KingEdwardII

That indeed is how reports commissioned by politicians work - they carefully choose the people who are going to write the report and make sure that those people understand what is expected of them. Yours, Mike.

Your mounting for the wire needs to have a means of vertical adjustment - it's as simple as that. As @RobinofLoxley mentions above, the MTB MP1 motors have a very simple clamp for the wire which allows for very straightforward adjustment - my approach it to slack off the clamp just enough to allow me to mount the motor with the wire deliberately set too high and then push the wire down from above until the top of the wire is flush with the top of the switch centre hole. The clamp can then be tightened to prevent any further vertical movement. Other brands of motor have similar forms of adjustment available. I don't know how you are mounting your servos, but you need to provide for some kind of adjustment mechanism for the vertical position of the wire. When servos are used in model aircraft, they often face the same problem of wires needing adjustment and you can buy fixings for the servos which provide this. Yours, Mike.

Indeed it was - I have a book with a 1903 plan of the station layout and it is clearly shown as a loop there. The loop also had a spur at the Bristol end to enable very long goods trains to be accommodated. Yours, Mike.

Why are you asking? Yours, Mike

The more I look at Old Oak Common HS2 station, the more it seems like a major lost opportunity. The site of the station is literally surrounded by rail and tube lines, yet makes connection with only one of them - the GWR main line, including the Elizabeth line. I suspect that the major connection here is the Elizabeth line to Heathrow, although the connection to the City and Canary Wharf is also better than that available at Euston. The other lines, which seem to be ignored in the current plans are: - Line from Clapham Junction to Willesden Junction - Line from Richmond to Willesden Junction - Central Line tube Of these 3, probably the most significant is the Clapham Junction to Willesden Junction line. A connection to this line would provide easy access to trains to the south west and south suburbs of London, plus the North London line and the line through Wembley to Watford. Claims are being made that the Oad Oak Station will be a major transport hub - the current connections planned seem very limited for such a claim, but could be made so much better. Yours, Mike.

That shows touching faith when we're talking about goverment planning. Even in a market economy, it can take some time for this to be so, even if there are no restrictions or planning regulations getting in the way of expanding the supply. For electricity, there is now no such market, but a system planned by the government and regulated from birth to death. I don't think that the government has even remotely got its head around the implications of banning the use of gas for home heating. This affects the daily winter peak load and so is of critical importance to the electricity supply. Equally, the production, storage and delivery of Hydrogen for railway use is another topic that has yet to come into focus with the government. All that diesel to replace. We know that replacing diesel with OHL can take decades to bring to fruition. Hydrogen ain't going to happen overnight either. Yours, Mike

The killer detail that nails that Patchway photo as the same location as the original posted photo is the tree on the extreme left of that shot looking back towards the station - it's the same unusual shape as the one right above the Castle cab in the original. Yours, Mike.

I think that I am less concerned about Hydrogen being a fire risk and more concerned with the problem of its low energy density. Put simply, you have to have a very large volume of Hydrogen tanks to contain enough Hydrogen to give a train (or bus) a decent range. Equally, there is the concern of having suitable Hydrogen refuelling locations, especially as the Hydrogen needs to be stored at very high pressures to keep the volume acceptably low. It seems that current battery technology is much more of a fire risk than Hydrogen. Lithium battery fires are relatively common and seem to be almost impossible to extinguish, leading to catastrophic damage to whatever they are contained in (cars, buses, houses...). Yours, Mike.

However, the A34 Newbury bypass has been a magnificent success in its major aim of enabling free movement of traffic north-south along one of the major highways of the country. Before the bypass was built, Newbury was a real bottleneck and it could take ages to get through, almost no matter what time of day it was. I can vouch for this personally having spent many hours stuck in queues there. The bypass certainly removed all the through traffic from Newbury - you only have to drive the bypass to see just what a large volume of traffic that is, with a high percentage of commercial vehicles involved. The A34 should in my view really become the M34 - it is one of the major transport arteries of the country connecting the Midlands and central England to the conurbation and ports along the south coast. Whether the claim that "traffic in Newbury has barely reduced" has any truth to it has to be doubted. Certainly my own experiences travelling on the old road through the town since the A34 bypass was built is that congestion there now is nothing like it used to be. The CPRE report making that claim has a very strong whiff of politics about it, really being angled at some of the new developments that have taken place in and around Newbury in the 21st century. Linking back to the topic of this thread - in 20 years time, once HS2 is completed and operational, we shall all wonder how the hell we did without it. And there will probably be folk like me grumbling that we did not have a big enough vision to create a comprehensive network of high speed lines around the country, leaving large swathes of the country poorly connected. I think I can hear the bleating from Devon & Cornwall already, and not forgetting the many communities across the North of England. Yours, Mike.

I travelled on the Elizabeth line for the first time yesterday (a Saturday) - Hayes & Harlington to Stratford and return. My main concern ahead of time was that the car park at Hayes would be full - it turned out to be nearly empty and a whole day's parking could be had for the bargain price of £2.50! My route involved changing at both Paddington and at Liverpool Street - something that will eventually be eliminated, of course. Both changes are straightforward, with a relatively short walk at Paddington and a longer one at Liverpool Street, although not much more than 5 minutes. The central section was fast and smooth - the tracks east out of Liverpool Street are noticeably rougher. The stations on the section out from Paddington to the west have been modernised, although the canopies at some of the stations are quite short, making a rainy day less than pleasant. We took about an hour overall, which I envisage should drop to 40 minutes or less once the through trains from Shenfield to Heathrow come into service, which will of course make the journey much easier. The train journeys cost us only £6.80 total - we paid an extra £3.30 for the bus journeys from Stratford station to/from the Lee Valley Hockey Centre. Comment was made about the hardness of the seating - almost like the wooden bench seats experienced on some of the ancient GWR stock at Didcot Railway Centre, which we had ridden on Friday!! Other than that, the trains were great. The return bus caused us the longest wait, although we had some confusion returning via Paddington in that all the departing Elizabeth line trains were shown on the boards, but without any platform numbers. Staff did not have a clue and simply told us to wait for the boards to be updated. We wisely headed off to platform 11 and soon sussed which of the trains visible there was the first one out. I think that this route is likely to become our way of getting across to east London, replacing the north London line from Richmond or Kew. Way better than having to tackle the M25 ;-) Yours, Mike.

Keith, I think that siding is clearly visible in the original picture which you posted, to the left of the goods shed building. You can see its buffer stops. Yours, Mike.

Yes, in many ways these make a lot more sense technically than Hydrogen. However, producing Methane by "green" means, using electricity, is still an unproven technology with equally unproven costs. Yours, Mike.

"removal of all diesel on passenger services by 2035" (quote from the press release) Now, I am a HUGE supporter of electrification, but I find it very hard to believe that this is an achievable goal. I doubt that they are going to run wires on places like the West Highland line and if they think that either batteries or Hydrogen are feasible and economical, then they are living in fairy land. Yours, Mike.

That's my real beef with these people - they are tiny minorities, yet seem to take the view that everyone else should bend to their beliefs. We live in a democratic society and the general idea is that things get done that the majority want. These protesters may have sincerely held beliefs, but they have not convinced me or many like me, yet they think that their beliefs gives them the right to disrupt law abiding folk in any way they see fit. Ultimately, this can lead to civil strife, since ordinary folk will only put up with so much messing about - as we have seen in some recent cases involving Extinction Rebellion and fellow travelers. Yours, Mike.

There are folk in the UK who I consider "professional protesters", who seem to do nothing else other than protest against major infrastructure projects. It pretty well does not matter what the project is, nor how necessary the project may be. "Rent a riot" will turn up and cause varying degrees of mayhem around the project, doing nothing other than increase project costs. Yours, Mike.

Indeed, but it is specific to coal for certain types of use. South Wales specialised in Steam Coal and Anthracite, and to a lesser extent in coking coal. For things like domestic coal, the north-east had significant advantages, particularly cost, since the Welsh pits had to deal with smaller seams and tougher geological conditions. South Wales did produce domestic coal, but it was typically only supplied to South Wales itself, since domestic coal from the north east and other parts of the UK was typically lower cost. Yours, Mike.

Huh?? What's this structure then: Perhaps the tourists have been doing too much of the Tudors and are expecting to see this: Now that would be a modelling challenge... Yours, Mike.

The coal from Aberdare would have been steam coal - certainly used as loco coal by the GWR but also by other companies. These "inland" coal trains required much beefier locos than the shorter range "downhill" journeys to the South Wales docks for export by sea. Hence the use of the 28xx 2-8-0s and later the 2-8-2Ts. The allocation of these larger types to the Aberdare shed is notable and unlike many of the other valley sheds. Yours, Mike.

I'd point out that now, long after the industrial revolution, the South East area (Kent, East & West Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire) has a total population of 6.68M This is bigger than Yorkshire (5.2M) and not far short of the North West (6.8M) (excluding Cumbria). It is also an area containing a lot of railways - many dominated by commuting, admittedly. However, there is also here a demand for longer distance travel. For the folk living in the SE region wanting to travel longer distances, London is less a transport hub and more an obstacle course. The lack of connecting routes is the major issue, a result of the Victorian insistence on keeping railway stations out of the centre of the city. Thameslink and associated north/south services do help to some extent. Elizabeth line helps a little bit, although it is not particularly well integrated into the network serving the SE region. Neither are the HS1 services to Kent integrated with the new HS2 services... Yours, Mike.

A quote from the Wikipedia entry on Minehead station: "The next major alterations came in 1934 when the original single track line was replaced by a double line to cope with the heavy holiday traffic, and a new signal box built. The platforms were extended at the same time. They were now 1,250 feet (380 m) long" This is supposedly based on info from Mike Oakley's book on Somerset stations. This length is longer than the other stations on the line. This shows the extent of the holiday traffic in relatively small resorts and the lengths the GWR went to accommodate it. Yours, Mike.

I think that this may depend on the extent to which the branch dealt with holiday traffic. The terminus stations on branches dealing with holiday traffic, such as Kingswear and Kingsbridge, tended to have quite lengthy platforms - for example, it is stated that Kingswear has a platform some 850 feet long (after extension in 1929). These stations often had through services on summer Saturdays from Paddington. There are pictures of a 6 coach through portion from Kingsbridge in 1961 on the Cornwall Railway Society website, for example. Intermediate stations on these branch lines did not necessarily have platforms of equivalent length to that of the terminus. South Devon is similar to other branch lines serving holiday destinations elsewhere, I think. Aberystwyth had a huge station (for the size of the town) with long platforms, only really used to their full extent on summer Saturdays for the holiday traffic. Yours, Mike.

Moo!

I was at University in Birmingham from 1979 to 1982. We used the cross city line a lot, both for getting into central Brum, but also out to places like Kings Norton and Longbridge. All DMUs and not the most interesting stuff - others have already commented on the motley collection of stock at that time. My main railway memories are the Birmingham - Norwich trains since my girlfriend lived out on the fens east of Peterborough. Typically 5 carriages pulled by a class 31, which used to wander across central England via Nuneaton, Leicester, Oakham, taking a couple of hours or so to Peterborough. The most "exciting" journey happened in the winter of 1981, when I travelled in the middle of a snowstorm. We left New Street with snow basically covering the railtops - gangs of P/W men were out trying to keep the points working. Things were on the slow side, to say the least. We got to Leicester and were then told that due to the conditions in Brum, they had not been able to refuel the engine - so they would have to do it in Leicester. We watched them detach the engine and looked anxiously as it made its way across the tracks off to the refuelling point through the gathering dusk. With our carriages getting colder by the minute, we were then told the loco was stuck due to frozen points. We started wondering what the local hotel options might be. After well over an hour, we got the happy news that they managed to gets the points free and our loco returned and eventually got us on our way. We got to Peterborough 5 hours after leaving Birmingham - but at least we got there. Fortunately my girlfriend had got a message about the delay, so was there to pick me up from the station. There had been much less snow in Peterborough, so we were able to get to her place without too much trouble. The modern equivalent services now run Birmingham - Cambridge (or Stansted) and you have to change to get to Norwich either at Peterborough or Ely. Meanwhile, Birmingham University station has gone up in the world and is no longer a mere suburban halt. A variety of long distance trains now stop there in addition to the cross city services - direct services to Cardiff, Nottingham, Worcester. And, of course, the cross city services are now whizzy electrics, not smoky old DMUs. The combination of a much enlarged University with the now very large Queen Elizabeth hospital also means that it is a very busy station indeed and there are a series of major upgrade works taking place to deal with passenger numbers. Yours, Mike.

The South Wales coalfield contains a variety of types of coal, with a grading running roughly east-to-west, with the softest and highest volatile content in the east and the hardest and lowest volatile content in the west. The softer varieties are typically classed as Bituminous coals while the harder varieties, particularly from the far west of the coalfield, are classed as Anthracite. The South Wales coalfield is really famous for its Steam Coal, which is a Bituminous coal. It was great for firing boilers to create steam e.g. for steam engines - especially ships and (of course) railway locomotives. The best steam coals tend to come from the central/eastern areas, very roughly from the Rhondda to Ebbw Vale, although there is variation by seam and locality. One of the features of south wales coal is its relatively low Sulfur content, which was always noted by the locals when using the product in domestic fires, if ever "foreign" coal with higher Sulfur content was substituted for the indigenous stuff ("Midlands coal" was the term used, almost no matter where it actually came from). Anthracite came into its own once clean air legislation started to bite - it burns much more cleanly, although it always had specific markets before that time. Yours, Mike.

It is of consequence to me, since I will be doing this journey a week Saturday! I realize that the eventual configuration will be far simpler, but that ain't going to be my experience next week... Yours, Mike.