Reorte

Agreed. I'm not massively enthused still but the drawing's enough to make me think "wait and see" before I really grumble.

It's in Woodhead isn't it?

Even if someone passes the test it doesn't mean they're going to carry on driving in a manner that would pass a test. Some will do whatever is needed to get through it and regard it as no more than that.

Plenty of stations with lifts and without foot crossings, so I very much doubt it'll be retained.

Maybe it was a 158 I saw then. I may have just assumed 156 in my memory because that's what ran along the S&C (so not the line we're talking about anyway) back when I used to use it semi-regularly.

Is the bank on the west side high enough to just go straight across on that one? If it was just the footpath I'd suggest that diverting it to where the road goes under would be a better option, but of course that doesn't give any (sensibly practical) access to the platform. On a cheerier, less controversial note Blea Moor must be getting quite a busy place.

Visible here: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.1543082,-2.3067657,3a,25.1y,38.31h,92.72t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sDWHNJq_d09kvmzIYcCUVew!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?ucbcb=1&entry=ttu Don't know if there's one in the other direction, I've not noticed it from the road if there is (there are spots where the line's hidden from the road though). *** Whilst I fully understand the reason for lifts I can't say the prospect of them being built there doesn't leave me feeling somewhat upset and depressed. Note that's not the same as arguing against them, before someone starts...

Don't they still sometimes need ballasting to bring them up to the minimum weight requirement though? But I supposed you can choose where to put the ballast for optimum balance, which you can't for paint. We tend to think of paint as irrelevant in terms of weight but it does add up - leave the lid off a tin of paint until it all dries out and it's still noticeably heavier than an empty tin (although I'm sure most people here are better modellers than me who manage to keep the tin rims clean so that the lid goes on properly and they don't dry out!)

Nice signal though. The idea of IETs going down there is rather surreal though; I'd never thought about it but HSTs did so I suppose IETs do now.

Weapons shrink when defences do - quite a few might be incapable of taking out an old heavily-armed battleship, but since no-one builds those any more there's no point in making a warhead that big, and they're not built like that now because making a sufficiently big warhead wouldn't be too much of a problem. So based on that I doubt the destructive power of the weapons will increase. The advances go on getting them to their target.

I guess people who do that these days use a harness. In the past well, a few people falling off them every voyage was normal. Anyway if I had to go up that, erm, construction my biggest worry wouldn't be me falling off (not that I'd be happy about the chances of that) but the whole lot collapsing beneath me.

I'm not in London but the last couple of years has been a right PITA for getting stuff done due to people not being available on site, it being much harder to work through issues when people are scattered all over the place - remote calls are no substitute for face to face discussions when working through complex technical problems. Anyway that sort of proves my point I think. Why aren't those offices in Basingstoke then? Businesses don't operate on sentiment (to be honest the level of rejection of it is frequently more of a curse than a blessing, but that's a digression). They've centralised to London, leaving other places not much more than dormitory towns. I'm actually against faster travel because it exacerbates that effect. Businesses the idea for pretty much the same reason. School runs? Need smaller, more local schools then. Which costs more...

Good maintenance will give far fewer problems even with change, and buy time to make whatever alterations and changes are needed. Plus there's no point in making all those changes you're arguing for if they're not going to be properly maintained either, otherwise it's just another case of doing the big fancy thing that's supposedly the solution to everything and ignoring the ongoing basics again.

That always seemed more stick than carrot. It's simply that it's more economically efficient, so that's what survives. It's not been forced by vested interests in selling cars and fuel.

Only a little help I'm afraid but I was quite surprised to once see a Scotrail-liveried unit, probably around that time, which I'm reasonably confident was a 156 (no idea about which one though) passing through Kirkby Stephen. I don't recall whether or not "Scotrail" had been removed but it certainly had the Saltire.

Definitely. It's all very well people going on about things like "it's a privilege, not a right to have a car" but the simple fact is that we've built our current world around easy car availability, and it's simply not possible for most people to get by practically in this day and age without one. Yes, it's practical for some to manage, and a lot could change their circumstances so that they're one of those some, but only at the expense of someone being shifted the other way. Centralisation of jobs, services, shops etc., unless that's all somehow reversed then a large proportion of car usage is here to stay. And it's hard to see how that can be reversed when the reason most of the local shops, jobs, and services have vanished is because they simply can't compete with the efficiencies of scale brought on by the centralisation. I don't think that's a good thing at all but I can't see what can be realistically done about it.

Is it climate change or simply the lack of basic maintenance I mentioned before? Sure, it won't help, but don't attempt to keep things in good condition and it doesn't really make much difference what the climate's doing, it'll fail sooner or later anyway. But it makes a good scapegoat when there is a failure.

The world moves forward by learning from the mistakes of others!

I find it rather ingenious. Admittedly the type of ingenuity that comes with no common sense whatsoever. The same type that in a different time made complicated cocktails of various poisonous substances in the search for eternal life...

I get the distinct impression that basic maintenance is seen as dull, expensive, old-fashioned, unsexy, and a waste of money that could be instead be spent on some flashy new high-tech gimmick that somehow supposedly avoids the need for it (which it never does, but the work involved in installing it might result in kicking the maintenance can down the road for a few years). There seems to be a view that you can do a one-off big job then ignore it forevermore, which is, of course, nonsense. This attitude is most definitely not confined to Network Rail, it's a problem throughout the country.

That's why I qualified it with "most." There are certainly some nasty junctions where it's not. The M6 J34 northbound was one of those, really nasty, a sharp corner on to the motorway, and no acceleration lane to speak of (it joined on a bridge that never had enough space for a hard shoulder). At least plenty of the traffic on the motorway seemed to be aware of it, pulling out from the inside lane when approaching it was common even if you couldn't see vehicles trying to merge (which was hard to unless you were fairly close). Fortunately that's gone now and been replaced with something much easier as part of the Heysham link road (the join now seems excessively long, but at least that doesn't cause problems).

When merging with a 70 mph road I'll be heading for 70 (assuming the road I'm joining is free-flowing), but trying to spot gaps well before I reach the dashed line, which may well entail easing off before I reach 70. It's obviously a bit easier if you're descending rather than going uphill (where you can see the main road earlier), but there's usually plenty of time at most junctions whichever way they go. People who expect others to pull over does annoy me. I'm happy to pull over if there's easy space to do so but it shouldn't be expected - in the same way as when I'm joining I think it's good practice to see merging traffic approaching well before the merge point.

It says "do not" rather than "must not" (rule 243), which suggests it's bad practice rather than strictly banned. Failing to follow what's in the Highway Code when it doesn't say must or must not could be interpreted as something along the lines of careless driving, but isn't a specific offence. Any time it uses "must" it's referring to the law, anything else is describing good practice, but the Highway Code isn't the law in its own right.

At least it's got more paint on it than some. I would've quite liked that if there wasn't so much black on the grid otherwise.

The OS has staff and does things other than reissue the same software, so it'll all be part of that - the same reason everything's shot up. Although anything above inflation (even allowing for that being high) seems excessive.