D854_Tiger

In the days of Peak haulage on XC, a non-enthusiast student friend, returning to Sheffield from Birmingham, insisted the Sunday diversionary route taken had been via Doncaster. I found that somewhat baffling and thought he had to be mistaken so, when it happened again two weeks later, he noted some of the signal box and junction names for me. Trent (fair enough), Shirebrook, Firbeck Junction and Decoy Junction (he was most instant about that, finding it somewhat ironic) were amongst the names he couldn't have conjured up. I don't know how else he could have picked up on those names but a route I still find very hard to believe.

Booked or otherwise, the most unusual diversion you have experienced or heard of. I once caught a Sunday Birmingham - Southampton XC service that was routed via Kidderminster, Worcester Shrub Hill, the Cotswold Line (where it doubled up as a Cotswold stopping service to Oxford), Oxford, Reading (reverse), Basingstoke, Salisbury (Laverstock curve), Eastliegh then Southampton. I've read of plenty more stranger than that before all those Beeching closures such as restaurant expresses diverted via the Banbury - Cheltenham route including the Kingham Flyover. Then stories of war-time trains diverted over previously closed down railways.

Do the replacement rules apply equally to all routes. If say a route is only used by one or none freight trains per day and has a blanket 20 mph speed restriction imposed because of it, would the need be so urgent for a clipped OOU point to be replaced by plain line.

I hadn't realised it was ever used, according to a cab ride DVD I own, for a while the Tube Stock delivery train used it in the up direction (the only booked working) as it was not allowed to use the platform roads. I have seen the down platform road used for looping by of all things a Voyager, I was on it, and we used the platform loop to overtake a freight train standing in the main platform. There's also a Youtube clip showing the Shakespeare Express doing the same thing but bizarrely not overtaking anything at all. The up loop is of course used quite often and even by booked passenger workings. Always nice to see old track being put back into use, rather than the all too often being taken out of use.

The class 802 will have 940 hp per engine verses 750 hp for the class 800. However it's the same engine only with a higher rating producing more power. I do wonder how physically that's achieved do they just allow the engines to rev faster or is it just a case of burning more fuel to generate more electric power but at the, more or less, same level of revolutions. A bit like when you go uphill in a car, with the engine not going any faster but giving it more gas for the same speed.

I had reason to call there the other day and some serious track relaying seems to be going on but not on the main line, the down loop and what looks like a siding extension to it (to the south). I ask because that loop nowadays is hardly ever used, indeed the tube stock delivery train was the only traffic it had seen in years, not least because there's also the platform line as well. I guess the answer is that's it's about to be used a heck of a lot more.

A 2+4 HST will have 4500 hp to play with - that's 750 hp per car. A 5 car class 802 will have 2820 hp and a 9 car 4700 hp - that's at best 564 hp per car A 3 car class 158 has 1050 hp - that's 350 hp per car. By any measure, those HSTs are going to be faster, most especially from a standing start and accelerating. Then west of Plymouth on a Cornish main line, which I believe has only a few hundred yards of straight main line, it's all about acceleration. Back in the day, Virgin XC launched Operation Princess, with some 2+5 HSTs substituting for Voyagers. I caught one from Swansea to New St, stopping at Cardiff, Newport, Cheltenham and New St, being a Sunday we were diverted via Chepstow, Worcester and Kidderminster. So very little 125 mph (in fact none) but the performance was stunning, almost car-like acceleration, from the endless slowing and Old Hill bank may as well have not been there. A somewhat slack timetable and few stops meant we arrived everywhere very early.

A 2+7 HST would be roughly the equivalent of nine car class 802, running on diesel, let's hope no one notices that the new trains aren't going to be anywhere near as powerful as the old trains through Cornwall.

New trains are always going to be ordered most where there is the greatest traffic growth and that's always going to be London and the South East. It's inevitable that any displaced stock, not yet beyond its shelf life, will then find its way to other lower growth areas. Just like with kids and certain hand me down clothes, not particularly fair and hopefully not always the case, but it's just the way it is.

When I was regularly commuting down to London, I always feared teleporters, because they would have done me out of a breakfast. Besides, have you ever seen the film The Fly.

Suitable, fobbed off and cast offs are, for me, all terms that rather miss the point. The point here surely is that some rather good trains (much better than many others still in service), with plenty of years of life left in them are going begging all for the want of a refurbishment and new diesels. Call me old fashioned and whatever the politics of the situation or relative wealth of the nation, you just don't scrap trains like that wasting perfectly good resources. Someone has to have them, someone should have them, it's just a question of where. All too often in the past, on our railways, we have seen perfectly good stock go to waste in favour of an obsession with new build that has been more often than not compromised.

I suspect political hype in these new fangled Mayoral offices still has a way to go before meeting reality. They might be able to throw away the LM colours but somehow I doubt they will get to throw away perfectly good trains. Then they might be in for a bit of a shock when they realise their new empire is built on tracks they don't own, must share and will never be allowed to own.

The spec of the interior will be everything. How many generations of EMU and DMU were based on the mk3 body shell and how many of those trains had interiors that were pretty awful, with 2 + 3 seating that never lined up with the windows. Yet a mk3 first class coach is arguably as good as train travel got in this country. A Vivarail with 2+2 seating, nice tables a decent view out of the window, well give me one of those over a class 153 on the HoW line anyday.

An older generation remembers railways featuring significantly in their lives, perhaps using the train to go shopping in the nearest town or city, using the train to visit relatives or to go on holiday. Back in the day, nearly everywhere had a railway station and even if not a railway station then the sounds of freight trains and freight yards were never too far away. Then something happened, railways were closed down, trains services were reduced and the railway's role in moving freight was diminished. Families bought cars, we even stopped going on holiday by train, more likely in an aircraft. Many of my younger relatives only experiences of trains up until becoming students were the Santa Specials on the SVR, We stopped using trains and a whole generation, much outside of London, never needed the references. Now as the railway renaissance continues a whole new younger generation are discovering trains, for the first time, but they don't have the references, the language, because they've never needed them. Then that is why language has reinvented itself and, yes, that means train station. Do I mind, well rather that than no references at all because that would have meant the railways would have died out.

Will it be the case that enough surplus DMUs will become available thanks to electrification projects. Given that many existing DMU services elsewhere already suffer from overcrowding, will need urgent strengthening and many surplus DMUs will be needed to replace Pacers. Then Okehampton is a relatively isolated part of the network and ideal for a trial. Long term should that service be successful then maybe something more compatible for the local operation could be drafted in. But those Pacers still need replacing and could the cost of new diesel trains be justified for that, when such a cheap (and none nasty) solution is available.

I suspect that might be the whole point. No one is going to claim they're getting someone else's cast offs (always politically sensitive) for a service that currently doesn't exist.

For delivery in Q1 2018. http://vivarail.co.uk/first-d-trains-ready-sale-delivery-q1-2018/ Rumour has it they already have a customer as well, but no one is saying. But then this is also breaking news. http://www.okehampton-today.co.uk/article.cfm?id=420560&headline=Okehampton%20to%20Exeter%20commuter%20train%20trials%20planned&sectionIs=news&searchyear=2017 A commuter service trial for Okehampton planned for 2018. Then where might they get the stock for that and note the word trial. So, I've decided to add two and two together to make five.

I should have known that, in my footballing days I was called it often enough.

A colleague and myself were having a discussion about the differences in rolling resistance forces between road and rail and it seemed a good way to describe this might be to consider how much more a horse would have been able to pull on a railway (in terms of the number of wagons) verses the typically one wagon on a road. However, to consider that means having to go back in time to when the earliest railways used horses. I have seen some paintings of early industrial scenes suggesting even tens of wagons on rail was possible so does anyone have more idea.as I know horses were still used in some places, even in BR days.

Does this count. Birmingham Snow Hill when it was the largest unstaffed halt in the country. https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5038/5898509627_fde182a405_b.jpg

If you are fascinated with trains and street running I would definitely recommend a visit to the Sheffield Supertram. Their trams are quite lengthy so I reckon they qualify as trains and there is plenty of pure street running.

I've seen a picture of a halt that was popular with Dartmoor walkers on the Princetown Railway called Ingra Tor. On the footpath approach to the halt was a large chocolate and cream British Railways sign that read, "Dog Walkers Beware of Snakes."

A lovely railway, that line to Weymouth, I'm guessing not quite the S&D but not far off. I first experienced it back in the 1970s on a glorious mid-summer day. I had selected the through train from Cardiif because i knew it was one of the few loco-hauled (class 47) services. It was but for some reason the class 47 was removed at Westbury, as I lent out of the droplight in the compartment, I had sole-occupancy of (all the way), I heard a familiar noise I dared not to hope was for our train. Needless to say a filthy Western (why did they always seem that way) was backing down onto our train, oh deep joy, glorious weather, glorious scenery and the perfect soundtrack to go with it. By then, only a handful of Westerns survived, mostly concentrated around Westbury, and not normally used on passengers trains so it was a bit of a result.

Nothing new, just take a look at the Underground and the Overground for complexity in ownership and operating jurisdiction. All flavours and combinations being catered for, despite the illusion of a single entity created by those commendable maps.

As others have already said, nationalisation of the railways was a political act that could occur overnight but from a managerial and organisational perspective that change was always going to take many years to implement. Initially, apart from the new colours, it made sense for the railway to remain pretty much as it had been, with the new regions basically reflecting the old big four. It's worth pointing out that it took many years for the complete restructuring of the railways, into one single entity, arguably a process not completed until sectorisation came about as late as the 1980s. Indeed perhaps, like a model railway, only when they finally finished the job did someone have the bright idea of starting all over again with privatisation. In my industry, we are about to encounter BREXIT, strange to relate how, when the EU first came about, I witnessed many International standards, whose content never changed other than new headers that simply added the word European, and I fully expect now to see some of those same standards have it removed all over again, still with the same content. Such is life. I prefer real ale but when none is available I tend to order a lager, "A pint of Black Label" whereupon my friends find it hilarious to point out that it hasn't been called that for a good twenty years however the young barperson always seems to know what I mean then I notice the button on the till marked Black Label.