New motive power for West Midlands Railway?

[melmerby]

Hi all

 

I spotted what could be the new means of motive power for West Midlands Railway.

I managed to get a snap of it in it's temporary livery see below:

 

 

Me? I think it's just a load of Bull!

 

Keith

 

 

[rab]

Hi all

 

I spotted what could be the new means of motive power for West Midlands Railway.

I managed to get a snap of it in it's temporary livery see below:

 

Bull.jpg

 

Me? I think it's just a load of Bull!

 

Keith

 

MethaneGas???

[eastwestdivide]

If it runs to Milton Keynes there could be trouble.

[Kris]

Hi all

 

I spotted what could be the new means of motive power for West Midlands Railway.

I managed to get a snap of it in it's temporary livery see below:

 

Bull.jpg

 

Me? I think it's just a load of Bull!

 

Keith

 

Trains powered by politicians words?

[Nearholmer]

West Midlands Railway?

 

Wasn’t that a fictional railway, invented by Rev Beal in the 1930s?

 

Has it now come to life?

[rab]

Trains powered by politicians words?

Perhaps hot air engines are making a comeback.

[009 micro modeller]

West Midlands Railway?

 

Wasn’t that a fictional railway, invented by Rev Beal in the 1930s?

 

Has it now come to life?

I believe the West Midlands franchise is an alleged railway, in the same sense that Govia/TSGN is.

[Ravenser]

West Midlands Railway?

 

Wasn’t that a fictional railway, invented by Rev Beal in the 1930s?

 

Has it now come to life?

 

In which case any new motive power has to be "bashed" out of a Steward-Reidpath diecast tank engine body....

[sem34090]

I hoped we'd see the return of 'proper' WMR Motive power, courtesy of E.B. Wilson:

[Edwin_m]

A victim of Swindon's practice of giving the names to the nameplate maker verbally? 

[Ravenser]

A victim of Swindon's practice of giving the names to the nameplate maker verbally? 

 

 

No - variant spellings of Shakespeare's name floated around for a long long time, and that's one of them. It might even be the version favoured in early 19th century Warwickshire  . The monument in Stratford church has Shakspeare, the baptismal register has Shakspere - Shakespeare appears to be the  London printing trade's usual spelling during his lifetime. Take your pick

Edited April 27, 2018 by Ravenser

[melmerby]

No - variant spellings of Shakespeare's name floated around for a long long time, and that's one of them. It might even be the version favoured in early 19th century Warwickshire  . The monument in Stratford church has Shakspeare, the baptismal register has Shakspere - Shakespeare appears to be the  London printing trade's usual spelling during his lifetime. Take your pick

Some years ago we did a ancestry search for my wife's side of the family (who were Bloomfields) and found various spellings once you get back into the 19th Century.

Don't forget much of the population was illiterate, (especially in rural areas) and the names were as recorded by the census officer using their personally preferred spelling.

We found as well as Bloomfield; Blomfield, Blumfield, Blumfeld etc. And no, it is not a German name!

 

Keith

[BernardTPM]

West Midlands Railway?

 

Wasn’t that a fictional railway, invented by Rev Beal in the 1930s?

 

Has it now come to life?

 

I believe the West Midlands franchise is an alleged railway, in the same sense that Govia/TSGN is.

 

I thought this post was about the PROPER one by Beal! Damn, just a load of old bull instead.

[phil-b259]

I believe the West Midlands franchise is an alleged railway, in the same sense that Govia/TSGN is.

The 'Experts' in Whitehall have been busy and have some increadbly complex plan to split up the old London Midland franchise.

 

Birmingham local services get devolved to a new regional quango run by the elected Mayor (in other words doing what was done in London - will that include decimating its transport grant in future years just as is happening to TfL I wonder) while there was talk of incoperating the rest into the next West coast franchise given they sort of compliment each other supposedly.

 

All makes perfect sense no doubt to the finance guys (plus marketing / rebranding consultants) in Whitehall - and their masters hungry for 'good news' story's to show how wonderfully dinamic and prepared to invest they are when it comes to railway matters.......

[Nearholmer]

Very interesting.

 

I happen to think that the TfL model of regional/local accountability is a very good one, and common to big cities across the world, but it works best with directly managed, vertically integrated railway (The Underground, DLR) run by an experienced management and staff. How many of the benefits can be realised in the WM, we’ll Have to wait and see.

 

Lack of tax funding for operation never helps, most cities across the world tax-fund public transport operations to a high %, but public transport isn’t the only thing being squeezed like a lemon in the UK ........ the result of democratically electing an austere regime I guess (although, thinking about it, we didn’t, did we? Easy to forget that we have a propped-up minority administration).

Edited April 28, 2018 by Nearholmer

[jjb1970]

I think that the railways share something in common with a few other things in that to me it is unclear whether they are underfunded or whether they are just not using the money which is available to good effect. There may well be underfunding but there also seems to be an awful lot of money being spent in silly ways or just downright wasted. Largely because of DafT from what I can see. As a tax payer and rail user I don't mind paying tax to fund a good railway but I do object to throwing money at it if that money won't be well spent. I actually think a fully self funded and accountable local arrangement is good because if things get silly people will have a much clearer stake in things and those responsible will be less anonymous.

[Nearholmer]

The last point is why I like the TfL model, and it happens be the Paris, Berlin, New York, Sydney etc etc model too.

 

And, it works, because the chain of accountability is visible and short. It’s much nicer to work in too, because ones efforts are less likely to disappear into a sort of central grey porridge.

[jjb1970]

I think it is true for most things that a tight feedback loop is beneficial in terms of decision making and accountability. One of the problems we have with our railways is that if you are not happy about it who do you complain to? The TOC will answer criticism for immediate customer service/delivery issues but most of the really important stuff that affects services now is decided by DafT so the TOC can (quite correctly) tell you that many issues are nothing to do with them. My experience of complaining to DafT with respect to their decision making is an exercise in futility and you just get a brush off, to the point I received a letter with the department header, my details, "Dear Sir" and then nothing, it was a blank page. So you try your MP, noting that MP's will only answer questions from their constituents and won't get involved in a case if you've been screwed by a TOC at the other end of the country, this holds true for ministers. And if they do pick up your complaint (and my experience is they generally are very good at helping with local issues if they can) then they'll face the same wall of impenetrability from DafT as the rest of us and few of them really know much about detailed specific issues. So we're paying billions to subsidise a rail system which is neither nationalised or privatised. We've ended up with perhaps the worst possible outcome in some ways in that it has created a system in which there is no clear accountability. Even if I look at Network Rail, I didn't see Mark Carne particularly held to account for the complete Horlicks that is the GWML electrification scheme and he is leaving on his own terms and doing nicely out of it all.

[Nearholmer]

I agree that the UK has been invented a particularly ineffective and disfunctional model for its national railways (I think NI and Scotland are slightly less bad than the rest), but no large country has really found a perfect model for governing National ‘utilities’.

 

The problem with s that, in a large country, things like healthcare, education, railways, power supply etc are very large, much larger in a given area than most private businesses, and are the subject of so many competing and contradictory wants and wishes. Centralisation usually introduces a ‘dead hand’ or ‘grey porridge’, while devolution to local control soon results in a ‘postcode lottery’ of patchy provision.

 

The easy and stupid solution is to privatise the problem out of the public realm, but it soon forces its way back into the public realm when it doesn’t deliver, and people get hacked off.

 

If anyone really knows how to do ‘big public provision’ effectively, I wish they’d share the secret!

[jjb1970]

Crikey, in another thread it appears that there may be a good example of the problem of how much of the financial issues faced by some organisations is actually down to being underfunded and how much down to their own miuse of the money they receive. It appears the NRM may be re-branding, they've just lost a heritage funding bid and in recent years there've been a lot of stories about the age of austerity and the NRM yet now it appears they may have had enough cash to throw at a re-branding exercise. Call me heartless or a rampant tory, but if an organisation has enough money to throw at re-branding then they're not under funded.

[jjb1970]

I think the concept of British Rail as a publicly owned arms length entity with its own board and which self managed worked quite well as it kept politicians and civil servants out of operational matters for the most part. I think a genuinely private railway could work. What we have is a nationalised railway without the buffer of a BR board which outsources service delivery to companies who bid for concessions (I really don't see that the current "franchises" are franchises) and with all important decision making at DafT and that has turned into a shambles. I think the TOCs for the most part do a good job, the ROSCOs have done OK providing rolling stock and at a technical level I think NR do a good job of looking after the network, it all goes down the plug when DafT start making micro-managing things (how many Southern passengers blame DafT for the utter shambles they've had to endure?) and thinking they know than the rail industry about how to specify trains, manage rolling stock procurement, manage TOCs etc.

[melmerby]

 companies who bid for concessions (I really don't see that the current "franchises" are franchises)

Franchises are usually people running a service/shop/programme whatever but using a well known brand and it's products on a commission basis. (e.g. many Costa coffee outlets)

A concession is when you operate your business using your product renting a pitch in somebody else's space. (beauty product counters in department stores spring too mind)

Your analogy for TOCs using the nationalised railway infrastructure definitely fits the second category.

 

Keith

[Nearholmer]

Just struck me as I read that that the model isn’t far removed in basic principles from the process of ‘selling monopolies’, which was a sort of strange government fund-raising method until the C19th. It involved bidding to buy a monopoly right to provide something, for a given period, which is what the TOCs are doing. Naturally, it became hugely corrupt, and I’m not suggesting that is the case, just observing that ideas come around in different clothes, with different names.

[melmerby]

Just struck me as I read that that the model isn’t far removed in basic principles from the process of ‘selling monopolies’, which was a sort of strange government fund-raising method until the C19th. It involved bidding to buy a monopoly right to provide something, for a given period, which is what the TOCs are doing. Naturally, it became hugely corrupt, and I’m not suggesting that is the case, just observing that ideas come around in different clothes, with different names.

I would argue that although the TOCs have sole rights over their "patch" the actual patches overlap in many cases allowing some limited competition.

 

e.g. from Birmingham to London there are 3 operators:

 

London North Western, stopping trains, New Street to Euston via Northampton. (Slowest but cheapest)*

* changing at Rugby to a faster Trent Valley service reduces the time somewhat

 

Virgin WC, limited stop trains, New Street to Euston (Fastest but dearest)

 

Chiltern, various options, Snow Hill to Marylebone (Between the two other operators, both in cost and speed)

 

 

Of course XC overlaps parts of some of the services and with many other TOCs.

 

I wouldn't say the system is anyway perfect at all but there is some competition in some areas

 

It would be nice if we had a proper integrated transport policy where bus, train & tram complement each other rather than run in competition as with the UK model

Even bus companies aren't allowed to co-operate with each other. e.g. where I live there are two bus companies that run part of the same route.

Both are hourly but run two minutes apart. So two buses in 2 minutes then nothing for 58 minutes.Totally bonkers.

 

Keith

Edited April 28, 2018 by melmerby

[Edwin_m]

Franchises are usually people running a service/shop/programme whatever but using a well known brand and it's products on a commission basis. (e.g. many Costa coffee outlets)

A concession is when you operate your business using your product renting a pitch in somebody else's space. (beauty product counters in department stores spring too mind)

Your analogy for TOCs using the nationalised railway infrastructure definitely fits the second category.

 

Keith

I suspect "franchise" is used because "concession" suggests something was "conceded" - which is probably close to the truth but not the message the politicians wanted to put out in the 1990s.