Since the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, road traffic levels grew heavily in some areas. This has come close to gridlock. Furthermore, in recent years there have been record high levels of passengers on the railways. A modest number of the railway closures have therefore been reversed.
In addition a small but significant number of closed stations have reopened, and passenger services been restored on lines where they had been closed or removed. Many of these were in the urban metropolitan counties and towns where Passenger Transport Executives have a role in promoting local passenger rail use.
A notable reopening was the Robin Hood Line in Nottinghamshire, between Nottingham and Worksop via Mansfield, which reopened in the early 1990s. Before the line reopened, Mansfield had been the largest town in Britain without a railway station.
Profits from the railways began to fall in the early 1980s. In 1983, the civil servant Sir David Serpell wrote what became known as the Serpell Report. He wanted even more cutbacks.
In the early 1980s there was a proposal to close Marylebone and divert British Rail services via High Wycombe into nearby Paddington. There was also a plan to extend the Metropolitan Line to Aylesbury, so London trains via Amersham would be sent to Baker Street. Marylebone station was to be converted into a bus and coach station. London Underground said the Metropolitan Line could not cope with any more trains and was full up. However these plans were deemed stupid and clumsy, and were quietly dropped.
The funding of BR was reduced so they created the cheaper Pacer trains. The British Rail Class 143 is a diesel multiple unit, part of the Pacer family of trains introduced between 1985 and 1986. They originally worked around North East England but were later transferred to Wales. It was made out of bus parts put on to lorry chassis and train wheels. Earlier units proved to be unreliable, but later units were of a better design.
The British Rail Class 156 "Super-Sprinter" diesel multiple units were built from 1987 to 1989 to replace elderly First Generation "Heritage" DMUs (like the Class 127 units) and locomotive-hauled passenger trains.
As funding increased before privatisation the successful British Rail Class 158 "Express Sprinter" was made. It is a type of diesel multiple unit (DMU) train. They were built for British Rail between 1989 and 1992 by BREL at their Derby Works.
On 12 December 1988, three commuter trains crashed, just south-west of Clapham junction station, in London. 35 people died and more than 100 were injured. British Rail's 30-year-old vintage Mark 1 carriages were found out to be dangerous and the broken signalling equipment was fixed and improved.
The British government under John Major said that privatisation would help passenger services, but this did not happen until much later.
The Scottish Assembly Government have re-opened the lines between Hamilton and Larkhall, Alloa and Stirling and is working on a link from Airdrie to Bathgate. The biggest line-reopening project is the former Waverley railway Edinburgh to Borders line.
The Welsh Assembly Government has re-opened the Vale of Glamorgan Line between Barry Bock and Bridgend in 2005. The Ebbw Valley Line reopened between Ebbw Vale and Cardiff in the year 2008. It will later go on to services to Newport in Gwent in 2011. The Barry–Bridgend route was closed after the Beeching report of March 1963. The line's passenger service was officially shut down in June 1964, but freight continued until the late 1990s.
Some English stations like Corby and Mansfield were reopened after privatisation.
Yet more stations were reopened by British Rail in Scotland, England and Wales before privatisation when the railway was run properly.
Train fares cost more than under British Rail.
Regional Railways was one of the three passenger sectors of British Rail. It was created in the year 1982. It finished operation in 1996, two years after privatisation. In the privatisation of British Rail, InterCity trains were divided up into several franchises. The Caledonian Sleeper are transferred to ScotRail, now First ScotRail.
Since privatisation, the number of companies has changed a number of times as rules have changed and the areas covered altered. The companies that took over passenger rail services include:
"Six sub-brands also occurred in the early 2000s:"
<nowiki>*</nowiki>Wales and Borders, now part of Arriva Trains Wales.
<nowiki>*</nowiki>Wessex Trains, now part of First Great Western.
<nowiki>**</nowiki> Silverlink Metro, now London Overground.
<nowiki>**</nowiki> Silverlink County, now part of London Midland.
<nowiki>***</nowiki> West Anglia, now part of National Express East Anglia.
<nowiki>***</nowiki> Great Northern Electrics, now part of National Express East Anglia.
The British Rail "double arrow" logo was said to show direction of travel on a double track railway on a railway map and was nicknamed "the arrow of indecision". It is now employed as a general symbol on street signs in Great Britain, but not in Northern Ireland, denoting railway stations, and as part of the Association of Train Operating Companies (A.T.O.C.)'s joint-managed National Rail brand, still being printed on railway tickets.
Sometimes strikes happened among British Rail staff, over staff pay, safety, working hours and alike. There were several strikes in the late 1970s, but decreased after privatisation. There were also several other strikes in the late 1970s. Other firms like the UK's coal mines also struck at this time.
Cobra
Cobra is a name of a snake and a girl cobra is called 'cobra Kai.' In English it is the common name for various venomous snakes. Most of those species are in the family Elapidae, and most of them can spread their neck ribs to form a flattened, widened hood.
The name "cobra" is short for "cobra de capelo" or "cobra-de-capelo", which is Portuguese for "snake with hood", or "hood-snake".
Cobras usually live in tropical and desert regions of Asia and Africa. When feeling threatened, cobras can tilt back and flatten their heads into their warning posture. The rest of the time their heads are symmetrical and they look much like any other snakes.
Cobra may refer to:
Most so-called, and all "true", species of cobras belong to the family Elapidae
Cape Cobra
The Cape Cobra ("Naja nivea") is a cobra inhabiting the regions of South Africa. It averages 4 feet (120 cm) long but may grow to be 6 feet (180 cm) long. The color varies from location to location, and those from the Kalahari are normally yellow with brown speck uniformly all over the body.
Kalahari Desert
The Kalahari Desert is a large arid to semi-arid sandy area in southern Kgalagadi Africa extending 900,000 km² (362,500 sq. mi.), covering much of Botswana and parts of Namibia and South Africa. It has huge tracts of excellent grazing after good rains.
The Kalahari Desert is the southern part of Africa, and the geography is a portion of desert and a plateau. The Kalahari supports some animals and plants because most of it is not a true desert. There are small amounts of rainfall and the summer temperature is very high. The driest areas usually receive of rain per year, and the wettest just a little over .
The surrounding Kalahari Basin covers over 2.5 million km² extending farther into Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, and encroaching into parts of Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The only permanent river, the Okavango, flows into a delta in the northwest, forming marshes that are rich in wildlife. Ancient dry riverbeds—called omuramba—traverse the Central Northern reaches of the Kalahari and provide standing pools of water during the rainy season. Previously havens for wild animals from elephant to giraffe, and for predators such as lion and cheetah, the riverbeds are now mostly grazing spots, though leopard or cheetah can still be found.