"Fat richard" wrote in message
...

Well thats me twenty quid short, I had a bet going on the GN not
joining up and the stock not being the new generation of fixed
formation 8 / 12 cars. I thought A.T.O. had been officially poo
pooed ?

Never more than educated speculation I think, based on the presumption many
people seem to have made 6 months ago that 'Conservatives = Guaranteed
Cuts' - so discussion centred on what was likely to give. The flames will
have been fanned because within NR people will have had to prepare options
for downgrades, but they presumably always hoped they wouldn't happen.

When one of the rail mags I get ran a piece on ATO being cancelled a while
back, the very next issue quoted a NR denial. Over the late summer when
posters here were suggesting the new signalling might be downgraded to only
16 tph, I searched and found that a contract had just been let to install
signalling to allow 24 tph.

Paul S