abellio, decided they wanted more of the lime light and added their name to the company name thus re-named the company Abellio Greater Anglia. Together with the change of name, they changed the logo to include the word Abellio, the little symbol in the top right and then changed the type face used for the words Greater Anglia.
The aim of the question from the caller was to ask why the name and logo change came around and to ask if they were spending money on completely re-branding the trains. His answer was that they were only putting the new logo on carriages that were going through a refurbishment and repaint programme, which only included the Norwich to Liverpool Street InterCity Class 90 locomotives and Mark III carriages that they pull along. This statement is a blatant LIE! While some of the Mark III carriages have been repainted, others remain with the blue and white livery they were painted in while National Express owned the franchise and called the service ONE. These carriages that still have the blue and white One livery have had the old Greater Anglia logos removed and replaced by the new Abellio Greater Anglia logos. If you're going to repaint them anyway, what's the point in wasting the time and money putting the new logo on if you're going have to take it off again and put another new one on once you've repainted it? And why would you lie about it on live radio? But of course it's not just the InterCity trains that have had their old logos removed and replaced, Class 321 and Class 360 have also been given new logos without a repaint, care to explain that one, Mr Denby?
Then there's the issue of replacing uniforms, lanyards and name badges. The new logo is appearing on replacement uniforms, which are identical in every way, except the logo. I'd understand if this was happening for new employees, but replacing two year old uniforms for people who already have them, just so their uniforms have the new logo on it, is simply ridiculous.
How about when Mr Denby was asked about train faults? He deflected that one onto Network Rail. Erm Jonathan, your company own and maintain the trains, not Network Rail, they're in charge of the infrastructure. When asked about train faults, you start rabbiting on about how signal failures and overhead power cable failures can delay trains, and only added a sub note about the ever ageing, ill maintained rolling stock that GA own. Be honest here, you didn't really answer the question, did you?
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