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ZiderHead

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Everything posted by ZiderHead

  1. Indeed, I have read a bunch of articles by the BBC and local newspapers and seen more on TV about incidents at crossings and I can't remember seeing or hearing a section in those reports which gives clear and simple instructions on how to use crossings. These are ideal opportunities to educate/remind the public on proper use (and therefore reduce incidents) but instead just reinforce the perception that its entirely the railway's responsibility. Edit: I'll go further and suggest that Mr Carne's recent apology also reinforces that perception. It may be PR-friendly but will ultimately lead to more deaths.
  2. That quote doesn't appear in the linked news page, presumably because it is incorrect. The girls did misuse the crossing and were on it when they shouldn't have been. They were therefore trespassing. The crossing in this incident was working properly - barriers down, red lights flashing and yodel sounding. That the girls either; were not aware of how to use the crossing or, chose not to use the crossing properly led to their deaths. Tragic and possibly preventable but not NR's fault, as confirmed by the coroner's accidental death finding.
  3. The Bombay Railways doc on BBC4 the other day put the casualties in the Mumbai area at several per day. One driver expected to be involved in 3 or 4 incidents per week while driving, another guessed that in his ?30yr career he had seen about 75 fatalities under his trains. Now that really puts it in perspective …
  4. The judge looks to me to have done the right thing in both cases. The CPS should have prosecuted the first as a due care, not dangerous driving and they would have secured a conviction so the judge could have imposed the harshest sentence under the guidelines. The second sentence was according to the guidelines (set in law by parliament remember, not by individual judges.)
  5. Well I assume that the local reporter, reporting for the local news, and later asking about the effect on the local holiday trade is more interested in the cost to local economy rather than the potential increase in national fares.
  6. Its an worthwhile question, although directed at the wrong person. The cost to NR will be born by rail users and taxpayers nationally, so largely irrelevant to locals*. Presumably the reporter wanted to know the cost to the local economy, so they should have sought out an economist in a relevant organisation to ask. It would have been nice if RG hadnt been so evasive in his answer though, that PR-trained "Not answering the question, then saying something positive about something else" schtick is very irritating. * depending on how much of the bill will be passed on to fares on this route.
  7. I would guess because any meaningful answer to that would involve a good 30mins of explanation and discussion. Some questions are best asked and answered on Newsnight
  8. I was wondering about the spraycrete too. On its own its just a crust, presumably to stop more of the ?soil/sand being washed away after the containers have already taken most of the energy out of the waves. Without steel mesh or rebar in it, I can't see it supporting itself let alone preventing movement behind it.
  9. Excellent 08 weathering references, cheers!
  10. From xmas eve: That turnout was installed the other (north) side of the bridge a few days after xmas, but not a lot seems to have happened there since, not a soul around every time Ive been past during Jan. (apologies for bad pic, it was just to prove to a friend that I had indeed forded large parts of flooded towpath, didn't want to stop for long as I hadn't been able to feel my toes for about 30mins and was a bit concerned about losing them to frostbite!)
  11. The cost to reinstate is largely irrelevant if the revenues stack up to pay for it. The planned Bere Alston to Tavistock reinstatement is being taken seriously so presumably the numbers work out for that - and that is only providing extra local services between Tavistock and Plymouth. It doesn't seem unreasonable that reinstating the remaining ?16 miles to Oakhampton could make financial sense when you take into account the revenue from extra local services, savings on road improvements and savings on lost revenue from occasional but catastrophic closures to the costal route.
  12. I haven't seen many suggestions that the Tavistock line should replace the coastal route, but provide a diversionary route when the coastal route is inevitably interrupted and provide additional local services. Far from increasing journey times by 30mins, in the case of a 2 week closure on the coast it would reduce journey times by almost 2 weeks!
  13. Concerning reinstatement of the Tavistock line as a diversionary route this document mentions a 2009 Commons enquiry which estimated the cost at £100m, as well as outlining some of the issues. Given typical budget drift for large projects like this £200m doesn't seem unreasonable. Say you want the project lifespan to be 30yrs (ie. when it will become redundant as the inland 500mph nuclear powered maglev line is up and running!), the annual cost is about £12m at 5% borrowing. This £12m a year will be offset to some degree by picking up lost revenue from closures on the coastal route, additional revenue from new local services, savings in road spending due to those local services and all the less quantifiable stuff which comes from improved infrastructure. Viewed this way that £200m starts to look more like an investment than an unpalatable one-off cost.
  14. Would reinstating Oakhampton to Bere Alston really be that expensive as a relief route? A quick glance at google maps shows very little built on the old trackbed apart from the council building in Tavistock - just a few barns and less than 10 houses. (Quite why an organisation which is itself responsible for planning, infrastructure and economic development would build their HQ bang on top of a potentially reinstatable route is bewildering to me, although sadly not that surprising …) Is Meldon Viaduct the only major structure which would need replacing on that route? How about the other bridges?
  15. Kenton, just out of interest, how old is your rolling stock with course scale wheelsets? IIRC O fine scale has been around since the '50s and I'm wondering how long it took manufacturers to transition to fine scale wheelsets.
  16. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-25022997 This is a tragic incident at Sandy Lane Crossing, car stalled just before signals and barriers operated and the driver was unable to restart it before it was hit by a container train, killing the passenger who was in a wheelchair. The report says the train arrived about 45s after the barriers dropped, which seems about right from my experience. Are these half barrier crossings monitored from the signal box at all? I don't remember seeing cameras there. https://maps.google.com/?ll=51.814764,-1.297477
  17. I don't think he would understand it - I mean he makes £150k a year and thinks its ok to live in a council house when there is a massive shortage of social housing …
  18. I don't think there's any great mystery here - the reason that Peco haven't created a Streamline OO range is simply that doing so would in all likelihood dent their profitability by a tiny, but measurable, amount. They have no incentive to do so because their existing competitors haven't produced a OO range which would eat into their sales, and the barriers to entry for a new competitor are so immense that a new player is very unlikely to appear. The minute that someone releases a OO range which is a direct competitor to their HO range, Peco could introduce their own OO range without missing a step and crush them.
  19. I read it with interest An example (with pulled out the air numbers) to illustrate what I mean: A set of molds for 1 yard of HO or OO flexitrack bases cost £15k. They wear out after 100,000 injections. You produce 200,000 HO track bases, you spent £30k on molds. You produce 100,000 HO track bases and 100,000 OO track bases, you spent £30k on molds. The "minimal cost" is the production of the new OO CAD file for the OO mold.
  20. You're right, injection molds and assembly jigs. But still pretty minimal cost - just the design cost. Both have to be swapped between batches anyway, and both are replaced due to wear and tear after x injections or assemblies. Edit: Damn, this thread moves so quickly I was replying to Gordon's post on the last page!
  21. Indeed, it would just be moving existing sales from one product line to another. However I suspect that Peco could grab some sales from Hornby and Bachmann as they would be offering a very different product - OO track - whereas they now only offer an alternative HO track. Maybe not many sales, but possibly enough to cover the costs of creating a new OO Streamline range. Simply changing the sleeper bases would not involve any changes to the rail design or production, assembly methods or tooling apart from the design of the base molds. Edit: it would be interesting to know how the track work is produced, I'd guess in batches with tools swapped out for different product lines? I can't imagine there is a different machine for every single track product Peco manufacture.
  22. Hi Martin I do take your point about the optical illusion of closer sleeper spacing, and that would still be available to those who prefer it in the existing HO range. To me the "long" crossing looks a vast improvement over the existing HO version (which has an extra 7 or 8 sleepers) and the small radius turnout looks … very tight. But it is a (very) small radius so it would. The larger radius comparisons you posted earlier illustrate very nicely how much better the existing Peco geometry track work could look by just changing the sleeper bases. Of course the Templot diagrams don't show the plastic parts of the track (check rails, crossings) so the imagined turnouts will inevitably be more prototypical looking than what Peco would produce, but an extremely useful exercise all the same ZH
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