Titan

Not only that, but if the above figures are somewhere near correct, the 323 is putting less horsepower through each powered axle despite having more power overall.

Have you or anyone else ever slipped to a stand in a 323?

When D9000 was built it had an experimental Xenon flashing headlamp installed and no central footstep. These must have been fitted in lieu of the footstep that the the other Deltics had as standard, otherwise there would have been no footstep at all. When the light was removed it was replaced with a smaller bespoke footstep in the light aperture, to bring the provision back in line with the other class members - and reduce the risk of someone not paying attention missing his footing. This made the extra ones redundant and they were removed at a later date.

Trains don't crash every day full stop. Even if the eventual brake power is the same, A vacuum brake takes a lot longer to apply to full service or emergency, at least an extra 10 seconds if not more depending on the length of train. To take just one example, The driver of DP2 reacted very quickly and applied the brakes fully at about 80mph or so. In 10 seconds you travel a long way at 80mph, a couple of hundred yards at least. Had the train been fitted with faster acting air brakes, of identical brake force to the vacuum, even if it could not stop it would have been traveling much more slowly than the 30mph or so it managed with vacuum brakes. This would have resulted in much less damage to DP2 and the following coaches. DP2 would have been repairable, and far fewer people would have died, possibly none. So yes, using vacuum brakes risks killing more people and doing more damage as proved by the above accident, and I am sure there are many other accidents where being able to get the brake fully on 10 seconds or more sooner would have significantly improved the outcome.

So presumably any offspring are more likely to be Ernies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61l4F3Q-uBg Didn't like them much either...

Probably in a garage being fixed. Again.

Is anyone going to enlighten me as to what the term "standard axles" actually means?

Probably just as well you did not post an image for Ford Fusion...

This statement tends to suggest you do not understand how they work. Only the law breakers get punished, everyone else gets green lights.

If it went from 100% steam to 100% diesel or electric in two years or less that would have been a sharp transition. From 1955 or even 1957 when the first diesels actually started to be delivered en mass to 1968 is a very long time indeed. A young boy who was in primary school could easily have grown up, got married and started a family in that time frame to try and put it in perspective...

You must be gutted.

I don't think the minutiae are relevant to the point being made. It is the principle that counts. You can argue till the cows come home whether the line should be drawn 0.001 to the right or 0.001 to the left...

The insulators in 1 and 2 are not the same. The 6.25kV ones are only slightly different, especially the catenary support as they were designed to be as far as possible a like for like replacement, so that there was a minimum amount of work to do. The registration support insulator changed from single disc to multiple disc as can be seen more clearly in these photos; Apologies for using a Woodhead example, but it is the same design and finding clear photographs from the GE on 1500Vdc was proving somewhat tricky... And it has to be said that the catenary insulators look so similar it is even is starting to make me wonder!

I did not say it was the same, I said it was cheap. The plastic one is probably even cheaper.

Why is scale and functional left off the list, since it is an available, cheap and well proven option, other than the BW pan perhaps?

That's not quite what happened. All the insulators had to be changed to 6.25kV standard prior to the voltage change over. Subjecting an insulator designed for 1500V to over four times its rated voltage would have had pretty dire consequences, particularly when you remember that the 6.25kV is RMS voltage, and so the actual peak voltage that the insulator would have to withstand would be even higher. What was kept the same were the electrical clearances to bridges etc, so that there was no need to raise bridges or change wire heights to cope with the higher voltages. The insulators all had to be replaced over again for the change to 25kV, which had to be done in time for the introduction of the 25kV only class 315.

Can anyone else spot the major flaw in this argument? If you are going to hire a car at the other end, then you have to add that cost to the train ticket to get a fair total. Then the only cost difference is that of fuel v cost of train ticket, in which case the car will win on almost all occasions, especially if you hire something frugal. Then of course the hire company will have to meet you at the station at the precise time you arrive, otherwise you will still have to add taxi fares to the train ticket costs until such time that the hire car can be picked up! In my case I was going to London for the evening, so hiring a car to drive in London just to save a couple of £10 taxi fares would have been silly.

I thought the 08's were built earlier than that, albeit not by many years. I guess all the older ones have been withdrawn.

Are any of the departmental/de-icing/sandite EPB's still running around? If any are still on London, Brighton and South Coast Railway underframes they must be pushing 100 years old... And I reckon some class 08's will soon be vying for the oldest locomotive in front line service ever, with class 20 and 31 not far behind. Certainly puts two fingers up to those in the sixties that thought diesels would not last...

It did occur to me that one six cylinder bank of a Deltic would probably have made a very interesting underfloor engine - It would have been 550bhp, or 733bhp for the turbocharged version. Napiers did make such an engine called the Culverin - in fact the Deltic was effectively 3 Culverins joined at the corners. If the Southern Region had used them on the Hastings units they could have been gangwayed throughout, lighter and kinder to the track as well as having more seating...

The cost of servicing is quite small compared to the cost of fuel. The price differences are such that it is often cheaper to rent a car on top of the fuel compared to rail, and you have in that case not only covered servicing/tax/insurance etc. but administration costs and profit on top of that too. On one occasion recently I rented a brand new Range Rover Sport, and that + the fuel it used was still cheaper than the two equivalent train tickets we would have had to buy, and that is not even counting the cost of the taxi we would otherwise have had to hire at the other end of the train journey either!

I suspect repainted at Nemisis Rail, Burton on Trent. Seems to be quite a selection of 'Before and After' Mk2's on most occasions that I have passed by on my commute to Birmingham. There must be quite a number they have turned out in blue and grey by now.

Starting off with the Deltic preservation society, including those in locomotives they have a total of 11 class 55 power units, and four marine units, two of which are series 1 units identical to those in the prototype other than having a marine gearbox fitted (and possibly some other ancillaries which could be swapped over), so even getting the prototype running should anyone ever contemplate it would not be impossible. Then there are the four in the locos of Martin Walker, one of which is an ex-marine unit converted to take the place of the one that threw a rod. The broken one may be a source of useful spares like liners, pistons etc. The DPS also had some 9 cylinder marine units that were dismantled for spares. At the current failure rate there should be enough spares to keep the fleet going for many decades...

I suppose the easiest way is to just bare the end of a couple of wires, connect them to a 12V supply and momentarily touch the connections to the coils.