D854_Tiger

Yet how often have small incompatible fleets really been a problem, most UK train fleets operate self contained services, on more or less self contained networks and are maintained separately in self contained facilities, in a way that still does a fair impression of the pre-1923 selection of private companies. Then even when commonality was possible on the modern privatised railway, between the Voyagers and the Meridians, we find the opportunity was never taken, both fleets being incompatible with each other. Indeed, when it came to producing incompatible fleets of trains, BR were dab hands at it, as well, prior to nationalisation virtually everything on the big four could couple up and work together, by the time privatisation came around, there was no standard for multiple working (there never has been) and multiple mechanisms for coupling. As for economy of scale, buying off the shelf (or as near as off the shelf as the UK loading gauge allows) you can have that by buying onto a standard family of trains shared across other European railways, with all the cost advantages that go with it e.g, the Pendoliono and Desiro family of trains. I seriously doubt the IET has export potential, even in its all electric configuration, like the HST before it, it's bespoke for the UK, so we can confidently expect an order from Australia and then that's it.

I suspect they are rather good trains it's just the DfT learning curve expense incurred in getting there, not helped by all the add on stuff caused by the delay with the electrification. However, on the positive side, the UK just gained a new train builder and a serious one at that, with big plans for Europe.

Whatever but now after their fiasco do we believe they will ever try again, for the Anglia franchise they seem to have left it up to the TOC.

One of the most reliable railways in Japan, a private commuter railway with very predictable traffic patterns, achieves its reliability precisely because they use specialist teams to manage the trains, rather then rely totally on the automation, which has the facility for human intervention.

French cars always had the best suspension, as well, as their rural roads aren't too good. I was once advised by a car salesman that I should buy an Italian car (preferably the one he was selling) because they're designed to be driven by Italians and therefore have to be designed to take plenty of punishment. Having been to Italy and seen their driving, I couldn't fault that logic. I think it is good that train designers are being pulled up on their seat designs, about time, new trains cost millions, mostly our millions in taxes, and therefore we should never accept the ship being ruined for a ha'porth of tar. Aren't they supposed to consult on these things before they build them and, if not, why not. Is it really such a big ask to expect the seats to be comfortable and to provide a decent view from the window. I notice class 150s are still turning up on the Heart of Wales line, four hours sitting in one of those must be (is) purgatory, but they are essentially a good train but one that has always been needlessly spoiled by the interiors.

It should be about risk verses cost, ultimately safety has to be value for money and for me what modern H&S lacks is a sense of proportion and was it not the case that during the time when the H&S executive were given responsibility for the railways they were ultimately deemed not fit for purpose. I know someone who received a brick in the face, when they were traveling by train, it flew in through an open window. I myself witnessed some scrote launch a brick which landed three inches below the window line of a mk1 compartment I was traveling in. Does it now follow that in the name of safety we must ban all windows on trains because, if it ever did, I personally would never set foot on a train again and would choose to always travel by car, where I am twenty times more likely to be killed. For many years, railway safety measures were driven by the body count and I see nothing wrong with a modern safety culture that says we shouldn't wait around for someone to be killed but it's all about striking the right balance. Frankly, we don't always seem to have that, for example, group standards in relation to station design that say we can't have curved platforms anymore and stations only on level track, adding millions to the cost of building them, but no group standard that says we can't have people standing on unguarded platforms whilst trains whiz past at 125 mph.

I find everything of German design to be somewhat utilitarian, their trains, cars and hotels you could never accuse them of being decorative. Now the non-PC bit but they do like their order thankfully, nowadays, they've found a way to be ordered without having to become N***s.

Horses for courses, I would argue for safety critical systems something better than a check list for switching outed systems back on is required. Perhaps a bank could get away with that approach (I know some who do) but then that is until it causes say a security breach and the s**t hits the fan. OK no one is going to die but after the horror show known as national media headlines there will be more than a few left staring at the carnage that maybe wished they had.

Indeed, and why not if your software is for something arguably trivial, such as media or retail use, but for safety critical software, such as avionics or railway signaling that requires testing to destruction, there needs to be a very highly accurate specification to test against. Then my point would also be that something apparently trivial like say selling mobile phone tat, things like chatting or dating apps, can become serious s**t if the credit card details get out, serious enough to take take an entire corporation down. The Talk Talk hack that provided 21,000 unique bank accounts and sort codes was performed by a seventeen year old, showing off to his mates utilising a somewhat trivial tool that's freely available on the Internet, and is estimated to have cost Talk Talk £42m in lost business. The Information Commissioner branded the hack a car crash, before fining Talk Talk £400,000 for the data breach, personally I would have let the kid off because that was like leaving him in charge of the house, with a well stocked booze cabinet, and not expecting a party when you went away on holiday. That's where agile development, in the shortest time, can get you and I'm betting Talk Talk are no longer up for it too much.

When politicians make long term promises they're never going to be around long enough to ever have to deliver, you can be pretty sure it's to draw attention away from their failure, in the present day, to deliver on previous long term promises made under exactly the same circumstances. A politician predicting twenty years hence, when they can't reliably predict next year, and here we all are taking it seriously.

Didn't they always do that, then judging by the plentiful number of steam leaks that always seemed to be on offer, maintenance free could be said to describe things quite well. There was always something rather nice, on a bitterly cold winter's day, to be presented with a rake of mk1s, leaking steam everywhere, because you knew pretty soon you were going to be as warm as toast.

I once took over a project where the previous supervisor had just left the company, all rather suddenly, on being shown his desk I opened a drawer and found one hundred and sixty three fault tickets, all of which had been cleared but never fixed.

Some of these issues can be one offs and may be very difficult to replicate, then the worry is it could happen again, though I doubt Cambrian drivers need to rely on computers to remind them where the speed restrictions are.

There should never really be a methodology to restarting computer systems because there is always the possibility of a power cut that will not respect any methodology, most especially in linked systems. Safety critical systems should be robust enough to withstand such things and recover safely and nowadays, thanks to data regulation (you don't really want to fall foul of), even trivial systems can be deemed safety critical. Standard testing for large systems, hit them with an off switch then see what happens, you be amazed how often developers have neglected to consider such eventualities.

In the same way that a fly's a******e is the safest bit when it flies into the windscreen of your car.

Ah, now your are pulling our legs, everyone knows the SR is somewhere inside Box Tunnel.

I prefer the local shop, for local people.

I believe VTEC were planning it to serve parts of Yorkshire and the North that other trains cannot reach.

I suspect there won't be a lot of splitting going on, apart from off-peak at Cardiff (for Swansea) and Bristol (for the West Country), every hour, most Cardiff and Bristol services should be nine car sets. The five car sets being mostly reserved for the Cheltenham, Worcester and Oxford routes where, if they need extra capacity, they can double up during the peaks.

https://www.railmagazine.com/news/network/no-sunday-service-as-kenilworth-finally-set-to-open

As the chap that launched Kwik Save once said, "A poor man needs a bargain and a rich man loves a bargain" the secret of Aldi's success.

We have been through the pain GW are now experiencing (only far more so) now is the time of our gain, made even more so in Brum, by three highly successful TOCs fighting for our business, all with most excellent products.

I only caught the very tail end of BR steam, indeed my memory of it is quite vague, apart from a daily 8F on a trip working and a couple of peak time commuter jobs everything was diesel on my local railway, when I was growing up. I can remember my last ever steam sighting a filthy 9F light engine, very much where it shouldn't have been (the WCML wires were up by then), some time in late 1966, between Brum and Coventry. But enough for steam to get under my skin, even though I was always big on diesels as well, this is one crank, at least, that doesn't use terms like kettle.

That's the kind of optimistic answer I was hoping for to the same question. On my visits to the narrow gauge in Wales, I'm always pleased to see youth very much in evidence. The younger generation are not immune to the delights of steam, through parental influence and being converted by Santa specials (so many kids experience that nowadays) and, of course, the on-going and brilliant influence of Thomas the Tank Engine. Plus we shouldn't rule out the huge influence the railway's renaissance is having on younger people, so much more likely to use railways nowadays, coupled with concerns over the environment, there's a lot more railway friendly interest and curiosity out there nowadays. My perception is that the days when rail enthusiasts were dismissed as geeks and anoraks have long gone, after all, thanks to the Internet, it's the geeks that have inherited the world and people who understand how stuff works are deemed to be cool once again Anyway, here's a tale, my nephew was treated to a surprise visit to Lapland, to see Father Xmas, he was told where they were going, when they arrived at the airport, whereupon he burst into tears because he had assumed that year's visit to Santa would be on the SVR once again. That was more than a few hundred quid down the toilet (Lapland is an expensive option, as package holidays go) although thankfully he did enjoy it in the end.

Yes they somehow manage to micromanage their way to some of the most expensive trains ever conceived on UK railways then worry about the f*****g seats costing too much. All the proof you could ever need that remote out-of-touch civil servants shouldn't even be let out alone, let alone trusted with running anything. It's like Rolls Royce or Bentley sparing no expense on the design of their cars and then bunging two tea crates in for the driver and passengers to sit on. Then, you could very easily substitute any number of D(fors) into these conversations starting with the MoD and ending with every other a**e elbow department.