Hobby

Quite probably, it's always been two lane as long as I've known it, since the late 80s, though it looks like a three lane road. There is an alternative which may suit that bit of road and access/egress from the side roads, the one where you have three lanes and an alternating two lane "overtaking" section with double white lines to keep the other traffic in it's lane. That seem to becoming quite common these days, I also saw quite a bit over in Germany earlier in the year.

Stick with Laddie! :)

The MGs are quite popular on Motability due to their low APs, I've seen very mixed reviews about them, people seem to fall into two categories, either love 'em or hate 'em! Don't know why, there's no common denominator from either camp.

However the Astra doesn't compete with the Passat, it's competition in that segment is the Golf, from £27k upwards, Astra £28k upwards. Not to mention the Golf's cousins, the Octavia and Leon which both start at around £25.5k. Vauxhall don't have a car in the Passat segment any longer.

That's a bad section of road, one day they'll sort it, it seems to change every time I use it!

Granted, but I don't think he was suggesting that, if you took that to it's conclusion you'd have to ban overtaking completely as it's inherently dangerous. On the section of road I mentioned there's plenty of places a three lane could be used. I do wonder sometimes if we are pandering to the lowest possible denominator in these sorts of cases. Bewdley Bypass, three lane section (on the hill), no accidents on there as long as I've lived down here: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.366496,-2.3131047,3a,75y,289h,72.56t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sUmQ4HvviQN6W2L4xbqFrxA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DUmQ4HvviQN6W2L4xbqFrxA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D176.31186%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

But conversely on a road that's wide enough and with good visibility such as yhe A5 north of the Shrewsbury bypass they kept people to the left. That section is now two lane and people sit in the middle of their lane and it prevents overtaking. I'm with Alastair on this.

Yes, I've been watching them, but the electric version is not on Motability and the plug in hybrid has an astronomical near £8000 advance payment against £1600/2500 for the 1.2 petrol. I'm afraid any savings I might make using electric will be eaten up and more by the AP! I'm assuming Vauxhall don't really want Motability to have the PHEV! It's interesting to see that the boot capacity (516l) is the same in the PHEV and EV versions, I assume some of the batteries have ended up where the fuel tank used to be!

My understanding is that for a battery fire sprinklers would be useless, and as we are now heading down that route perhaps it would be a waste of time and money putting them in. It will be interesting to see what the report on Luton says, but from what we've seen on film I doubt sprinklers would have had much effect. As others have said the safety features are there already, I feel far safer travelling through the CT than a road tunnel with none of those feature (spoken as a regular user of the CT). That's false, strict safety procedures are already in place in the CT, and have already been tested in worse scenarios than we're likely to see with a car fire.

It's certainly showing it's age, there's many EVs far better than the Leaf as an example now. Whilst it touches on computerisation it also ignores safety and comfort which are miles ahead of the cars they've used to illustrate the article. When they get rid of their rose tinted glasses and do a proper comparison it may be worth a read!

I think you answered your own point there! Spa was never a street circuit, it was a road circuit like Reims. There were plenty of street circuits but Spa wasn't one.

Yes, and I expect its to do with what will sell. BR liveries have "come back" several times recently, and as with the GWR livery is well known. An LNER livery would be pretty niche. I expect it'll come along in due course, after, no doubt, the Virgin livery!

For the amount of money LM want from the host country I doubt there's many African countries that could afford it, South Africa possibly, a quick search says 2024 is off but possible 2025, Lewis wants it to happen so perhaps he'll hang on until it does!

Lots of people! It's a known issue with them, I believe there are fixes, @PaulRhB I think may be able to help?

Am I the only one to imagine a car twice as large as the others, won't go round corners very quickly and will wallow whilst doing so and is powered by the largest cubic capacity engine allowed?! 🤣

Must admit that was my thoughts as well Ian, surely flashing yellows would be the obvious solution, no extra signals but some wiring/computer changes. But it's very probably not as simple as that!

As I said the costings were against diesel, not petrol, and the savings on fuel costs alone were a lot less. For such an install I wouldn't trust myself to do it so my comments re that stand. As I said the savings, if any would have been marginal. It worked for you, but it wouldn't have for me, we're all different. (I'd rather not bare with you, though, if you don't mind!) 😄

How is it "paid for"? They've never taken anything from my account until it's ready to dispatch.

But a very different scenario to Cogload which is on a high speed mainline where wrong direction working was required when setting back the train, and it was a move which was outside the norm where the guard would not have had the same level of route knowledge as your scenario, and if such an action went wrong the consequences would be very different. Not a comparison of like with like. Let the drivers drive and the guards guard.

I can see this remark probably didn't help either. It's clearly a case of what someone sees rather than what is actually the case. Yes, most of the role of a TM, SC or Conductor is aimed at the "passenger facing" aspect, and that's been the case for many years now and is the most visible aspect of the job, but they are still trained and hold competencies for if something goes wrong. Luckily I never had need to use them, as is the case i suspect for most Guards, but I do know of several that did have to use them, including evacuation and emergency protection.

Where did he say that? What we aren't allowed to do is get involved in actions that should be those of the Driver, which was always the case but in the "old days" sometimes those rules were "bent" to get out of a hole, nowadays we have to follow the rules. Which is actually what Phil said: "Train managers are not competent to act as drivers or shunters under any circumstances!" Although we are still allowed to signal the driver when coupling up, and, if we sign the stock, still couple up stock if it doesn't have auto couplers. That in no way means Guards are "incompetent", our role, including the safety aspect (emergency protection, evacuation, etc., etc.) are still there and in use, I think you may have mis-interpreted what he said!

As a newly retired Train Manager (Guard) I take exception to that statement which denigrates the role I used to hold. There's a big difference between what may have happened in BR days when, on some occasions, the rules were, shall we say, bent, and the lack of that nowadays, but the climate of blame has changed a lot since those days as well, not to mention other aspects of the job, with consequences far more severe now for the individual than they used to be if they choose to do a "short cut" which isn't allowed. Our Guards are still the only person you can rely on if things go wrong and the driver, as is often the case, is incapacitated in an accident and I can assure you we are very competent! Please justify it with some facts as to why the current Guards are held in such low esteem by you.

Mmm, this happened a few years ago (5 or 6) but as far as I am aware should still be possible as it was done under the present rules. We had been routed onto the slow lines heading towards Water Orton from New Street as there were issues further up towards Derby. We stood for a while and then the driver was instructed to set back one signal so we could cross to the fast to go via Leicester. The Driver went to the rear cab to take the train back after instructing me to sound the bell-buzzer when we'd cleared the signal protecting the crossover. So I wasn't driving or applying the brakes but telling the driver when he should. I expect this would have been an option in this particular case if needed.

Well said, Mike.

Probably the "mystery" 0-6-0! 🤣