rodent279

Koln Hbf is another impressive one, with the Hohenzollern bridge making a grand entrance over the Rhine. Milan Central is another one, and Basel is an interesting international crossroads.

Regarding non-UK stations, Warsaw Central was pretty grim. Big subterranean concrete maw, bit like New Street, but without the charm. I suppose a lot of these stations had what you might call "atmosphere"-but then so did the Colisseum when they were feeding Christians to the lions..........

OT, but were HST power cars ever turned on the table at OC?

Trowbridge was a depressing place even before the bus shelter. I spent over an hour there waiting for a failed 33, which eventually arrived behind a 47, on a freezing December evening in 1983.

Agreed, I like it too.

Personally, I love Euston. Recent retail developments have not helped one bit, but I love the big circulating area with its marble floor and high ceiling. The old Euston, though long demolished before I was born, sounded like a depressing place. And as for the Doric Arch -pig ugly monstrosity! Why try to make a railway station look like a Greek temple? Who are you trying to kid? My nomination for most depressing station today would have to be Swindon though.

Which leads me to another in my series of piffling trivialities. Back in BR days, how were oil tail lamps allocated and maintained? Did each station have a number of lamps allocated to it? Were they identified in some way? If one needed say a new lens, how was this done? Was it just sent off in the stores van to works for repair? How was this all accounted for? Did BR actually have any idea of how many tail lamps it had? And lastly, how far could a tail lamp stray? Could one start it's day in London on a Monday, and by the following weekend been in Penzance, having travelled via Wick?

Australia -Gov't in Canberra, business in Sydney. Germany federal Government split between Bonn & Berlin, Lander (State governments) distributed throughout the country. Business largely in Frankfurt, but much more distributed. It's not uncommon for the seat of govt to be remotely located from the major business centres.

If you want to really start tackle this problem (London bias, funding imbalance compared to rest of country etc), you need to address the fact that the country revolves around London. The solution is not just CR1/2 etc, or MML/GWML/TP electrification. There needs to be a more even distribution of power, wealth and decision making throughout the rest of the country.

Yes. And yet still people vote for them in droves.

BR's political remit was to provide a service, albeit on a smaller budget every year. The remit now is to make money.

From memory, around 1986/7 battery lamps became prevalent, with virtually no oil lamps by about 1989. Oil and petrol trains had battery lamps since about the 60's.

Slower than GWML, in fact I reckon the wires will have reached Swansea by the time I finish this! 1 bogie is now complete, and the 2nd coming along ok. I'll post some pics tomorrow. Cheers N

I did wonder about LG. Where were the Rio sets based? NL? My 2006 P5 Motive Power book shows a load of LE-based power cars.

No, 3rd rail is not less expensive, mainly because for a given load, you need more feeder stations, to overcome the greater volt drop. There are something like 20 feeder stations on the south coast line between Brighton & Portsmouth, it's been estimated you could save the cost of renewing all but 2 of these by converting to 25kV OHL. Yes there would be a cost penalty in associated civils work to achieve clearances, but for a high intensity, high speed service, with power-hingry trains like IEP or Pendo, there is no real alternative to 25kV OHL. Not that I'm suggesting converting the south coast line should be converted, but I know it's been looked into.

I suspect there is a lot of truth in this. If politicians are good at anything, it's blame-shifting.

I can think of OO, PM, LA, LE, BN, HT, NL & EC. Are there any more? Cheers N

Agreed, spot on. Plus of course, electricity generation can be powered by renewables. As for OHL "defacing" the countryside, I don't agree. I think it enhances it. I love the succession of catenary curves along a railway, and watching them rise and fall from within a train.

Aye...

I think you've just summed it up quite neatly with those 14 words.....

I think part of the problem lies in the big gap of 2 decades or so between large electrification projects. ECML finished 1990-91. GWML started - what, 2010? Ok there was CrossCity and a couple of other bits, but nothing on the scale of either of those two. Skills have been lost.

No. Effectively all locos are prefixed with 0, though it isn't in the number. So all locos, both diesel and electric, are in the range 000-099.

To what extent has there been budget overruns? Cynical is my second name, I suspect there may be an amount of blame shifting on the part of politicians here, looking to exploit something in order to hide their own failings.

Going back to numbers, and avoiding clashes, I've always wondered why BR didn't adopt a similar approach to DB, use 6 digit numbers, and number all electric locos starting with 1, diesels with 2, EMU's with 3, DMU's with 4, passenger coaches with 5 etc etc.

Can't answer the questions, but what are roe vacs? Cheers N