Rods_of_Revolution

I've I had cab ride in one of those Vanguards at Whatley; a friend working at NR organised a visit in 2007, and once the Whatley chaps saw how fascinated we were with this little shunter they fired it up and gave us a ride. We got to ride in the SW1001 too, but that didn't have quite as much novelty as we'd already been in the 1001 at Merehead earlier in the day! Whoever painted that Vanguard in OP's photo must have been listening to Hawkwind and eating some of the local fungi! Cheers, Jack

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-astrazenec-idUSKBN2BS1QE

Scientists tend to use evidence rather than proof, but yes, there is evidence to support the link. It's been widely accepted that the evidence is starting to support a small causal link between the AZ vaccine and Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis. Intitally it was regarded as an unlucky aberration when it was only the German cluster, but then the cluster in Britain occured, which changed most experts' opinion to believe there is a causal link. https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-03/small-casual-link-between-astrazeneca-jab-and-blood-clots-expert-suspects

If a variant comes along that is more dangerous to younger people then the theshold for what is deemed 'safe' will be lowered as the risk from Coronavirus increases. You're right that other brands are also having side-effects, however it seems that the issues they're having are more generalised, so whilst the Pfizer vaccine has also produced blood clots, they are of a more common type and with a prevalence similar to what would be expected in unvaccinated individuals. The blood clotting that the AZ vaccine produces is as a result of an auto-immune response which changes the composition of the blood leading to clotting, which is a very rare condition, especially in the group where it has presented, which seems to be females under 55. Out of the 31 cases in Germany, 9 were fatal, so it's a condition which is very serious if not quickly treated. So it's not the blood clotting in general which is an issue, as if you hit your finger with a hammer you'll also develop blood clots, which your body then disolves over time; it's the specific type and the mechanism which produces them which has caused concern in the AZ vaccine. It's not just the EU who have been changing their approach with the AZ vaccine, Canada also suspended its use in under 55s, so this suggests it's not so much a political move on the part of the EU. The AZ vaccine must be supplied at cost for the duration of the pandemic period, a leaked memo showed that the 'pandemic period' expires on July 1st of this year. I assume the price increase will only apply to subsequent orders of the vaccine and for new products such as booster jabs, but I don't know for sure.

If you've got a spark and clean fuel, then it could be lack of compression. You'll need a compression tester to check that though. If no seals are visibly damaged and there's no oil or fuel seeping from anywhere, then it could be the piston ring. Cheers, Jack

AZ are allowed to sell the vaccine at a profit from 1st of July 2021, this will probably include 'booster jabs' in the future too, so to say the AZ vaccine isn't about money is not true. The company has also seen massive public investment which will serve them well into the future, beyond the pandemic. They've also managed to produce impressive pre-tax profits, despite selling the vaccine 'at cost.' So it's not as though they are a charity, they made a business decision to surrender early profit with the belief they'll reap rewards further down the line. Some regulators think there are legitimate reasons for concern regarding the AZ vaccine. Coronavirus poses little to no risk for most younger people, so as younger people begin to take the vaccine the threshold for what is 'safe' gets much higher. It's difficult to justify giving a vaccine to people which is more deadly than the disease it's intended to protect them from. So whilst the AZ blood clotting issue is rare, so is dying of Covid for many younger individuals. Let's not forget that the phase 3 trials are still on going, so there's still plenty more data to be gathered and assessed within the trials alone. These vaccines have been developed, tested and deployed at an unprecidented rate, which comes at an increased risk. If time can be taken to determine the best vaccine, or perhaps whether a vaccine is even necessary, for the lower risk groups, then it's worth it to avoid unnecessary deaths and injuries. As Coronavirus is a much greater threat to the older and more vulnerable demographics, the threshold for a 'safe' vaccine is much lower, which is why many countries are limiting the AZ vaccine to use in those demographics. I also wish to point out that the grouping by age for risk is slightly arbitrary. When someone states that 80-90 year olds have a 1 in 10 chance of dying from COVID-19, this is only true for the group, not the individuals. It's not as though someone is rolling a ten-sided die when an 80-90 year old gets COVID-19 and if the roll is a '1' that person dies. The truth is that there are many more variables, and for most individuals, the risk is far lower than the stated '1 in 10'. Once you move into younger demographics, whilst the risk for the group can be expressed as 1 in X, the true risk for the majority of individuals is far lower. In simple terms, imagine for example a group of 10 people, 9 are fit and healthy, but 1 has a compromised immune system; they all catch Coronavirus and the person with the compromised immune system dies from COVID-19, so the risk to the group is stated as a 1 in 10 chance of dying, despite 90% of the group have a 100% chance of survival. This also goes for the vaccine risk, as the risk for the vaccine side-effects is often stated as 1 in X, with X being the number of vaccines given. This assumes that the vaccine side-effects are equally distributed across all individuals, which they may not be. A side-effect may have near zero prevalence for one demographic, but may be almost a certainty for a particular individual. Calculating risk isn't simple. So when dealing with a relatively new virus and a new vaccine, it's a tricky process to determine whether the vaccine is 'safe' because 'safe' isn't absolute and can in fact vary greatly. There are also many unknown variables, which means any risk models will have a high degree of uncertainty. A variable could be medication people are taking, as the vaccine could be cross-reacting with a particular medication. If that was the case, people taking that medications could be given a different vaccine. Anytime a complex issue is boiled down to 'they're just playing politics' I'm quite skeptical, as the truth is probably as complex as the issue itself.

You've been watching too much Thomas the Tank Engine...

This would probably be closer to the Class 60 application. Roof grey above the cantrail stripe, yellow corner pillars and the black around the windows squared off, rather than following the radius of the 66 windows. Personally I prefer the black corner pillars.

I agree. To me it looks like GBRf have tried to shoehorn the Class 60 style of triple grey onto the Class 66, but it doesn't work very well as that style of triple grey was specifically designed to work with the shape of the Class 60. Whomever BR had planning the livery application was careful to adapt it to each class in sympathy with their shape.

It's nice to have variety in the liveries, however I'm not keen on the application. I would have prefered something more along the lines of: Original image by GBRf can be found here. Reproduced in an edited form under the fair dealing exemptions of copyright for the purpose review/criticism.

Depreciation makes no difference to the point I was making. Depreciation is factored into whether a service is worth running. If it's not worth running and it doesn't serve any operational purpose, it shouldn't be running. If a loco depreciates in value £100 per day, the cost to crew the locomotive is £120 per day, and the cost of fuel is £2.5 per mile. If you run the train on a 100mi route and sell £100 worth of tickets, that service has lost £370; if it had just sat in the siding it would have lost only £100. There are lots of trains running each day which are running at a loss and are only running because the franchise requires that they are run. Regarding your second point, at the time the Beeching report was compiled there were good data for where tickets were being purchased from and to, this was factored into the calculations. They were also well aware of the effect of private car ownership. Very few people were of the mind 'there are no trains, I'll buy a car', most people who previously travelled by train, then travelled by bus instead once the local station closed. The closing of the railway stations was less of a factor in deciding to buy a car than the cost of buying a car was. Even if the railways remained open, most people would have bought the cars when they could afford them, regardless of the local train service. The later Beeching report regarding development of trunk routes specifically highlighted that shorter distance intercity traffic would be lost to private cars. On your third point, if people don't have access to a car, they can travel by bus, which is much more suited to low volumes of passenger numbers as it doesn't have the high infrastucture cost of a railway; it also provides more frequent stops, which mitigates having to walk some distance to the local railway station.

For only 82 people to die in a storm of that magnitude out of a population of 28 million people is a miracle in my eyes. Comparing it to the death tolls for such storms 100 years ago and it's amazing how successful we have been as a species at improving the quality and duration of human life.

I think the national grid would experience a bit more than a wobble if Britain was hit with a ice storm dumping half a meter of snow with temperatures below -20 Celsius, so it's not really a useful comparison. In a state with a population of 28 million, 82 deaths is a comparatively successful outcome, as just a few decades ago such a storm would have killed thousands of people. In railway terms there are the UIC standards, which allow for interoperability and are a useful set of standards developed by the industry itself with members both public and private. The UIC is the sort of international industry body which performs a very useful function as the industry collectively regulates itself, rather than being subject to excessive government regulation and the politcal fallout that brings.

Your first one is the point I was making. People say private companies will gut the railway system, where as it was BR who gutted the railway system. Thus it is not a case of private will gut the system and public will not. They are both capable of such a thing. My second point was that private companies are better at raising capital and generally managing a system for a sustainable profit, where as public companies are generally poor in both these areas, relying on the government to provide funding and often lacking accountability for their failings. If BR was a private company it would probably have failed within 20 years and been bought by other companies, instead of dragging on and hemorrhaging money for half a century. As for the motorways, that's a single example. It was largely private companies who built the electricity network, roads, telecoms network, waterworks, etc. Almost the entire infrastructure of the UK at the time of nationalisation. It just so happens that the motorways as a concept only really arrived when Britain was going through a period of nationalising the infrastructure and so they were nationalised from the start. Had it not been for the two World Wars, there wouldn't have been any need for nationalisation, but I think a better approach would have been bail-outs, rather than nationalisation. Bail-outs allow for support without infrastructure and its development being used as politcal pawns. Private companies certainly wouldn't have taken 15 years to develop a report on improving the efficiency of their network, that's for sure.

I'm not talking in absolutes. Just as if I was to say that the water that comes out the tap is clean, it is clean for almost all purposes, but it's never truely 'clean,' if clean means 100% of the impurities have been removed. The market can never by 100% free, but it can be free for most intents and purposes. I've seen instances where a company will come up with a solid business plan, apply for paths to run trains, only to be told that they'd be too competitive with an existing franchise holder. That's a functional monopoly, but it's not an inevitable consequence of the free market, it's driven by government mandates. If the railway market was free, companies would be free to bid on whichever paths they wanted and the highest bidder would recieve them. The same applies to rolling stock procurement. The companies operating the trains can't chose what rolling stock they want, the government sets the requirements and procures it on behalf of the franchisee. It even extends to new projects, like HS2; the market probably doesn't want to save 25mins on their journey, the market probably wants a seat and train that runs on time, and so an additional conventional railway route would be cheaper and better satisfy the market, yet for political reasons the government wants a highspeed route. Passenger services frequently turn a profit, but that profit is lost because the unprofitable parts are subsidised instead of being cut. Why are empty trains running between Bristol and Paddington in the middle of the afternoon? It's not to make money, it just takes money away from the peak hours services which turn a profit; they're run because the government insists there have to be trains all day. You have observed how the freight railways turn a profit, and that's because they only run trains when there is demand, not for the sake of having a train running. You don't get an empty stone train running across the country on the off chance there may be some stone that needs moving. The demand for lots of passenger services have been lost to the car, so why are they still running? It's not practical for millions of people to drive into London at the same time, the parking is bad, there is traffic congestion, etc, so that's why people commute by train and it's what makes peak time services profitable. However if you're going into London in the middle of the afternoon, it's probably easier to drive, so people use the car not the train, and so the train doesn't need to run. People see the removal of services as though they're losing something which is needed, rather than than losing something which is no longer required. From the point of view of enthusiasts like us, the more trains the better! But in truth the railways are practical pieces of infrastructure and the market driven approach by private companies is far more efficient. The government have almost always been meddling in our railways. If you look at the Railway Regulation Act 1844, you'll see that even back then the government was insisting certain trains must be run, regardless of whether they were profitable or useful. This was followed by the Cheap Trains Act 1883. The government have been interfering since the beginning.

You're taking small examples where something worked and treating it as though it's a microcosm. You mention the HST as a success, but then neglect to mention the hundreds of standard steam locomotives which were comissioned and then cut up long before they were life-expired. BR then comissioned a whole raft of different diesel types and once again cut them up long before they were life-expired. There's no way any private company would have undertaken such a wasteful approach to developing new locomotives and methods of operation. BR were almost constantly on the back foot, always reacting rather than being proactive. The main reason for poor management in the public sector isn't the people themselves, it's the fact that the stakeholders are mostly nebulous and so there's little accountability, and what accountability there is tends to be in the form of political games. Can you imagine any private company explaining to investors that they took their money and built hundreds of state of the art steam locomotives and then cut them up. Of course not, the company would have gone bust after it cut up all those steam locomotives, rather than being given a budget to do the same again but with diesel locomotives. Let's not forget that BR was run at a loss for almost all of its existence, again, something which would never have happened with a private company, as they would go bust and be replaced with something that would better serve the market. BR were in a position where there were millions of people and millions of tons of freight that were willing to pay to be moved around the country, and despite that demand, and over 50 years of development, BR couldn't find a way to operate in a profitable manner. The free market is the system of supply and demand, it always tends towards equilibrium. Government regulations, ownership and subsidies are ways of manipulating the system of supply and demand; they are tools which should be applied very carefully, selectively, and with great consideration. Nationalising anything should be an absolute last resort (war, natural disaster, etc) and it should be undertaken for as shorter duration as possible. Once the government controls something it will inevitably become a political toy and changes will be driven not by the demand of the market, but by the demands of political point scoring.

Seems like the sides will need completely replacing. I'd imagine the underframe will need a lot of rot cutting out of it and new sections spliced in. It would be cheaper to build one from scratch than buy, transport and restore this one. It's not even like it's a vehicle of much historical significance either. There's probably £12000 worth of scrap metal, but it's not worth much more than that realistically.

It never was 'privatised' to begin with. Almost anyone who's worked in railway management knows that it's the government that has the final say on almost all aspects of running the 'privatised' railway. Private companies are much better at innovation, raising capital and bringing supply to meet demand, than any part of the public sector. Everytime I suggest that the railways should be properly privatised, people tell me that private companies will do eveything on the cheap, gut the service and tear up railways left, right and centre to maximise profit; despite the fact almost all the railways in this country were built by private companies, and almost all the cutting of services and ripping up of tracks was done by BR. The same goes for almost every sector of infrastructure, private enterprise innovates and builds it, the government takes it over and runs it into the ground, before finally they 'privatise' it again, only with so much regulation that it cripples almost every positive aspect of privatisation. If I was betting, my money would be on rail services in Scotland getting significantly worse, not better. All the best, Jack

I think the main reason people get up in arms about such bridges being replaced or removed is because they know it will be replaced with a bland and generic concrete slab. If any replacement bridges were to be faced with local stone and built to incorporate an arch or other classical architectural features, people wouldn't cling on to old redundant structures in the same way. If the GWML electrification project had used Brunelian architecture and local stone, people would be less perturbed about some old bridge in the middle of a field getting knocked down and filled in. Once beautiful wayside halts, with a small stone waiting room built to compliment the local architecture, lit by neoclassical style cast iron lamps, are now just a plexiglass box lit by LEDs on the end of anonymous steel tubes. Until companies rediscover the effect of beautiful architecture on the human psyche, we'll be doomed to a bland, cheap and generic world. Regards, Jack

Were Mk1 BGs common on the milk trains that came up from Cornwall? Did the requirement for a passenger brake vehicle end along with brake vans no longer being required on Class 4/6 fitted freight trains in '69? Cheers, Jack

Always go for a very dark red; if a tail lamp isn't lit, the red lens can almost look black in daylight. If you want to get really technical, then mix a much lighter red and paint an arc over the upper part of the lens, as the upper part will reflect the sky, and the lower part the ground. Once you've done that, then varnish, as on small models varnish will give a glint, but it won't do environmental reflections, which is why they need painting. For the front/clear lens, do the same as with the red, except use a very dark grey with with a light grey arc, then varnish. Don't forget to paint any apertures (for checking the flame) black; lots of people forget to paint these and just do them white. BR Tail lamps have them either side. Once you're done painting, apply a dark brown wash or some dark brown weathering powders to knock the white back a little bit. If you're modelling O or larger and you have a really, really steady hand, you can paint a hint of the rings of the fresnel lens (assuming the lamp type has one.) All the best, Jack

Hi Mick, Do you use anything to seal the weathering powders? I have found that most varnishes seem to either blow away (when sprayed) or otherwise diminish the appearance of the powders. All the best, Jack

Were BGs or any other brake coaches ever used in lieu of a brake van on freight trains? I know they were used for a brief period on Freightliner services as a stand in for the fiberglass cabooses, but were they ever used on general freight services? Cheers, Jack

There are some scans here: https://www.stellabooks.com/books/no-author/official-hand-book-of-stations-935250/2120447 G is Goods P is Passenger and Parcel P* is Passenger but not Parcel or Misc Traffic F is Furniture Vans, Carriages, Portable Engines and Machines on Wheels L is Live Stock H is Horse Boxes and Prize Cattle Vans C is Carriages by Passenger Train. All the best, Jack

I've seen photos of farm machinery regularly being moved on CONFLATs on the Malmesbury branch, as well as Holborn Compressors on CONFLATs on the Roskear branch. Perhaps it was a rare occurance and it's just chance that the two prototypes I'm researching for my 1960s rollingstock happen to be two that deviate from the norm. If a CONFLAT arrived loaded with a container, but there was no container for the return trip, would it be returned empty or would they load with something else? From a business point of view it would make sense that a wagon is always loaded with something where possible. All the best, Jack