Hobby

I really hope not they are a pain in the backside here in Birmingham (part of one of the pilot test sites), especially being ridden illegally, such as running red lights, on pavements, etc., everyone hates them! In my local town the police have confiscated several thank goodness.

I meant for you to ask on twitter, not just look at it! Most TOCs have someone looking at it that will respond quickly though I can only speak for those I know and the Welsh operator I know nothing about.

I think it depends on the cause of the disruption. If its weather I don't think they do as usually other forms of transport has similar issues, though sometimes as with voyagers and Dawlish they'll agree mutual ticket acceptance. I think if its an official dispute such as XCs its the same, no need to replace though again mutual ticket acceptance may be available. Have you checked their website for their t&cs? Or even the hated twitter can be useful in these cases!

I keep saying Katy that i don't disagree with you that things can go wrong, but my experience over the last 25 years (since the cars I am buying started to include electrics) is that they don't. Other people may have different experiences but that's mine. And I'd rather have a reliable modern car as my daily than one I have to keep fettling to ensure it runs ok and will start when i want it to. Other people like Alastair (and you?) prefer the opposite, such is life, we just have different expectations, that's all. You can plug your "easy to fix" (as if an engine change even in an old car is easy!) as much as you want but you won't change my opinion, perhaps best left at that?

It's the same where I am, Jeff, people in large cities don't know how good they have it!

No, they've been doubling up the sets on most of the remaining services, until now! The service hasn't been running at under 50% of pre pandemic either, it's been well above that for quite a while now, it started out at roughly 50% when they got rid of the NCL/SOU/RDG and MAN/BRI/EXD services (the "half hourly" ones at New Street), but they have been creeping back in for some time now, though that'll all be out of the window with this.

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No (TM and SC-wise, I think the Drivers are the same).

It does cost a lot if it goes wrong I've never said otherwise, but the key point is that it rarely does go wrong, since the introduction of computers into cars (probably the definition of a "modern", early/mid 80-s when they reached common family cars?) I haven't had one fail due to the electrics. The vast majority of modern cars go on and on, way beyond what we were used to back in the 70s when i started driving, also the engines, assuming correct servicing, also last much longer, cars with 150k plus mileages are commonplace, they were very rare indeed back in my younger days , and even then would have had at least one, probably two, rebuilds. As my daily I am not interested in a car that's easy or cheap to fix, I want one that doesn't need that attention in the first place. And a modern car, with all it's sophistication, does just that, and in addition is much more comfortable, more economical (my current car has an engine that is the same size as my second car, a Mini 1000, but is larger and heavier but has better mpg), and safer. As I said earlier that doesn't mean I don't like the older cars (I wouldn't be on this thread if I didn't!), but they have a time and place for me, and that is to wallow in nostalgia with other, similar minded people, at car shows and on club rallies. For anything else I use the modern, thanks.

Common sense or a realistic view of what regulations the general population is likely to abide by? The answer to that is open to debate as well.

Judging by reactions on social media I do wonder if we've now reached the stage where we have more information than ordinary people can reasonably process and make proper sense of...

Certainly that's the way it's looking so far, based on the experts who have spoken about it and not the media and social media scare headlines. Could be a good thing if it turns out that way... We'll have to wait and see.

That'll make their eyes water!

I have been doing it all the time, Andy, our policy is still for people to wear masks, that hasn't changed, all that's happened is that it's now Government policy as well. However it's not my job to enforce it, regardless of what some people may think. I'd be putting myself in danger, both of violence against me and of catching this strain of Covid, we get enough threats of verbal and physical violence as it is I've no intention of risking even more.

On to supermarkets, I was in Morrisons just after opening time this morning (emergency as the milk I'd bough two days ago had gone off!) and it was pretty quiet, can't remember about mask wearing I was just in and out as quick as possible!

It never did first time round because it's impossible to do without employing several hundred thousand more staff so that all trains could be policed! But more to the point why it was seen by many to be working in the past was that passenger numbers were very, very, low, so most behaved. Unless people stop travelling (remember they haven't said stop using trains, only wear masks) I would say we'll see many still not wearing them and fights break out again between those that won't and the self-appointed mask police. Personally I'll be in my cubby hole out of the way, and I'll fish my plastic face shield out again!

Weekends have always been a bad time on the railways, we all hate working Saturday and Sunday. Before Covid it was drunks, sports fans and shoppers, now Covid is added to that toxic mix. If I were to give one piece of advice to prospective travellers it would be avoid weekends, especially Friday and Saturdays nights and during the day on Sundays.

Not really, some joint use of parts, but different... "The Land Rover Td5 engine, a 2.5-litre, 5-cylinder turbodiesel used in the Discovery and the Defender had the same bore/stroke dimensions as the L series and used the same pistons, connecting rods and crankshaft dimensions. However, the Td5 was not simply a 5-cylinder L series. It used Lucas electronic unit injection, instead of the L series' direct-injection system, as well as a through-flow cylinder head and a very different ancillary equipment layout. The Td5 had been developed by the Rover Group under the codename 'Project Storm', which was originally to develop a replacement range of turbodiesels to replace the L series, with 4-, 5-, and 6-cylinder engines of 2, 2.5, and 3 litres respectively." (Wiki) To reply to those who talk about changing a camshaft and other work needed to keep an old car on the road as if it's just a walk in the park I'd better say here and now I am not one of them! I enjoy driving an old car for nostalga's ake but I'm not mechanically minded, or any good at body repairs, etc, so I use a professional. hence my earlier comment about costs is perfectly valid... For me!!

I'm now on my eighth consecutive VW Group car, one failure since 2001 and even that was just a switch into "get you home" mode rather than parking up on the hard shoulder... Not that my experiences counts against such illustrious knowledge... But my experiences with 70s and 80s cars would suggest that modern cars, despite (or because of?) the modern electrics are far more reliable... But that doesn't stop me wanting another to run as a classic, even though I know it'll cost me more to run than a modern!

Really? Do you have the statistics to back up that claim? From what I have seen modern cars are pretty reliable and go big mileages with the correct servicing. Yes, when they go wrong it can cost big money, but compared with the stuff I drove around in in the 70's they are much more reliable and will get you home, unlike the old cars. In both cases, however, it's how you look after them that's important, my Dad used to to do 50k a year in the 50s and 60s and I can never remember his cars ever breaking down, but they were serviced every 2.5/3k miles so it doesn't surprise me. Everything will break down if it isn't properly looked after, new school or old.

Of course it's virtually certain that it's already out and about, just like the delta variant was out long before we even started talking of banning travel. That's not to say that bans shouldn't happen but we have to be realistic, by the time it's been identified it's too late to do anything but slow the spread, not stop it.

Glass half empty vs glass half full yet again... To counter what you said, Andy, the development to counter the Delta variant was done pretty quickly and I see nothing that would change that for any new variant unless you have specific inside info to counter that? Thing is, they now know what they are dealing with, and have the information they need to get working quickly, and they also have the basics all up and running, it's very different to the early days when it was all new to the scientists involved.

Would agree about towns and cities, but outside them it most certainly was much quieter. I'm talking about the middle 70s when I had my first cars, I used to go stock car racing and used the M6 and M61/2 an awful lot back then and they were very, very quiet compared to today and that also included the back roads... Yes there were still traffic jams, and those are what we tend to remember, but they weren't the norm... Also nearly 7000 people died on the roads in the mid 70s, fewer than 2000 now... I agree about the power of cars making a difference, but, to join yours and others speculation I'd add mine, that although there are more poor/bad drivers in total numbers today (roughly 10m cars were around in the mid 70s, now over 32m so a set percentage will have a large affect on the overall numbers), I recon as a percentage of the total number of drivers overall the percentage is probably no different to what it was when I started on the road in the mid 70s. Just that they are much more visible these days, either because their numbers are larger so you see them more often or because of the airing they get on social media.

In some respects it's also positive, firstly that they've identified it so quickly and secondly because they'll be using the data to modify the vaccines to cope with it!

People have always driven like that, I'll be honest enough to admit that I was a bit reckless back in the 70s. But there was much less traffic so a lot less things to hit back then.