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Rules Affecting Appearance of Heritage Line at 40 or 50 mph


Ian J.
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Infrastructure-wise I would think that you would need to eliminate ungated/foot crossings (which might mean the legal procedure to stop up rights of way or providing very expensive accessible footbridges, while level crossings would need to be either manned gates or full barriers operated by CCTV or automatic half barriers. Major roads would need to be bridged.(CJL)

Edited by dibber25
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3 hours ago, dibber25 said:

Infrastructure-wise I would think that you would need to eliminate ungated/foot crossings (which might mean the legal procedure to stop up rights of way or providing very expensive accessible footbridges, while level crossings would need to be either manned gates or full barriers operated by CCTV or automatic half barriers. Major roads would need to be bridged.(CJL)

There are no legal requirements for any of the above, but each would need to be risk assessed on its own merits. The outcomes of those assessments are what determine the solutions at each site.

 

Jim

Edited by jim.snowdon
Correcting typo.
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7 hours ago, keefer said:

The Freightliner example had the wagon next to the loco and connected to the air brake.  A through vacuum pipe connected the loco to the vacuum brakes of the coaches and there was also a through steam pipe for heating

Thanks for that … must have been thinking of the traditional mixed trains where the coaches had to be next to the loco.  

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Regarding freight, these would have to be 'modern' vehicles as they'd be going onwards onto the national network from the heritage line. I imagine that either a freight operating company's locos would be used, or at worst, one of the heritage line's diesels to get to the connection with the national network (at Sayersbridge).

 

Regarding road and foot crossings, etc, I can imagine they'd have been upgraded in someway to make them safer, presumably with barriers for the roads, and perhaps as (used to be?) at Wareham with a lit lamp for 'safe' and the light is out for 'do not cross'. In my scenario, as the changes would be gradual over a twenty+ year timescale, I don't think it would be the 'shock' that a real heritage railway would have to absorb if it were to try to do such things 'overnight'.

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11 hours ago, Ian J. said:

Regarding freight, these would have to be 'modern' vehicles as they'd be going onwards onto the national network from the heritage line. I imagine that either a freight operating company's locos would be used, or at worst, one of the heritage line's diesels to get to the connection with the national network (at Sayersbridge).

 

Regarding road and foot crossings, etc, I can imagine they'd have been upgraded in someway to make them safer, presumably with barriers for the roads, and perhaps as (used to be?) at Wareham with a lit lamp for 'safe' and the light is out for 'do not cross'. In my scenario, as the changes would be gradual over a twenty+ year timescale, I don't think it would be the 'shock' that a real heritage railway would have to absorb if it were to try to do such things 'overnight'.

The situation with level crossings and foot crossings depends on a variety of factors and the critical point is the one made above by Jim Snowdon.  

 

There are plenty of footpath crossings on NR lines which have very much higher line speeds than those you are envisaging and they are 'protected' by nothing more than a warning notice for the footpath users.   Level crossings, in terms of protected and worked level. crossings, are similar - traditional gates still survive at some where line speeds are higher than those you envisage while automation has taken place at crossings with lower line speeds than you are thinking of (e.g. the WSR has a number of automatic level crossings).   It's all a matter of what is assessed as being necessary on either safety grounds or for operational economy at each individual worked level crossing, on safety grounds at any occupation or accommodation crossing used by vehicles or herds of animals or forming part of a bridleway, and on safety grounds (officially) at footpath crossings.   So in many instances an increase in line speeds might make no visible difference at all at many crossings.

Edited by The Stationmaster
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12 hours ago, Ian J. said:

Regarding freight, these would have to be 'modern' vehicles as they'd be going onwards onto the national network from the heritage line. I imagine that either a freight operating company's locos would be used, or at worst, one of the heritage line's diesels to get to the connection with the national network (at Sayersbridge).

The nature of your line might be different but there's an example with the Ribble Railway, where bitumen tanks are brought in so far then taken on by the Ribble Railway's loco (I don't know the details). But that's a much shorter line than you're talking about.

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Thinking further about crossings, can someone give me some examples where an improvement in safety changed the crossing, and how the crossing was changed? I'm thinking of both pedestrian and road crossings, whether out in the countyside or in built up areas.

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On 24/01/2020 at 20:09, Ian J. said:

Thinking further about crossings, can someone give me some examples where an improvement in safety changed the crossing, and how the crossing was changed? I'm thinking of both pedestrian and road crossings, whether out in the countyside or in built up areas.

The most obviously noticeable are occupation and accommodation crossings - often for farmers to gain access across the railway of for people to reach their homes down a lane.  Traditionally there would have been no more than an ordinary field type gate and nothing else.  But improvements could see a better surface and approach gradients, warning signs added, and a telephone cabinet housing the 'phone to contact the nearest signalbox.  Equally - although not required where the linespeed is below 100mph - the crossing might be closed and a new  concrete roadway, 12 ft wide, provided to the nearest bridge to enable a farmer to cross there instead - we had a crossing on one of my past patches where that was done because it was badly sitrd on curved track and there had been several incidents leading to the death of animals on the crossing.  In some cases the old crossing have simply had the gates left in position but have been fenced across on the railway side and often have hedgerows growing over them on the other side - there are several like this on the GWML where the crossings were closed to allow HSTs to run at 125 mph - but no reason why t couldn't be done elsewhere with lower speeds.

 

There have been instances of crossing leading to, say, a few houses being converted to miniature red/green warning lights (for road users) along with the other improvements. 

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That's significant information, Mike, many thanks. A fair bit of my imagined line's distance is through rural areas and when I do some of the vignettes, they'll be of plain line through such rural environments where such occupation and accomodation crossings might be likely to feature. So very useful information and highly likely to make a difference to how I model the line.

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Following on this discussion, I've been thinking about trackwork. I'd like to model 60 foot bullhead, but I don't know if that was practical 30 or so years ago, let alone today. I imagine flatbottomed would be cheaper for a railway to buy, or get 'second hand'. Also, would it be realistic to have that in 60 foot lengths rather than CWR? I gather most heritage operations use 60 foot track lengths quite a lot for nostalgia reasons, as it gives that 'clickety-clack' sound and feel when running over it. How would modern units cope with it, and modern wagons?

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There are places where joined bullhead is still in use on the national network.  Probably not very many, but unlikely to be a problem for any rolling stock assuming speeds are modest.  I doubt any heritage line uses CWR - it takes quite a lot of specialist kit to lay and maintain it.  Perhaps if they let one of the track laying companies do it for them as a training exercise?  

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