SwissRailPassion

Elephants did indeed travel by train and arrive just there at Bridlington. Somewhere I've seen a photo of them unloading.

It's terrible.

Colditz?

Nice to see the RSSB spending public money on another whacky scheme. Millions have been spent on crazy schemes in the quest for innovation in the last three years and most of the schemes are laughable.

DfT are culpable in the GWML fiasco. It is their failure to specify the exact requirements for the line and stick to them. They were changed shortly after the start. There was the pause masterminded by Philip Hammond and a revised specification issued almost a year later. People have short memories. The DfT were set against electrification for many years. Alistair Darling authorised spending on new badly-needed diesel trains. £40M was spent but the trains were cancelled as the dash for electrification began thanks to Lord Adonis. 240 new diesel vehicles would have been very useful but the DfT thought new diesels were obsolete and the future would be electric or battery/hydrogen. Who would have thought that strapping diesel engines onto electric trains would be the future. Only the DfT could promise Diesel engines bolted to electric trains to "bring about the benefits of electrification, without the disruption of electrification"

I beg to differ. Whitehall has stymied rail investment almost at every turn. There were hardly any useful schemes aside from LCR in the Blair years. Since then the very big politically backed projects have come off the drawing board in England and Wales. Both major parties agree on HS2 so things are easy. There are many other schemes that have not been progressed in England and Wales due to Whitehall's dead hand. Scotland has invested in rail and re-opened lines far more quickly. It reflects the political situation in England. Big ticket ideas get political backing at ministerial level, whereas useful schemes on a regional level are stuck due to lack of political structures across the counties. TFN and Rail North are attempts to devolve and direct money across the north. Osbornes idea of the northern powerhouse is/was part of this. The Northern hub may have just escaped the DfT axe due to devolution, although NR have gone cold on the critical extra platforms at Piccadilly. The GWML project has turned to shambles directly due to NR and DfT wishing to save money.

There's so much complexity to this. The DfT did not specify 140 mph at first but a little later. Thus the catenary design had to be adjusted. Two pantographs raised on 5 + 5 services causes more stress and movement so the system needs to be robust, this too was not apparent at the start. The DfT moved the goalposts which added to the costs and made things much harder to control. Add to this cabling, bridge work, piles deeper than a dockyard, a whizz bang magic installation train that was incorrectly specified, engineers unused to large project electrification, a functioning busy mainline, Crossrail overlap, and Reading station rebuilding and there's a lot that can go wrong. If the DfT had authorised a few infill schemes technical expertise could have been built up over time and good practice developed. However that's never the way with Whitehall.

The Borders Railway involved far more work and cost around £100M for every ten miles. It included a complete rebuild of the solum, several new stations, many new bridges, culverts and tunnel work. Port bury is heading for almost double that cost. Is it because it is in England?

Ant eater? http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/giant-anteater

We hardly hear any of this on the BBC or Sky. NR's flagship project and 'The greatest investment since Victorian times' is in tatters and the entire electrification programme in ruins. The contract for IEP begins very soon and the government will be paying for trains on a daily rate as they stand in the sidings. All this was predicted three or four years ago and it is coming true in slow motion.

Looking good. What's the height of the bridge? Is it 4 inches?

It's not privatisation but Alliances based on the SWT model that was. SWT Alliance was successful but there was a move away from it. It seems sensible for the routes and TOC/FOCs to be in alliances and have common control for planning and ops.

153, 156 and 158 are all long models and present difficulties in smaller layouts. That's why the pacer is so good on smaller layouts, it's more realistic. Please can you produce a three car pacer, I'm sure they will sell.

Is there a career route for civil servants whereby they hone their skills in procurement ineptitude at the DfT before moving to the really big-ticket procurement cock ups at the MOD?

Quite right there should be a fuss. The MML had a much better business case than the GWML back in 2009. Politicians chose GWML above the more sensible option. MML was an easier and cheaper job. I doubt MML will be electrified before 2025 if at all.

Seven dead according to latest reports.

This throws an enormous spanner in the works for Northern and Scotrail. Not just for GWR. Franchising income profiles will now be at significant risk at four franchises. The benefits of the new long franchises are now in danger of unraveling. Many have seen this coming for some time but it is worse than I feared. We will be paying Hitachi to supply expensive electric trains and we will pay even more to make them bi-mode and replace faster HSTs. Northwest electrification will now be even later, and TPE electrification is in doubt, as the bi-mode option works against investing in wires. The ramifications of this will be felt in Exeter, Whitby, Blackpool, Coventry, Bridlington, Paignton and Leeds. Perhaps Stadler or CAF could step in to plug the gap, or else it's the D Train?

How's it going at the layout? Long time no hear.

I suspect it's a 141...

The parapets are high because we did not claim a derogation years ago. Recently new work has to be even higher, again we failed to claim the derogation. We could blame Brussels but we were consulted and simply failed to register an exemption or claim a derogation. Other countries did and as a result it is possible to watch trains from bridges across Europe.

The DfT have already lost at Scotrail and TPE. The unions will oppose this and they will win. In the end the DfT will blink and a certain man will no longer fly in to work from Vienna.

Very impressive!

These are part of the batch for the Hayes service which goes electric on 5th September. H &H to Padd will have 387s from then.

Yes a great picture. The new platforms date from 1912 after the up and down lines were paired to cope with the hordes. The loco is standing on No 6 and the photo is taken from the excursion platforms 7 and 8. Is this the loco that managed 80 mph on a non-stop Hull - Bridlington train in 1913?

The Wherry Lines ETMS scheme has been abandoned and common sense has prevailed. The resignalling will be with colour lights after all.