david.hill64

I would say that the bigger problem is the collapse of the sleeper underneath. After all, trains safely cross at speed gaps in rails every time they pass through pointwork. Provided that it is a single vertical crack and the rails are supported each side it will not present a derailment risk. Still needs clamping and replacing though. I suspect that this is being made public to help RMT fight modernisation of maintenance practices.

Roger Ford has just published his monthly newsletter. His analysis of likely London-Manchester journey times shows a likely saving of 10 minutes by using HS2. DfT think 30 minutes. Who will be correct?

Taking money from the capital expenditure (investment) budget to spend on maintenance is a sure sign of a failing company. The same applies at a national level.

Agreed, Derby was also a small part of the Bombardier Empire. When I worked for Bombardier (2013 - 2019) there was an internal notice about the company registration moving to UK. While the operational HQ was in Berlin, for tax purposes Bombardier Transportation became a UK company and paid its corporation taxes in UK.

But it's not 'Derby' in isolation. The works at Derby is a small part of the Alstom empire and history tells us that the French have form when it comes to merging/acquiring UK engineering companies and shipping the work to France. Think GEC and Chrysler for example. The chance of Alstom diverting work from France to UK is zero. Bombardier was a Canadian company but it's worldwide headquarters was a brass plaque in the City of London so at least there was an argument that it might have supported UK jobs because of that. No chance with Alstom. But even Bombardier did rationalize the business in a vain attempt to stay afloat. I think from Derby's perspective it is a pity that the Bombardier-Siemens merger (takeover by Siemens didn't happen). There is then a chance that the TfL order might have gone to Derby even if the design would have been done in Germany. But all of this ignores the fact that against the Chinese and the Koreans, western and Japanese companies are hopelessly uneconomic. If there is a large build of DMU's to replace the 15X fleet it will likely be CRCC that produces them. (At which point operators will long for the build quality of the CAF fleet).

Agreed. Even when UK was in the EU, how many rolling stock orders were made in UK for EU customers? Issues with gauging are far more important. At least Alstom has been trying to help by giving work such as Cairo monorail cars to Derby, but in the absence of domestic orders, things look grim. Remember too that Hitachi, Siemens and CAF have opened assembly plants in UK, so the Derby works has new competition. We have of course been here before: I remember when Litchurch Lane was producing modular bathrooms for buildings in an attempt to keep staff on the books.

Fatigue cracking and stress corrosion cracking are not the same thing at all.

Don't forget that the corrosion problem with IET is nothing like the traditional corrosion problem with steel bodies stock. It is stress corrosion cracking, previously unknown in the rail environment and not covered by any standard. Having said all of that, as a passenger I do not like the IET for the same reasons as noted above.

Yes, but you don't expect reputable Japanese companies to falsify QA documentation. I have a lot of sympathy with Hitachi.

Actually the people making the decisions are protected under English law if they don't upgrade to safer options provided that the safer options are not reasonably practicable (ie cost too much). They would be remiss if they hadn't considered the safer option, but do not need to adopt it. People may well remember the clamour post Ladbroke Grove for widespread adoption of ATP rather than TPWS. The enquiry agreed that TPWS was a reasonably practicable option whilst ATP, as an overlay to the existing signalling system, was not. Since then there has not been a single fatality on UK rail that could have been prevented if ATP were in place. So, pending installation of ETCS, we may very well conclude that not upgrading to the safer option - which would have taken money from the system that has been better used on other safety measures - was the correct decision. HST's were/are a fabulous train, but their time has come.

Which is why modern WSP systems try to control wheel speed in braking so that it is almost synchronous. A small amount of slippage has a conditioning effect on the wheel-rail interface, cleaning it and improving adhesion. The downside of small creep values is that the largest tangential stresses in the contact area occur just sub-surface of the interface. This promotes rolling contact fatigue damage, hence we now grind rails to remove the damages surface layer before the cracks can propagate.

IIRC the BT5 was a heavyweight version of the BT10, also used on the 'special vehicles' (Royal Train) project.

I think it is a BT15*. I remember riding in a test train with one of the coaches fitted with this bogie and seeing the look of disappointment on the face of the bogie engineer responsible for the project as the ride was, shall we say, disappointing. Mind you it was very difficult to match the ride of a BT10 when the dampers were in good shape. The vehicle was in the train as a make weight rather than being the primary focus of the tests. * When I saw the photo BT 15 was my first guess, but there were other similar developments that tried to eliminate the panhard rod assembly of the BT10, so I may well be wrong.

No. The main reason why outside bearings were standard was for hot box detection when this was a real issue. Moving the bearings inside results in a significant weight saving. Primary suspension design is mostly about wheel-rail interaction (steering). Softer secondary suspension will give a better ride at the expense of body movement which has to be restricted to comply with gauging requirements. I suspect that this is the reason why we notice poorer ride, though the dreadful tertiary suspension (seating) doesn't help.

When the Hymeks were being withdrawn I had a week in Scotland planned which started with a late evening departure from Gloucester to Birmingham. I was very happy when the Cardiff to Birmingham train arrived at Gloucester Central behind a grubby looking Hymek. I thought I was in for a treat with a thrash up the Lickey. Sadly the Hymek was removed, but was replaced by a pair of 25's. Never regular performers on passenger trains through Gloucester. Made for an interesting start to the week.

Suggestions from letter writers in the Telegraph today suggest that capacity on the existing lines can be made available by running double deck trains, lowering the track through tunnels and at bridges if there isn't sufficient headroom. Another pundit suggests running trains closer together using LIDAR so that they can almost buffer up when one has stopped.

The company I work for now is bidding to support a Japanese company for a job on a local HSR project. The Japanese have made it a condition of contract award that there shall be no involvement of any of my company's China personnel. They are still bitter at the theft of IPR and don't want to get bitten again. I am used to non-disclosure agreements but the Japanese are now taking this to a new level.

I was one of them. At the time - 20 years ago - my flights to and from Taiwan were mostly with EVA air. Pilots were inevitably western. China Air (the Taiwan national carrier) used ex military pilots and had a rather poor safety record. EVA management understood that they needed to instil a different culture in the cockpit crew and that would take time. These days most of the EVA flight crew are Taiwanese.

If it is a new Jag it will be a diesel hybrid. Still have waiting times of 6-9 months on most models.

That's because the design of the Shinkansen Electrification system cannot cope with anything more than 80km/h on the diverging route. Pantographs have to be strong as the horns are use to guide the head at diverging locations. Doing this at high speeds is likely to interfere with the knitting. I worked on the Taiwan High Speed Rail system, the infrastructure design for which was based on UIC standards. The alignment had been optimised to allow skip-stop operations including long turnouts with a 200km/h diverging speed limit. The Japanese were unable to take advantage of this. The Japanese have standardised turnouts - quite sensible really. Of course my experience is 20 years old now and they may have changed but I think it unlikely as they stick with things that work.

But temporary: there will be a net gain in woodland once finished. I know that 300 year old woodland will take a few years to re-establish, but this project has been very mindful - perhaps too minful? - of ecological consequences. What would you have done instead? Stop people travelling? We have an aging and growing population. Both older and younger people are less inclined to drive than previous generations. Do you stop them travelling, or do you provide them with a modern efficient transport system?

The project is littered with scope changes, mostly for political reasons. Tunnelling under the Chilterns is an obvious one, as is the indecision about Euston. Contractors make their money on changes. As the boss of Met-Cam said: changes turn a net loss into a gross profit. George Osbourne asks the question 'why does it cost so much more to build a railway here than in continental Europe?' It's a valid point but I doubt whether the construction costs are very much different. It is the plague of parasites that feed off every major investment opportunity here.

Just had chance to watch this. I thought it was thought-provoking and interesting, apart from the cheap political shots, but I guess they were inevitable. When he discussed the winners from privatisation he forgot to mention staff, especially drivers whose remuneration is considerably better than it was before. No mention either of the (until recently) significantly increased level of service or safety improvements, and how running too many trains on a network inevitably leads to problems when things start to fall apart, nor of the fact that when Labour were in power they did nothing to reverse privatisation of the TOCs. I think that the points about Leamside and Castlefield are particularly telling. London got Crossrail - Manchester gets little.

Just following up on private sector involvement: I was involved with the Taiwan High Speed Rail project in 1992/3 when it was a government funded project. Compared with western countries, Taiwan's government is awash with cash, but still decided in 1993 to cancel the project for affordability reasons. What they did next was to enact legislation that permitted private investment in infrastructure then let a competition to award the project. Knowing that the base economics of rail don't work in favour of the railway (who don't get the larger financial rewards), they sweetened the deal by giving sole development rights in the new station areas for 50 years. So why don't we say to developers/ pension funds/ insurance companies, you pay the cost of the Euston extension, and in return the station site is handed over to you for 50 years. Develop it as you will, get the revenue from offices, retail and £x a head from every passenger. See if the numbers stack up.

So why not use your noddle and invite in the private sector? They are likely to end up buying the infrastructure anyway. It needs something other than groupthink to move forward. Your post is an excellent example of why we don't do things like they do in Asia: we find reasons not to do things. In Asia they find ways to do things.