Edwin_m

4 hours ago, Coryton said:

 

Er....if they really had no idea of why trains had stopped and how long it was likely to be before they started again, presumably they could have waited long enough to make some phone calls, find out the situation, and write a more useful message?

 

And the fact that the staff scarpered suggests that they knew something about how long it was likely to be before services resumed.

 

Maybe I'm a bit odd but you will struggle to persuade me that a sign saying "No trains" and a lack of staff to find out more from is the epitome of good customer service.

 

I may be reading a bit too much into an anecdote here though.

The original mention of this post said that a derailed train had spilled oil over a couple of miles of track.  So perhaps the staff had to scarper for safety reasons, or just because the smell was too bad?  

1 hour ago, 2E Sub Shed said:

On a flight taking off at Heathrow  some years ago, speed building up down the runway, smell of aviation fuel in the cabin, suddenly all the acceleration stops and we come to a slow crawl. 

Announcement from the Captain, " we have have a warning light come on and we have rejected the take-off, I am sure it is nothing but we are following procedure ", aircraft went to a maintenance stand with all passengers on board and after 2 hours of sounds of something being belted with various blunt instruments, we were taken off and bused 100 feet to another aircraft for a delayed departure. 

59 minutes ago, uax6 said:

 

Which, of course, has never happen ever.... Report 15/2015: Collision with a collapsed signal post at Newbury - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

 

Andy G

 

Grrr, I can't get the raib report to go as a hyperlink. 

Try https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/collision-with-a-collapsed-signal-post-at-newbury.  On RMWeb you have to use the hyperlink button and paste it into the window that appears, you can't just paste into the text.  

I've an idea one fell over on the South Wales main line a few years before, but nothing hit it.  Perhaps Western Region signals were particularly vulnerable, despite few of them being near any sources of stray current?  

1 hour ago, Kickstart said:

Hiya

 

For me, yes I would like information. Best chance of combating rising anxiety.

 

But the same applies in most things. Roads are possibly worse (although off the motorways, more chance to to something about it), and a useful information sign is an exception! Mail order is much the same (I have been waiting over a month for some wargames figures - and wish I knew when they would arrive)

 

Last railway delay  I had was about half a mile from my destination, but the guard did keep us informed.

 

All the best

 

Katy

On several occasions I've found the variable message signs on motorways useful in warning of problems ahead, in time to take an alternative route.  It's useful also to have a passenger who's able to look at traffic news on the internet, as this often gives the nature and expected duration of the problem.  

The one people could sort out quite easily is phone queueing systems.  Too many just say you are in the queue with no indication of how long it is.  Giving an estimated time (based on queue length and typical rate of processing calls) might risk over-promising, but the information on how many are ahead of you would be useful on its own.  That way if you've only progressed from 15th to 12th after 30min, and you can't stay on the line for more than another 30min, you can decide to try at another time without worrying that if you'd stayed on a bit longer you might have got through.  It would also be useful if these systems said when their least busy times were, but I suspect the call centre managers probably just reduce their staffing at those times so the waiting time remains about the same.  

59 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

The only reason it might help you to know why your train isn't running is that it may help you to form your own judgment on how long it will be before there is a train running and decide what to do next.  Commuters' own guess (based on experience) as to the length of a piece of string may be rather different from that of railway managers who whilst doing their best in difficult circumstances may tend to err on the optimistic side.  But to be fair to the railway, airlines are a lot worse at that!

Many people on this forum would be able to make a reasonable judgment in most cases.  For "normals", giving this information demonstrates respect as mentioned, but also creates the impression that the operator knows about the problem and is doing something about it.  Even if they aren't.  

My experience with airlines is that they are usually better at keeping people informed, at least once on board the aircraft.  I think this is because the way aviation works, the flight crew have access to nearly all information that might affect their flight, which they can pass on to their passengers.  Unless someone makes the effort to tell them, all a train driver knows is the state of the line for a maximum of three signals ahead, and passenger-facing staff on trains or stations don't even know that.  Often a passenger who goes onto one of the real time websites will know more than their traincrew.  Something similar applies to airline staff when at airports.  

"Delayed due to receiving a fitter's attention" might sometimes have been closer to the truth than intended.  

On 18/09/2021 at 18:18, The Johnster said:

...any other animal such as a horse or a dog which will immediately scarper off to the side and safety...

Not always.  Many years ago between Westbury and Salisbury the announcement said the train was running slowly because a dog on the line insisted on running along the track instead of getting out of the way.  

10 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

My reading of continental practice is that they understand it much better as not being the ogre that the British Utility companies would like to believe it to be, largely because they have been running street tramways on a nominally continuous basis. At the time the second generation tramways were starting to appear in Britain there was at least a complete generation gap in the experience of the Utility company engineers (not to mention a marked reluctance of certain of them to talk to their counterparts elsewhere in the country). There is a generally held view amongst those in Europe that 12" of largely mass concrete, which is typically what is under the track, is sufficient to stop a lot of stray current. So is putting down a plastic membrane before the concrete is poured.

The behaviour of these overlap sections, where the track is Earthed at the AC end and floating ('earthy') at the DC end is quite interesting, not least as on occasions when running rails have been accidentally connected to Earth quite large currents can flow, despite the rail to earth potentials being very small. It still comes as a bit of a surprise that nothing has happened at Euston, where the DC lines have shared earthed tracks all the way up Camden for the last 50-odd years.

That reminds me that when Seeboard (as they were at the time) were looking for any stray currents from Croydon Tramlink around the Addington area they ended up finding that the cable armouring virtually everywhere was awash with stray currents from all over the place. The conclusion was that it was largely a consequence of having a large interconnected cable network thoroughly overlaid by an equally large DC railway, aka Southern Region, which had, of course, been functioning (and leaking) for many decades.

 

It's partly because British utilities are privatised and therefore much more sensitive to anything that might cost them money.  

On the situation with Network Rail, I'm sure Jim will remember the shenanigans in Croydon trying to get the then Railtrack (also privatised) to accept the trams in proximity.  Much of the problem there was the use of 1970s-vintage 50Hz and audio frequency track circuits, which could give a false clear if an amp or so of AC at the wrong frequency and phase finds its way into the rails.  The trams have AC traction drives that range through these frequencies as the vehicle accelerates, and unlike the railway versions do not have software that jumps over sensitive frequencies.  The motor currents at these frequencies could be in the hundreds of amps, though the traction electronics will filter this so much less appears in the supply and return.  This is unlike older trams with traditional DC contactors, which would generate short spikes but not continuous harmonics of a particular frequency, and are electrically similar to but less severe than traditional Southern EMUs.  Although older traction is worse for interference in some ways (there are reports that the 4REPs could change signal aspects on the Bournemouth line), everyone had learned to live with them.  

More modern railway signalling has greater immunity, using track circuits that need to "see" a more complicated combination of frequencies before showing unoccupied, or axle counters where all circuitry is insulated from the rails.  However the signalling at New Street still goes back to the 1960s, though some equipment may have been replaced.  

8 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

Concrete tunnel sections being transported to the TBM....

 

 

 

 

.

Someone mentioned that they are not laying a narrow gauge tunnel railway in this tunnel.  I assume what looks like a railway track in the concrete roadway is actually something else.  

3 minutes ago, Pete the Elaner said:

 

Advertising how clean the railway is...on a diesel.

Ok, so cleaner than a convoy of lorries, but wouldn't  this make more sense on something electric? A class 90 perhaps?

The trains that haul the spoil and materials trains can't be electric because none of their routes are fully electrified.  One might have been if the government had agreed electrification of EWR.  So naming an electric would probably attract even more criticism.  

The N gauge intermodals (or at least the FEAs and Megafrets) have wheelsets with a 2mm diameter plastic axle that appears to be split in the middle.  Has anyone succeeded in converting these to resistance axles for current detection?  I thought of swapping them with the 5mm wheelsets from the Farish intermodals, but the axle is a different length. 

I assume a similar arrangement also guides the transporter vehicle into the turntable siding at the bottom, where the "sloping" passenger vehicle goes into the equivalent sloping platform.  There didn't seem to be an equivalent at the top - I assume there is a level platform one side to board the coach on the transporter, and a sloping one on the other.  

1 minute ago, melmerby said:

Yes

I don't know why I typed Turin as I searched for the video under "Trieste"

Brain & fingers not talking to each other - again

No problem.  

Does the funicular in Thuringia still swap loads?  Tim mentioned it doesn't carry wagons any more, and the coach looked as if it might now be a permanent fixture to increase passenger capacity.  I hope the coach has good brakes or is securely chocked/welded to the rails, otherwise I dread to think what might happen if it stopped suddenly on the way down!  

9 hours ago, melmerby said:

Viewed it tonight.

Another excellent selection of items.

 

I was intrigued by the funicular that carried rail vehicles and pedestrians.

In the US there were several funiculars that carried tramcars (trolley cars)

 

In Turin there is a tram line where the tramcars are pushed up a funicular by a dumb carriage

 

Just to set that straight it's actually Trieste.  

My first exhibition visit in two years I think, and left feeling fairly positive.  More space this year meant fewer stands but the reasons for that are understandable, and there were still some excellent layouts.  Traders seem to be concentrating more on secondhand, with Rails for example devoting the majority of their stand to it, perhaps because anyone wanting new is increasingly likely to just go online but with secondhand more people will want to see the item before buying.  It may also be a reflection of the drastic increase in prices of new N gauge stuff in the last few years.  

I think there's someone somewhere in a concrete bunker stroking a cat, thinking up conspiracy theories and putting them on the internet.  Or is that in itself a conspiracy theory?  

8 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

South Ruislip.

 

 

 

.

Looks like they've opened up a big tin of track colour and got together some aerosols for weathering it.  

38 minutes ago, alastairq said:

 Is there a correlation then, with the personalities and behaviours of said cats.... and one certain Adloff Hilter?

Have we just invoked the feline equivalent of Godwin's Law?

1 hour ago, Hobby said:

 

Looks like it's been there a while judging by the smaller pile of Metros in the right hand section!

The caption "going" is clearly wrong here.  

I think the "driving trailer" has a brake valve and it certainly has a horn.  

4 hours ago, keefer said:

What's with that 4th rail?

Is it just retained for bonding/earth purposes as it is not on pots (and with now being lower, doesn't need an end ramp)?

Presumably where LU stock used to go but now sees only 3rd-rail stock.

Yes.

Earthing on dual-electrified sections is a black art.  I suspect when the fourth rail was no longer needed someone thought it was easier to just keep it instead of risking problems with stray current, which has been known to corrode the bases of OLE masts to the extent they needed replacing.  

5 hours ago, adb968008 said:

People need work.

They will migrate to jobs that pay better.

 

if HGV has high barriers and low salaries, of course people will drive a van instead… if they could ride a horse and cart and it pays better than a van, i’d reckon they’d switch to that too…

Jobs that require more skills also pay better, especially when those skills are scarce.  Someone with an HGV licence has the scarce skill of being able to drive an HGV, so is unlikely to be driving a van unless their preference to do so outweighs the prospect of extra money.   Someone without an HGV licence may be driving a van, but they can't switch to an HGV without doing training and passing a test, which takes time and money.  They're not really much more of a solution to the HGV driver shortage than any random member of the public with a car driving license.  

23 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

I wonder how much of this shortage is due to Online deliveries…

Weve stopped shopping and started getting it delivered.

 

Thats taken a lot of new van drivers, and Of course “Just Uber-roo”… maybe that money is better paid

 

I doubt online has much to do with this.  The HGVs that brought the goods to the shops previously will now take (some of) them to distribution warehouses - there may be some move towards larger lorries to handle the greater volumes to fewer places, but there will be fewer of them.  

From the warehouses to the consumer is indeed all about vans of various sizes, but those drivers don't need a HGV license.  Anyone with one who was driving vans has probably switched to HGVs already unless there's some reason they can't do that.  

As mentioned, most supermarkets send some goods by rail, but it only happens when enough goods is moving between the same origin and destination, and they are far enough apart that the economies of scale outweigh the cost of double handling.  As a rule of thumb, if the truck driver can deliver an item and get back within a shift, that will probably be what happens.  Hence containers from Felixstowe and Southampton go on rail to the Midlands and beyond, but not to the South East.  The "hub and spoke" model of supermarket distribution creates large volumes between the hubs, but any rail use is generally over long distances between rail-connected hubs, such as Daventry to central Scotland.  

This may change at the margin, due to factors such as drivers' wages (assuming we don't get autonomous trucks), increasing traffic congestion and (according to the Modern Railways article mentioned) the impossibility of a zero emission long range HGV.  One of more of these could tip a particular flow over from road to rail if the economics are fairly close currently - assuming the rail network has capacity carry it.  Several companies are also targeting parcels by rail, where a similar hub and spoke model may create enough volume over distance, with distribution by electric van meaning the "last mile" is actually a lot longer than that.  So we aren't going to see anything like the "Edwardian Model" of goods being trans-shipped to or from rail at nearly every stations.  

It's certainly normal for a loco-hauled train to have a handbrake on one coach, for use when the locomotive is uncoupled as the air or vacuum brakes can't be relied on to hold it indefinitely.  Possibly if one of the locos remained coupled to the train when the others ran round, as might be the case from the OP's description, that would satisfy the requirement.  

I was put on a train at Manchester to visit my grandmother who would have met me in Watford, but I must have had strict instructions to get myself off the train there as we knew the stop was really short and she wouldn't have had time to get on and find me.  I was worried about bombings so it would have been about 1974 and I would have been 8 or 9.  I don't remember being under the care of the guard, but may parents may have "had a word".  

1 hour ago, Pandora said:

Lord Berkeley is pro-HS2,  but objects to the current form of the project,  reading  his personal  "Oakervey Review" his stance being  the project is over-specified and therefore of excessive cost,. His vision is an HS2 with a modest reduction in line speed  with a reduction  to  14 trains per hour capacity  to save £40 bn , an HS2 of   14 trains per hour and a line speed reduction  would align  HS2 with other world-class high-speed lines and  In the light of the risk to the  HS2 leg to Leeds, slated for cancellation to save money,  the Berkeley specification would permit the retention of the Leeds facility within reduced budget.

If the service is reduced to 14 trains per hour then which ones do you cut?  Probably those going to York and beyond, because they are only half an hour or so quicker on HS2 than the existing ECML times.  A reduction in HS2 line speed (along with likely minor ECML accelerations) would reduce or eliminate that differential.  This would of course weaken the case for the eastern leg by removing some of the trains that would use it.  

36 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

And as an aside, what would be the total cost, including that for disruption, of adding two lines to the WCML? I suspect that it would make HS2 look cheap whatere it eventually costs - and upset far more people.

The WCML upgrade came in it about £10m at 2000 prices, and added hardly any track.  For a start, think of the number of houses that back onto the WCML in all the places it passes through, and how many of those would need compensating or buying out.  HS2 deliberately avoids any significant settlement or tunnels under if unavoidable, so the impact on people is tiny by comparison.