Titan

They seem to have lost their cherries?

And I suppose that the people who want to do something stupid, but not really want to do something stupid don't count? I suspect the majority of idiots might fall in to the former category.

I think the obsolete electronics is a red herring. For a fleet like that you would just get emulators made that would just plug in to the same slots, do the same job, only using modern available components which would probably take up 1/4 of the room and cost 1/10 of the price of the original components allowing for inflation. I am pretty sure that there are parallels in the classic car world too, many 1980's cars with fuel injection etc. are becoming collectible, and you can get plug in replacement ECU's which look the same on the outside, but have modern electronics inside.

That's the one, saw it in the early/mid nineties towards the end of its life IIRC.

Dunno, but it is surprising what you can see sometimes. I once found myself following an old mini metro many years ago with the registration TRY 56X (Try sex!) The number plate was appropriate for the age of the car and it was your standard rusty version driven by an old bloke in a cloth cap. We just did not know what to make of it!

All collisions happen because something or someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet for some reason in this instance you are implying that therefore someone thinks it ok to kill someone. Why?

Where did you get that from? There is not even the slightest hint of that opinion in the statement you quoted, it even specifically states it was down to the car, I think the more serious question is why you are trying to put your words in to someone else's mouth and distort their statement for your own purposes?

If it is not yet live it will need to be earthed at regular intervals, probably about every 400m or so.

Do you mean now or when the post you quoted was written?

The wire heights will be changing from very low to low. They will be nowhere near as high as the heights you get above level crossings, which all pans are designed to cope with.

Unfortunately they have implemented the legislation. The main issue is contact wire height at stations, specifically the distance of the contact wire from the platform surface. Because of our higher platforms and shorter height trains, the contact wire tends to be a lot closer than it would be on the continent. This means that a very large number of Stations with OLE are now illegal, particularly where there are overbridges - and as most stations have either a footbridge or some other bridge that is near that means something that has been fine for 50 years+ all of a sudden isn't. It would not be so bad if it was just left as an EU directive, at least it may have been possible to get a derogation. However you cannot get a derogation against the law. It also means that when we leave the EU the act will still have to be repealed for the wiring to become legal again. It can mean that wiring can become impossible - If the only way to get a legal wire height is to demolish a listed bridge, the only way not to break the law is to continue running diesel...

Sounds like a misinterpretation of the 9 foot rule - when working near live OLE you must be a minimum of nine feet away at all times, that does not mean electricity will jump nine feet, it is just to give an adequate margin of safety for humans. Permanently fixed earthed metalwork can safely be a lot closer, as it wont accidentally move too near and die if the current happens to flash over...

I thought so too, which is why I am very surprised to see one in blue apparently using it!

They are, but they should be at least 600mm from the wires so no insulation on the wires is required.

Possibly to annoy them, but I suspect that they may be steam enthusiasts waiting for one of the last steam workings on the ECML - the picture was probably taken in about 1967 - possibly Flying Scotsman? Some things don't change...

The thing is a new electrification structure should not have earthed metalwork anywhere near the wiring, let alone close enough to warrant extra insulation. If it has, something has gone seriously wrong in the design and/or construction process.

Many were painted blue before ETH was fitted, see below: Not only do you have blue with no ETH, but it is picking up water for the boiler from the water troughs, which must make this a very rare shot! Looks like it might be D9019 if I am not mistaken.

It is just mitigation where clearances are tight. The insulation is not thick enough to provide full 25Kv protection, but the idea is that small air gap + some insulation reduces the flashover risk to earth compared to having no additional insulation at all. Quite why the contractors have decided to put insulation on the earth wire too I have no idea...

It is actually quite clever, it is 25Kv, but it is 180 degrees out of phase with the contact wire. This effectively makes it a 50Kv system, with a resultant increase in power available, and/or increase in the distance apart feeder stations can be, which means you need fewer of them. You still only need 25Kv clearance to earth and 25kv insulators, but you must have 50Kv clearance from this cable to any other live part of the OLE. However getting 25Kv clearance to earth under bridges is a bit more tricky compared to the tensioned OLE, so they tend to be run as heavily insulated cables in troughing under bridges. They also in theory perform the same function as the return conductor in reducing inductance/interferance in the signalling cables. However modern traction and signalling systems tend to be much better in this respect compared to 1960's technology, so it is likely that existing return conductor systems may be removed as they will no longer be necessary. One other innovation that will become common place in the future is invertor feeder stations. It has always been a bit awkward in that the railway imposes a heavy single phase demand on a three phase national grid. They try to mitigate this by having adjacent feeder stations on different phases, but it is far from ideal. With an invertor feeder station you can take load from each phase evenly, rectify it to dc and then invert it to single phase AC. Not only does this eliminate asymmetric loading on the national grid, but all feeder stations can output on the same phase as each other eliminating the need for neutral sections, since the output phasing is independent of the input. I think they also make regenerative braking feeding back in to the grid easier as well.

That really, really, really should not need explaining..... It is the record breaking maximum speed that APT-E achieved.

Doubt it. You could get them for £55 at one point and if that is not cheap enough then they never will be.

Boaty McBoatface lives!

Rather surprised to see an 86 with headcode boxes hauling Mk3s!

What surprised me even more on the AC Electric photos thread was an 86 with headcode boxes hauling Mk3s!

Don't know if it ever happened, but there was talk some time ago that the break-glass covering hammers etc. on trains would be replaced by sugar-glass, that is the stuff that is used for stunts in the film industry. Looks like glass so is still a deterrent to miss-use, but easy to break without risk of injury in an emergency.