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rodent279

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    Downend, European Union.
  • Interests
    Running, Morris Minors & assorted other buffoonery.

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  1. It's worth bearing in mind that (if I recall correctly) the main justification for the original SNCF LGV between Paris & Lyons was capacity on the classic PLM route, not a burning desire to do that journey in half the time.
  2. Are we, as voters, mature enough to allow politicians to tell us what we need to hear (not want to hear), without ending their careers instantly? Until we are, there will be no significant change.
  3. So to sum up, GWR is in this sticky situation because Hitachi had cleverer lawyers then the DfT, and they were able to run rings around them, not solely because Hitachi's product is no good, or GWR are inept.
  4. And we still are. We think small, we think everything should be on the smallest scale possible, we have this bizarre idea that doing it as cheaply as possible up front means getting the best value for money. We haven't learnt any lessons, and I don't hold out much hope for ever learning them. We are condemned to a show spiral of decline into a basket case, and I don't see that changing.
  5. Well now, let's see. 1 cubic cm of water has a mass of 1 gram, and a weight of 9.81/1000 N. If you scale that up 76 times (i.e. make the cube of water 76 times larger in all 3 dimensions), you have 76x76x76 cubic cm, which is 438,976 cubic cm. That has a mass of 438,976g, or 438.976kg, and a weight of 9.81*438.976=4380kN. So the mass has been scaled up by 438,976 times, and the weight by a lot more than that. So the same rules will apply to the material in a wagon. The volume of steel (not the volume of the wagon, the volume of the steel itself) is scaled down by 76 in all dimensions, so therefore the mass of the steel is reduced by the same factor. If our wagon was made of the same steel in 4mm scale, it would have a mass that is 76x76x76 times smaller than the real thing. So if your wagon has a mass of 10 metric tonnes empty (let's assume it's all steel), the same thing in 4mm scale should have a mass of 10000kg / 438976 = 0.0227kg = 2.27g 22.7g. (Only a thousand out, as Henry Jennings used to say!)
  6. Oh I think the staff on the frontline do their utmost to keep the job going, with professionalism and (usually) with a smile, which is no mean feat when you are up against it in front of the fare paying D@!|¥ M@!| reading public. I think probably the senior leadership also get it, and are probably just as frustrated as the rest of us at how little room to manoeuvre they have. At I said earlier, the clever bit is that its the DfT and ministers who put us where we are, but they are not getting the blame.
  7. Maybe Hitachi should be the TOC then? Give them end to end responsibility.
  8. None. I am coming round to the conclusion that Britain is a basket case, and there is no way out.
  9. The people vote for them, they get what they deserve.
  10. That is eye opening. It makes me wonder why Hitachi (and GWR) put up with a situation like that, because a contract that restrictive can't be good for either of their brand images. I can't see that it would be any skin off Hitachi's nose if GWR were able to to up water tanks at stations, It also makes me wonder why the TOCs put up with it? Why, given the fact that GWR at least appear to have virtually no control over things, would they not simply walk away, and leave the DfT to run it directly?
  11. But should that really matter? I didn't pay for my ticket, my employer paid, but that does not take away the discomfort and inconvenience of standing for 90 min. Why should you have to put up with that regardless of what you have paid? (I could have bagged a seat in the 1st class car I was stood in, but decided to let one of the older folk standing have it- in the end, someone younger than me grabbed it!)
  12. I was on one such short formed this morning, Taunton-Padd via Temple Meads. I got on (just) at TM, it was wedged, almost crush loading all the way to Paddington.
  13. This point has been made time and again-reopening a long closed railway is effectively building a new railway. The idea that just because an old railway route can be traced in Google maps, means it's a simple case of throw some track down and off you go, is for the birds.
  14. Since a lot of WCML freight runs at night I don't think it would make much difference, and reopening the GC after nearly 60 years would not be much cheaper.
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