david.hill64

I think there needs to be a thread about 'what sort of railway do we want?' so that this can return to ticket office closures.

You want all of these double manned with staff who have the necessary skills to relieve an incapacitated driver? If so, on what grounds? Remember, my original comment on this was in answer to a poster who suggested that staff needed to be 'on hand' in case the driver had a heart attack.

Freight drivers? DOO passenger?

Actually I agree. But it requires a different mindset from the unions. I would have train managers trained in basic train handling skills so that in case of need they would be able to move the train to a safe location. Ideally 'railmen' (of whatever sex) could be working as train managers or drivers on different shifts, but not all drivers will have the people management skills to be a competent train manager, and not all train managers will have the skills for drivers. So that utopia will never be reached even if ASLEF and RMT could give up their turf.

Are you seriously suggesting that we ought to double man every driving cab to mitigate the effect of a driver having a heart attack? And both men would need to have competence in first aid. You cannot eliminate all safety risks on a railway and there is no requirement anywhere (in the world to the best of my knowledge) to do so.

I wish my coach recognition skills were better: there is a fabulous collection of vehicles behind D278 in J1063.

Nothing wrong with tax avoidance: HMRC enables us to do it by giving us personal allowances and ISA's for example. Tax evasion on the other hand is a serious matter and I fully agree that it should be sorted. For international companies, they will choose to set up base in a country with a low tax rate: hence Ireland's success. But is it right that the Irish should be able to deprive other countries of tax revenue in this way? (Rhetorical question).

Congratulations on reaching 1000 pages. Yours has always been one of my favourite threads.

But the report you link to says that, for inequality as measured by the GINI coefficient, UK is average within the developed world. It is also clear that the country is losing many of the super wealthy individuals who pay most tax. Oil and gas companies like Shell are considering moving their tax base out of the UK because of taxation policies. A spot of levelling down runs the risk of being too successful, with no money available even for basic services. Funding for infrastructure projects will always be cheaper if done by government money but if that is not available then institutions with a long view, such as pension funds, may be the best option. Government money will only be available if we can grow the economy productively. Government debt is now about 100% of GDP and the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that this will rise to 300% in 50 years, so not much hope for rail projects without a step shift in economic performance. The sad thing is that Northern Powerhouse Rail, HS2 etc are key elements of that step shift but when competing for funding for NHS pay will likely lose out.

Trams are usually fitted with magnetic track brakes for emergency stops. The deceleration rate is non-linear (increases as speed drops) but overall is likely to be about 4m/s/s. A car can stop at about 10m/s/s.

Looking through this thread, I am amazed at just how clean many of the locos were even just months before withdrawal. A credit to the area. (I grew up in Gloucester - Horton Road locos were in abominable condition in their last few years).

Cannot say that I disagree with any of that!

If the staff who are currently in the ticket office are instead on the concourse then they can still validate tickets. The key issue will be about the technology that is going to be used for tickets. If it's around a smartphone app, then railcards, car parking etc can all be linked into that. Smart cards can also do a lot. In Taiwan I use something that used to be called an Easy Card but now seems to be in the process of being renamed as the T pass. I can use this on metros, conventional rail, buses and taxis. Bus transfers are free in conjunction with rail travel and it all works well.

We need to wait to see which technology is required, but I think that it's likely to be a smartphone app. Which of course will not help the minority who don't own such a device so will have to be more than one.

According to the reports I have read so far, the system will know what discount cards you have and will charge the cheapest fare for the journey at the time of day that you make it. If this is indeed the case, then the objective of moving to a simplified national fares structure will have been met.

I can see a situation where trains on rural lines have the tap-in, tap out device onboard. Still potentially problematic if you forget to tap out.

A few years ago I was enjoying a short holiday in Devon/Cornwall and planned to use some of the time to explore the branch lines. However, my trip from Penzance to Plymouth was significantly delayed by 'signalling problems' after a severe gale the night before. When I passed a semaphore with its arm twisted back at 90 degrees I could see the problem. I assume it must have been hit by something rather than the force of the wind itself.

Presumably the penalty fares regime will have to change too. The helpful GWR site advises that you will be able to buy your ticket on the train or at your destination station. One would hope that you would not be penalized for so doing. I would also hope that whatever is in force is applied universally.

Actually my comment was in reply to a general comment about workplace safety, not specifically for rail. As you know, rail safety now is centred around a risk based approach: identify the hazards proactively, work out effective elimination or mitigation measures and validate that they are in place and effective. As Oldudders commented, this was led by Dupont identifying that a culture change was required away from a rules based approach that was effective at stopping you repeating old accidents but not so good for new ones (especially associated with the introduction of new technologies). The approach has been refined over the years.

It was the 1974 Health and Safety at Work act that arguably spurred proper efforts.

When I joined BR in the late 70's there were still about 30-35 workplace fatalities per year. Happily we are in a better place now.

I specifically did not claim that increased passenger numbers and improved safety were the result of privatisation: I merely point out that saying that our rail system is a national disgrace isn't supported by hard evidence. I also stated that they might very well have continued to improve under BR.

BR had committed to ATP and probably would not have commissioned the studies that resulted in the decision to start the SPAD Reduction and Mitigation project, though they did support it. It was mostly a Railtrack initiative.

Agreed: Railtrack was naïve: they believed that contractors would do what they said they would without the necessary supervision. But: Railtrack strongly supported the development of TPWS which they rightly realised was a better alternative to nationwide roll out of a country specific ATP system. Railtrack supported the development of TPWS and its implementation pending the implementation of ETCS level 3 which again correctly they had diagnosed as being the most cost effective form of signalling control and safety improvement. What they hadn't realized was that it would take the EU close on 30 years to develop and agree the specifications for the system. So ETCS level 3 has not yet been widely implemented. The decision to implement TPWS was, in my not unbiased opinion, one of the best of the last 30 years, but then as the project manager who led the team that developed TPWS, I am not a disinterested party in the judgement. Of course Railtrack had history in believing what they were told by engineers who didn't understand UK railways and like the DfT they assumed that UK rail engineers were incompetent. So I give you WCML resignalling which was promised by American consultants as the answer to everything, even though no such system existed. Railtrack even signed a contract with Virgin promising to deliver a system in an impossible timescale. So yes, Railtrack was not an unqualified success. Bur Railtrack was only around for 8 years of the privatised BR era - about 30 years now - and you cannot dispute the clear statistics that UK rail is safer now than it ever was under BR ownership. So, take a cheap shot about Railtrack, but please accept that in this important respect, UK rail is now demonstrably safer than it ever was under BR ownership.

And recently the Dutch and German taxpayers have been unhappy at subsidising UK rail.