This is the Nightmail Crossing the Border…

Good news indeed, the Royal Mail is returning to the rails. It was always a fraught relationship with tight performance targets for the railways. It was failure to meet some of those targets that cost the railways the business.

During the nineties, I was well aware of those targets and the need to get the postal trains to their destinations on time. As a signaller, I did my bit to signal them efficiently, giving them priority according to instructions. However that determination was frequently undermined by circumstances. Failures in signalling equipment such as tracks, points and signals – not to mention other operators’ trains would conspire to prevent us meeting those targets. On one occasion salt spray caused multiple track failures in the Weston-Super-Mare area and I spent the best part of a couple of hours talking the driver of the first postal from one signal to the next. Indeed, it was still going on at shift changeover at 06:00. The post was late in the west country that morning.

Railtrack was the custodian of the infrastructure and as such, contractually liable for those failures. For most of my signalling career, the withdrawal of the postal contract was a sword of Damocles hanging over us so it was no great surprise when it finally happened.

That GB Railfreight has secured a new contract is good news indeed. As a former railwayman, I feel that the postal and the railway are made for each other. I really hope it works out this time.