The project headed up by Alliance Rail to run a commercial passenger service, linking Marchwood to Southampton and onto Waterloo (via Hook) isn’t quite dead yet.

This video features a really interesting interview with Ian Yeowart of Alliance Rail, who doesn’t mask his feelings about the decision by made by the Office of Road and Rail not to issue a licence.

This interview includes quite a lot of technical detail which can be quite hard to follow unless you are a railway enthusiast, but it does seem pretty clear that the body responsible for considering these applications hasn’t done its’ job properly, with a strong hint that there may be political pressure applied which influences its’ independence.

At one stage there is mention of a Judicial Review.. that’s sounds familiar because the prospect of such a legal challenge is also topical in the context of local government reorganisation.

The point to remember about Judicial Reviews are that they are only about the process by which decisions are made. They don’t alter the decision itself. If government want to do something it has the power to do so, whether it is creating Super Councils, or creating a monopoly for a state run railway.

The Office for Road and Rail could accept that it had misinterpreted all the evidence but the answer is still “No”.