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On 23/07/2020 at 12:37, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

Can I share this to Faceache?

9 minutes ago, 4630 said:

The first Grand Central passenger service from Bradford Interchange to London Kings Cross after the easing of the Covid-19 lockdown approaching Heaton Lodge Junction on 26th July 2020.

 

 

180114 'KIRKGATE CALLING' 1A81, 07.57 Bradford Interchange to London Kings Cross (10.40).

So, which way does it go?

6 minutes ago, 4630 said:

 

 As an aside, BBC's Look North programme is generally supportive of rail in West Yorkshire in their reporting.  Yesterday's reporting of this press release however was far more cynical and along the lines of  "We've heard it all before over many years from numerous Transport Secretaries, whose average duration in post is about 18 months."   

 

 

On this side of the Pennines, that's more or less what Andy Burnham said in his response to Mr. Shapps' announcement

West Yorkshire PTE was always more supportive of rail wasn't it? Wasn't the Leeds/ Bradford to Skipton electrification one of their schemes?

36 minutes ago, iands said:

Quite so. Earlier this year, just before I retired, I was chatting with a very experienced OHL engineer with an involvement with the Trans-pennine electrification scheme. I was a little astonished when he quoted the York (Colton Jnc) to Church Fenton section D&B coming in at just over £300M! Somewhat expensive for approximately 4.5 miles of railway (albeit 4-track). However, he did say that this section of the York-Leeds scheme was heavily, and dispropotionately, "risk loaded". Even so, £589M of new(?) money isn't going to go far in terms of actual infrastructure, especially if there is another layer of "management" to fund as well. 

Thanks for that, iands. I wouldn't have thought that there was much, if any external bridge works, and so on, to be done on that stretch. That almost looks like a quote to ensure that the scheme is shelved.

My actual feeling is that, if they want a a fully electrified route between Manchester and Leeds, the various northern transport bodies are going to have to find some way of raising the money themselves, and doing it incrementally.

I must admit that £0.6 billion surely wouldn't cover the costs of upgrading the entire route; is the bit announced just the Huddersfield - Dewsbury upgrade proposed last year?

A couple of other points; firstly, all the off-railway civils work (raising bridges, etc.) for electrifying to Stalybridge was completed in 2017, and all the electrical feed work. How much would it cost to complete the job?

The other thing was that, in the interview I saw, Mr. Shapps mentioned electrifying York-Newcastle. Really?

The M &GN never went to March. The closest it got was Murrow, where it crossed the joint. The GN & GE joint was really only the link between March and Spalding, wasn't it; although the line from March to St. Ives was vested in the joint committee as well, IIRC

About the only thing still extant on that Victoria photo is the bridge!

1 hour ago, Tricky-CRS said:

Covid is a red herring in all this, The world did not stop or dramatically change after the Spanish flue in 1918-1920. Social distancing was introduced in the UK in 1918 and did not last once troops came home from the front and certainly did not change factories, mills and offices long into the 1920s. Once the new normal is established or a vaccine is available alot will want to return to normal working. Humans are generally social creatures that need regular social interactions, I do not want to work from home long term for an employer. Mine is reopening our office next week due to demand from staff to do so. 

 

That artical was flawed in that it kept saying post covid, for a project that was started well before, was not required. Using that argument the Victorians shouldn't have built any canals, railways or roads because spanish flu / covid would make them obsolete. Add in it said it would be powered by fossil fuels when we are rapidly stopping the use of them. Add in Chris lives in a big house in rural England, driving around telling the rest of us who live in tiny houses or apartments in towns and cities that we should not travel, use electric but watch him do it. These environmental groups are also apposed to all development including green alternatives like tidal and wave power, I think we should de-carbon but unfortunately you have to break some eggs to make a cake. 

If a tidal power scheme destroyed a natural habitat, I can quite see why. For what it's worth, here's one who is fairly environmentally aware. We aren't the only creatures on the planet, after all. I would say that, if you could at the very least mitigate its environmental effects, I wouldn't have built a bridge across the Severn Estuary, I would have built a tidal barrage

18 hours ago, russ p said:

 

Is it Torside?

Without a doubt

1 hour ago, phil-b259 said:

 

I fear you are trying to apply 1980s political ideology several decades too early...

 

The Woodhead scheme was an inherited one - construction works started before WW2 meaning all BR had to do was dust off the plans and resume, much in the same way as the Central line extensions were. True in some cases there was some trimming of the schemes (dropping the wiring to Manchester central or the curtailing of the Central line at Ruslip rather than go on to Denham) but such actions did not affect the core of the schemes. In any case even though the key decision as to whether or not to continue was taken by a Labour Government, the subsequent Conservative administration did not intervene

 

More generally, while yes, the Conservative party has always favoured private business over state ones the real effects of this didn't show until Mrs Thatcher became leader and started an aggressive campaign of privatisations. Post war Britain was broke! there was no money to 'divert' away from the provinces* by any party - the whole point of the 1951 Festival of Britain was to try and draw a line under the austerity / rationing which had continued (and in some cases got worse) in the immediate post war years. By the time money was available to invest in a big way (aka the 1955 Modernisation plan), 25KV AC had proven itself as the new standard - and applying it to the WCML (which then, as now, was the busiest and most intensively used of our main lines) was seen as a far better use than extending an small, technically obsolete scheme between Sheffield and Manchester.

 

Had the LNER still been existence they would have not faired any better in terms of the after effects of WW1 and Woodhead would still have most likely remained an isolated scheme as the rise of the motor car decimated railway revenues and the consequent problems raising finance to undertake further mass electrification whatever the voltage.

 

* Note the final pre-war Southern electrification was finished in 1939. There was NO further electrification in the South East till the 1958 Kent Coast Phase 1 scheme went live.

 

 

 

I have read somewhere that both the Kent Coast and Bournemouth electrification schemes were SR schemes pre-1939, but , as you say, WW2 put a stop to any investment for years.

As you say, and has already been mentioned, the conductors remained the same; only the insulators were changed. I could imagine the power draw has fallen well, with only one class 323 going up the hill every half-hour, rather than heavily-laden EM1s and EM2s.

Again, electrification of suburban commuter services, from their very beginning around London, Liverpool and Tyneside, were due to efforts by the railway companies to offset losses due to competition from electric tramways and, later, motor buses, no?

On 11/07/2020 at 13:55, PenrithBeacon said:

I think CJ Allen was a bit of a fantasist, his articles in RM are just crackers.

I have often thought that the LNER would have been much better off if it had modernisedits massive, and very expensive, agricultural network, replacing the Victorian 0-6-0s with modern d/e types or, better yet, with a fleet of lorries. Picking up produce from the farmers and taking it to concentration depots for onward distribution. Sometimes reduced costs are a better way of increasing profit.

Not convinced about the cost/benefits of electrifying the ECML in the forties/ fifties. It's mostly flat, unlike the Woodhead route and the modern steam engine's direct costs are much the same as electric power at an average speed of 60ish which is what the LNE locomotives were intended to do. The electric loco only really scores on schedules of 80 plus average (the steam engine starts to struggle here, needing two firemen) or low speed slogging with mineral trains on inclines.

Regards

I thought the Woodhead electrification was partly a tunnel scheme, i.e., to eliminate the horrific working conditions in working steam through the summit tunnels. Weren't they on a gradient, which meant you had to keep steam on in one direction at least.

On 11/07/2020 at 10:36, Suzie said:

 

With long term stability (no threat of government interfering to spoil the long term prospects) there would have been the possibility of investing for the long term to reap the eventual benefits. Doing nothing was not going to reap any short term benefits!

"The government" has, almost from their beginnings, interfered with the railways; in 1844, the then President of the Board of Trade, one W.E. Gladstone, had Railways Act passed through Parliament, which had clauses in it which allowed for nationalisation of railway companies under certain conditions. There was the 1889 act which made interlocking of signals, block working and continuous brakes on passenger trains compulsory. I believe there was an act in the 1890s which fixed minimum freight rates. The grouping of the railways was due to an act of Parliament; nationalisation was talked about then.

23 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

 

It isnt that railways cost more, its how those costs are identified and accounted for

So, just as there are lies, damn lies and statistics, there are liars, damn liars and accountants?

On 07/07/2020 at 21:04, TheSignalEngineer said:

I don't know about the years immediarely after closure of Woodhead but from 1995 coal was mainly imported through Liverpool's Gladstone Dock terminal I believe. 

Re-routed via Standedge, using class 56s. There are stories of the westbound MGR trains struggling  up the gradient past Huddersfield.

19 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

It was on a B&W 8K98FF in my experience, but yes!  I preferred Sulzers, no horrid uppy-downy Doxford bits.....  ;-)  Or upper/exhaust piston for the pedants.  

This was a 9-98VT2BF in a 65000 ton BP tanker (18000bhp). Only did one Sulzer (but two H & W VTBFs)

Cylinder head nuts on a B & W 98VT2BF engine. Very similar to NHNs experience, but a lot more of them at once. There was a gauge so that you could only tighten each nut so far in each flog, and of course the spanner had to be manoevered to get even tightening of the head. It took a while!

2 hours ago, TheQ said:

Oh and  there is no such thing as an English Government, there  are Northern Irish, Welsh, Scottish Parliaments of limited powers, and a British Parilament elected by the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. To which MPs of any part of the UK can be in the Government.

Also MPs of any part of the UK can and do vote on matters which only apply to England while only their parties can vote on the same matters in their own parliaments..

Err....I don't think so. After the failed referendum vote, didn't the Coalition parliament enact a law which meant that only English MPs could vote on English laws, if the government so wished. It has been used a couple of times; I just can't remember what the votes were for.

1 hour ago, lmsforever said:

High speed in Scotland is not needed ,the existing services from Carlisle reach Glasgow in one hour as does the route to Newcastle .Rail across the border is in a good position and the existing services are under constant improvement providing what passengers reqiure.Speed is not everything  the average passenger wants ,on time ,comfortable ,clean.and at a good price.I think that uptake on high speed will be slow and existing services will be required for a long time to come.Many passengers will still use their current routes but London centric passengers will use high speed the and pay the premium fare.But its a long way off and times will change for the good or not its interesting to speculate what may happen.

clear case of crystal ball-itis. Why would there be a premium fare?

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

It’s behind you...

Oh, no it isn't!

On 30/06/2020 at 12:47, Butler Henderson said:

I use all the local stores, prices in all are either "how much" or "that's a bargain" Sticking with one and you are bound to overpay for something. Weirdest is the beer I buy, Co-op the cheapest, Asda the most expensive by 29p

In my local Co-op there are some truly marvellous beers, including some made by one of our local breweries specifically for the Co-op

Is that even a catering vehicle? Lovely film; one of those where you're listening to the music and watching the trains going by.

7 hours ago, MarkC said:

Well, some of us - only the Western Europeans - are escaping tomorrow (28th). However, for our Russian and Indonesian shipmates, the wait (disgracefully) continues. Mind you, if the USA decides to shut its borders in the next 22 hours as I write, then we'll be going nowhere.

 

We didn't want to let anyone know the good news was confirmed until our reliefs were safely in their hotel - we berth at 0830, taxi to airport is booked for 1130.

 

25 weeks on board for 3 of us. The other 3 who are leaving joined a few weeks later.

 

One Apprentice was supposed to depart too - but as he hasn't got a US Visa he was going via Canada. His permission to do so hasn't been received, so he's not going anywhere either

 

Mark

Hurrah! Wouldn't the apprentice have a college course to attend next?

4 hours ago, luckymucklebackit said:

 

More coal fired impersonators.  Not my video but I was standing next to the guy who filed it taking still shots!

I hope no-one had their washing out!.