Ticket To Ride Finally made to the end of an exhausting week, seemed to spend most of it reminding people of why our department is here and that folks need to take ownership of things rather than playing IT issue ping pong! Anyway I added up and I have spent around ten hours this week back and fourth on the train doiung my usual commute. I was pondering why tickets had rail settlement plan printed as a watermark...... thought it may have some form of historical reference....... sadly not: Rail Settlement Plan Rail Settlement Plan (RSP) is a company owned by the franchised passenger rail operators to provide a wide range of common IT based services to those operators and to others, including third party providers of information and retail services, and to open access operators. The company was established on the privatisation of British Railways primarily to operate the process that enables the revenue received from the purchase of generic, non-company specific train tickets to be split amongst the retailing station and the train operating companies (TOCs) that run trains along the route or parts of the route where the ticket is valid for travel. For example, the same railway ticket is valid from London Bridge to East Croydon on all services. The RSP provides a process to share the revenue between the three train operating companies who run trains along this route (Southern, First Capital Connect and Southeastern). Since privatisation the company has increased the range of services it provides to train operators. The company now: collects retail sales data from 10,000 points-of-sale; carries out the correct allocation of ticket revenue to train operators; settles that revenue to the operators; sets standards and accredits all industry points of sale; maintains the central industry fares database and provides tools for train operators to set fares; distributes fares, timetable, station and other industry data to points of sale and other information systems; provides the National Reservations Service enabling retailers to book reservations on all trains with reservable seats; provides the cabability to pick up preordered tickets at platform ticket machines (Ticket-on --Departure) provides all the industry ticket stock RSP is a division of the Association of Train Operating Companies. (Source: Wikipedia) 2010PAD-15 January 15th 2010

Virgin Trains supported charity CLIC Sargent will benefit from the sale of six sets of ‘Thunderbirds’ themed nameplates following its withdrawal of six Class 57 locomotives from service. The nameplates will be sold at a specialist railwayana auction in Derby on 10 December 2011 by Sheffield Railwayana Auctions. The locomotives involved are: 57301 Scott Tracy 57303 Alan Tracy 57305 John Tracy 57306 Jeff Tracy 57310 Kyrano 57312 The Hood Network Rail is looking to take over the six Class 57 locomotives for specialist seasonal duties south of the River Thames. The locomotives have previously been part of Virgin Trains’ 16-Stong Class 57/3 fleet, but are no longer required by the West Coast franchise operator. The Class 57s were required when Pendolino trains entered service with Virgin Trains in 2002. Their primary role was as a strategic rescue fleet, hence the ‘Thunderbird International Rescue’ naming theme. The first locomotive was officially named by Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson at London’s Euston station on 17 June 2002. At the unveiling of the first locomotive, 57301 named after Thunderbird 1 pilot Scott Tracy in June 2002, Gerry Anderson said: "The Tracy boys are delighted to hear that the Virgin Trains rescue vehicles are to be named after them. They said that it is a great honour. Brains, who has had a great deal of experience in maintaining rescue vehicles, has offered to help the Virgin engineers and crews in any way he can. I consider it to be a great honour too and I wish them good luck with their rescues. F A B."