locoholic

This morning I saw Duchess of Sutherland making an impressive ascent of Llanvihangel Bank between Abergavenny and Hereford. I could swear that there was no diesel at the end of the train, but pictures of it north of Hereford show a WCR Cl 47 tacked on the back. Does anyone know if it was added at Hereford, please, or am I just very unobservant?

Are there any WCML passenger train diversions via the S&C these days?

I guess no-one on here was remotely surprised by this, which is why the news wasn't posted?!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-48054789

7 hours ago, melmerby said:

 

The idea of 4 tracking (from Rugby to Brum) has been on and off the menu ever since I got interested in railways 60+ years ago

But is now presumably permanently off the menu due to HS2?

I wonder how long it will be before we have to book a space on the M25 (pre-paid, of course)? I'm sure Beardy would like to have a go at running a motorway.

I'm struggling to think of any loco named after a stately "house".

Made it to Bitton today. The Sentinel was in action, and was being filmed (for local ITV News?).

Hearing the whirring of the geared drive rather than the normal "chuff chuff" of a steam train came as a surprise - I guess I'd never actually seen a steam Sentinel running before, so thank you to everyone involved in its restoration.

11 hours ago, jcredfer said:

 

Because the northerly sections have to have a destination.

 

Regards

 

Julian

And the only place that Northerners want to go to is London?

2 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

This is interesting. Even the people who own and run Manchester Airport are coming out strongly for HS2.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/20/tories-conservatives-hs2-party-leadership-hopefuls-warned

 

Naturally, because this is in the Grauniad, it must be complete, left wing rubbish. Except that there are many far left-wingers who would also cancel HS2 without a second thought (preferring the myth of improving what we have). Whatever the truth of the warnings, there is clearly a greater realisation of the benefits of HS2 to the Midlands and the North, by people living and working there, than is oft cited by those living further south, who think they know better.

 

As a matter of interest, if, as stated in The Guardian, the main benefit of HS2 comes from the section north of Birmingham, why didn't they build that section first?

6 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

This is interesting. Even the people who own and run Manchester Airport are coming out strongly for HS2.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/20/tories-conservatives-hs2-party-leadership-hopefuls-warned

 

Naturally, because this is in the Grauniad, it must be complete, left wing rubbish. Except that there are many far left-wingers who would also cancel HS2 without a second thought (preferring the myth of improving what we have). Whatever the truth of the warnings, there is clearly a greater realisation of the benefits of HS2 to the Midlands and the North, by people living and working there, than is oft cited by those living further south, who think they know better.

 

Airport owner supports spending billions of public money to improve access to airport. Not a big surprise!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-bristol-47998414/historic-chocolate-train-steams-again

Lovely to see. Might pop down on Monday.

2 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

https://bettertransport.org.uk/roads-nowhere/induced-traffic

 

So what? I agree that is true. But the same process happens with rail.

The basic problem is that more and more people are being crammed onto a small island, and their demand for travel harms the environment. Rail has a smaller impact, but forms a small percentage of journeys and much of the UK doesn't have easy access to a railway station (sadly, HS2 won't improve the latter at all). Are you seriously trying to assert that building HS2 won't induce an increase in travel?

40 minutes ago, Richard E said:

 

And there you are, in your own words you have admitted that the rail network is operating at capacity - ergo we should logically increase that capacity. As I said before the debate really is around upgrading Victorian infrastructure (akin to widening a road but leaving all the bends and junctions in place) or building a new line (realigned road or bypass). Which we do rather depends on where the pinch points are and why they exist.

And there we go back to square one! If the road network is at capacity, we are told that building more roads will just generate new traffic. But when a rail enthusiast sees a rail line at capacity, building a new railway is the automatic solution. Can't you see the contradiction? "Oh, but a new railway line has less impact" - maybe, a bit, perhaps.

18 minutes ago, caradoc said:

 

The WCML in particular is as you say operating at capacity, however if upgrading the existing route, as opposed to HS2, was to be adopted the resulting disruption would make this Easter's line closures pale into utter significance and would last for years, if not decades; Remember how much chaos was caused last time the WCML was upgraded ? And we still only have a 125mph (max, less in places) railway, with double track sections mixing 60mph freights with 125mph passengers.

I agree. I just take issue with the received wisdom on here that new roads are unjustifiable, whereas new rail is always good. My recent experiences of rail travel has not been positive, and the road network provides a cheaper, more reliable, convenient and flexible alternative.

5 hours ago, Edwin_m said:

It does, but the consequences are very different. 

 

In conditions of suppressed demand, such as exist in most of the UK, improving a section of road reduces road journey times and more people decide to drive who would previously have used public transport or not make the journey at all.  This causes the unimproved sections of road nearby to become congested, increasing pollution and other downsides, and creating pressure for those sections of road to be upgraded as well. 

 

In similar conditions improving the train service will cause some people to make the journey by train who would otherwise have driven or not made the journey at all.  However this has much less of a downside as the railway has less impact on its neighbours.  Also the train service will be planned to take advantage of the available infrastructure and won't lead to uncontrolled congestion of the type that happens on the roads, so people's journeys will be much more predictable than if they had driven. 

It is true that new rail capacity has less of an impact than road, but new rail, especially high speed, is much more expensive, less flexible and prone to disruption. It is also debateable whether rail is immune from "uncontrolled congestion" - travellers on South West Rail know what happens when anything goes awry, however apparently trivial, because the rail infrastructure is operating at capacity, just like the road network.

45 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

I am not sure I could have been clearer in stating the difference in causation between the historic growth of road traffic and the growth of rail passenger numbers, and the relevance of extra capacity provided to one and not to the other. These are not my "views". This is data, indisputably supported by the annual publication of Transport Statistics for Great Britain, previously published by the TRRL, and now by the ONS, and a whole series of independent and governmental/ngo studies on future transport options, which draw the same conclusions.

 

If you choose to ignore the key sentence, summarised as - rail growth has doubled without significant extra capacity  - which rather suggests you are right about me not realising the application of the same "thinking" to railways: I did not realise that, as it is almost completely untrue, to date in the UK. But that won't matter to you, will it?

 

I do sometimes enjoy your interventions, but I have lost interest now.

I'm sorry, but your comments above simply do not constitute a coherent argument.

Forest of Dean had a few. Sling branch, Mineral loop, FoD Central Rly, Steam Mills, etc etc.

It would appear that the WSR will be mainly operated by pannier tanks for the foreseeable future. I thought they had been judged too small and slow for the line? Can we look forward to shorter and more crowded trains this year?

56 minutes ago, 298 said:

 

You are a Bus owner in Titfield, and I'm claiming my 2/6d.

No, I am just a car owner who lives miles from the nearest station, but who was nevertheless planning a rail trip to Scotland. A small change in my plans to travel on a Saturday rather than a Friday means that the journey time is nearly double, due to replacement bus services on the WCML, instead of diversions via the S&C. I shall therefore be driving. The modern railway is expensive, unreliable and inconvenient. Building more of it in the current climate is sadly of very questionable benefit to ordinary taxpayers.

1 hour ago, Mike Storey said:

 

That was the thinking of the 1960's to 1980's, and led to massive new road networks. It simply proved that more roads means more traffic, and solved little. Capacity drove demand.

 

Rail demand has risen exponentially with only marginal increases in capacity in the last 30 years, so your comparison is regrettably, completely flawed.

 

 

 

Road traffic has increased in the same way. The "thinking" that providing extra capacity stimulates extra demand also applies to railways, or didn't you realise that? It is your logic that is completedly flawed, due, I suspect, to an understandable sentimental bias in favour of anything that runs on rails.

3 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Current road policy is similar to the anti-HS2 junkies' wishes - widening of existing A roads, "smart" upgrades of motorways, widening the M25 car park etc. Every single one of these jobs is very lengthy, highly disruptive, and pretty much redundant when completed (being full, or just moving the traffic jams further on). I don't advocate new roads...

 

 

 

Why not?

You think HS2 is now justified because the current rail network is so successful that extra capacity is needed.

The road network has been massively more successful. Logically we should build more roads.

Here is the "How many people can you squeeze into an auto-trailer?" event this morning. Especially challenging when you consider that almost all the seats were already occupied by people who had boarded at Bewdley and who didn't get off...  Perhaps not the best idea to have a one-coach train as the first departure from Kidderminster on a gala day?!

13 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Which actually makes perfect sense when you think about it. a retention tank can only hold so much waste!

 

Topping up the fresh water tanks when empty won't help the situation if the retention tanks are full.

 

HSTs didn't have this problem as they continued the disgusting practice of showering the underside of the train and lineside (including any track workers, lineside equipment) and even passenger door handles with raw sewage - so keeping the fresh water tanks topped up at the likes of Paddington was an easy way of keeping the toilets in service.

But that suggests that the IETs diagams need to include more depot visits.

So all we really learned from episode 2 is that we can expect Hornby's stand at Warley 2019 to be substantially taller.

It was a shame that viewers were allowed to think that the Terrier was the first time models had been duplicated. I thought the first episode was the better, but both were interesting.

Does anyone have any information on the time period when these vans were used on the Tartan Arrow service, which locos pulled the trains, and how long the livery survived, please?

So far I all have seen is a photo of two of the LMS style BGs on an empty stock working, and one of the CCTs in a Class 25 hauled parcels train between Preston and Bolton.