D854_Tiger

You shouldn't be getting 800s to Plymouth that often though, and the 802s which you will get regularly were specified to provide adequate performance on diesel.

Obviously when an 800 shows up you'll lose time, but you'd expect that - like substituting a 47 where a deltic was needed.

I suppose the unknown is whether 802s will actually perform properly.

 

I maintain that slogging over the hills on the Highland main line is where 800s will really embarrass themselves. Thankfully there aren't that many ICEC trains to Inverness.e 

The class 800s should only reach Devon via Bristol and the plan is that those trains will not go further west than Exeter or Torbay.

The performance of the class 802 has been specifically designed around the WoE route (unlike the HST) a route where there is no 125 mph running whatsoever west of Reading.

Contrasting doors to make them easier to see for visually impaired people - in this case, a dark upright block colour on a light background.  Then add more dark and bright colours in similar vertical blocks.  Isn't that just confusing?  I mean, those who can tell a dark green door from a dark green block are probably not visually impaired enough to need the colour to see which part is the door, while those who can see very little and need the change of colour won't be able to tell which dark green block is a door and which isn't...

You might have thought when designing for the visually impaired they might have consulted the visually impaired.

I'm not saying they haven't but ......

The thing I find is that you do get some people for whom that is true, some people who have 20 years useful experience, and some people who will just resist any change at all.

The key is to be able to tell the difference, which isn't that easy, and the temptation is to dismiss any opposition as wrong - on both sides; the "what do they know, they're only just of of school" attitude is just as unhelpful as declaring someone a luddite if they don't agree with a new clever idea.

 

The guy in your example was just stupid.

In my experience, those that think they know it all, inexperienced or highly experienced, can be equal pain in the arses to deal with, even if they do know best, when they are always shouting the odds letting you know about it.

I believe the expression is blowing your own trumpet - polite, helpful, no chip on their shoulder, no axe to grind, if they don't know admitting to it and if they do know not making a song and dance about it are the best people you want to be around in the workplace.

This mornings W.A.G. express has failed at Wrexham general.

Blimey, all those missing Welsh Assembly Members, holding up proceedings in Cardiff this morning, I wondered why the world had stopped.

You presume wrong.

 

These IETs wont be the be all and end all that some people think and people posting their opinion as fact is starting to wee wee me off.

 

I do have practical experience of being in the cab of these things and although a decent enough place to be, on diesel they are just plain slow because they are underpowered.

Yeah but they are going to be like **** off a shovel on electric power, which presumably you do at least accept that is how eventually they will be used on the core route.

So what if they can't match a HST on diesel, they were never designed to, and if that inconveniences the PAX for a while pad out the schedules, that's what they did when the WCML was being upgraded, a blanket ten minutes was added to every schedule the very first day the work started.

I didn't realise Dunbar station had changed hands, but is now run by ScotRall according to National Rail!  Certainly was ICEC until recently.

 

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations/DUN/details.html

Scotrail trains now serve Dunbar four times a day thus presumably providing the excuse for a power grab, even though the other twelve trains a day are all English.

Sorry about that but David Starkey was on the radio today drawing comparison between BREXIT and the Reformation.

He was at his acerbic best stating that the English people will never accept interfering foreigners telling them what they can and cannot do, whereas the Scottish people quite like the idea of interfering foreigners telling the English what they can and cannot do.

Priceless stuff, I bet the Twittersphere has been going ballistic today.

Hello I has seen YouTube so that branch don’t have or have signal ? But only token key for access points

Yes, correct the line is controlled by tokens with no signal.

Wiki explains it here quite well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looe_Valley_Line

According to this the Coombe Junction ground frame is normally controlled by the guard acting as signalman (person).

What's so impressive about that? After forty years we should be getting a much better timetable.

 

Geoff Endacott

Well they are promising a doubling of frequency and fifteen minutes off the end to end schedules and that should still be deliverable despite the reduced scope of the electrification.

To do much better than that would probably mean an entirely new railway and all the new railway builders are going to be busy elsewhere, for a while longer yet, on more important stuff.

I shall now take cover.

Criticising the procurement process is one thing.

 

But the article I read in Modern Railways (and I don't recall now what names were on it) was very critical of the trains themselves. Now I'm writing this some time after I read it, but the impression I took away was that they were happy to dwell on all the negative aspects and they weren't prepared to concede that anything might actually be good about the trains, including - if I remember correctly - a comment along the lines that they couldn't be considered to be "proper" long distance trains at all but were glorified commuter trains. In terms of interior design, I'd say that was far more true of the current GWR HSTs.

Not living that way, I have yet to sample them and will let things bed in a little before I do.

Everything I have read and seen on Youtube suggests they are very good trains so is something I will look forward to.

Over the years and whenever reading the crank perspective, I have long since come to the conclusion that they just hate change and always refuse to look at the bigger picture, which should always be getting far more of those normal bums on the seats.

Had the interweb existed back in the day, I have absolutely no doubt many cranks would have been demonising the HSTs for replacing the Deltics.

I have always tried (refused) to fall into that mould but did succumb to it with all those units that were based on the mk3 body shell the kind of triumph of (what was undoubtedly wonderful) engineering over style that was beyond the pale.

If the class 150 ever was the future of medium distance rail travel then surely rail travel had no future.

But how much 'competition is there really?

 

LM (or whatever they are called now) only 'compete with Virgin because (i) They both have to call at large stations like Coventry and (ii) It is more efficient to have one train going all the way to London than lots of short runs with changes and (iii) Removing stops at  lesser used stations, like along the Trent Valley speeds up Virgin services but users still expect through trains to London.

 

Similarly while Chiltern have been very sucessfull in grabbing a large chunk of the Birmingham revenue - but that is on the back of the need to serve the likes of Banbury and Leamington Spay anyway.

 

At the end if the day true 'competition' only really works when there are very few restrictions on the ability of producers / service providers to push their wares. Unlike a supermarket or a financial comparison website the railway has a finite level of infrastructure capacity (and that has already been reached on the WCML) plus a finite number of resources to deliver it (train fleets, drivers etc).

 

As such while I have no problem with separation of 'brands' based on the type of service they provide, this assumption that splitting franchises in the name of 'competition is flawed and only increases costs (more staff needed following the separation of crew, maintenance, inefficiency in unit diagramming as services get split between different TOCs etc.

How much competition was introduced when Ryanair decided to fly from Stansted to Monchengladbach (Dusseldorf) against BA flying from Heathrow to the real Dusseldorf.

Some, but not enough to fill those Ryanair flights, those Ryanair flights have been filled by the new more convenient (for plenty) journey opportunities that have been opened up by the new route.

The same can be true on the railway, simply by competing TOCs serving different stations along the way but with similar overall journey times.

DafT and the government continues to lurch from one big idea to the next one looking for some sort of panacea and all the while some blame the TOCs and ROSCOs for the resulting confusion and mess.

I can understand though why they might want to split up the GW franchise.

Here in the West Midlands, we have three franchises competing for our business to London and the perception of the pax is that it works well, so much so, business is booming on all three.

Now that maybe far more perception, than actual delivery on performance and fares, but it does seem to work in terms of generating business.

The same thing seems to work with the airlines, attracting multiple airlines to the same route doesn't just split the available business multiple ways, it clearly seems to attract new business as well.

One morning I decided to use Hampton-in-Arden station, to get to London on LM, an OAP was using the same train and told me how wonderful it was to have a direct train to London from her village, three minutes walk away (a village that is only one station away from International with three Pendolinos every hour), allowing her to visit her daughter down in London (all on one train). I got the distinct impression she was making that journey more often because of it.

Just been watching this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-42357608/death-by-smog-london-s-fatal-four-day-pea-souper

 

Did this prompt the Government to reappraise the use of steam past the end of the 60s and hasten the transition to diesel and electrics?

That's an interesting concept that steam was replaced by Deltics in order to clean up the air we breath.

I'm willing to bet the difference in journey time from Chipenham to Bristol or Cardiff to Swansea, between a HST or IET running on diesel, is next to nothing, not once the shorter station stops the IET makes possible are taken into account.

P.S I suspect curtailing the electrification at Thingly was more about what was going to be deliverable, within a given time, rather than saving money.

Not for Chippenham <> Bristol passengers there won't be any improvement (OK, perhaps a quicker get away on the Down from Chippenham as the wires will go to Thingley (not "Swindon"), but that's it). Yet again you seem to be suggesting that "it'll be fine for those west of Swindon, and stuff the rest". I don't know the figures in terms of ticket sales for passengers east or west from Chippenham, but there is significant west bound traffic to Bath and Bristol, who have no interest in performance between Paddington and Swindon. 

 

No doubt those west of Cardiff will be thinking the same...

 

The point is we are where we are, And, although this is probably a point for the Electrification thread, given track lowering has been done at Box Tunnel, Sydney Gardens and Keynsham, bridges have been rebuilt at Thingley (x2), Corsham (x2), Ashley and Oldfield Park (that come to mind), and there are piles in at many locations, when you add in the £300 million for the "engine deal" how much is actually being "saved" by curtailing the wires at Thingley?

I'm willing to bet the difference in journey time from Chipenham to Bristol or Cardiff to Swansea, between a HST or IET running on diesel, is next to nothing, not once the shorter station stops the IET makes possible are taken into account.

Interesting stuff...but I get the impression that certain parties are determined not to find anything positive in these trains.

 

I had a flick through the Modern Railways issue covering the IET launch but the coverage was so overwhelmingly negative that I left it on the shelf, having been reminded why I stopped buying Modern Railways.

By any measure, by now, surely the concept of the DfT specifying trains to address the issues and pitfalls of the TOCs doing so, by them going it alone, has been totally discredited.

Modern railways are merely the messenger in this.

However, there can be no doubting that they will probably be very good (though expensive) trains and, though the bi-mode concept can be faulted, it seems strange to me that people are choosing to criticise the trains based on the performance aspect.

On electric they can clearly go like the proverbial, just as they were designed, on diesel less so, also just as designed, the problem is the lack of wires and Hitachi or for that matter the DfT can hardly be blamed for that.

As for spending 300m on uprating the diesels, what a terrible waste of our money, just for a year, the GW, NR and their customers should have been told to make do in the meantime with contracts, timetables and fares adjusted accordingly, if need be.

Once the wires reach Swindon, an HST like timetable should be an easy ask, and it's nothing but ongoing improvement from then on.

I'm not sure why they need two brands other than to assuage regional vanity in the Midlands and North West. Seems a bit pointless to mett

Politics, once you create a whole new level of government, that no one is interested in (judging by the turnout for its election), it's probably most important that we know they are there.

Then, once they are there, they have to do stuff, no matter how much it may irritate us, or else we might ask why ever did we need them.

In Scotland they even gave the Scottish parliament the power to raise taxes and set alcohol prices, that was like giving Wee Jimmy Krankie a catapult for Xmas and telling them not to point it at anyone.

Hi,

 

There was talk at one point of running 2 x 12 car units on Western, but my boss and I had to put down that idea as it was simply ridiculous!

 

Simon 

Exactly, those Japanese, coming over here, with their Japanese ways just because they are used to dispatching eighteen coaches worth of bullet train, every quarter of an hour, doesn't mean they can get away with the same thing over here.

One thing I will give test 350's is that ride quality aside there is a reassuring feeling of solidity about them and a build quality which is unusual. If they could sort the ride quality they'd be among the best trains on the network. When the 319's pass another train it can be quite alarming, they make some worrying noise and vibration and the power delivery is weird. I once wrote to LM to report one pulling off with the doors still open and got the standard reply with no follow up to offer any assurance. However I do prefer the ride of the 319's.

I've used class 350 quite a bit to get down to London.

Where I live, I'm spoiled for choice for services to London, I have the option of Warwick Parkway (Chiltern), International (Virgin and LNW) or Coleshill Parkway (change Nuneaton into the TV Flyer).

There's also the option of local stations on the Brum - Coventry line where the LNW services stop, typically twice per hour, that go through to Euston, one in the morning which, once it gets to Northampton, is fast to London.

On the TV flyer I find the class 350 superb, 110 mph and just two stops, in my opinion the best units the WCML has ever had. Yes the older class 321, 319, 317 family ride just as well (I believe based on the truly wonderful mk3) but frankly BR sure knew how to design a sow's ear from a silk purse because the travelling ambience of those units always was basically awful for longer journeys.

If LNW were still using them round my way to London, Virgin would be getting my money every time and the fact they don't nowadays I think speaks very well for the class 350.

Anyway, found a Youtube clip of the new West Midlands Livery (still looking for the LNW one).

P.S. I last went to London, three weeks ago, I parked up at Coleshill, TV Flyer from Nuneaton to Euston, then came home on Chiltern loco hauled (staying on until The Hawthorns), tram to New Street and finally class 170 back to Coleshill - nice day out and someone else was paying for first class.

Just out of interest, a (perhaps silly) question on front end design of modern fast trains like these. How much of the design is actually required for areodynamics/speed, and how much is the front end design actually just for show? I was wondering if with modern technology, it  was in any way possible to have 125mph units with flattish fronts that could have corridor connections. A bit late now I know, but intersting anyway as I think a big problem with these things is that you cant get from one part of the train to the other, once it's on the move.

Nowadays, they go to the trouble of designing city cars, which mostly totter around doing thirty (on a good day), to be aerodynamic because of the fuel it can save, so I reckon it must be worth doing for 125 mph trains.

Indeed, looking at the number of units around with corridor connections, running at 100 mph, I would argue that is wasting quite a bit of energy.

The time I did a long trip on a voyager was precisely because travelling in a voyager was preferable to the alternative options to avoid it. I can only talk for myself but I do find the attractiveness of the using the train drops as journeys get more complicated. I do a lot of journeys where changing is unavoidable but it does alter the equation of whether to use the train, fly or drive in my case.

Every passenger survey, ever conducted, has shown that the majority of punters prefer through trains, even if comes at the expense of a longer journey time.

Give the punters what they want I say.

Quicker is the operative word, one Manchester to Euston train goes via Birmingham, when I used to consider the service to get to London I used to think it was a typo in the WTT - it adds an hour onto the journey.  Unless you are going to Birmingham why would you bother getting on that train.

 

For most people going to Scotland or coming down they will get the direct trains and not these secondary services via Birmingham which are designed for the people of the West Midlands to get to places not for those doing the whole distance.

Except the direct trains are fast from Warrington so where could you change in order to get to Milton Keynes or Northampton.

Plus with book ahead tickets nowadays, concentrated on the quieter trains the punters from Euston may well find the cheapest fares are being offered on some of those slower trains.

Also remember Virgin West Coast only serves Edingburgh with one fast TV service a day, if you want to go London to Edinburgh with them pound to a penny it will be via Birmingham.

We all prefer direct trains, if possible. But if running direct trains makes a reliable service less likely, making people change may be the better option.

 

The Swiss and the Germans certainly seem to think so.

BR used to work on that principle, who remembers Brum to Nottingham (change Derby) or Brum to Shrewsbury (change Wolverhampton) and changes that were near compulsory thanks to very few through trains being offered.

The operators might like it but the problem is, especially with the traffic growth nowadays, you don't really want whole train loads of people pouring onto the platforms in order to change.

Watching proceedings at Birmingham International this week, it was very noticeable how trains were being looped into bay platforms for seemingly little or no reason but one look at the number of waiting passengers and you start to realise it's as much about crowd control as train control.

I've even known them turn one at Reading!

 

 

As to why they get backwards - sometimes a diversion will force a reversal. e.g. if there is disruption between Wootton Bassett and Reading, the usual diversion for trains from South Wales is to reverse at Bristol Parkway, head towards Temple Meads, but take the avoiding curve towards Bath, thence Bradford on Avon, Westbury, Newbury, Reading.

 

Alternatively a train fault (e.g. issue with the leading cab) can lead to a train being reversed, as happened to my first trip on an 800 at Swansea in October.

There are some booked diagrams as well that leave the HSTs facing the wrong way, particularly at the end of the day, empty stock workings from places like Hereford and Cheltenham also there is a Cardiff service that runs via Bristol (reverse) late evening.

I'm sure they have moves booked to correct the situation but any delayed trains or faults they need to get fixed overnight and the train facing the right way is probably the first concern to go out of the window.

I don't think its anything to do with any restrictions on the Clitheroe line, I don't think anything is restricted gauge-wise and heavy cement and log trains regularly travel the line so I don't think there is a weight/axle loading issue.

 

Is it something to do with the entrance to the Pendleton site is the wrong way round to go straight through. Not familiar with that end of the line. 

Given the sparsity of traffic over the Clitheroe line, I would imagine the pool of drivers with the necessary route knowledge is quite small and gaining said route knowledge quite tricky when there are very few trains on which to do so.

Yesterday there was a sum total of two freight trains over the line.

A few years back, a relative told me how they had conducted a week's training course at somewhere that backed right on to that railway, not being a crank he gave the railway little thought until Thursday arrived, when there was this rumbling noise that interrupted proceedings and had the entire course making puzzled looks at each other until the lecturer pointed out, "Oh it's a train."

The only train they saw the entire week.

From what I've read (and heard), much of this 'substantial' was often down to the substantial quantities of beer that many Victorian railwaymen consumed. The alcohol probably helped keep out the cold. My engineman great grandfather, who apparently enjoyed a beer or several (hopefully after work, but we heard stories), appeared to be of about average height but certainly in his latter days was rather more than rotund! Quite how he managed to perform some of his duties, I dont know, but it didn't stop him being the father of sixteen children! Unusually for a railwayman of his time, he was clean shaven.

Different times, different standards, back in the day I've heard stories of something of drinking culture on the railways (whilst on duty) and you don't have to go back as far as the Victorians (try 1970s).

Then, I remember my old dad, asking a policeman the driving way whilst supping a pint outside a pub one summer in the 1960s and being told mind how you go if your having a few beers.

They would have locked him up nowadays and thrown away the key.