rodent279

Currently standing all the way from Temple Meads to Padd on a 5 car vice 9 car. 1st class declassified, so I am stood in there (there is more room in the aisle). As an aside, I get the impression from a totally unscientific observation that there is a ride "sweet spot" at something sub-125, say around 110-115. Has anyone else noticed this?

Are class 387 EMUs still running to Bristol & Cardiff vice-80x's?

Long time, no update. How is the repair program progressing? What are class 80x availability figures like now?

Deep.

That sounds a bit like "we've always done it this way, so it must be right". We do tend to assume that because something has been in operation a long time, the best operating practices have naturally evolved over time. Sometimes that may be the case, but a lot of the time, people simply do whatever requires the least thought and the least effort.

Fixed it for you 🙃

Yet large swathes of German and Austrian OHLE use a similar headspan design to the ECML, do they suffer in high winds as well?

I suspect it was purely to monitor & record pan & ohl behaviour at high speeds, I doubt there was any intention for an electric HST. My father rode on "Zebedee" as it was known, on tests that included going through Linslade single bore at well over a ton (120mph I think, but the thought makes me shudder!).

I was told, by someone intimately involved, that the southern WCML electrification project in the 1960s was instructed to space ohl gantries upto the maximum (240ft? someone keep me honest) wherever possible. I believe the stretch from Tring cutting to Ledburn had a reputation for coming down in high winds for this reason. So it's nothing new.

Birds eye view of the ongoing work at Euston Station, taken from the top of BT Tower recently.

That's what's called keeping the job going!

What if, just suppose, the LNER had gone with Robinson as CME, and he persevered fire a few years, then retired in say 1926-7? Is it beyond the realms of possibility that Stanier could have made the move from Swindon a few years earlier, and gone to Doncaster?

I thought ECML electrification was delivered on time and within budget?

Others will no doubt correct me, but I think the prototype set was nowhere as intensively used as the production sets, and that is why the cooling issues arose.

Pardon me for being pedantic/slow on the uptake/dim/all of the above, but so what then is nationalisation, if it is not public ownership of a company? How is it different?

A slight divergence (but we are so far OT that it doesn't matter really!). The Midland build the S&C in the 1870's, having been told they had to by the Board of Trade (having come to an agreement with the LNW over use of the Ingleton-Tebay line, the MR petioned the BoT to have the powers to build the S&C revoked-at least, that's my understanding). So the S&C was built, at huge cost, but this does not seem to have affected the MR's financial position. We all know the GC London extension was money down the drain-was the S&C any more of a moneyspinner for the Midland?

Agreed. But this is Britain, sanity has had a different definition to the usual definition for some years now. I'm not holding my breath. See my previous sentence.

Reviving an old thread, and wandering slightly OT, the Underground system was not included in the grouping. I've read elsewhere that in 1933 they were "taken into public ownership, rather than full nationalisation". What is the difference between public ownership and nationalisation?

Once the land has been sold off, it will be uber expensive to reacquire, if it hasn't been developed already. I think phase 2 is dead and buried, deliberately so.

So if I understand correctly, the 86 (allegedly) overran a set of points that were set against it, yet (allegedly) didn't SPAD. How is that possible? Surely the signal is there to prevent unauthorised movement over those points?

Good job it wasn't Tangmere that overran the points, or people may start boycotting it!

Just catching up with this. Good grief, what an absolute shambles of a farce of a cluster £@#¥ of a country we live in.

Good point well made! My apologies to WAS 😀

It seems to me that there is something of a "sweetspot" for locomotive engineers, that lies between being a small c conservative and being a radical innovator. The most successful combine both, without letting one side run away uncontrolled. Collet, as referred to above, was a production engineer. He knew how to take what was, manufacture it better and make incremental improvements. He wasn't really an innovator, an explorer who tried to explore different ways of doing things. Stanier and Gresley were capable of being innovators without being so leftfield that what they did required extensive refining. Bullied was perhaps too much of an innovator, as far on the radical side of the sweetspot as Collet was on the (small c) conservative side. That said, not everything WAS and HNG did was "normal" and went smoothly, witness LNER 10000, LMS 6399, Jubilees that were disappointing steamers at first etc. And Collet of course was to pave the way for the BR dmu fleet with the GWR diesel railcars (though arguably they were as much a product of AEC as Swindon). I'm aware that I'm overlooking the much underrated Richard Maunsell here. I'd class him in with Stanier and Gresley, though not sure if quite at the same level. His S15 and H15 mixed traffic types were quite the equivalent of anything north or west of the Thames, the Schools was in a class of it's own, and once Bulleid had sorted the draughting on the Nelson's, they were transformed.