Jim Martin

Can anybody kindly explain please......this is seen as relevant to the O.P, my apologies if others disagree..........

 

I've heard complaints from various industry individuals, some who run rival freight firms, about the fact that EWS/DBS wont sell their 60's.

 

In previous years there have been issues with the way EWS disposes of it's hardware such as Loco's that THEY OWN, and competitors have gone running off crying to the rail regulator to complain about this, the result being that EWS got slapped wrists and were told they HAD to make Loco's available for sale to competitors etc and were not allowed to just scrap them.

 

Well, how the hell does that work ?

 

I buy my car and I now own it.........it's up to me if I want to scrap it on the day of first registration if I so choose, it's MY car, so, as long as it's paid for, maintained and then disposed of in a non-hazardous manner, I can do what I like with it.

 

Well, the same with EWS/DBS. They OWN the Class 60, as they did with previous classes, why is it an issue what they do with vehicles that EWS/DBS actually OWN and then decide they don't need ?

 

I don't wanna see them sitting around rotting but then if they wanted to melt them all down and sell the metal, why not...........THEY OWN THEM.

 

Thanks,

 

Dave

Ed Burkhardt gave an interview to Rail Express back in 2007 and he made this exact point. This was after he'd left EWS, so he didn't

have an axe to grind (or if he did, he'd probably have been looking to stick it to EWS's then-management).

In the early post-privatisation period, I think that there was a reasonable argument to be made in favour of forcing EWS to put redundant

power up for sale. At that time the only UK source of off-the-shelf main-line locomotives was second hand sales of ex-BR power, EWS had sole

control of that supply and they could use it to exclude possible competitors. That isn't the case today and I'd have thought that anyone

who wanted to acquire a fleet of locomotives could do so relatively easily without going cap-in-hand to DBS.

In the same interview, he also said "EWS should replace the Class 60s as soon as it possibly can, unless it has plans to shrink its participation in the UK market even more". Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Personally, I'm a lover of the 60s and consider myself lucky to be living in an area that was one of their last strongholds, but the practical arguments in favour of the Class 66 seem overwhelming to me.

Jim

Thanks for all the replies. This was something that occurred to me just the other day, while I was looking at a photo of the harbour at Dover with the old linkspan clearly visible and a lone class 09 (I suppose - I'd have said 08 but for the picture being of a Southern Region location) pottering about. To be honest, I hadn't realised that the old linkspan lasted as long as it did. I wonder whether the investment in the new facilities paid for itself, given their relatively short life.

Jim

The parallel shunting of the Dover train ferry by a pair of locomotives is quite well-known, but I was wondering: did this practice come in with the commissioning of the new linkspan in the late 1980s or had it also been used with the earlier linkspan and smaller ferries? I don't think I've ever seen any film of the old linkspan in use, so I don't know.

Jim

Just to qualify what I wrote earlier, the actual reference is in MRJ 155 (December 2004). What Tim Shackleton wrote was that the body sides of the Hurst model were a scale 6" shorter than those on the Inter-City kit and he suggested adjusting the Hurst kit to ride slightly higher on its bogies to reduce the difference in height, if you were going to run the kits in mixed rakes. Later in the same article, in a comparsion of overall dimensions against those taken from a Thrall GA drawing, he quoted the overall height (in 4mm scale) as being 44mm for the prototype, 45mm for the Inter-City kit and 44mm for the Hurst kit after adjustment. I would infer from this that the height prior to adjustment is in the region of 43mm, in which case the Dapol model could be right.

Also, FWIW I quite like the colour. I don't think that EWS red is all that well-represented on RTR stock, for the most part. Certainly on most N-gauge models it may well be accurate based on colour chips or whatever, but reduced to 1:148 scale it generally looks too brown to my eye. That goes for both Farish and Dapol.

Jim

Hi Craig,

 

yes they are the same wagon, the most obvious differences are the bogies and the height, although the height is only obvious when the rakes are mixed and matched, a full rake of one or the other would be ok. Not sure which is correct though, don't assume it's the Hurst one.

I recall a comparison between the Hurst and Inter-City kits published in MRJ a couple of years ago which concuded that the Hurst kit was a bit short on overall height. That being the case (and I don't have the reference to hand, so I can't confirm it) the Dapol model may well be right.

Jim

Hi Jim,

I've tried to do a quick version of what you say, Hope you like it. I'll try and do the same thing on some of the other ones later on.

Warm Regards 7APT7

Nice bit of sky Good choice to go for the high, whispy clouds: they give it a bit more depth, IMHO. Smashing photo (as are many of the others, but this was my favourite).

Jim

Years and years ago, I read a review of a model building kit in one of the American magazines which commented on how many layouts have one- or two- car sidings, then said "what's great about Walthers is that they make models of industries that look large enough that they would actually need rail service" (or words to that effect).

The same thing is absolutely true of this layout: huge industries that demand proper trains. More than anything, that's what I like about it. Lots of those photos are cool, but the one looking up at the cast-in "Dale Limestone Company" lettering is a touch of photoshopped sky (in the top corner) away from being impossible to identify as a model, if you ask me.

Jim