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Locomotion at shildon have several such things - a game to pack open wagons correctly, a sort of double inglenook shunting puzzle, a game where you have to watch a 4 aspect colour light signal change and press the correct button (proceed, proceed with caution or whatever) for what it means. It speeds up as time goes on, and if you get one wrong or time runs out you get the score. My 6 year old daughter enjoys playing all of them, her record is 26 signals (I once did 31). I agree about the idea of simulating driving or something similar.

I live in a 120 year old house. Every time we take plaster off or boards up you find a new and inventive bodge that needs fixing. Funnily enough it turns out the garage we're converting has no foundations under 40% of the walls (the idiots just built them on top of the concrete in the back yard, then later on raised the level of the yard with another inch of concrete, you dont find that til you dig through the concrete), which are to be knocked down, new foundations put in and new walls built. Guess what that did to the building costs? As we're knocking holes in it we need to redo the kitchen but most of the appliances are made abroad, and theres some sort of idiotic ploy to devalue our currency and stuff up our imports happening at the moment, so whilst i can price things up now, i cant be sure those prices will be the same when I'm in a position to purchase and install them. Now if we look at HS2, we have x amount of railways in that corridor, need more capacity, have a reasonable idea of what traffic will go on it, can price up costs now but as things go along there will likely be some increases. whilst obviously simplified it isn't a false analogy.

Only in the sense that building anything is always an act of faith because the future cannot be known or predicted with certainty, hence the years spent analysing the problem and working out the best solution, and getting a best estimate of future needs. I have builders coming to convert my garage in a few weeks. It's an act of faith inasmuch as I assume I'll still have a job for the next few years to pay for it, that I'll be fit enough to do the internal fit out, that my family wont split up so we'll still need the space. All evidence suggests I'm fine on all counts, but nothing can be known 100%, I might be sacked tomorrow.

The captions have been rewritten to fit the reversed bubbles (I think). I thought they might've just cut each line out and flipped it, but there are differences (see the D in bushed).

I might need to rescind my earlier comment. Ben Stokes. Wow.

I think it's relevant here to mention a few swiss projects. The gotthard and lotschberg base tunnels. They definitely aren't high speed railways in the accepted sense of things, but are expensive long term investments in infrastructure. The gotthard base tunnel is 35.5 miles long and cut journey times between zurich and milan by about half an hour to 45 minutes. Waste of money? Only for business people? Well after it opened they were able to put the local stopping services back on the old line (which had been curtailed due to capacity issues), helping everyone in those two valleys and has vastly increased the capacity on a key north - south link, removing huge amounts of traffic that would otherwise have gone via road. If the uninformed and ignorant had sat there trying to point out that they were spending billions to save business people less than an hour on their trip they'd quite simply be wrong: that was never the intention. Its costs came in about 50% higher than budgeted, but it has certainly been successful. Why is it the population was quite decisively in favour? Longest and deepest rail tunnel in the world, mainly for bridge traffic between two other countries. You might even suggest it sounds like a vanity project. Perhaps there are simply less selfish people in switzerland? People who decry any central government investment or spending that doesn't directly benefit them. There are some legitimate arguments against most major infrastructure projects but I'm not hearing them from those against HS2. It's unlikely any random contributor on here, or MP or (especially) our 'esteemed' PM has a better understanding of the need for HS2 than the experts who've spent years working out the necessary course of action and planning it. I dont think 50 odd billion was committed idly or on a whim. This review isn't as a result of new evidence or solutions arising, it's purely political to satisfy the selfish, senescent selectorate of our current government. I live in the north east. I likely won't benefit anything from HS2 as I've only travelled that end of the wcml 3-4 times when I lived elsewhere. However I can see it is useful and necessary. Likewise crossrail and other major infrastructure spending in other regions. Infrastructure spending is necessary in my region too, but I'm not stupid enough to think that stopping major projects elsewhere will make it any more likely. Interestingly part of the lotschberg base tunnel (a mere 21 miles) were built to single track as money was short, things went over budget and funds were diverted to cover the gotthard base tunnel. The upshot is that almost immediately after opening it was at full capacity. They started work a year or two back on planning to finish the second bore. Would've been cheaper to have just done it at the same time, but at least when it came to cutting budgets they had the foresight to finish the digging of most of the western bore but just didnt fit it out and lay track.

I suspect lots of heritage railways have raked in a lot of extra cash from bequests and wills in the past decade. I'd hope they haven't become dependent on it - surely this is bonus money rather than a reliable source of cash. There are lots of big projects getting done (new builds, restorations) perhaps on the back of this. (In a similar vein you might suggest that model railway manufacturers have stopped chasing family money from kids trainsets and gone all out for the pensioner's disposable income, but without recruiting for the future that'll dry up).

Sadly I suspect stopping at old oak common is more likely. Building from the euston end of course...

Switzerland. But the cities are often smaller. My comments weren't aimed at comparing ourselves to other countries, but pointing out the obvious logic that if we wish for people to make a modal shift from private car to trains for long distance travel then the current pricing model doesn't work. The train is both less convenient and more expensive, but might save a little journey time and is less stressful. Once you have more than one person in the car there is no competition. Achieving such a modal shift, which we all see as desirable on environmental, congestion, air pollution and energy efficiency grounds will require some financial incentives. Likely in terms of subsidising public transport (and similar action to make car use less attractive).

What time of day are those tickets and how many of them are available at that price? My experience is that even booking several months in advance there are precious few cheap tickets around unless you wish to arrive at half past midnight. Whereas in italy or france the cheaper prices were available at normal times of day, even if booked the day before. Besides which pricing out casual travellers, or those who are unable to schedule everything months in advance is rather stupid, it reinforces the idea that taking the train is a major event like planning a holiday or booking flights, rather than an everyday thing. Thus making people take the car instead unless it's something they can plan for 3 months in advance. Perhaps if we had more capacity on our trains or lines the prices might become more reasonable? Any ideas out there for how we could increase capacity? (And back to the topic...)

It might have been mentioned once or twice earlier in the thread, but it isn't really about the travellers on HS2 so much as freeing up capacity. The 56 billion is as much to unclog the bottom end of the wcml for the benefit of all the commuters, local train users, cheap off peak ticket buyers, freight traffic etc as it is to benefit the people paying the surcharges for travelling on HS2. Depending on how much more expensive it is, it'll be used. Perhaps not as your every day commute, but as a holiday trip or reasonably special occasion (I have used the high speed trains in france and italy on holiday, it's a one off journey and the time saved and better accommodation is worth it). Having said that, ticket prices are too high in this country and if we want ordinary people to switch from their cars (which from a social, infrastructure, energy use and environmental point of view we should do) we need to make rail travel cheaper than doing the journey in a car. If I drive to my wife's parents it costs me £30-40 to take the whole family and I have a car to get around in when we get there. Last time we took the train it was quicker, much nicer, but over £200 and that was when the kids were younger so didnt need tickets, two together railcard and booked months in advance. Plus we had no car for the week we were there.

Theres definitely something in this. Yes costs are rising and everything else but some of the prices would make me think twice if I was alone, then i have to factor in wife and kids. Time also becomes a factor (have a toddler). If the journey is too long i know there'll be boredom or tiredness and accompanying meltdown. Enthusiasts often wish to build a big extension or get back to X or Y (which is understandable, commendable and having a big goal or project can galvanise support or give you something to work towards), but if it makes the journey too expensive or too long it might well just put people off and add significantly to running/maintenance expenses.

Like many of these large infrastructure projects we keep cancelling and putting off, the need will remain and we'll end up having to do it anyway in a few years time, but at significantly higher costs.

Surely post October the NHS will be overflowing with cash from cancellation of other projects. In those glorious sunlit uplands I cant see how we couldnt afford to build HS2 three times over, never mind needing to cancel it to prop up our schools and hospitals. Theres only so many times you can pull the plug on programs of huge present and future public benefit and claim you're doing it to shower money over our hospitals before even the average Sun reader realises it's a massive lie.

I hate cricket. Remember when we were good at it (er, yesterday!)?

Perhaps both Heathrow and HS2 are to be cancelled. Instead we could build a new airport on a floating island in the thames, next to the SS Richard Montgomery... Now theres a vanity project for you.

Not sure the thread title is accurate. He seems to have access to mains electricity to run a glue gun

AJ Powell, the 264t drawing was reprinted in narrow lines a few years back. he had an o-16.5 model built for him and there was a photo of it. Given his training, experience and employment it isn't surprising that there was significant br standard design influence.

Needs shorter, fatter boiler than anything put on a conventional loco or you cripple the garratt and defeat half the point of the design.

One might argue that the past several years would suggest this is not the habitual modus operandi of our current government...

Had we invested in Armstrong whitworth and EE's diesel locos in the early 30s, when they were building more advanced locos for export than the American builders could produce at the time, we might have established a significant lead, but we'd still likely have lost it during the war as simpler and cheaper to build steam locos were more useful, and the production facilities might well have been put onto airplane/aero engine production. AW moved out of railways in the 30s due to overcapacity in the loco building market and they moved further towards armaments as that was where the orders were coming from. Several big uk builders shut their doors or ceased loco production in the 30s (Armstrong Whitworth, kitson, Kerr stuart, nasmyth wilson off the top of my head). Ironically AW's workshops were probably the more modern and better equipped of any of the big builders.

I mentioned that on the previous page. Essentially they tried making them with ancient machinery and poor control over tolerances. It didnt work so well.

The gentleman in question is William John Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland. But if you just google welbeck tunnels its easier.

Industrial users weren't covered by the weight/manning agreements. Only proper railroads. Plus they were built for abroad. Having said that I'm not sure 1 extra ton of ballast would make much difference in performance.

I know they had a lowered cab compared to the usual 44t, but would they be within the loading gauge for british use? If they're sat about waiting and locos were needed I can see it as plausible they were borrowed or tested locally, but obviously not if they're out of gauge.