In an announcement that caught many by surprise, the Department for Transport (DfT) announced today that the next East Midlands franchise is to be awarded to Abellio, a subsidiary of Netherlands Railways.  Trading as East Midlands Railway, the new franchise is due to start on 18th August 2019 and run for eight years, to 21st August 2027, with an option for a possible extension of a further two years.  Various improvements and investments are promised, including a new fleet of trains for the main line, extra capacity in the morning peak on services into London, plus other innovations such as trials with trains powered by hydrogen fuel-cells.  More day-to-day improvements include free wi-fi throughout the journey, something Harborough Rail Users have campaigned for, plus the increasingly standard compensation for delays of more than 15 minutes.  We await the details of service changes and we hope to meet the new operator in the near future.  We have had - and continue to have - a good working relationship with East Midlands Trains and we hope to have similarly constructive communication with Abellio once they have taken over.

The Department for Transport has announced that the Midland Main Line is to be electrified to Market Harborough.  This is an extension of the scheme currently under way to electrify from Bedford to Kettering and Corby.  The decision had been anticipated, as the power supply for that electrification will be from the National Grid high-voltage power line that crosses the railway near Braybrooke, just south of Market Harborough.  It makes sense to feed that power back to Kettering using overhead wires rather than an underground conduit, and then to extend it for 'the last mile' into Market Harborough.  The decision means that our trains will run electrically all the way between Market Harborough and London.  This will make them quieter, cleaner and faster.  Until electrification is extended further, however, they will switch to diesel for the section north to Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield.  
The Market Harborough electrification is due to be completed in December 2023.
The decision is warmly welcome, but we need to ensure that Market Harborough retains an inter-city service rather than becoming the terminus for outer-suburban trains.

Last September, the DfT announced the next round of Access for All funding for railway stations.  Funds from a national allocation of £300m must be bid for by 'local delivery groups', which for Market Harborough means East Midlands Trains and Network Rail.  They are including additional accessibility enhancements for our station in their overall bid for the EMT network. 
HRU and Harborough MP Neil O'Brien have both submitted letters in support of this bid, which seeks funding towards an additional lift between the booking office and the new northbound platform, plus an accessible toilet on the new southbound platform.  The DfT is due to announce its decision in April 2019.

On 17th September 2018, Nusrat Ghani MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport, wrote to all MPs outlining the latest allocation of funds under the Access for All programme.  This sets aside £300m for access improvements to railway stations as part of the government's Inclusive Transport Strategy, launched on 25th July.  The funding covers Network Rail's 'Control Period 6' (CP6): the five years from 1st April 2019 to 31st March 2024.  Bids for funds must be made by 'Local Delivery Groups' (LDGs), which usually means the local train operator and Network Rail.  The deadline for bids is 16th November 2018, with the results announced in April 2019.
Market Harborough has already had an allocation of Access for All funds for the planned footbridge with lifts; this is due to be built with the new platforms on the straightened line in 2019.  However, we seek further enhancements to the station's accessibility, in the form of:

• A lift between the booking office and the platforms
• Toilets on the new southbound platform.

Neither of these are included in current plans, though the DfT and Network Rail are reviewing the costs and benefits.
We in Harborough Rail Users have been liaising with Harborough MP Neil O'Brien about all this and he has written to East Midlands Trains seeking a meeting.  This is a first step towards getting a bid submitted for the additional enhancements to bring our increasingly busy station up to fully accessible modern standards. If recent growth trends continue, especially with all the new housing being built in the area, it will not be long before Market Harborough station sees over a million passenger journeys a year!  We need a station that fully matches that level of business!
Further information is on the DfT website at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/access-for-all-programme
and Network Rail https://www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/passengers/station-improvements/access-for-all/