phil-b259

Simply swapping one type of manually operated mechanical locking mechanism to another would, in railway terms probably considered in much the same way that swapping one type of point machine to another is dealt with - I.e. providing no changes are made to the controls then it can be done as a maintenance activity by maintenance staff and tested using maintenance testing procedures. By contrast re-inventing the whole door system and simply letting a door swing open under gravity and in an uncontrolled manor* would not be considered as replacing a manual mechanical lock with an ‘operationally equivalent’ system due to all the new elements which were not present on the old system and as such mean far more approvals / testing would be needed. Such a system would also probably cost far more than simply making a drag batch of manually operated mechanical locks…. * Given the dangers of an uncontrolled** hinged door hitting passengers on the platform as it opens and potentially causing injuries I doubt it’s a solution which would pass a proper risk assessment ** if it has to be moved by a person then that person can be said to have the ability to control and stop the opening process if needed.

Any engineering firm capable of making them! Door locks are not jet engines and as such it’s perfectly possible to get a new batch made (particularly if you make use of ‘off the shelf’ solutions rather than seek exact replicas of BR locks)

Vaculm braking is not unacceptable on safety grounds - it still fulfills all the legislative requirements as far as vehicles operating on the national rail network go. The ONLY reason Network Rail don’t like it is hardly anyone uses it - so if a vacuum braked train needs rescuing / dragging off the main line due to a failure then it’s going to take ages to sort out thus increasing the compensation payments which have to be paid out to other operators due to the infrastructure being unavailable (If the failed train is a charter then it’s even more expensive for Network Rail as the amount of charter operators pay is capped - what Network Rail have to pay out to everyone else is not! By contrast if the train is air braked then it will be say to source an air braked loco from a Freight company to get the failed train out of the way.

If that were a realistic proposition the LSL, Belmont, Hastings diesels etc wouldn’t have / are spending lots of money on ‘Mk1’ (the law basically considers anything with a separate bodyshell and underframe to be a ‘Mk1’ regardless of whether it is actually a true Mk1 coach. Fitting of interior door handles and restring droplight openings is also hardly difficult - huge numbers of BR Mk1 based EMUs had just such a setup as a response to restricted clearances on some routes (e.g. East Grinstead line)

In the absence of more drivers or more rolling stock - both of which require authorisation from the DfT in Whitehall (who are still peddling the notion that trains are running round empty) any changes that Southern do is always going to be a robbing Peter to pay Paul sort of thing.

Plenty of coaches have operated with doors locked out of use to passengers - and at least one type of Mk1 (the RU) didn’t have any passenger doors at all! All the ORR will require is that before locking all the doors out of use is that someone has risk assessments the implications for emergency evacuations - but this should NOT be confused with a requirement that all doors must be available in an emergency! As I said earlier if the RMB is sandwiched between two CDL fitted carriages with end doors then the risks of locking the RMB doors out of use will be minimal and as such there will be no issues as far as the ORR are concerned with it carrying passengers.

No - that would require an official exemption to be issued by the ORR for the RMB Please remember the use of Stewards was a mitigating measure for the absence of a CDL system.

The line is not open to traffic yet and will be under an engineers possession. In such possessions points may be wound on manual and left in configurations which would not be be possible were they being moved by am interlocking for the purpose of setting routes and changing signals to proceed.

It all depends on the risks... If that RMB is sandwiched between two CDL fitted vehicles with end doors then locking out all the doors on the RMB wouldn't have present a huge risk. After all the Mk1 RU vehicle didn't have any passenger doors from the beginning - people had to board using the doors on adjacent coaches... And if the RMB doors are all secured out of use to passengers then, legally speaking the requirement to fit CDL to it or get an exemption for it from the ORR also disappears!

If you mean securing all* doors with a railway staff issue carriage key then this would not be permissible because passengers would have no way of deactivating the locks in an emergency. CDL (and more modern systems) always have an emergency override facility inside and outside the carriage which allows the locking system to be disabled and the door opened. *Its perfectly acceptable to lock some doors out of use at the planning stage (charter operators usually lock the middle doors on Mk1 stock out of use) - but I expect the exact number would depend on the outcome of a risk assessment (which would consider whether the locked door at the end of one carriage was right next door to a unlocked door in the next carriage for example.

The 4F came after the 3F and if yours has tender pick ups (I'm not able to check my 3F & 4F locos right now) then they would have been fitted to all 4F models. Bachmann rarely seem to go back and tweak their locos once designed - some other manufacturers are noticeably better in that regard. Adding tender pick ups where the decoder is already in the tender wouldn't be a significantly difficult or expensive exercise and its somewhat stage Bachmann don't do this given the high prices they charge for re-runs.

It depends on the era the loco was designed... There was a period when despite Bachmann putting the decoder socket in the tender they neglected to fit power pickups to the tender and the 3F may have originated during this time. In recent years all newly tooled Bachman tender locos have included tender pick ups.

I'm not surprised, the Telegraphs readership are generally very much right wing 'state actions = bad' 'private business = 'excellent' mentality with an added does of selfish self entitlement which comes from generally being well off. Its not nicknamed the 'Torygraph' for nothing....

Regardless of its size or mass, UK laws require ALL motor vehicles to be fitted with seatbelts which MUST BE USED by the occupants while the vehicle is in motion. The only exceptions are for historic vehicles which did not come with seatbelts (or the provision for them when built), PSV vehicles (busses) and obviously motorcycles

Even if Hornby do include what amounts to a 'blanking plate' with a lamp iron on it, because it has to be robust and easy enough to remove it will not be a tight and close fit with the surrounding surfaces. A loco with obvious squares which stand out more than the rivet details etc round each lamp bracket will look naff however much you try and ignore it.

Firstly if the lamps are removable then they will have to be physically oversize so that your average Hornby purchaser can actually swap them round. It also follows that if the lamps are oversize using a tiny LED will only accentuate that look by virtue of the smaller lens Secondly its the likes of Sam who are precisely the people who will be wowed by the lamps so as pricy as it is I wouldn't rule out it getting a review as Sam does make a big thing of asking his supporters what they want him to tackle...

Yup - but again not is all as it seems. (1) The problem was with national grid feeders / equipment and not railway supplies (2) The repeated outages affected the Domestic supply to Arundel signal box (which controls not just Arundel but also the coastway route between Angmering and Ford) What caused most of the disruption was the Telephone concentrator failing (it has a battery back up but the prolonged outage drained it) with the signaller having to talk past 20 signals as all the level crossing phones were not working. There was also an issue where emergency lighting also started failing as its battery back ups went flat making it unsafe for the signaller to remain inside and forcing the closure of the box. There were also issues with power supplies at Petersfield and Havant…..

The ‘rebuilding’ was limited to the new interior where NSE wanted 2+1 seating in first class as opposed to the 2+2 RR had specified plus NSE wanted a slightly enhanced catering trolley provision and CET toilets fitted. NSE also wanted th3 couplers tweaked as outlined above. From a mechanical / structural perspective there were no differences to the 158 fleet. Yes the engines were a bit more powerful on the 159s as opposed to the 158s but that was something specified by RR before the idea of diverting the fleet to NSE was thought of. The changes couldn’t be made at the build stage (as opposed to things like the exterior paint finish which was altered from RR to NSE) due to the way the contract was worded so after BR took delivery of the units (minus the first class seating IIRC) which were immediately sent on to someone else to have the NSE alterations done. There was a nice article about the class which gave a bit of background as to alternative options to modernise the West Of England route in a 1992 edition of the Railway Magazine IIRC.

Neither of which could be said to be inspiring - the former being a grubby white colour (particularly where the carriage washers seem to be useless at removing grime) and the latter being a dark depressing green….

I liked that ‘multicoloured monstrosity’ as you put it - commuting itself is a soul destroying affair and a splash of colour on a dreary day helps lift the mood. I also liked the strategy of different liveries for long distance units - kind of marked SWT out as different from the other 3rd rail TOCs which come over as just boring commuter networks.

Yes - but to a certain extent* this is justified because of the nature of the charter train business - which aside from the Jacobite are generally ‘one offs’ scattered throughout the year between a huge variety of places scattered all over the UK. * Note the emphasis on the word ‘certain’ - that doesn’t mean zero hours contracts are a good thing as a whole and the way the Government has let them be abused by their private sector / outsourcing mates to increase shareholder payouts while low paid workers themselves suffer is disgraceful.

WRONG! Loco drive didn’t appear in ANY of Hornbys models until production was transferred to China in the 2000s! Once production had been transferred to China Hornby started the process of re-tooling popular items in their range and the 8F was one of the early products which benefited from this with both the loco and tender being new tooling both with respect to the innards and the bodies themselves. Come 2010ish Some of the 1980s era tender drive products got a chassis makeover to eliminate the tender drive mechanism and appeared in the ‘RailRoad’ range - but I’m not sure if the 8F was one of the models so treated.

I was speaking with respect to new safety initiatives. The railway is full of things which the safety regulators tolerate because it is impractical to replace them wholesale - 3rd rail, tunnels without emergency access shafts, stations on curves / gradients, level crossings etc. Fitting central door locking is by contrast very much a practical proposition - stop pretending it isn’t.. Seatbelts very much fall into that ‘it’s impractical’ category as regards the existing rail network - not least because voters will not tolerate being told they must pre-book / can only board trains if the operator can guarantee there is a seat for them to use. However If trains were invented these days then, as with planes I suspect that standees would not be permitted - and as such they might be applicable to new build systems….. For example, given the significantly higher speed of HS2 trains. providing that whilst on HS2 infrastructure all passengers are required to have a guaranteed seat reservation (and standees get chucked off before the trains reach HS2 infrastructure) then seatbelts could well be seen as a suitable safety measure.

The ‘super detailed’ model was introduced with separately fitted details like lamp irons and smokebox door handles from the very beginning plus finely made valve gear / connecting rods. Although It did retain the older wiper strips and peg type coupling from the 1980s, all other elements including the chassis and body shells (including the tender) were completely new tooling. It share NOTHING in tooling terms with the previous 1980s era tender drive model (which had provision for the crude ‘firebox glow’ feature) that preceded it lacked the aforementioned separately fitted detail plus with fitted heavy chunky motion components.

I think these are exactly the sort of problems which have been highlighted when seatbelts have been looked at in the past. As I see it seatbelts on trains require (1) A total ban on standing passengers (2) All seats to be facing the same direction (so that if someone isn’t wearing a belt when the train decelerates they impact the seat in front and not the passenger sitting opposite). (3) Alterations to ticket T&Cs which put an onus on passengers to use said seatbelts when seated. The top two being features of long distance coaches and planes…..