rodent279

1 hour ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

I know of their reputation, the name supposedly came from having characteristics of a certain bird. Perhaps also for their liking of working throughout on excursions to Weston Super Mare then six hours on the beach before working back.

One of their best seaside trips I saw was when a pair were sent out from Saltley on 58002 to rescue a ailing HST. They passed us on the sea wall at Dawlish en route to Plymouth, dropped the HST off and had a brew then worked the 58 back light engine to Saltley.

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

On 02/01/2023 at 11:40, t-b-g said:

 

Indeed and that is why, in my view, it was highly likely that Robinson was approached. He had the seniority. No matter how people try to interpret the surviving records 100 years later, it is highly unlikely, in my view, that Gresley would have been appointed without some sort of discussion with Robinson.

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?

On 25/01/2024 at 06:46, DenysW said:

There are a couple of those, with some very interesting details and approaches, ending in the conclusion that a 'rational' investor would have stopped holding investments in UK Railways by about 1900. I couldn't follow that, because it wasn't actually supported by data. That doesn't mean it was wrong, of course.

 

I think it simply means that the better UK railway companies (mostly centred in the middle and the north of England) suffered catastrophic declines in their share prices between the peak in 1898 and their minimum in 1922, losing about 70% of their value, and making it essentially impossible for them to raise new capital. As there don't seem to be corresponding  changes-in-profitability issues (other than the long-established gradual squeeze on operating margins) I think this implies that competing investments, especially Government bonds were now paying the same or better than the railways at lower risk.

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?

42 minutes ago, APOLLO said:

It's criminally insane to sell land / property purchased for the Manchester (and Golborne link) lines.

 

As we march forward to 2050 etc (net zero) the line will be needed at some point.

 

The route must be kept and mothballed. Property and farmland etc bought can be rented / leased, always with the proviso of future railway construction.

 

But our Governments of all colours only see ££££, mostly for themselves and their mates.

 

What a mess we are in.

 

Brit15

 

 

Agreed. But this is Britain, sanity has had a different definition to the usual definition for some years now.

1 hour ago, class26 said:

This government has a maximum of 11 months to run, most likely less.

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?

46 minutes ago, class26 said:

There`s a mention of this in February`s "Modern Railways". Apparently the government decided to continue with all 7 platforms to give Birmingham additional capacity in the future stating that it was a relatively easy job to add a chord to the south so some services could free up space in New St. Also, despite what this government is saying I can`t personally imagine HS2 staying at phase 1 only. At some point the Brum - Manchester section needs something doing to it , even if it isn`t called HS2 and then that capacity will be needed. For once we are doing the right thing and looking ahead beyond the end of next week !

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. 

37 minutes ago, melmoth said:

 

I agree with most of this, but would point out that Fury (6399) was built in 1929, long before Stanier arrived at the LMS.

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.

12 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Some of the proponents, for instance, pointed to how successful state owned railways had proven in countries of The Empire, which is hardly something you’d hear today!

Oh I dunno, I'm sure our Indian friends could teach us a thing or two, especially when it comes to handling large numbers of people, and selling tickets....maybe the pupil has become the master!

7 hours ago, DCB said:

Bullied  I have a horrible feeling there would have been 50 partly completed Leaders lined up outside Crewe works when he was sacked rather than the 4at Eastleigh(?) ! 

I doubt Lord Stamp would have stood for that! He was pretty shrewd, had Bulleid got the job he would have been kept on a tight leash.

On 22/01/2024 at 13:44, TTDB said:

Not so much as a British outline but BREL did supply  Taiwan railways with some MK2 based EMU units in the 1970s unfortunately all now withdrawn from service

Pretty much mk2e/f outline class 312's with a more up to date control system. 

7 minutes ago, 25kV said:

<digression>Slightly untidy nameplate position (in my opinion) - curious as to why the original position wasn't chosen, or why the plates weren't aligned with the window centres or mid-height on the upper band.  </digression>

Possibly internal layout alterations associated with class 57 conversion make fitting in the original position either impossible or unwelcome for maintenance staff?

2 minutes ago, JimC said:

But was there enough of a road system in 1921 to make a Beeching Mk1 possible? Could it be argued that Beeching was facilitated by 1930s/1950s road building?

Probably not, and probably yes, but there was a huge surplus of Army lorries post WW1, and a large number of Army personnel who had learnt to drive, so the driver was there, if you'll excuse the pun.

And a Beeching Mk1 need not have just been about closures, it could also have meant modernisation & improvement of inefficient outdated working practices. Some of that happened under the B4, but was enough done? Was there enough impetus to do more? Did the common carrier requirement stifle attempts at modernisation?

I guess another way of putting it would be was Beeching (and the 1955 Modernisation Plan) 30-odd years too late?

1 hour ago, Tom Burnham said:

Yes, I'm sure that would be so. The significant thing for users of the maps would be who was responsible for operation and maintenance, and legal ownership would not be of particular interest.  For instance I believe the North Cornwall Railway continued as a company until 1923 although it had always been worked as part of the LSWR system.

Didn't one of the Cornwall railways survive as a legal entity until Nationalisation, although leased/fully owned by the GW?

So, if the Grouping in 1921 was a means of ensuring smaller less financially sound railways did not go bust, was the Grouping a missed opportunity? Did the railways really need a kind of Beeching MK1 in 1921?

Did the LMS approach anyone else other than Stanier?

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I don’t know the configurations of the places under discussion, but in general costs can vary hugely according to how easy/difficult it is to access substations.
 

An “infill” between locations where there are subs nearby at each end can sometimes be surprisingly low cost (depends a bit on available capacity), whereas an extension that requires complete new sub(s), or worse still a grid intake, can be horribly expensive on a route-mile basis. Some of it is down to design standards of availability that are selected, of course, because if it decided that a “wet string” extension, with no provision to feed from the remote end, and the lower availability associated with that, is acceptable, then costs can be kept down - it’s a “you get what you pay for” equation.

In that respect, the 23 miles from Oxford to Banbury might not be as expensive as you think. Maybe if it was ever joined up to the wires in Brum or via Leamington to Cov, the extra traffic would justify an extra feeder station, but possibly Oxford- Banbury could be done as a low cost extension, a bit like Cambridge -Kings Lynn.

On 26/02/2021 at 12:30, keefer said:

B4 disc-braked bogie. Originally for the Mk2 coaches on the cl.27 push-pull trains. The other side of the bogie does not have the pipework.

The first disc braked B4 bogies (and I think the first mainline stock built from new with disc brakes) were the late lamented 1965/6 build class 310 EMUs, BRs best EMU.*

*other opinions exist 🙃

4 hours ago, rodent279 said:

About 40 in a straight line, but it will depend on load as well.

I lie, more like about 30 in a straight line from BY to OXF, Didcot is a little further at about 37 miles in a straight line.