KingEdwardII

4 hours ago, caradoc said:

Today there is an hourly through service between Liverpool and Norwich! 

Yes, but you would not dream of using that as part of a journey to get to Harwich! I checked and if you use the Liverpool - Norwich train to start your journey, it takes about 6 hours 25 mins to get to Harwich and there are 3 changes...

The National Rail app recommendation is to go via London and the journey then takes about 4 hours 30mins. Even the trip up from London Liverpool Street involves a change at Manningtree, except for one direct service @ 21:02. So much for "boat trains".

Yours, Mike.

2 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

The vast majority of folk travelling to Heathrow

The statistics for Heathrow for November 2022 show a total of 5,646,134 passengers of which 383,365 were "domestic" - i.e. to UK locations. Of these 54,214 were for the Manchester - Heathrow route.

So for Heathrow, domestic is less than 10% and the Manchester route is about 1%.

Yours, Mike.

1 hour ago, Downer said:

Just what we need - something that makes flying easier.

Misses the point - what these projects do is to enable getting to the airport by train easier. The vast majority of transport to/from Heathrow is by road. That's because for many folk, the train journey is pants. To/from central London is OK - as also the journey from Essex along the Elizabeth line now. From many other places, the journey takes forever. Result: people go by road, as I have done and still do for over 40 years.

The link to Reading and the south & west is the most obvious one to complete. It's relatively straightforward and will enable practical train journeys to Heathrow from a large swathe of south & west England.

The link to the south makes some sense, although I think the number of journeys potentially affected may not be as large as the Reading link. As others have pointed out, the southern link is much more involved than the link to Reading.

Yours, Mike.

Congratulations on the GWSR blogs, including the steam department. They are all very good and give an excellent insight into the behind the scenes activities at the heritage line. Keep up the good work!

Yours, Mike.

After WWII, the 4700 2-8-0s were used on the heavy summer Saturday expresses, especially to the West Country, particularly "The Royal Duchy" and Paddington - Kingswear but also the Cornish Riviera.

Some of this is detailed in David Maidment's "Great Western Eight Coupled Heavy Freight Locomotives" book, with some great photos.

We can only hope that the Heavy Freight group at the GWS at Didcot succeed with their new build 4709 and that we get to see a suitably long train hauled by one of these magnificent steeds.

Yours, Mike.

7 minutes ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

is the top of the tank open

Unlikely unless the designer was a nature lover and wanted a garden pond. The wildlife you would get in an open topped tank would not go down well in the average boiler.

Yours, Mike.

Forget Worcestershire Parkway for a moment - the service from Bristol TM to Worcester (e.g. Shrub Hill) is a bit of a mess. There are direct trains, but these are way slower than the journeys that involve a change at Cheltenham! 1hour 14mins vs 1 hour 30+mins...even allowing for waiting on the platform at Cheltenham.

So the journeys from Bristol TM to Worcestershire Parkway don't look much different to the fast trains to Worcester Shrub Hill!

I agree that the service to Worcestershire Parkway is a bit of let-down.

Yours, Mike.

35 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

examples of Roman concrete

I suppose the Pantheon in Rome is perhaps the most famous of these structures. Still largely in its as-built form, especially the dome which is unreinforced concrete 43m across.

There are plenty of railway structures that date back to the building of the original lines. One favourite of mine is Brunel's brick arch bridge over the Thames at Maidenhead with the famously flat arches.

Yours, Mike.

8 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

How's that Colne Valley viaduct coming along ?

With that music, I thought I was watching the start of a 1970s Mafiosi film - so the next sequence is of someone getting buried in the concrete of one of the supports ;-)

Yours, Mike.

I have a double track junction like the top one in @RobinofLoxley 's diagram above, built using large radius Peco turnouts and a long crossing.

What will take you some effort is getting the power feeds for the long crossing sorted out. My recommendation is to fully isolate the long crossing (IRJs on all the rails) and then have wiring to set the polarity of the 2 frogs. In my case this is done using the point motor on the outermost turnout (ie top one in the diagram), making the simple assumption that the setting of this turnout determines whether a train can traverse the long crossing to/from the outer track - which it should if things are correctly interlocked. This typically requires the point motor to have two switches linked to the motor position - as available with MP5 and Cobalt pms, for example - one for each frog on the long crossing.

If you are not using point motors, you will have to provide the equivalent function with switches.

Yours, Mike

21 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

It's all down to levels of pedantry,

No pedantry here - the difference between 16" and 24" in the width of a baseboard is simply huge. It alters what you are able to model substantially. The OP hasn't responded yet as to which width he really meant.

Yours, Mike.

5 hours ago, D9502 said:

600mm (~16")

?!? 600mm == 24"

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Used to wave at girls in the bakery from passing trains. 

The girls working mostly on the cakes side of the bakery got the highest wages - and the daytime shifts!

I worked the 12 hour night shift loading bread vans for morning deliveries - and we were all blokes! It put me off eating bread for a while...

Yours, Mike.

On 03/08/2023 at 21:12, Philou said:

Can anyone tell me just how much OLE has been completed

Very very hard to work that out from publicly available material - there is not even a clear guide to how much is planned for each of the phases of work, let alone the completion status.

Disappointing.

Yours,  Mike.

2 hours ago, Rugd1022 said:

the shunt neck at Elstow, which looks like the branch line that never was

Looking at some old maps of the Bedford area, it looks like there was a brickworks at Elstow, which had its own rail connection to the Midland main line. Other brickworks in the area had something similar. The shunt neck was always just that - it never went anywhere else.

The brickworks is now a Tarmac asphalt plant. They still seem to use the rail link, presumably to bring in rock, since there is an unloading facility along the loop - and the shiny rails in the photo says that it must be in regular use.

Yours, Mike.

On 03/08/2023 at 09:17, billbedford said:

The Romans were innocent, this time. 

Except they weren't - they've been caught red handed with rabbit bones at Fishbourne:

https://news.sky.com/story/rabbits-arrived-in-britain-1-000-years-earlier-than-thought-11696820

Yours, Mike.

9 hours ago, br2975 said:

the units are bereft of toilets

Yes, as with the Elizabeth line trains, I wonder if this is the right decision.

Currently, the journey from Cardiff to Aberdare takes an hour. OK, the new electric trains may well be faster, but that is a long time to be without toilet facilities. So this criticism is justified.

Yours, Mike.

8 hours ago, br2975 said:

This is Radyr, looking in the 'up' direction towards Taffs Well and the valleys.

When I was a teenager, there were a pair of freight-only tracks on the left at Radyr, which were the haunt of Class 37s - we used to view them from the back garden of a friends house at the top of the embankment above the tracks.

Riverciders' photo of a 37 at Taffs Well is the classic valleys coal train of that era. Being in the rain definitely gives it the right mood.

The transformation of all these locations through electrification is simply amazing to me. The new trackwork at Taffs Well, with that new scissors crossing, is very impressive.

Yours, Mike.

3 hours ago, Ian Hargrave said:

cometh the dmu in green with whiskers

Fondly remembered as the steed for my first train journeys from Aberdare to Cardiff Queen Street, way back in the early 1960s, before we moved to the sea air of Aberystwyth and Manors pulling long rakes of coaches.

Electric trains from Aberdare to Cardiff - they will be great, but nothing can remove the memory of the deep throated sound of a 116 DMU moving away from a station, even if the click and hum of the new vehicles is so much more civilised.

Yours, Mike.

5 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

I was told that the depot is in the vee of the former junction.

No, the depot is in the area between the old line and the A470 - as can be seen in the picture shown in this article:

https://tfw.wales/projects/metro/south-wales-metro/taffs-well

That this was the Forgemasters site is confirmed by these photos:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/how-village-taffs-well-could-12472787

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6322551

Your comment made me doubt my memory - it was about 50 years ago and many things get hazy after such a long time! However, some web searching proves that my memory was correct in this case!

I used to live in Coryton, just over a mile south of Taffs Well, and my dad used to have his hair cut by a barber in Taffs Well, only a stone's throw from the station - we knew the area pretty well.

These new tram/trains will be a huge step up for the valley lines - I look forward to travelling on them. I still have numerous relatives living in the Aberdare area.

Yours, Mike.

Strange to see the new guise of that site in Taffs Well - in my youth "South Wales Forgemasters" had a plant there, looking very different. I had a student summer job at a bakery just to the north, so cycled past most days. The junction for the now long closed line to Caerphilly was just in front of the site.

Yours, Mike.

1 hour ago, wagonman said:

HS2 station will be at Curzon Street which is nowhere near Moor Street

Walk out of the western entrance of the new Curzon Street station and you will almost trip over the entrance to Moor Street station. They could not be much closer unless you built the one on top of the other. Like St Pancras and Kings Cross.

New Street Station to Curzon Street Station is about 650m on foot. A tram connection is being built - the Birmingham Eastside Metro extension to Digbeth:

https://metroalliance.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Eastside-Edition_issue-14.pdf

Yours, Mike.

9 hours ago, Reorte said:

but that still reads as more of a need than want view.

So as to avoid ANY doubt - I WANT an electrified rail system. Not need. You may not agree with me, but I think that electric traction for railways is by far the best.

Yours, Mike.

47 minutes ago, Reorte said:

I've never understood wanting  it.

I think that electric traction is by far the best option for railways. Period.

And I say that as an enthusiast for preserved lines with steam traction.

The UK is way behind in electrifying its railways.

Yours, Mike.

Electrification.

Electrification.

Electrification.