phil-b259

Given how popular Sams trains website is and the sort of feedback which get posted in the comments section is I fear there is a large segment of 'don't care about prototypical nonsense' train set types out there who will hoover them up regardless. The only thing which might stop them is the high price....

Thats rubbish! Come on Hornby even you can't be as thick as to think lamps were left on between locos and their trains.... If Hornby can go to the trouble of having a plug in lamp for the smokebox door then there is no reason whey the same cannot be done for the tender...

I meant 'you' in the general forum wide sense, not the personal. Its just there are a lot of people on this forum who find him objectionable in one way or another.....

He did - BUT (1) he never went and gave either item a final score nor (2) entered into his own 'league table' Whatever else you might say about Sam his adoption of the system used by the Consumers Association / Which? for decades (only reviewing items / services they have purchased from providers the general public can buy from) does show integrity.

And also the fact that Hornbys efforts: (1) Are done to a far lower standard with much more reliance on moulded on detail (2) Are very much a LBSCR Stoudley body design (2) Have rubbish interiors (3) Are fitted with Westinghouse air brake equipment and Stroudley emergency communication system (which means no external items visible) As such I have only purchased 4 of Hornbys efforts (all LBSCR versions) but have many times that number of the Hattons offering in a multitude of liveries....

CDL does NOT ‘control’ the doors! All it does is prevent them from being unlocked - once they are unlocked then it’s down to the forces acting on them which governs how fast and with what force they open outwards. Plug or sliding doors will either retract into the train body or say very close to it and as such there is very little chance of them hitting a passenger standing on the platform as they open. Hinged doors swing out on a wide arc - plus have door furniture (latches /catches) which stick out and could cause injury. A person controlling when a swing door is opened and then the actual the rate of a swing can ensure that it is done in a safe manor - including stopping the door or deferring the opening until a passenger has moved out of the way. A door which uses gravity to swing out when released cannot do this! Finally you should take note that in places like France for decades they have had doors which require the user to manually open them - but which can be closed by power when commanded to by the train guard. This is by far a better way of doing things….

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!