rodent279

I was told, by someone intimately involved, that the southern WCML electrification project in the 1960s was instructed to space ohl gantries upto the maximum (240ft? someone keep me honest) wherever possible. I believe the stretch from Tring cutting to Ledburn had a reputation for coming down in high winds for this reason. So it's nothing new.

Birds eye view of the ongoing work at Euston Station, taken from the top of BT Tower recently.

That's what's called keeping the job going!

What if, just suppose, the LNER had gone with Robinson as CME, and he persevered fire a few years, then retired in say 1926-7? Is it beyond the realms of possibility that Stanier could have made the move from Swindon a few years earlier, and gone to Doncaster?

I thought ECML electrification was delivered on time and within budget?

Others will no doubt correct me, but I think the prototype set was nowhere as intensively used as the production sets, and that is why the cooling issues arose.

Pardon me for being pedantic/slow on the uptake/dim/all of the above, but so what then is nationalisation, if it is not public ownership of a company? How is it different?

A slight divergence (but we are so far OT that it doesn't matter really!). The Midland build the S&C in the 1870's, having been told they had to by the Board of Trade (having come to an agreement with the LNW over use of the Ingleton-Tebay line, the MR petioned the BoT to have the powers to build the S&C revoked-at least, that's my understanding). So the S&C was built, at huge cost, but this does not seem to have affected the MR's financial position. We all know the GC London extension was money down the drain-was the S&C any more of a moneyspinner for the Midland?

Agreed. But this is Britain, sanity has had a different definition to the usual definition for some years now. I'm not holding my breath. See my previous sentence.

Reviving an old thread, and wandering slightly OT, the Underground system was not included in the grouping. I've read elsewhere that in 1933 they were "taken into public ownership, rather than full nationalisation". What is the difference between public ownership and nationalisation?

Once the land has been sold off, it will be uber expensive to reacquire, if it hasn't been developed already. I think phase 2 is dead and buried, deliberately so.

So if I understand correctly, the 86 (allegedly) overran a set of points that were set against it, yet (allegedly) didn't SPAD. How is that possible? Surely the signal is there to prevent unauthorised movement over those points?

Good job it wasn't Tangmere that overran the points, or people may start boycotting it!

Just catching up with this. Good grief, what an absolute shambles of a farce of a cluster £@#¥ of a country we live in.

Good point well made! My apologies to WAS 😀

It seems to me that there is something of a "sweetspot" for locomotive engineers, that lies between being a small c conservative and being a radical innovator. The most successful combine both, without letting one side run away uncontrolled. Collet, as referred to above, was a production engineer. He knew how to take what was, manufacture it better and make incremental improvements. He wasn't really an innovator, an explorer who tried to explore different ways of doing things. Stanier and Gresley were capable of being innovators without being so leftfield that what they did required extensive refining. Bullied was perhaps too much of an innovator, as far on the radical side of the sweetspot as Collet was on the (small c) conservative side. That said, not everything WAS and HNG did was "normal" and went smoothly, witness LNER 10000, LMS 6399, Jubilees that were disappointing steamers at first etc. And Collet of course was to pave the way for the BR dmu fleet with the GWR diesel railcars (though arguably they were as much a product of AEC as Swindon). I'm aware that I'm overlooking the much underrated Richard Maunsell here. I'd class him in with Stanier and Gresley, though not sure if quite at the same level. His S15 and H15 mixed traffic types were quite the equivalent of anything north or west of the Thames, the Schools was in a class of it's own, and once Bulleid had sorted the draughting on the Nelson's, they were transformed.

Oh I dunno, I'm sure our Indian friends could teach us a thing or two, especially when it comes to handling large numbers of people, and selling tickets....maybe the pupil has become the master!

I doubt Lord Stamp would have stood for that! He was pretty shrewd, had Bulleid got the job he would have been kept on a tight leash.

Pretty much mk2e/f outline class 312's with a more up to date control system.

Possibly internal layout alterations associated with class 57 conversion make fitting in the original position either impossible or unwelcome for maintenance staff?

Probably not, and probably yes, but there was a huge surplus of Army lorries post WW1, and a large number of Army personnel who had learnt to drive, so the driver was there, if you'll excuse the pun. And a Beeching Mk1 need not have just been about closures, it could also have meant modernisation & improvement of inefficient outdated working practices. Some of that happened under the B4, but was enough done? Was there enough impetus to do more? Did the common carrier requirement stifle attempts at modernisation? I guess another way of putting it would be was Beeching (and the 1955 Modernisation Plan) 30-odd years too late?

Didn't one of the Cornwall railways survive as a legal entity until Nationalisation, although leased/fully owned by the GW?

So, if the Grouping in 1921 was a means of ensuring smaller less financially sound railways did not go bust, was the Grouping a missed opportunity? Did the railways really need a kind of Beeching MK1 in 1921?

Did the LMS approach anyone else other than Stanier?

In that respect, the 23 miles from Oxford to Banbury might not be as expensive as you think. Maybe if it was ever joined up to the wires in Brum or via Leamington to Cov, the extra traffic would justify an extra feeder station, but possibly Oxford- Banbury could be done as a low cost extension, a bit like Cambridge -Kings Lynn.