Ron Ron Ron

Yes, but the polarity switches back and forth at a very fast rate. The phase is keeping that switching in sync at the same timing.

Last weekend at Burton Green... (Note: no work taking place on a weekend) .

Indeed. See the link I posted further up this page, regarding the difficulties encountered with boring the Northolt West tunnels. https://www.geplus.co.uk/news/hs2-tbm-quartet-tackles-differing-geology-on-twin-bore-tunnel-under-london-22-04-2024/ .

That's why you should treat any price, or cost comparisons with the past, based purely on the the prevailing rates of inflation, with total suspicion . For example the cost of a model train, a TV or a pair of shoes between say 1990 and 2024. There are so many changing variables involved, relative cost of materials, variation in labour rates in different economies over time, different manufacturing technologies, different levels of overheads, relative costs of transportation and loads of other things. Simply saying that inflation over that time period has been X % , has very little bearing on how or why prices have increased over the same period. Those inflation calculators you can use, are interesting and amusing, but are far too crude to present a full picture. .

They would not be in phase if each individual rail in the adjacent Power District (or sub-district), on the other side of the insulated rail joiner, has been wired in the reverse. i.e. not the same feed wire (left -right, inner-outer, red-black or whatever colour) The track power is actually a DCC signal, which reverses rapidly in phase. So each Power District must be in sync with each other, because otherwise, a loco bridging the gap where the two sections of rail are out of phase would cause a short. As an analogy, think of + & - with DC. It would be the equivalent of a loco's wheels bridging + & - as it crosses the gap between each isolated section of rail. Adding additional Boosters will be OK (if connected properly) because they should work in sync....provide the actual wiring to each rail is the right way round. Take the same care with connecting up Circuit Breakers. . .

Each rail needs insulation from the adjacent rail in the next district, but all rails are powered and it doesn't matter if a loco bridges the gap, provided all power districts are in phase with each other. The first use of Power Districts, was to provide adequate power to different parts of large layouts, using separate Boosters to power each district. In fact, the original (unofficial) definition of as "Power District", was a section of the layout, fed by it's own Booster. With the increased use of Circuit Breakers, that definition has been watered down to also include sections protected by CB's. Those were previously described as "Sub-Districts"; i.e. sub-divisions within a single Power District. Pedant hat on. Sorry Iain, I can't help it !!! 🙄 A Command Station doesn't provide track power. It's the built-in Booster that does that. For example, the Roco Z21 box, or the Lenz LZV200 etc, etc, contain both a Command Station and a Booster (Power Station in original Lenz and NMRA terms). I'll take a lie down now......... .

Mike is absolutely right about the damage the DafT and Treasury did to the franchising system, through excessive meddling and pure greed.. Franchising would have worked very well, without putting the bidding TOC's in a position where they had to bid way over the odds in order to win the contracts. Also more fool the TOC's who ended up committing themselves to those unaffordable premium payments. Those government departments created the environment for failure and the eventual collapse of the franchise system. .

Sorry Phil, you wasted a lot of virtual ink in that post. It's simply not what happens. Those lease deal are not for 5-10 years, in other words, the length of the franchise term. There's no way that any of the trains would be deliverable on that basis. The lease deals are underwritten by rollover terms that ensure that when the TOC is no longer the incumbent (end of franchise and new operator, takeover by OLR, Insolvency etc,), the trains (and the lease) will be passed on to the new operator. This is where the DafT come in, because they have to underwrite the contract. Without that, the ROSCO and the people providing the money, will not do a deal. End of !! It's too high an exposure and risk. Also, in your scenario (1) above, if the DafT leased the trains directly, you've introduced a new level of cost and risk. They are already effectively doing that anyway, by taking out a long term lease indirectly . .

Precisely. All this talk about profits being syphoned off doesn't reflect the reality. Of course there's nothing behind it. We better get used to it, there's a general Election coming. If only there was a way of turning all the B/S into money..... 🤣 .

That's not what happens. No public money is used to purchase rolling stock. The DafT has a sticky hand in approving TOC train orders...in fact sometimes making it a condition of a franchise or management contract let. TOC X places an order for new trains with manufacturer Y. But nobody will supply trains to a a short term tenant without some cast iron guarantee, or the cash up front. The usual type of arrangement is that a ROSCO will be used to take ownership and a financing package (how the trains are paid for) will be negotiated between the manufacturer, the ROSCO and importantly, a lender (the source of the capital). Hence, the manufacturer gets paid for making and supplying the trains. The ROSCO effectively takes a mortgage out on the trains and pays this back from the income it receives from leasing the trains to the TOC. The manufacturer gets paid. The ROSCO has a viable business model, where it makes a profit from lease income, minus finance costs, but takes on all the risk. The TOC gets trains. The government (Treasury, DafT etc) don't have to find the money to buy or lease trains directly. plus it's all off the PSBR spreadsheet. An example when government (DafT) gets more intimately involved than usual in a train order. The Intercity Express Programme (IEP), which resulted in a large order for the initial IET fleets supplied to GWR and LNER. The DafT spend tens of millions in the lengthy and costly procurement process... ...however, the actual supply of the trains comes from Agility Trains, a ROSCO owned by Hitachi and AXA UK (originally the partner was John Laing). The trains were paid for (and are ultimately owned) by an international banking consortium, including huge Japanese merchant banks, all managed by HSBC. They in turn have a 27.5 year guarantee that the TOC's or their successor will lease the trains, securing and guaranteeing the debt. You can easily see that going back to the old way of buying trains (before BR starting leasing themselves), or the DafT /GBR or whoever taking over the ROSCO role, could lead to expensive and sometimes wasteful procurement exercises, no doubt with a lot of costly chopping and changing thrown in. The chances of savings are very slim to highly unlikely. The government would have to go and borrow the money itself or enter into a long term costly PFI (the never never...thank you Gordon Brown !! ), all which will add to the burgeoning government debt. I contend there are far more urgent and important things for HMG to spend their pocket money on. .

Labour's announcement is just a different flavour of the same thing. The Tory idea is to find a new role for private sector involvement, in providing services to or on behalf of GBR, with the hope of installing commercial incentives and retaining access to external channels of capital. Not quite the management contract arrangement, but something similar. The dithering is because (as far as we know) nobody (government, DafT, the Treasury, the TOC's) has come up with a concrete plan. From the scant detail put forward by Labour, it's sounds like they would like GBR to provide the TOC service, but still outsource in some areas. They appear to be putting a lot of emphasis on making big savings and efficiencies, by removing duplication and complicated interfaces. If you really want to achieve those sort of savings it would inevitably lead to lots of job losses. .

For one, we don't live in a totalitarian communist state. Two; why would any government body need too get involved in running commercial transport services (outside of wartime or national emergency). Do you expect them to control delivery of your groceries or your toy train purchases? A return to British Road Services? No thank you. We may think that public operated passenger bus services are the best way to provide local public transport, but it doesn't follow that other road traffic, such as trucks and taxis, or whatever, have to be publicly operated. Rail freight is a purely commercial business and we no longer depend on it for vital national supply lines, such as supplying coal. The sector is doing reasonable well, considering the commercial ups and downs over the last dozen or more years and the loss of several major customers (coal, oil and steel etc,). Labour recognise this, hence leaving it well alone, despite factions within the party wanting to nationalise all sorts of things or purely ideological reasons. Anyway, it's not on the table from either so called "main party", so not worth considering. . .

There was an issue back in the past, when the early ROSCO's took over the former BR stock, but most of that has gone. The old BR stock was largely written down, but the leasing costs didn't reflect that. However, the majority of passenger rail stock running today, has been provided by private sector finance over the last (now more than) quarter of a century. The ROSCO's may own the rail stock, but they owe the purchase costs to a large number of banking and finance consortia. Without those investors, there couldn't have been the mass re-equipment of passenger stock we've witnessed, over the 28 years post BR. To "nationalise" the ROSCO's would mean having to purchase all the rolling stock, which belongs to them and having to find a huge amount of money to pay back the lenders. There's no way the treasury would allow that. The sums involved would require serious major cuts elsewhere in public spending. As for the Freight operating companies (FOC's), where is the need too nationalise them? There is none whatsoever. Also you can kiss goodbye to any notion of political policies to encourage more freight onto rail. Nationalised rail freight would be a monopoly and therefore any actions that would penalise competing modes (basically road), would be anti-competitive, illegal and open to challenge. Attempting to nationalise rail freight would be an ideological fools errand, which is why it's been left out of both Labour and Conservative proposals. .

First completed sections of HS2’s Curzon Street Station viaduct, revealed. .

Another infrastructure tunnel at Old Oak Common has been completed. This is a 120 metre long, small bore tunnel under the Grand Union canal, designed to carry electrical power services to the eastern end of the OOC station box,. Initially this tunnel will carry the power supply for the 2 TBM's, ordered for the construction of the Euston tunnels. Once tunnelling to Euston is completed, this tunnel will then provide the power supply for the Euston tunnels from OOC to Euston. https://barhale.co.uk/news/uk-power-networks-and-barhale-build-tunnel-to-power-hs2-construction-to-euston/ .