Edwin_m

There's always the possibility of human error and that's why there should be additional safeguards, either checks by other people or (much preferred these days) automatic systems that monitor and intervene where necessary. At Abermule there were three or four other mistakes made that led to the driver being given back the same token they had just surrendered. We don't know how many times one or more of those mistakes were made at other times and places, but of these Abermule was one of only a handful resulting in a collision. As for engineered safeguards, locking of the starter signal until a token was released for that direction would have prevented it.

Perhaps not surprising when one of the main purposes of the British nuclear programme was to create the materials needed for the nuclear deterrent. And the tendency of various authorities to cover up past nuclear accidents doesn't help with public confidence either. Another problem is the public's perception of risk - rare but high-consequence events like train and plane accidents are seen as worse than frequent but lower-consequence events like road accidents, even when (as in this case) the total casualties are greater in the latter. The same applies with the risk of a large nuclear accident versus the many smaller accidents that happen in coal mines, oil rigs etc and the people suffering due to pollution. Having said that, a major incident would rationally be worse than a series of minor ones over time with the same total of casualties, due to issues such as overwhelming of hospital facilities (perhaps leading to suffering of people unable to receive treatment for other things) and the general disruption to society from a large event.

Do you have any evidence to support this statement? The equivalent argument on alcohol taxes would not be to support the drinks industry, it would be to pay for the indirect consequences of alcohol consumption, such as increased late-night policing and treatment of injuries caused by drunk people to themselves or others.

The use of the road network actually creates a lot more costs than appear in the account for central government road spending: Large slice of the police force Large slice of the NHS Local authority roads - needed for essential access to properties, but almost nobody would be able to drive any journey without them All the measures we should be (but probably aren't) taking to address CO2 and particulate emissions from vehicles Bus and possibly train subsidies (if nobody had the option of driving, a lot more of them would cover their costs) Walking and cycling infrastructure (if there was no traffic then the existing roads would be safe for those users) So it's entirely reasonable to expect taxation on road use to cover many of these costs. Whether it does or not, I have no idea.

A dark brown cat curled up on a black office chair is close to invisible. But not very happy when sat on.

A 58 would have been built to more recent structural strength standards, which would have made the front end less likely to deform on impact, therefore increasing the energy to be dissipated elsewhere and the forces exerted on the flask. The same may apply to a 56 - not sure when the standards changed. Today's standards are even more stringent, although the latest ones require energy-absorbing material in the nose. This is too little to have any effect in a train-to-train collision but intended to improve the outcome in something like a collision with a HGV on a level crossing - so could also mitigate a collision with a flask.

Went through the Moffat tunnel on Amtrak in 1986, and part way through we screeched to a halt and the lights went out. It was announced that the driver had received a message to shut down because the concentration of fumes was getting to high.

Also Woodhead had no significant freight traffic generated on the route itself (except Stocksbridge which was and still is served by the surviving remnant). Closing Hope Valley would have meant saying goodbye to the Peak District stone traffic, or keeping the route through Bakewell open instead.

Tunnel ventilation was one of the reasons several mountain sections in the States were electrified. However that was to eliminate steam working, and with the advent of diesels these electrifications were fairly quickly abandoned. Which suggests that steam would be worse than diesel from a pollution point of view.

Another dog/cat crossover bed thread. Many years ago we had a dog and a cat, each having a box that they generally used. My mother tripped over the dog once too often, shouted at him to get into his box, and in some flusterment he jumped into the cat box. Which was occupied.

They missed a trick with the 4DD, they could have had first class in the upper compartments "looking down on him".

Looks like it helps with flood defences for the reason you gave. These days anything that reduces the capacity to store flood water where it does relatively little damage probably requires the builder to provide an equivalent amount of water storage capacity nearby. Someone who wrote that article thinks the Manchester terminus will be on the Mayfield site...

I do beg their pardon ... I was thinking more of them having to put the fish in the baggage car and take their seats elswhere in the train.

They did provide some "baggage cars" - I seem to recall reading somewhere that this was their principal use.

Simplifying somewhat, if a masonry bridge stands up at all, then it has the potential to stand for centuries as long as it gets a modest amount of maintenance and the abutments don't move. The material is entirely in compression, and the loads it bears are way below its crush load. There are road bridges from the middle ages, built for horses and carts, that carry today's motor vehicles with no significant strengthening. Not only are metallic (and more modern concrete) bridges designed for a specific load, the person doing that design needs a good understanding of structural engineering and material properties. The Tay Bridge was far from the only one where they got that wrong!

Indeed.

There's just not the number of passengers to make through trains to/from the continent viable beyond London. Even for the larger places like Manchester or Birmingham, the number of seats per day on flights to Paris or Brussels wouldn't fill a single Eurostar, and for that distance the flight would still offer quicker door to door journeys as well as a choice of departure times. What might change that would be adopting the practice of every international train other than Eurostar, that the same train can be used for domestic journeys within the countries it passes through. You could then imagine something like Manchester-Birmingham-London-Ashford-Lille-Paris. Passport checks are done on the train, or more likely not at all where countries are parties to the Schengen agreement. But the Channel Tunnel rules on security and the UK policy on passport controls mean that anyone boarding a Tunnel-bound train for a domestic journey would also have to go through passport checks and baggage screening, which nobody would want to do. There was a rather crudely-designed link in the original HS2 design between Old Oak and St Pancras for through journeys to HS1, but it was deleted before it went to Parliament. The trains being bought for HS2 will be able to run on classic British lines provided they are 25kV electrified, and will do so to reach Manchester (initially) and Scotland. So I don't see any technical reason why they couldn't run on the electrified parts of the GWML, though they would have to be hauled dead from the nearest HS2 to Network Rail connection either at Calvert or Washwood Heath.

The scheme recently blocked would have connected the Met to Watford High Street and Watford Junction, plus if I recall correctly a replacement station in the Croxley area. Anyone at Watford Junction wanting to go into London had much better alternatives. Watford High Street serves the town centre so isn't likely to have an outward flow of people living nearby and commuting. Anyone using the new Croxley station could probably have used the existing one without too much inconvenience. Hence the benefit to London is only that offered by some people heading to parts of Wembley, Harrow etc which are more conveniently served by the Met than by the WCML. Those, I'd say, were pretty few in the context of justifying a significant piece of infrastructure. The main economic beneficiary would have been Watford, getting more commuters and shoppers from the west.

There may be a good case for taxes raised in London to be spent on improvements outside London that benefit London commuters, allowing London businesses to get the workforce they need to prosper. But it's very difficult to see how the Croxley link would benefit more than a handful of London commuters, since Watford Junction already has good rail links to London, and also to intermediate destinations such as Harrow and Wembley.

That's kind of my point, as well as pointing out the unspoken assumption that everyone is going to or from London. HS2 as originally proposed would have provided a brand new electrified route with no significant speed restrictions. I took a look at the projected time savings and I think this was about the greatest percentage saving of any HS2 journey compared to today. But I'm not disagreeing that the business case will be worse, as more people will be travelling to London. That's also the reason it's relatively slow today.

It would have been transformative for the Cross Country route from Birmingham.

There's a general move towards prefabrication in a factory and bringing concrete items to site for assembly. It's usually quicker and safer than pouring concrete on site.

It doesn't really make sense to make it more expensive. It's supposed to attract those travelling between the main cities, so the existing route has more capacity for passenger trains making intermediate stops (as well as freight). Currently many of the fares are set to price people off at busy times, and hopefully that won't be so necessary once that extra capacity is available. The original business case was based on the assumption that fares would be broadly similar to existing (allowing for inflation).

I think the answer is that First Past the Post is a stupid name for what many would argue is a stupid system. There are plenty of stupid names around - how much of the West Coast Main Line is in sight of the coast or even the nearest railway to it?

The penny doesn't seem to have dropped generally that OOC only has 6 HS2 platforms and Euston is being built with 10. So some destinations in the north will have a much worse service if Euston isn't built. As should be obvious to anyone who's been near the west side of Euston recently, construction is well under way so it's probably going to cost more to cancel than to complete. The opposition could hire advertising space on the hoardings to point out that behind them lies a huge example of government ineptitude...