Jim’s “out and about with GBRf” thread

[gismorail]

Those two tone Class 47’s look good with the light reflecting of the sides one of my favourite liveries which suited the Class 47 😀

[wombatofludham]

We're you on the RHTT yesterday which was held at Wolverhampton last night when returning to King's Norton?

[big jim]

No not me guv, we don’t do Wolverhampton on our circuit

 

im enjoying a quiet few days at the caravan before returning to it all next week again 

[Covkid]

On 15/10/2022 at 17:09, CovDriver said:

We use a system that's operated through Abelio that provide most TOC's with taxis and it's a vast improvement from what it was like. 

I can recall one journey from Coventry to Northampton and the taxi driver was almost at the end of a 16hour shift. 

He couldn't keep his eyes open so I told him to to take a break at Watford Gap services whilst I got a replacement taxi. 

 

 

Taxis have always been an issue for transporting traincrew and I totally get "Covdriver"s experience.  We used to have a job from New St to Crewe to bring the DVT set off early morning.  I remember one morning receiving a phone call from the driver saying he was at Stafford services and needed a replacement taxi to take him to Crewe after he had "sacked" the original. 

 

Earlier, just around the time I started with XC we received a call from a Saltley driver in deepest Oxon.  There was a diagrammed taxi for two drivers from Brum to Old Oak Common to work the first two trains out of Paddington. Their taxi had been stopped by the blues and twos, whereupon Old Bill frogmarched to taxi driver off to their police car and away, leaving our two drivers and the taxi sat in the services. Fair play to the SY men who jumped back in it and drove themselves to Old Oak !!!

 

Finally, in my previous job at Bescot our local taxi firm in Walsall supplied all our taxis but they admitted defeat at the completion of Ramadam. We ended up with a couple of road licence holder staff driving that company's taxis to get our crew moved. That was thirty odd years ago and those events would never happen these days !!!      

[big jim]

7 hours ago, Covkid said:

 

That was thirty odd years ago and those events would never happen these days !!!      

 

you’d be surprised!

 

ramadan is a particularly bad time for taxis in Birmingham, really struggle to get one of when you do they drive like loonies to get home in time to break their fast

 

I have known drivers take over driving the taxi themselves after the taxi guy has almost fallen asleep at the wheel, thankfully that was quite a few years back now too

[CovDriver]

9 hours ago, Covkid said:

 

Taxis have always been an issue for transporting traincrew and I totally get "Covdriver"s experience

Earlier, just around the time I started with XC we received a call from a Saltley driver in deepest Oxon.  There was a diagrammed taxi for two drivers from Brum to Old Oak Common to work the first two trains out of Paddington. Their taxi had been stopped by the blues and twos, whereupon Old Bill frogmarched to taxi driver off to their police car and away, leaving our two drivers and the taxi sat in the services. Fair play to the SY men who jumped back in it and drove themselves to Old Oak !!

I've heard this from a New St man a while back most definitely a Saltley seagull man in the seat for that job!!!

And as for drivers taking over from the taxi driver has happened up until recently when we had a job doing the last New St to Northampton service and being booked in a taxi back from Northampton to Coventry. 

[wombatofludham]

On 22/10/2022 at 11:12, big jim said:

No not me guv, we don’t do Wolverhampton on our circuit

 

im enjoying a quiet few days at the caravan before returning to it all next week again 

I just wondered as I was in the area of the station and happened to notice (well hear it, as it made a loud hissing noise before stopping) the unit stopped in P3.  I think it is the first time I've seen an MPV set and it certainly made a fantastic amount of noise as it set off although I doubt anyone living close to anywhere the units need to accelerate away from would appreciate the noise.

 

[big jim]

The unit engines and auxiliary unit for the jetters aren’t particularly noisy, so he engines sound like a sprinter!

 

 the water jets when running are, but from the cab you can barely hear them as they are very well sound insulated 

[big jim]

Here we go again, water jetting, possessions on tonight so turned back at hednesford but it seemed to be a long slow night just crawling round following late running trains 

 

kings norton, jetters getting tested 

 

Break time in new st, in the platform this time 

 

Redditch 

 

and back to a wet kings norton 

 

same tonight 

[corneliuslundie]

We could have done with you on the Cambrian line last night. The last westbound train was definitely slipping quite a bit, especially nearer Shrewsbury.

Jonathan

[big jim]

 

4 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

We could have done with you on the Cambrian line last night. The last westbound train was definitely slipping quite a bit, especially nearer Shrewsbury.

Jonathan

It was slippy last night on the cross city line between shenstone and four oaks, struggled to get above 30mph as it was slipping/spinning so much 

 

Coventry

 

New st

 

Named class 172 

 

New st again, heading back to nuneaton

 

And back to kings norton

 

bit shorter job for me tonight as marcus37 is doing the start of the job to get someone passed out so I’m meeting it later on at kings Norton and just doing Lichfield and nuneaton, a nice break in a long week of work, just found out my Saturday job to bidston is cancelled too

[phil-b259]

On 21/09/2022 at 08:02, Gareth 73 said:

Tried this business of holding trains to time once, more bloody stressful than pulling off and keep them moving regardless 🙃 

 

Just wait till you get ARS...

 

Apparently the Hitachi version cannot handle trains running early because of how the software works.

 

Mind you it also cannot deal with 'as required' or where several paths are timetabled but only one gets used...

[Gareth 73]

10 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Just wait till you get ARS...

 

Apparently the Hitachi version cannot handle trains running early because of how the software works.

 

Mind you it also cannot deal with 'as required' or where several paths are timetabled but only one gets used...

That's ok I'm sure there's a command to turn that system off so I can do my job. I'm sure lots of signalmen would be more than happy to sit back and let the system do all the work for them and then just blame the system when something is done wrong (they don't already do that where ARS is active honest cough cough).

Don't know if ARS is used abroad but if so we might get "ARS the European edition" 

[Fat Controller]

4 hours ago, Gareth 73 said:

That's ok I'm sure there's a command to turn that system off so I can do my job. I'm sure lots of signalmen would be more than happy to sit back and let the system do all the work for them and then just blame the system when something is done wrong (they don't already do that where ARS is active honest cough cough).

Don't know if ARS is used abroad but if so we might get "ARS the European edition" 

ARS(E) was discussed at a meeting my wife attended concerning the Rail Traffic Management System for Eurotunnel in Paris about 30 years ago..

4 hours ago, Gareth 73 said:

That's ok I'm sure there's a command to turn that system off so I can do my job. I'm sure lots of signalmen would be more than happy to sit back and let the system do all the work for them and then just blame the system when something is done wrong (they don't already do that where ARS is active honest cough cough).

Don't know if ARS is used abroad but if so we might get "ARS the European edition" 

 

[St. Simon]

4 hours ago, Gareth 73 said:

That's ok I'm sure there's a command to turn that system off so I can do my job. I'm sure lots of signalmen would be more than happy to sit back and let the system do all the work for them and then just blame the system when something is done wrong (they don't already do that where ARS is active honest cough cough).

Don't know if ARS is used abroad but if so we might get "ARS the European edition" 

Hi,

 

I yet to meet a signaller who users ARS and doesn’t love it.

 

I was at TVSC a month or so ago and asked a couple of signallers there whether they felt ARS (the Resonate / BR  version),was doing them out of a job, and they firmly disagreed and said that all of their colleagues loved ARS as well. They also really liked the Illuminate TMS software.

 

They liked it because it allowed them to concentrate on complex areas or dealing with failures as it took care of the simple stuff. From what I’ve seen ARS doesn’t really get it ‘wrong’, it may just act in a different way to a signaller (which doesn’t mean the same thing)

 

I have no experience or dealings with the Hitachi Software (we must be careful that there is a difference between ARS and TMS software, which I think Hitachi produces both) so can’t comment.

 

However the BR designed ARS was one of the most (if not the most) advanced system in the world. I think European / Rest of World systems are simple ARS without conflict resolution, which maybe what the Hitachi / Alstom / Seimens systems are.

 

Simon

[Steadfast]

The reasons I've been told by signallers that they won't override is because if ARS causes a delay / poor regulation it can go down as such. If they override it and something goes awry, the delay then falls on them as an 'O code' (ie the delay is blamed on that signaller) even if they can see an obvious clash will occur. 

 

We have had it regularly where a train is routed along a mainline and is booked in a loop, lets call it Timberborough, to let an HST by. Said HST is sufficiently late that it won't, or wouldnt have, caught the freight by the time they are both routed into a station / reception line, say 15 miles further west where the HST will pass the freight. Signaller would keep the freight on the main, on greens, doing 45 or 60 mph as per the spec of the train.

 

ARS puts the train into said loop, with a green at the exit signal, so the driver has to slow his freight down to the speed of the points (say 15 or 25 mph), trundle along the loop, over the exit points and then get back to his running speed for no reason.

 

Anyone who's never driven one, a freight train doesn't accelerate like a passenger train and even an empty one will take time to regain speed. This is a waste of fuel and could be seen as unneccessary extra demand on the freight driver. Additionally. the HST may well catch him up as a result, and that driver is now chasing yellows, adding extra demand and risk to the HST driver. Had the freight been left to run on the main at it's maximum speed, the HST would have had a clear run on greens until checked down for the, let's say, 50 mph junction toward the station.

 

Jo

[big jim]

Not sure if the line between crewe and shrewsbury has ARSE (I like to add equipment to the end!) since changing from absoloyre block to being controlled by Cardiff but early on it was a pain if you were a VSTP or ad hoc engineers train as every obstacle detector crossing you approached the protecting signal would stay at red until you got to, or almost to the magnet so with a heavy freight train (normally with a pair of 97s up front) you would have to come almost to a stop so you would never get any sort of progress 

 

seems to have improved now though 

[big jim]

Just a couple from the last few nights, Thursday i got on at kings Norton as another driver was having an assessment ride 

 

Different platform at new st for a change before heading to Lichfield

 

we never made it to nuneaton after the jetter unit failed 

 

then tonight I did the early part of the job back as far as kings norton where the other driver took over and I got an early finish 

 

hednesford 

 

back on it Sunday before a week of possession trains and the trafford park job 

[corneliuslundie]

There seem to have been a few problems with the equipment this year. I don't remember you reporting such incidents previously.

Jonathan

[big jim]

Ive only had 2 shifts where where I’ve had to return to the depot as a failure, the first was a shakedown run anyway, they seem pretty robust really when you consider the Windhoff is 22 years old and they pretty much sit round for most of the year getting basic static maintainance then get used in anger in quite demanding work straight away 

 

 

[big jim]

Only night of RHTT this week done, just as we set off for the stop board at rhe depot the circuit was cancelled so we headed back into the yard and shut the machine down only to have it reinstated as I was walking back to the car so turned around and fired it back up again, just about to set off and it was cancelled again but a few calls and we ended up taking it out anyway, an hour late so missing a few sites!

 

Freightliner RHTT getting ready to head off to Marylebone

 

Celeb 66 lurking 

 

66175 “rail riders” on a steel train having been banked up the lickey, it waits there while the bank engine passes by heading back to bescot 

 

 

Part of the job tonight was to clean the line between hednesford and Rugeley as it’s been closed for a week due to possessions, I was expecting it to be horrendous but it was in fact not slippy at all which really surprised me

 

first train in trent valley station for a while!

 

Back in walsall ready to head back along the chase 

 

We were supposed to go to Stafford but as I hadn’t had a break due to the late departure and a few other issues we went to bescot where I left the MPV and had a break in our messroom 

 

That was about it, should ave done redditch by again a diagram issue meant we couldn’t get there so went back to the depot via new st 

 

possession train tonight to nuneaton 

 

[CovDriver]

Looking forward to slipping around between Selly Oak and Kings Norton as according to Network Rail that's the only site not been treated. 

And I'm the first one down the Lickey bank.

I'm glad my sand hoppers are full.. 

 

Cheers 

 

Colin 

[big jim]

The diagram and Schedule showed us going to new st via selly oak but it was under possession so was never going to happen, good joined up planning as usual! 

 

 

[corneliuslundie]

I am not saying "like" for your post as it seems to reflect very badly on the management responsible for arranging diagrams etc. More like a TV farce than a well managed railway.

Jonathan

[Nova Scotian]

That is a filthy 66 - assume the cab sides and front gets cleaned regularly for identification purposes, but the sides and back don't matter?