for those interested in submitting a tender for the ECML. The Ticket Collector will tell you who's going for it.

The big surprise comes from Sea Containers who haven't ruled themselves out just yet. It's unlikely but not so unlikely that it's outside the realms of posibility. There's also the speculation about posibility that the existing GNER managment team might submitt an independant bid but again I think that's unlikely.

Who ever wins will be expected to honour GNER's existing commitments (source P'boro ET) e.g Pedestrianise P'boro station to name but one. Not sure how that will go down though.

My money is on the Virgin/Stagecoach joint venture. I may even take a punt and buy some stagecoach shares. Just take a look at their price over the last 12 months: -

http://www.sharecast.com/cgi-bin/sharecast/story.cgi?story_id=1025037

If there's one things that GNER can do (or not as the case may be) to wind me up on a Monday morning it's cancel all seat reservations, as they did with this mornings 07.20.

As usual for a Monday, it was very busy this morning. Not a day you'd want GNER to fail with the seat reservations then. Unfortunately they did. I got lucky but only becase while most walked past, I asked some dopey lady to move her clobber off the spare seat. Had I not. I would have been standing just like the shy people who walked past rather than ask the dopey lady to move her stuff.

As yet we don't know what the casue is though Sean (the Guard) promosed to find out and let us know tomorrow. (I bet he never mentions it). My guess is the printer broke down again and they haven't taken my advice and purchased a back up.

Friday wasd a bad day for GNER. I bumped into a number of people who'se intended service had been cancelled which were mainly afternoon services running between 1pm and 4pm. I guess the winds were a bigger problem on friday than they were earlier in the week. Even so, I know of at least 3 services which were cancelled and I see from The Ticket Collector, other services were affected too.