Slow Down - You're Going too fast (140mph ECML)

[chris p bacon]

But that information won't have reached North East Herts as yet, it's in some sort of 'suck out' void of knowledge interposed between the centre of the universe and the learned colony of Cambridge. The absolute low point is called in brief 'Nasty' (as in nasty, brutish and short) which is still paleolithic. Even the ley lines divert around that location, the electric evaporates and all communication is by arm waving and grunting.

You've been to Lidl in Baldock then.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

You've been to Lidl in Baldock then.

 No closer than the Asda in Stevenage.

[edcayton]

Just to spoil the fun can I point out that HS1 and2, France and Japan are all NEW railways, designed for high line speeds. The ecml still has level crossings, sharp curves, junctions etc. And I certainly wouldn't be happy on St Evenage platforms with a train passing at 140mph.

 

Ed

[chris p bacon]

Just to spoil the fun can I point out that HS1 and2, France and Japan are all NEW railways, designed for high line speeds. The ecml still has level crossings, sharp curves, junctions etc. And I certainly wouldn't be happy on St Evenage platforms with a train passing at 140mph.

 

Ed

I doubt you'd be the first to have been sucked off Chavenage's platforms.........

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

I have not been on the Knebworth platforms for some years, but note that they now appear to have a centreline fence. Controlled access to the fast platform faces would seem an obvious development as speeds increase. Except at Welwyn North, where the average fatpassengercat is so massive as to have their own personal gravity to anchor them to the platform.

[dhjgreen]

I have not been on the Knebworth platforms for some years, but note that they now appear to have a centreline fence. Controlled access to the fast platform faces would seem an obvious development as speeds increase. Except at Welwyn North, where the average fatpassengercat is so massive as to have their own personal gravity to anchor them to the platform.

Exactly what they did at through stations in Japan the last time I was there (15 years ago).

[Zomboid]

Fencing off the fast line platforms where they're rarely used is pretty widespread. Suicide prevention, I think.

[Vistisen]

A friend of mine who used to work on engine tuning for car manufacturers and rally teams was banned after being booked at 130mph on the M45 when driving his much-doctored Metro. He said it was a pity he got stopped when he did because it was just getting warmed up and he wanted to see if he could get it up to 150mph.

 

as a youth I was once in a 2CV that had been slipstreaming a coach downhill on the motorway and we got stopped by a Policeman. we got let off with a warning, as the man said. "A 2CV breaking the motorway speedlimit, I don't want to look like a pill''k, so don't do it again boys"

[Edwin_m]

Exactly what they did at through stations in Japan the last time I was there (15 years ago).

Apparently it's a condition of exceeding 125mph that there are no passengers waiting on platforms alongside any tracks where it happens.  For somewhere like Northallerton that probably means only letting passengers onto the platform when a stopping train is approaching, and checking nobody stays behind after it has gone.

[russ p]

Just to the south of Northallerton near Longlands junction is some small sections of fencing

In the early 90s tests were done with rail staff as volunteers whereby they were tethered to these and more volunteers tethered on the station together with BRUTE trollies tethered and 91s and a short mk4 set driven past at upto 140 mph to measure the effect of passing high speed trains

[Fat Controller]

Just to the south of Northallerton near Longlands junction is some small sections of fencing

In the early 90s tests were done with rail staff as volunteers whereby they were tethered to these and more volunteers tethered on the station together with BRUTE trollies tethered and 91s and a short mk4 set driven past at upto 140 mph to measure the effect of passing high speed trains

I believe the person responsible was the then Divisional Manager at Newcastle; he later came to Eurotunnel, and suggested the experiment might be replicated there. Fortunately, wiser counsels prevailed.

[Fenman]

The "journalist" wrote:

 

"Their family are no strangers to tragedy's involving trains"
 

Any "professional" journalist whose grasp of basic punctuation is that shaky probably also struggles with concepts like "facts".

 

Paul

[PatB]

Of course it's well known to the public that engineers are staggeringly reckless, that there is no such thing in the rail industry as a risk assessment and that no punitive sanctions apply to companies found responsible for the deaths of either their staff or the traveling public.

 

And how old is this person? because, at the age of 50 in a family of relatively late breeders, I'm fairly sure that my great grandparents weren't born prior to c1870. Even if you add another 20-30 years it seems unlikely that great grandad wouuld have been "one of the first" to be killed on the railway.

 

And that comment by an alleged coach driver has to be a wind-up. Hasn't it?

[pete_mcfarlane]

And how old is this person? because, at the age of 50 in a family of relatively late breeders, I'm fairly sure that my great grandparents weren't born prior to c1870. Even if you add another 20-30 years it seems unlikely that great grandad wouuld have been "one of the first" to be killed on the railway.

At the very least, they'd have to have been killed in 1815: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1815_Philadelphia_train_accident

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Of course it's well known to the public that engineers are staggeringly reckless...

 

In all fairness, sometimes they jolly well are! Errare humanum est and all that. The fact that most do their work with great integrity and profoundly satisfactory resuts for society as a whole, is instantly erased in public perception by the rare lapses and the consequent Kablooie! events.

 

...And how old is this person? because, at the age of 50 in a family of relatively late breeders, I'm fairly sure that my great grandparents weren't born prior to c1870. Even if you add another 20-30 years it seems unlikely that great grandad wouuld have been "one of the first" to be killed on the railway.

 

And that comment by an alleged coach driver has to be a wind-up. Hasn't it?

 All highly appropriate to this particular rag, which was definitely around at the time of the putative GGF's dates, and then already had a long established track record for factual inaccuracy.

[The Stationmaster]

Of course it's well known to the public that engineers are staggeringly reckless, that there is no such thing in the rail industry as a risk assessment and that no punitive sanctions apply to companies found responsible for the deaths of either their staff or the traveling public.

 

And how old is this person? because, at the age of 50 in a family of relatively late breeders, I'm fairly sure that my great grandparents weren't born prior to c1870. Even if you add another 20-30 years it seems unlikely that great grandad wouuld have been "one of the first" to be killed on the railway.

 

And that comment by an alleged coach driver has to be a wind-up. Hasn't it?

 

All depends where you start from doesn't it.  

 

My son and daughter are both old enough to have been driving trains for some years had they been so inclined to go into that work.  One of my great-great grandfathers married in 1840 and at least one of my grandfathers is noted in the 1890 census while another great grandfather was almost certain to have been involved in the last narrowing of the gauge on the GWR in 1892 as he retired in the mid 1920s - meaning he would have been at work no later than c.1880.  None of them were of course anywhere near likely to have been  'one of the first' to have been killed on the railway as they all survived into fairly old age.  

 

But while that woman's comment is clearly stretching things too far it pays to remember that history is often a lot closer than we might think it is.

[PatB]

In all fairness, sometimes they jolly well are! Errare humanum est and all that. The fact that most do their work with great integrity and profoundly satisfactory resuts for society as a whole, is instantly erased in public perception by the rare lapses and the consequent Kablooie! events.

 

 

Well, yes, OK, sometimes, and it can be quite spectacular and tragic at times. Piper Alpha springs to mind and, more recently and more locally (to me), though less fatally, a lead contamination incident in WA, amongst, I have to confess, many others. TBH the potential to kill people by getting it wrong is a significant factor in my decision not to be an engineer any more.

 

Nonetheless, I would still find it far fetched were it seriously suggested that Network Rail and the train operating companies woke up one morning and thought "I know, let's increase line speeds by 15 mph without bothering to assess track alignment, maintenance, signalling, braking distances, traffic control etc. etc. etc.". I'm happy to accept that a great many much cleverer, or at least better informed, people than me are involved in developing modern railway operating practices.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Wasn't it Princess Alice of Athone who died in about 1980, who was believed to have been the last person living who had known officers who had served at Trafalgar and Waterloo? It seemed so improbable; but by living into extreme old age, and having met extremely elderly members of the court in her early childhood, this 'stretch' back to the formative events of C19th was just possible.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Nonetheless, I would still find it far fetched were it seriously suggested that Network Rail and the train operating companies woke up one morning and thought "I know, let's increase line speeds by 15 mph without bothering to assess track alignment, maintenance, signalling, braking distances, traffic control etc. etc. etc.". I'm happy to accept that a great many much cleverer, or at least better informed, people than me are involved in developing modern railway operating practices.

 I wish I could fully agree with that, but events tell me otherwise.

 

There's a stretch of ECML near me at Marshmoor. The name gives a clue to the ground conditions through which the line was originally built getting on 170 years ago. Search the record for accidents, and you find that when heavier traction for greater speed potential is put on the route, it falls off at Marshmoor: formations shifted, rail breakages. The corporate memory it seems is unable to retain knowledge of this weakness.

 

And the recent WCML bridge foundation washout at Lamington: turns out that the monitoring system for a great many bridges known to be at risk of this failure mode had somehow been abandoned; that's if I understood the report correctly.

[The Stationmaster]

Wasn't it Princess Alice of Athone who died in about 1980, who was believed to have been the last person living who had known officers who had served at Trafalgar and Waterloo? It seemed so improbable; but by living into extreme old age, and having met extremely elderly members of the court in her early childhood, this 'stretch' back to the formative events of C19th was just possible.

 

She was born in 1883 so it might just be possible for her to have met such folk - the last British survivor of Trafalgar who had been an officer died in 1887 according to an article in The Times.  I can't find a reliable date for the death of the last British survivor of Waterloo.

[rockershovel]

She was born in 1883 so it might just be possible for her to have met such folk - the last British survivor of Trafalgar who had been an officer died in 1887 according to an article in The Times.  I can't find a reliable date for the death of the last British survivor of Waterloo.

Best I can find for Waterloo is Morris Shea, d.1892

 

I was working at Combe Down, near Bath in 2009 when Harry Patch died, regarded as the last WW1 Tommy, and saw his funeral cortège pass by. We stopped work for the morning, because of noise and congestion. Makes you think...

[Kickstart]

Hi

 

The last American civil war widow died in 2004. In 2012 there were still 2 people receiving American civil war pensions as children of veterans

 

All the best

 

Katy

[jjb1970]

I say that the drivers should be burnt at the stake to cleanse these satanic forces making things move without needing horses, it's the devils work. Burn them!

[pete_mcfarlane]

Wikipedia has an interesting list of the last survivors of conflicts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_last_surviving_veterans_of_military_insurgencies_and_wars

 

The last survivor of the Boer war died as recently as 1993. 

[PatB]

Hi

 

The last American civil war widow died in 2004. In 2012 there were still 2 people receiving American civil war pensions as children of veterans

 

All the best

 

Katy

 

I can believe the children of veterans, as there were Gettysburg veterans still alive in the 1940s so late children from any of them wouldn't need to be spectacularly old to have survived to 2012. I'm not so sure about that widow figure though. Even assuming C19th rural America child bride status, surely any Civil War widow would need to be c150 years old by 2004.

 

Edit:  Ah, OK, presumably if a veteran married late to a young woman and subsequently died, I can see how it would work. I first thought of women made widows during the fighting itself.