royaloak

Because no Government would be stupid enough to have a 'Nationalised' industry where one group of workers going on strike would be able to basically paralyse the Country, privatisation was all about divide and conquer, I am not saying that was the reason for privatisation but I am sure it did have a bearing on it.

Same reason as the doors.

Because they were only supposed to be in service for 10 to 15 years while everything was electrified and the APT took over so it wasnt worth the expense, that plan didnt quite work out though.

Not by choice, blame the lack of a sensible electrification policy and lack of suitable trains.

I am no expert but I think I detect just the slightest hint of sarcasm in this post?

Which is why a lot of classic racing or rally cars have had their original magnesium wheels replaced with alloy ones, magnesium simply ages.

But you basically have the same number of staff members operating over twice as many trains.

I would hazard a guess that these have been a bit popular so a rerun would be a serious possibility, when would depend on what sort of mood Hornby are in.

All standard releases are now limited in number, they are produced as one batch and that is that, the days of thousands and thousands of the same model being produced year after year are long gone.

No prizes for guessing where that budget will be coming from!

So that begs the question, what is the difference between the old broom and the new broom?

Oh dont worry SM has got it, the biggest problem is the 'crewplan' computer program, bung all the information and agreements in it and it will churn out compliant diagrams, what it wont take into account is what happens during disruption which is where a decent roster clerk should then look over the diagrams and 'adjust' them for resilience, unfortunately that doesnt happen so we end up with 9hr54 diagrams with 4 hours driving, minimum break then another 4 hours driving on them, what could possibly go wrong. Exeter now do Exeter to Paddington and back to Exeter before they get a PNB, Plymouth now do Plymouth to Paddington 1hr4 PNB (minimum required is 57 minutes) then back to Plymouth, so if they are 8 minutes late into Paddington it will impact their back working. We then get the company going on about managing our fatigue, oh the irony. When I was at Exeter they put a poster up asking us why we thought the number of incidents was on the increase, but at the bottom it had 'diagrams are not the problem' in bold letters, so they did know the reason but didnt want us to tell them! Drivers and Guards are now worked about 2 and a half times harder than they were under BR, but as soon as there is a hitch the timetable will fall apart because there isnt any resilience in the diagrams and there arent any spares any more, in fact its now normal to have uncovered diagrams on a daily basis due to lack of crew.

The Fast trains wont be on the ECML though will they, they will be on HS2 so why waste money trying to speed up the ECML?

At least it isnt Purple Rain.

10 yes definitely. 2) Yes probably 3) Definitely not because then HS2 would cease to be a HS route, its to take the long distance trains away from the WCML, ECML and to a lesser extent the MML, HS2 needs to be have its first station at Birmingham to make the best advantage of its HS moniker.