to David Dundas

Dear David and wife, whose name I failed to ask for yesterday.  Copied to Maggie Simpson and Jed Marson.

Thank you for making me realise how important hydrogen is for trains and larger HGVs.  Your elucidation was most helpful.  I had, in fact, picked up on hydrogen trains six years ago but I was unsure of my facts when we spoke last night, so remained silent until I could check today.  See my photos and the published letter, below.

Please see the bigger picture and the full length to Worcester and on to Oxford and London, to help Brum by bypassing it to the west - one of only two North-South railways between Brum and the Irish Sea

It is this Railfuture map

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

 that shows the full 120 Kms Black Country Railway

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

from Worcester to Derby via Stourbridge, Dudley, Walsall and Lichfield.  I know you said you want to see it opened one small step at a time.  However, I would plead with you that its national importance is only recognised if it is taken as a whole and opened as a complete line for both freight and passenger use.  It is vital for freight to take the pressure off the Camp Hill line (Kings Norton, Kings Heath, Moseley, Grand Central) once the three stations and half hour diesel service is reinstated in 2025 (?)  However, I never succeeded in getting Maggie Simpson of the Rail Freight Group to take an interest and help me.

Are there any other rail freight organisations I could try, David?

HYDROGEN

I was promoting this hydrogen train six years ago in my many emails trying to get your local mainline back in use by saying it would be ideal for our 120 Kms Black Country Railway!

 Image of hydrogen train 01.pdf

I've pasted my letter to Rail Professional magazine at the bottom of this page:

 Image of hydrogen train 02.pdf

When we spoke last night, I thought that I had read about the hydrogen (or similar) train sometime last decade but could not remember for sure.  I wrote emails at the time saying it would be ideal for our regional railway from Worcester to Derby, if only the middle section of 56 Kms could be completed with commuter, regional and freight trains.  However this was not to be.  BECAUSE OF:

METRO TAKEOVER!

This is from an email I wrote earlier today to a LibDem activist I met before yesterday evening's meeting started, Jed Marson, Vice Chair, Campaigns, Green Liberal Democrats who is from Hallow, a village north of Worcester.  A vital city on our forgotten principal mainline railway.  Jed wrote:

"Glad to meet you this evening. I note your concern about the jamming of major intercity corridors with trams, potentially blocking routes for trains.  I will engage in the LibDems party to find out how we can do both."

MY REPLY:

"We already have trams and trains in seven places in the UK out of a good few more than seven.  Unfortunately, our taxes have been misused and wasted to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds in both price and in weight of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), over 42 years, to give us a miserly 25 Kms of tramways of which 18 Kms are on the first mainline railway destroyed.  The second, would you believe, one of only two between Brum and the Irish Sea is being turned into the world's first TRAIN-TRAM-TRAIN mainline railway "of national strategic significance"!!

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

"Actually, the world's first TRAIN-TRAM-CYCLE/WALKWAY-TRAIN mainline railway of 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby.  How absolutely absurd.  Not at all.  You will just have to hire a bike between Walsall and Lichfield - a great idea to keep passengers in trim!

"Yet again, the UK becomes a laughing stock around the world - Brexit, HS2, two mainline railways downgraded to tramways.

"What is the point of replacing and duplicating buses and trains with trams when we desperately need the two main modes to be as good as they are on the mainland of Europe?  Those two main modes, in addition, have nowhere near come to being finished as electrified modes, have they?  The authorities have been diverted by the lure of trams which we all do love to ride on - me most of all!  But it has been a fatal and foolish fascination, don't you think, Jed?

"We've seen the destruction of railway lines for trams and buildings.  For example, for over 20 years, up until 2015/16, the Camp Hill Line was designated to be given over to trams!  All you good politicians and transport experts then changed your minds and decided to use it for TRAINS, after all, and to rebuild three stations.  Yet, that cannot even be done because, I think, you all love extravagant trams more than trains and ran out of money!!  The three stations won't be finished until next year, now.

"Trams and trains, I think, means:

1. Duplication or replacement/conversion of perfectly adequate buses and trains that need to have electrification finished.
2. Very high greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from all the steel and concrete that has to be manufactured for the steel tracks and the concrete that they get laid in.
3. Places like Kidderminster have the most disgraceful and slum looking bus station imaginable, while Brum luxuriates in the second most expensive transport mode, per Km, to construct after HS2.
4. I see Metro as very desirable but just far too greedy and extravagant.  Swish, swanky and smooth but the wrong priority.
5. Use the £15 billion for Metro's 150 miles and eight lines to restore our railways instead of destroying them.
6. Use the money for insulating the homes of the poorest; for Fare-Free Public Transport for all (and not just for my age group); to build homes at High Plateau, Merry Hill SC; for transforming the 25 Kms Black Country Cycle/Walk Mudway, the UK's grandest, longest and most important cycle-walk mudway.
7. Use some of the money to finish the Black Country Urban Forest and to do the ecological survey at Daniels Land, Merry Hill SC to see if it is an SSSI.
8. Above all, free rides on the bus, train and tram for all you youngsters!"

END OF MY EMAIL TO JED.

My banner near Brownhills:

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

The steel train tracks nicked by metal thieves!  Looking towards your city, David.  This is the planned cycle/walkway:

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

David, Can you and your wife, with Jed and I, promote the UK's only unfinished railway "of national strategic significance"?  Is there any chance of us working together to get something done?  Since the 1990s I've been working on my own but, since last decade, with the help of a wonderful train driver, Dave Parsons who lives nearby, understands and agrees with me.

Very best wishes, whatever you both think!

Wholesale destruction for high climate impacting trams!

Hi Dan - do show this to Helen, if you wish.  Perhaps, you have supervision with her.

Your committees and Board meetings are worthwhile in people meeting together and talking, agreeing, disagreeing.  But, please allow Albert and I to engage in polite conversation with officers and members before and after your meetings.  Please trust us to behave as guests and we will not abuse our position as visitors.  But it is so pleasant just to talk about common concerns with only those who wish to talk, obviously.  Please let us up to Rm 116 when we arrive.  I won't be a trouble maker, honestly!  I simply want to chat with committee members who wish to chat with me.  We don't need to be escorted, either.  Just trust us, please.

Dear old Albert Thomas seems to have nothing to contribute but he must be encouraged to speak up.  He must be on the committee of Midlands branch of Railfuture with their brilliant map from 2003, here​

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

​​of what you all should be implementing at 16 Summer Lane instead of the very high climate impacting Metro tram network on mainline railways.  But Albert refuses to speak to me or to give me his email address.  However, you do, which is great.

​Please read the email, below to Cllr Peter Lowe and Richard Parker, Labour candidate for Mayor next year.  Read to simply understand where I am coming from.  I really should not have to spell out the blindingly obvious in this way.  A retired old bloke who has never been a transport professional or expert but who is fed up  with sitting in traffic jams next to or near to the UK's last major but wasted principal mainline railway.  One of only two between Brum and the Irish Sea!!

​Dan, it is the networking that we all do before and after formal meetings that is so important.  Please let Albert and I do it, too!

Do chase up councillors who have a poor attendance record.  Or, simply remove them if they can't be bothered to check, challenge, query or take any interest by turning up.

​Best wishes

​Tim

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2023 at 08:28
Subject: PETER AND RICHARD ELECTED from May 2024
To: Peter Lowe <cllr.peter.lowe@dudleymbc.org.uk>, Peter Lowe <p.lowe@miphealth.org.uk>

Dear Peter and Richard

You are both likely to be elected next year to your different leadership roles.  In national government, the Tories have messed up good and proper.  However, when it comes to Tram HQ at 16 Summer Lane, you have all messed up badly by giving top priority to attempting (and failing) to reinstate the tram network instead of the surviving railway network.  Failed badly because it has taken you 42 years to reinstate only 25 Kms of tramway, of which 18 Kms are on the first mainline railway spoiled.  It was supposed to have been 200 Kms by the year 2000, 23 years ago!  You both must own up to the idiocy of putting trams on two important mainline railways instead of commuter, regional and intercity trains.  The second, even more important principal mainline

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

 opens for trams, instead of commuter, regional and intercity trains, next year.

It is rather like the calamity of putting London Underground trains on the HS1/Eurostar line through Kent which you have NOT done!  Brilliant!  Well done!

However, you can both make amends by stopping the further waste of public money, finite resources and the deepening of the climate catastrophe by coming out fighting to stop WBHE Phase 2, aka the Dudley Tram Phase 2.  This​, below, is why your present plans are so damaging and plain wrong:

• It destroys my magnificent vertical guerrilla garden;
• an even more important nature reserve;
• ​destroys desperately needed housing land to save farming land from being concreted;
• ​trams will wipe out land needed to finish the Black Country Urban Forest;
• yet more of our railway "of national strategic significance"
  
   "of national strategic significance".pdf
   is lost and 
• you nicely escalate the climate emergency​ (and resource shortages) you voted to do something about.

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

I would like to show you exactly what I mean at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.  I can make any day except Tuesdays when I have​ wonderful family commitments.​  I'll even pay for the coffee, after my tour!

With best wishes

Trees and shrubs vandalised, officially by Moto Hospitality

21 October 2023

Dear friends

Your Grounds Maintenance Team at Frankley Northbound Services

I am the guerrilla gardener that is beautifying the bank next to the lorry park and planted the trees along the boundary post and rail fence.  I cleared a lot of rubbish off that site and continue to keep it clean and tidy.

I was distressed to see that your over zealous, out of control and most inept garden maintenance team had unnecessarily cut back plants and trees that I had planted and was taking very good care of myself, since the 1990s.  And, with the knowledge and passive permission of your managers over the decades - from last century, too.  A few of whom I have met.

What was particularly tragic was the brutal chopping of the top half to one third of the silver birch tree that had gained quite a height and is visible from the cafe's panoramic window.  It was done in a really rough and cack handed way by tearing at the branches and main trunk.  Truly dreadful!

Please have your grounds maintenance team retrained in pruning - and, anyway, to keep well away from my trees, PLEASE!  One tree does need pruning by a professional tree surgeon so that the HGV drivers can see the large metal information sign that is being covered by that tree growth.

Your one and only manager on duty this afternoon, Daniel from the M&S shop, was totally unsympathetic but, I think, was distracted by trying to catch shoplifters.

29 October 2023

Dear team

Andrea wrote, "Please rest assured I have passed your communication to the Site Operations Manager at Frankley to investigate."

I can assure you that he has not been in contact with me.  Last week when I tried to see him, he was in the office but would not come out and speak with me!  I can only see Daniel who seems to have difficulty in believing me that, since the 1990s, successive managers have been perfectly happy with the 40 or 50 trees I have planted along the post and rail fence and with my care of them over the decades.

I'm enclosing the following photos to show how your gardeners/maintenance people not only did totally unnecessary pruning but slashed and tore at the branches in the most brutal and violent way in their vandalism!  Why do they do that?  Please explain what on earth they are about!

PHOTOS

Last week, Daniel mentioned the pest problem on the bank next to the lorry park.  I had to explain to him that my work there in clearing rubbish off the site and, continuing to keep it clean, will solve the rat problem far more effectively than your staff cutting down or vandalising my plantings.

Your money spent in vandalising the shrubs and trees would be far better spent in having security guards to prevent shoplifting.

Could you please arrange for me to see the Site Operations Manager, this coming week, rather than my seeing Daniel for a third time?

Best wishes and many thanks.

Colossal misspending, over spending, and glorious extravagance to destroy even mainline railways

AUGUST 13, 2023

BCWanderer is correct. Peter Madeley has done a brilliant job in uncovering this financial scandal. I have uncovered how Mayor Andy has allowed the development of the region's railways for TRAMS and a MUWAY of all things!! Two former mainline railways have been used for trams when, at a fraction of the price, both could have had their commuter, regional and even freight trains back at a fraction of the cost now squandered on Metro trams.

The UK's major, 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway is on two former railway lines too but, unbelievably, Andy and the authorities cannot even do that job correctly and their incompetence has turned sections in all three council areas into impassable mud!!

Andy said "All three projects are full steam ahead" 25 July 2023

On Radio WM, on Kath's 10 am Show, Andy said:

"You are not right in saying that they were suspended ... it is bad that Pipers Row extension is late but we are testing trams on that. It will open very soon now subject to the testing ... WBHE has definitely never been suspended."

TIM WELLER This is incorrect. In the early summer of 2022, the whole WBHE had to be stopped because of a shortfall of money to finish it. It was therefore split into two phases. That means it WAS suspended. "WBHE Phase 2 now has the funding for the tram from Dudley to Merry Hill, so construction will go ahead ... All three projects are full steam ahead."

TIM WELLER The full WBHE was to terminate at Cottage St, Brierley Hill, not at Merry Hill and where is the new termination, at the shopping centre? WBHE is curtailed and cannot be completed because of its enormous cost. Andy failed to make that clear on the radio on 25 July. He hid embarrassing failings by the Combined Authority that the Express and Star uncovered, as here:  See https://www.expressandstar.com/news/politics/2023/07/03/delayed-delivery-and-broken-promises--labours-plan-to-move-away-from-tram-travel/

The violent iron first, for 75 years, has made things worse and solved nothing.

What astonishes me is the obvious inappropriateness of reacting to a terrorist attack by declaring total war on the country that elected the terrorist group in 2007.  But did they know how they would turn out?  And, anyway, Hamas provides education, health, and other essential services for the Gazans.  Israel knows that the vast majority of the people they slaughter will have not wanted anything to do with the Hamas attack on 7 October. Yet, Israel's government has killed nearly all non-combatants.  7,000 Gazans in the first 3 weeks.

Should the people of Israel be doing some self-examination over anything that they might have missed in 75 years?

When nothing has worked in 75 years, should Israel, the West and the UN try a different approach?  But how can they when the people of Israel keep on electing right-wing politicians who are convinced that only the iron fist and never the emollient velvet glove will work - one day, soon.  And, this time, they believe once more that it will work because the highest number, ever, of Palestinians will never again see the light of day.

Transport Action Network - Chris Todd

 Thanks, Chris.  All good stuff.  My own transport action is this:

• Don't bother with spending billions in price and weight of greenhouse gas emissions in rebuilding electric tram networks in the West Midlands and Leeds.
• Simply finish electrifying and USING our existing mothballed or freight only railway lines for railway trains NOT trams!
• Get electric buses on roads directly and not electric "bus on rails" trams.  Electric buses don't need the high greenhouse gas intensive railway tracks we get with trams.
• Fare-Free Public Transport for ALL and not just for my age group.  And throughout England and Wales.
• Enthuse, enlighten, excite, inspire, reward the car lobby in this way instead of enraging them with you know what!

Feedback, comments, please

October 2023 expedition to the Southern Uplands

Ten days and nine nights, with four nights in four different hotels.  Never before so many hotel visits!  I'm weakening.  Kirkstyle Hotel, Biggar; the Philipburn Hotel, Selkirk; Buccleuch Arms Hotel, Moffat and, Westmorland Hotel, Tebay.

21 Donald summits visited and two full days exploring Selkirk for the first time.  Next day, the full Borders Railway and the tram to Newhaven and the Granton Harbour E breakwater.  Their tram is more comfortable and, leather seats on this year's new extension - unlike our own deceptive-looking 'sponge' which gives you a rude awakening as one's bum hits the hard plastic seat beneath a thin layer of cotton that is the non-existent 'sponge'!

Cold weather worsened by constant N or E winds but not a drop of rain.  One night of very hard frost inside the car windows.  Waterproofs needed for warmth, only.

One accident when I tripped and hit my left knee coming down a stony track from the bothy alongside Games Hope Burn.  My right leg was weak and uncomfortable at times and that slowed me, along with general old age.  I went with my right leg not quite right but not serious enough to see a doctor.

HIGHLIGHT

Carrifran Gans must be the steepest major hill in Scotland where the one direct path to the summit starts from a road.  The hill is above Moffat Water, at a height of 757 m for the cairn from the cattle grid on the road at 192 m.  You climb 565 m in 2 Kms of horizontal distance.  Therefore, 28% average steepness from road to cairn, with slopes of 60-80%.  On the descent, it was the nearest thing I've got to via ferrata, with my hanging on to the barbed wire free but, metal fence, on my left.

Weird ethics from the West?

How is it that the West's 'truth' finds it perfectly acceptable to do to the Palestinians what their 'government', Hamas, did to our side on the 7 October? And, "for up to 3 months", too!

Could this, just possibly, be revenge for the sake of revenge? And be morally questionable?

Is this in tune with Christian teaching?

Is Benjamin Netanyahu REALLY following his ethics of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?

Israel is breaking every rule in every book

It is a most cruel and disproportionate form of revenge for Israel to spend 3 months demolishing the homes of Palestinians in Gaza with families still inside them. Especially when none of them had anything to do with the October 7 atrocity and, anyway wanted no one hurt in this way or, any other way.

It breaks Israel's own Hebrew Scriptures that make clear that revenge must be limited to an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth kind of retribution. 

It ends up with the Palestinians who are left alive in Gaza even angrier with Israel. And so the hatred never ends.

Israel has not learnt a thing from the real 9/11 in 2001. And, ignored Biden's warnings over NOT overreacting as the West did at that time.

The ongoing slaughter of Gazans - for 3 months - by our side is unacceptable

Dear Andy - and copied to my own MP, James Morris in the bleak hope that he might be impressed by what you wrote, below when he isn't when it comes from me.

Thank you for your brilliant letter, below this, to your MP that you sent me.  You have said it perfectly and you have put it better than I did.  I am told there is a balanced view put by some Christians who are convinced that the State of Israel can, almost, do no wrong and that God is, uniquely, on its side.  For them, Israel has a special place in God's heart as His Chosen Nation.

Thanks so much for sending me what you wrote, Andy.  I remain horrified by man's inhumanity to man and this latest manifestation from both sides, indeed all sides and from everyone who believes in coercion, force, violence, killings, war.

Best wishes

Tim

On Tue, 24 Oct 2023 at 08:31, andrew hardwick <andyhardwick4@hotmail.com> wrote:

Dear John Penrose

I am writing to express my concern about the situation in Israel/Palestine and the UKs public and political response to it. 

What Hamas did in its attacks on October 7th was barbaric and cannot be defended. The attacks from motorbikes, the killing of children and taking of hostages is a crime against humanity. Of course, after 75 catastrophic years we may understand it, but such random killing cannot be justified.  

I have heard many times the statement Israel has the right to defend itself. That statement cannot be used to justify the collective punishment that the Israelis are now inflicting on the Palestinians of Gaza. 

Israel is practising its own form of apartheid. How many Palestinians have been killed by Israel in 2023? How many of these were children? How many Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails without trial? How many Palestinian homes, and villages have set on fire by Israeli settlers? What are the British governments official figures please? 

I am disappointed to see the prime minster and the leaders of the opposition so openly siding with Israel. The Hamas killings cannot be justified. The Israeli killings cannot be justified. 

It is time for British politicians to speak out against the violent terror that is being inflicted on the Palestinians by Israel, as well as speaking out against the violence of Hamas. 

Dear Tim

Thanks for copying me in to your letter, I share your concerns. Above is my letter to my MP. I intend to send him another one this week. 

Hope you and Linda are both well. 

Best wishes 

Andy 

Get Outlook for iOS

---

From: Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, October 23, 2023 10:51:53 AM
To: James Morris <james.morris.mp@parliament.uk>
Subject: The ongoing slaughter of Gazans - for 3 months - by our side is unacceptable

 

TO OUR FAITH LEADERS - and my MP      Will anyone else speak up?

When will other ordinary, decent people break their guilty silence and condemn brutal, barbaric Benjamin sending other ordinary, decent people to the most horrific deaths when they have nothing to do with Hamas and have never hurt anyone in their entire lives?

When will our Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders outrightly condemn this obvious immorality and murder of babies and the elderly stuck in their care homes and shattered hospitals unable to escape the Israeli reign of terror?

Using terror to defeat terror is NOT a noble and decent act.  Nor is it effective.  It simply ups the anti and escalates the hatred, as our side has discovered over the last 75 years of Israel being born out of violence and killings in 1948.

This indiscriminate slaughter of wholly innocent men, women and children breaks every moral code in the book, including the Koran and the Bible that also contains the Hebrew Scriptures.

I understand, some Hamas fighters were killed on 7 October, the day of the Hamas atrocity in Israel.

It is what Russia is doing in Ukraine and what our side is doing in Yemen and has done in countless other countries since the 2nd WW.

BUT THAT IS NO EXCUSE for Benjamin Netanyahu to follow our shameful and immoral example.

Tim Weller

Barbaric Benjamin

On a more serious and desperately horrifying note:- From the days of that giant Goliath, off and on, the people of Gaza and the people of Israel have been at each others throats. One Lord Jesus lived and taught forgiveness, mercy and nonviolence for all peoples. But one barbaric Benjamin, over all Israel, does not practise an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth but a revenge of collective punishment.

Very jaundiced opinions!

Perpetual impertinence and, preposterous to have a just God on one side only! Thus, the other side can be wiped out. So Allah is Great as equally as our God is even Greater and can do Anything!

Only God's Chosen Nation can have the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey - and flowing too with blood, off and on, ever since. 

The centuries have seen:

16/17th centuries planting of right-thinking Protestants in heretical, Catholic Ireland and a 19th century union with Ireland incorporated into the UK to prevent invasion, according to Prof David Olusoga.

One tribe fighting over land to massacre the other.

Our "disgraceful" (Michael Portillo) Opium Wars in China, our disastrous World Wars, with force and coercion to bolster our Advantage ever since.

Empire building by many nations to maintain that empire's domination.

Our great Cold War victory led to the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact and their members coming into NATO to upset the balance!  Its membership expanded but, so disastrously for Ukraine. Not helped by overzealous, Ukrainian, pro-Europeans not waiting for the next election to democratically get what they wanted.

Never peace in our time, only injustice and domination with paranoia that the other side will do us down if we don't rule over them with a rod of iron.  And, spend at least 2% of our national income on warfare and its weapons.

 

On the most unholy Holy Land there has ever been!

Such is the human condition, one side or the other has always to be top dog over the other. Imposition, coercion, force, violence, killings have gone on since time immemorial. Perpetual revenge and mutual hatred makes compromise, concession and sharing impossible.

We even have to be top dog over nature, forgetting we are part of nature and should be living in harmony with her laws!

Israel/West's defence policy is so incompetent and ineffective that even after 75 years of hard endeavour they have come nowhere near to wiping Hamas and Hezbollah off the face of the earth. Why don't they try compromise and a patient, self-denying, negotiated settlement to live in peace with their neighbours? All they ever think of is imposition, coercion, force, violence, killings - ad nauseum. A thoroughly well-proven, bankrupt policy. What do you think?

All very true but this further round of killings from 1947 to today between Palestine and Israel can be ended, I believe, only through a negotiated settlement of compromise, sacrifice, self-denial, sharing and friendship on both sides.  And the powerful, wealthy West/Israel must take the lead as the top dogs, the VIPs, the elite - with the UN.  The people in power, like 'Binny' N must try a more civilised way to live in peace and friendship with his neighbours.  And follow his own Hebrew Scriptures, too!

The limitations of military action

The limitations of military action

Military action cannot be proportionate to the threat that you face.

Hamas must be destroyed said Tom Tugendhat, Security Minister.  He said it is a vicious terrorist organisation, and its total destruction would be a blessing for both Israel and the Palestinian people.

Israel has to sort out how to live in peace with its neighbours.  It has never done that for 75 years.  75 years of a firm belief in coercion, imposition, force, violence and killings to live in uneasy 'peace'.

Helen Edwards says WMCA and I only disagree on policy

I disagree with their policy which is this:

• In the 1950s, the authorities' policy was to spend millions of pounds to destroy the tram network in the W Midlands.
• In the 1960s onwards, to destroy the railway network with roads, buildings and, to rebuild the tram network, on what was left of the railway lines that had escaped complete obliteration.
• In the 1970s, urban railway lines continued to be turned, by your colleagues, into using them for vehicles, trading estates, homes and every other kind of building.
• In the 1980s, all you top, very well-paid officers, with council leaders and national government, decided to no longer rebuild your new tramway out to the airport but on the mainline railway between Snow Hill railway station, to fall short of both the bus station and railway station in Wolverhampton.  This alone is idiocy and incompetence of the first order!
• But, it was then repeated with an even more outrageous stupidity by turning what you all knew was a "railway of national strategic significance" into another tramway - the WBHE, aka the Dudley Tram.  The Dudley Tram on 6.7 Kms of Dudley's only principal mainline railway with 4 Kms destroying, at Merry Hill, more of nature, public open space, housing land and my vertical guerrilla garden instead of roads being used.  Roads were used where there has been for decades a perfectly good bus service, now duplicated or replaced by trams.
• This is your policy of giving top priority, costing hundreds of millions of pounds, to rebuilding the tram network on the surviving railway network, rather than electrifying the trains and buses, let alone putting commuter and regional and intercity trains back!!

Love Letter to Councillors ...

LOVE LETTER TO COUNCILLORS ON A​ MISSION FOR TRAMS TO MERRY HILL

I'm so pleased for you that you have your long-awaited (from the 1980s) Metro trams at long last.  But, don't rest on your laurels; there is still very MUCH more to do, my friends!

I quite understand that you must continue your 60-year-old policy of destroying, this time, Dudley's very last railway, to relegate our town from having back the mainline Castle Hill Railway Station to, instead, a piddling little tram stop and test track.  Dudley's New Fame:- the largest town in the UK by population without a railway station.  Yet, the line was successful for 100 years until we all fell in love with cars.  And, to this day, nearly 50 Kms, already built, are left with nothing!

What is your personal wish for the former mainline railway and existing freight line from Stourbridge Jct to Brierley Hill and, the mothballed, former passenger and freight railway from Wednesbury to Burton on Trent?  Nearly 50 Kms still wasted alongside or near to congested main roads and motorways.  It has every motorway, road and canal crossing already built but you good politicians forgot to finish the job - with, you know what!

What are you doing to respond to your own Council's Climate Emergency motion that you passed in 2020 and then passed over ever since?

Why did you bring it forward when it does look, so far, as though you have every intention to change nothing?  You now lay yourselves open to the charge of hypocrisy, of course.

Have you ever considered reforming your actions to ones of retrenchment?  Retrenchment to minimise deadly greenhouse gas emissions and to maximise economic growth in insulation, Passivhaus standards in housing, solar PV on every E, W, S roof and small to medium-sized, highly energy-efficient homes for the homeless and badly housed?

Have you ever considered the carrot, the reward of regional Fare-Free Public Transport that old crocks like me have had for 15 years, so far?  This OAP and friends in Brum are championing the same perk for you youngsters!  Campaign with us over this iniquitous inequality and blatant discrimination against the young and middle-aged.  Co-operation and partnership working, please.

Remember, too the UK's major, urban-rural-urban, 25 Kms, business, commuter and leisure route that is the fine, the upstanding, the disgraceful Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway through four nature reserves and one Woodland Trust property.

And a decent mosque for Dudley town Muslims.  Stop that discrimination and Islamophobia.

And a cycle-walkway on the other side of Duncan Edwards Way from the tramline. 

Degrowth - Facing the Apocalypse

"When in a hole stop digging! Today global economic growth is averaging 3% and has done so for 60 years. This doubles the global economy over 20 years. This is incompatible with the natural limits of the planet and will lead to the breakdown of its ecosystems. Degrowth offers a strategic alternative to such growth and the conflicts and societal breakdowns that it is already generating.

"Alan Thornett is the author of "Facing the Apocalypse - Arguments for Ecosocialism", and has recently written this article for the Green Left's publication Watermelon."

https://www.ecosocialistdiscussion.com/2023/09/16/degrowth-a-remarkable-renaissance/

The scandal of 60 years of railway destruction by every sector of society!

Dear Bridget

Note the date, 2003 on the map, below but little, if anything, has changed!  Railfuture are the experts on all railway matters outside the industry/professionals but have done nothing to support me over 30 years of trying to restore our railways!  They love trams as much as they adore trains.  They and the authorities have given trams top priority for railway lines rather than the much cheaper (and obvious!) train reinstatement.

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

​

Our 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance"​

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

​​is actually a SW to NE railway but is one of only two N-S mainline railways between Brum and the Irish Sea.  For 60 years, we have seen much extra road and train congestion because of 60 years of quite properly CLOSED railways as big loss makers by Richard Beeching, were then bulldozed away or had roads, buildings and tramways built on them.  This, with the full support of public opinion and, in particular, with planning permission being given by councillors over the 60 years and with them giving their approval for their conversion to tramways over the last 40 years.  MPs and trade union leaders, especially every railway union, have all fully approved this bizarre, a truly weird and wonderful practice!

5.5 Kms = Dudley Tram between Metro line One at Wednesbury and the former Dudley mainline railway station on the 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance"​.

20 Kms = Snow Hill station to Wolverhampton St George's Sq Metro tramway on a former mainline railway for 18 Kms.  Opened in 1999.

25.7 Kms = present length of tramways from Wolverhampton railway station to Edgbaston Village tram stop.  This has only taken 42 years to achieve, would you believe!  18 Kms on a mainline railway (now destroyed) and 7 Kms on roads all served by buses.

120 Kms = Worcester to Derby via Dudley aka Derby, Dudley, Devon or Burton on Trent to Bristol via Brierley Hill, for the sake of alliteration!

56 Kms = the unused but ready built Stourbridge Jct station to Burton on Trent station on the middle section of the Black Country Railway between Worcester and Derby.

FUTURE OPENING:

​Wednesbury to Flood Street in Dudley tramway that will be opened in time for Christmas jollities in 2024 - very possibly!  It was promised by Dudley Council leader, Cllr Fred Hunt to me in a conversation in the 90s, by the year 2000!

​Fraudulent High Scam 2, a N-S railway, is now cancelled north of Brum.  But Rishi Sunak is promising to give some of the £36 billion saved to Andy Street for his tram obsession.  Andy wants, even more now, his 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops for tram extensions, now on and under roads for £15 BILLION to 2040 (Jan 2020 figure)​

 THE SCANDAL IN FOUR LINES

​​

 6 scandals on the 40th anniversary of the W Mid...

​​​

​Courtesy of Pam Archer:

"Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall, (so) he will end by destroying the world." 

(Albert Schweitzer, 1950s, cited in "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson, 1962).  My view: the world will blissfully go on without its full burden of 7 billion humans - and rising!

THE ESSENCE OF WHY THE BLACK COUNTRY RAILWAY MUST BE FINISHED:

GLORIOUS ENGLISH ECCENTRICITY: the UK's only mothballed, easily reinstated, ready made but they forgot the trains and stations, mainline railway.  Nothing to do with the EU.  Their mainland railways are better and actually used for TRAINS!​

WHICH IS MORE SENSIBLE THINKING?

2 or 3 fast regional trains every hour and nine new stations to complete the 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby;  OR: 6 to 10 "bus on rails" trams every hour and 17 tram stops over only 11 Kms to STOP the reinstatement of the railway "of national strategic significance."

SMART POLITICIANS?

£449 m plus cost overruns to build the Black Country Tramline over 6.7 Kms that destroys the Black Country Railway over 56 Kms.  All 56 Kms can get commuter/regional trains back for less than £200 m (2015 figure).  Or, stupid politicians?

SMART RAILWAYS?

Why CUT a 120 Kms principal, mainline railway through the congested West Midlands with a tramline in two halves, a railway test track and a trail of trees, Japanese knotweed and undergrowth, when absent trains on 56 Kms of track could have their trains and stations back, FOR LESS MONEY than using trams on only 6.7 Kms?​

​Thanks so much for your interest, Bridget.

AN INCONVENIENT FLAW IN HS2: Too fast to stop at stations!

The nonsense of High Scam 2 with no stations, for people who don't fly, to get on and off the thing!  MORE DETAIL: Two terminal stations, two stations that some trains get diverted to (Brum and Crewe) and two airports, ONLY.

Extra provision and capacity for flyers, only!  No-one else.

Financial Shenanigans at WMCA

Dear Top Officials at WMCA

Dudley MBC is paying millions for Dudley Tram, Phase 2 to wreck a nationally vital railway - one of only two N-S mainline railways between Brum and the Irish Sea

There must be someone who can get to the bottom of this and honestly and professionally answer my questions.  Three questions:

1. How much of Dudley Council's money​, as its contribution, is going to finish the WBHE Phase 2 extension to Cottage St or is it just to Merry Hill?
2. How is it that Andy Street thinks he's got DfT permission to turn the UK's last principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance "into a tramway (because of "the Transport and Works Act Order" he hurriedly threw back at me as he disappeared into chairing his Board meeting).  But that legislation was many years ago and was never intended to wreck perfectly good/unfinished railways by turning them into tramways.  Especially when I got my way, last decade, when the DfT decided to follow my advice and have their 'Restoring Your Railways' initiative.  But, strangely, it does not apply to finishing the 120 Kms Black Country Railway with trains and stations - only trams and tram stops at nearly ten times per Km cost of using what was so successful for 100 years!

My letter, above, from DfT dated 8 March 2018 proves he does not have the evidence.  I have it and he is wrong.  Even if he was right, it must be the most nonsensical decision after the nonsense of High Scam 2 with no stations, for people who refuse to fly, to get on and off the thing!  MORE DETAIL: Two terminal stations, two stations that some trains get diverted to (Brum and Crewe) and two airports, ONLY!

   3.  Will you please forward to me, and the media, the full, unredacted, "independent" report into Metro that Andy commissioned in 2021.

THANK YOU!