A trip to Westminster on behalf of the 4,000 of us...

Please sign the other petition, too: https://www.change.org/p/department-for-transport. It is tantalisingly close to its 10,000 target! 200 extra have signed that petition since my last update on this petition, and less than 400 more signatures are needed now. The issues are tightly connected (and getting more tightly connected). We have been busy since the last update. We have been to Parliament to bend the ear of the Rail Minister, Jo Johnson, and extracted a rare public apology. …but unfortunately all we have managed to get SO FAR in terms of promises is that the rail replacement bus between Wellingborough and Bedford will go direct station-to-station (instead of earlier plans that would have made it useless for through journeys). It looks like despite our efforts, the cuts we have been campaigning against will be coming from May: our aim now is to get them reversed as quickly as possible. We are bitterly disappointed for those of you who are going to find it virtually impossible to get to/from work as a consequence. Also while we were in Westminster, we caught the Managing Director of East Midlands Trains admitting (about East Mids trains on the mainline) “A lot of these trains will be much shorter", giving us a chance to pick up extra allies further up the East Midlands route (we haven’t gone full-power on that yet – we need extra volunteers to make use of this opportunity – please sign up at https://goo.gl/forms/1xlXN3U0tvbnI7WE2 ). An increasing number of MPs have been writing to the Rail Minister. Please make sure yours does to raise your concerns: ask them by using WriteToThem.com.