david.hill64

2 hours ago, woodenhead said:

When it comes to safety being improved in private hands - I give you RailTrack.

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.

8 hours ago, woodenhead said:

But it is another example of the money squandered on the railways that goes into the hands of private investors often overseas.  Train users in Germany were very happy to find their trains subsidised by the UK taxpayer.

 

Or robbing the poor taxpayer and giving it to the rich.

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

7 hours ago, 30368 said:

 

Yes David, there was a degree of risk involved but not that much. Each original ROSCO had about a third of the former BR Fleet allocated and paid around £250 - £300 million, frankly a fraction of the actual value. THey would never of been funded by Britain's Banking system unless it was a dead cert. When they were sold on to banks the original "investors" made a mint. I don't in any way blame them, some of whom were colleagues of mine. I do recall at least one very senior railway manager though who ended up in a ROSCO and resigned before the sale which he found morally repugnant.

 

I had many dealings with ROSCO's in my time and generally they were very, very profitable and were able to move most of the safety and performance risk to the TOCs. For example, the TOCs were under pressure to improve train reliablity so they progressed reliability mods - the cost of which was added to the leasing cost to the all round benefit of the ROSCOs. Transparancy of Leasing Company profits are now beyond our ken given their offshore owners.

 

Ben Elton was spot on with his analysis, rail privatisation, along with water (!!) and energy are a national disgrace the consequences of which we are all living and, many of us, struggling with.

 

Kind regards,

 

Richard B

 

 

The degree of risk centred around the Labour party's threat to renationalize. Every time a Labour party spokesman made a statement, ROSCO management saw that their chance of completing the buy out increased. HSBC walked away from their plans to buy Eversholt only to take it later from the management team at a higher price when the risk was less. I agree that the initial sale prices did represent a bargain, but if politics had gone a different way then who knows?

TOCS didn't progress reliability modifications on their own: they worked with the ROSCO engineering teams to determine what was required. The ROSCOs paid for the modifications  and if these added value over time then some residual value would be set against future lease rentals. If not, the TOC would pay within the current lease. Eversholt I know invested heavily in additional works at heavy maintenance to protect the vehicles in a way that BR could never afford to.

Safety risk lies squarely with the TOCs: which is exactly as it should be. I remember leading a debate within Eversholt as to whether we should be generating some form of safety case for the fleet but it ran the risk of split responsibilities leading to safety risk. However, when there were safety incidents - Networkers dropping gearboxes, 91's throwing cardan shafts through platform waiting shelters, Greyhound CIG bearings - we reacted swiftly and not just to protect revenue.

Yes ROSCOs were/are profitable, but then most financial institutions are. However, you might reflect that the foreign ownership is indicative of the profits not being high enough to interest domestic investors which brings us back to why only Angel (with typical  Japanese long view owners) was not a management buy out.

Ben Elton may have a view that Rail privatisation is a national disgrace but during the privatisation era traffic growth reversed decades of decline and safety is much improved. We do not know if this would have happened under BR (and I think that there is a good chance that it would have) but many things are better now.

1 hour ago, simon b said:

I understood the junction pointwork and signals are going in now to save disruption later. It would be available for freight use, but not for passenger trains until the entire line between there and aylesbury was rebuilt. It will probably be used for getting material trains up to the maintenance depot site.

If that is the case it would be eminently sensible.

Twenty five years ago (doesn't time fly?) I was involved with the Taiwan High Speed Rail project. This project included some intermediate stations that would be added later. I persuaded the management that it would be much cheaper and safer to lay in the tracks, signalling and overhead during the initial design and construction. A decision that was proven correct.

21 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Don't forget that if there hadn't been ROSCOs, our hobby would not have had Exactoscale! The late Andrew Jukes re-mortgaged his house to make his bid for Eversholt, and was subject to media abuse when he sold his share for a reputed £16m. Setting up a commercially-viable finescale track system will have cost a bit, but at the time he was reported to say the money was in trust for his family, I think. 

I worked for Eversholt but never knew that Andrew had an interest in anything other than 12" to 1'. Like the other directors in Eversholt he risked everything financially to take the risk. If it had gone wrong they would have been bankrupt and homeless.

I've not watched the programme yet, so perhaps am not in the best place to comment, but.....

BR was 30 years ago and we are in a completely different world now and unlikely to return to the old one even if it were a good idea to do so. The current structure of the railways does add additional costs - every TOC needs its Engineering and Operations Directors responsible for their safety case for example. Companies now employ staff in roles that never existed before - how many 'Diversity Managers' did BR employ for example? The approach to safety - especially workforce safety - is much more robust than before, but this comes at a cost particularly in the amount of time actually available to do work onsite. Trying to make a meaningful comparison between the costs in BR's time and the costs now is fraught with difficulties. Having said that, I think that BR at the end had for the most part morphed into an effective organisation and given the equivalent funding to that available now we would have an excellent railway.

BR was lucky in that most of the time it didn't have to pay the full cost of the trains that it bought but at the end it was starting to do so with the 365 procurement (and don't forget that the class 50 was leased at first). The rule of thumb in a ROSCO was that the cost of a new train and its associated heavy maintenance split evenly three ways between supplier's price, maintainer's price and the cost of the capital required to pay those two. BR effectively got free money for its capital budget and that hid the true cost. Remember that ROSCOs were twice subject to competition enquiries that found that they did not abuse the market position. 

On 25/06/2023 at 05:14, JeffP said:

Were the Gordon Highlander deflectors an option in the kit?

Not supplied in the kit but we do have them in stock.

David

It will be for providing power to the trailer cars for the A/C. It used to be the case that drivers used the rear power car to provide hotel power. This kept the engine revs (and noise) down for them at station stops.

17 hours ago, EasternO said:

Did the £125 include CAD or was it just the print?

Everything.

37 minutes ago, Pebbles said:

I would be grateful if you could clarify whether items produced on a home 3D printer can in fact be directly used to produce vulcanised rubber moulds.

If you mean 'can home produced resin printed parts be used as casting masters in vulcanised rubber moulds' then yes, provided you have the correct resin. The production of the rubber moulds requires a vulcanising machine. Vulcanising is usually done at about 150 degrees so you need a printing resin that is stable until at least that temperature.

Few people these days would go to the trouble of producing a brass or metal master from which to make moulds for whitemetal or pewter. The cheapest route is to produce the master by 3D printing and then use that to produce the moulds. The same method can be used for producing lost wax casting moulds for brass/nickel silver but here you have to use low ash resins. You don't need to worry about shrinkage of whitemetal but should allow 3% for brass.

All the casters I know use vulcanised moulds as the cold cured ones have insufficient life. You can get good surface detail representing hinges etc.

I have just spent £125 on a master for a loco backhead produced by 3D printing. if I had paid a commercial rate to have a master produced by traditional machining processes it would have cost at least 10 times that much.

15 minutes ago, LMS2968 said:

It was one of the variations of LMS Standard 3500 gallon type, often referred to wongly as 'Fowler' type, derived from Midland types. Almost certainly black below the grime.

What's confusing me is the horizontal line - that looks like lining - but I guess is the bottom of the beading. There is a lower faint line as well. I just couldn't imagine one of these being attached to a lined tender unless it was a borrow from something important!

On 11/06/2023 at 00:38, montyburns56 said:

Gloucester 1964 by Peter Brabham

 

 

Great photo. What sort of tender is that, and what colour is it?

On 23/05/2023 at 01:43, Chris M said:

I saw an interesting article on the philosophy of government run railways compared to private train operators. The private train operators mostly look to increasing revenue to improve financial performance whereas government run railways almost always concentrate on reducing costs. The railways are now effectively government run and this could well be an example of this philosophy.

Roger Ford has an interesting analysis showing that cost cutting cannot restore railway finances, you have to go for revenue growth. Long distance leisure travel has more than recovered post Covid - only commuting is in the doldrums. Yet DfT seems to be hell bent on making life uncomfortable for passengers. Short formations, poorer onboard services. They may yet be the death of rail.

16 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

A computer based interlocking (be it old school BR SSI or one of the more modern equivalents works) by a central computer interlocking accessing remote modules over secure telecoms links with each trackside module being given its own address and suitable locally provided power supplies to drive whatever is connected to it.

 

Because the information being exchanged between the two is in the form of secure digital codes rather than mere voltages there is no physical or practical need to have remote interlockings so current practices tends to have them concentrated in one place (which has the advantage that you can then justify having a dedicated technician to look after them all - particularly in this day and age when additional protection with techs applying controls like occupying track circuits to prevent routes being set etc is increasingly being mandated by the safety authorities).

 

Relay based interlockings are, as you say, limited by the issue of voltage drops - which can only be alleviated with repeater relays every mile or so. This is both expensive and uses more cabling plus introduces more points of failure so what you get with these is lots of individual interlockings housed in their own relay rooms at strategic intervals along the scheme. 

 

 

 

 

Thank you. So essentially the object controller is divorced from the interlocking module. I think I probably knew that at one time but it's over 20 years since I was involved with main line practice. But I do remember now reference to track side modules. More recently on all of the MRT signalling projects that I have been involved with, there are a number of solid state interlocking centres spread around the system, located within 1km of the objects they control. Because MRT stations are close together it is convenient to do it this way.

Edit to make clear that the interlockings are modern!

7 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

With SSI or its modern equivalents then the interlockings are all in one place (usually the signal centre) and there are no relay rooms scattered along the track and no 'automatic' sections

 

I am not disputing this as I don't have recent experience on main line signalling, but on metros it is usual to have a single central control centre (usually with a separately located back-up which may or may not be a hot standby). The interlockings though are distributed, mostly because there is a practical limit to the length of cabling between a switch machine and its object controller, which is part of the interlocking. If the cable is too long the voltage drop is such that the current needed to throw the switch is likely to fry the controller. I would be interested to understand how this problem is overcome on main lines especially as we move to fewer larger control centres.

On the systems I dealt with the cycle time of an interlocking controller was just over half a second, so it would take over a second from receiving a command to acting on it and then sending proof back that the command had been successfully implemented.

On 14/05/2023 at 07:27, The Stationmaster said:

 The branch was also used to research the problem and it was found that because of the design of their suspension - intended to give the smoothest possible ride - they spent a lot of time running with various wheels not making continuous contact with the railhead.

Mike, Are you sure that was the conclusion? The issue with 14X and 15X not activating track circuits is usually ascribed to the superior wheel-rail interaction characteristics of these vehicles compared to the DMU's they replaced. The later designs lost much less energy at the wheel-rail interface than the older designs: hence lower wheel wear/ lower rail wear and better ride. The downside is that if you are not scrubbing the muck off the rail head you run the risk of not shunting the track circuits as the resistance is too high.

David

Just now, jamie92208 said:

I think that @melmerby was referring to the one in rural Hertfordshire.  The fields in the picture don't look like the Hunslet that I used to patrol.

 

Jamie

You're absolutely right: nothing like Hunslet!

On 23/04/2023 at 07:37, The Stationmaster said:

But where it gets conflated is when stuff is done for other reasons.  The design costs for signal alterations are nowadays massive - for a variety of reasons - and every time you remove a facility or add one there is a cosyt of signalling design plus actually doing the work.  Thus it is far cheaper to leave unwanted connections and sidings in place than it is to remove them.  

 

When TPWS was being introduced the ROSCOs were eager that this should be seen as a Network change as it would mean that Railtrack would have to pickup the bill for T&RS as well as infrastructure. Railtrack argued that with such schemes 'costs shall lie where they fall'.

Good to see that Network Rail have agreed that ETCS is a Network change and are funding trial fitments on things with grandfather rights.

On 23/04/2023 at 05:59, melmerby said:

Except they are not

The connection with the running line has been completely removed.

So re-instatement would require a new turnout, switch machine and signalling changes:

 

So no chance of the Middleton's engine being used to shunt the yard as occasionally happened...........

11 hours ago, The Johnster said:

There was no traction knowledge in those days, steam engines being held to be similar enough to each other to allow men to climb aboard, have a look at the backhead to indentify the controls, and get on with it.

 

This was still going on in the early 70s, with unknown-to-WR driver oddities such as Class 20s singly or in pairs, 24s, 25s, 26s, 31s, 40s, and even an occasional 44 fetching up at STJ, driven by men who'd been route piloted from Saltley or Gloucester but were 'on their hours' so the loco had to be abandoned while the crews went home to Derby, Tinsley, or whereever on cushions, if the locos could not be sent back light or on a back working.  Just as well Saltley signed everywhere and all traction...  Gloucester was still a major freight hub, but the traincrew staff had been decimated when the shed closed to steam, and were short of both locos and men. 

In the late 70's the Middleton Railway in Leeds decided that crew competence needed to be assessed by an outside agent, so arranged one weekend for a Holbeck traction inspector to assess all of the drivers. The loco assigned for duty that day was the Borrows well tank which had a number of idiosyncrasies and was left hand drive unlike the rest of the steam fleet at that time. I had never driven it before and passed comment to that effect when I got into the cab. 'Doesn't matter, son, they're all the same' was the reply! (I passed).

I remember an example of one of the first arrivals of a pair of 20's in Gloucester in the very early 70's. They had arrived from the north and were immediately sent back. Unfortunately the crew didn't know the road quite as well as they thought and misread a main line signal as applying to them in the loop adjacent to the site of Barnwood shed. A pair of 20's light engine then proceeded to demolish the buffer stops at the end of the trap siding and finish, IIRC, at least an engine and a half length past the stops, wheel deep in ballast and halfway down the embankment. I think my first sight of a 20 in Gloucester.

1 minute ago, jjb1970 said:

China wants to connect up SE Asia with a new railway system, ultimately reaching Singapore. Not only passengers but freight. I really don't see anything wrong with that, China gets better connectivity with some key trading partners, other countries get new high speed railways, the region gets a viable alternative to flying (some of the short haul SE Asian routes are incredibly busy) as well as relieving stress on some of the roads in the region which can be crazy. 

The only issue I have with it is can the countries afford their new infrastructure? As you say the biggest beneficiary will be China and they get others to pay for it.

Not on the same scale, but in the mid-60's Gloucester used to gain a surplus of locos from the north. It was usual on Sundays to see convoys of light engines - 4 or 5 at a time - steaming back to Birmingham.

20 minutes ago, Edwin_m said:

 Main line units have a bus cable linking the shoes within the unit, but tube stock only links the shoes on an individual car.  

True I think for SR stock, but unless things have changed it wasn't true for class 313. When I was at Eversholt we wanted to fit a bus cable to these to overcome some of the problems with gapping on the North London Lines, but couldn't get the safety case approved at the time. Something to do with the problems with old DC track circuits on AC lines IIRC.

David

4 hours ago, Derekstuart said:

Many thanks everyone. I recognise some of the terminology and it's this triple valve thingy that I remember being the reason why braking cannot be reduced without release. It's WHY that it that's the puzzler. But I think it will be in one of my Dad's old training manuals from when he was an Instructor- now that I know what to look for.

 

Many thanks again. A tremendous level of knowledge on this website.

Derek

The Wiki entry on Railway Air Brakes has a reasonable explanation of the workings of the Triple Valve.

David