phil-b259

Yes - but job losses in the management / legal / financial / legal areas. The thing crippling the railways at present is FRONT LINE JOBS. You know like a lack of Drivers, Guards, Infrastructure maintainers etc..... Its no use having a fully staffed legal or business ethics team if you have points failures but nobody able to go and fix them* or trains with no drivers* because nobody has wanted to do overtime! * I get to read the control logs so I know what I am talking about!

The point is not so much trains being leased its the nature of the leases being signed. Aeroplanes are not country restricted - An Airbus A321 or Boeing 737 can operate in any country in the world with no changes to the aircraft itself other than cosmetic stuff like the paint job and seating layout / interior trim as the specifications in terms of what airports need to have (e.g. taxiway spacing etc) handle the aircraft doesn't change A coach is similarly flexible it can roam all over the UK at will and again there will be no changes to the fundamentals even if it gets a new paint job and seats Trains by contrast are a different matter. For starters the small UK loading gauge and high platforms mean that train built for the UK is going to be unattractive to most other countries as it does not fit the needs of their infrastructure (e.g. only single deck where as a UIC gauge train would be double deck) - the same is generally not true of planes. Then if you look at redeployment options within the UK the lack of electrification, short platform lengths, driver training requirements (the latter being particularly noteworthy given there is no requirement for coach drivers to be 'type' approved for a particular model of vehicle nor have prior knowledge of ever mile of public highway they are due to drive. etc) all mean that moving trains between routes is either impossible or quite expensive. It therefore follows that as UK train fleets are heavily restricted in redeployment terms the lease period should be long - i.e. for 20 years minimum and the lease payments structured around that - not the 5 to 10 years which is typical due to the Governments focus on short term TOC contracts. It also follows that as the trains being leased are going to remain in the UK for the majority of their lives and the lease payments are being met from UK taxpayers / UK fare payers the leasing companies should be paying UK taxes on the profits they make - not be based in offshore tax havens and filter their profits through complicated financial models in pursuit of bumper dividends.

Erm... pay them money? Given it is official Government policy for museums in receipt of grants from DMCS to maximise revenue generation I suspect as long as the Science Museum Group get a cut of everything Bradford Exchange sell they really don't care how tacky the product is!

I don't see that as being much of a help and would be tremendously disruptive to the industry because you still have to cater for open access operators like Hull trains and of course all railfreight. Granted you could go round combining TOCs (e.g. Group South Eastern, Southern and SWR into some sort of recreated 'Southern Railway' or recreate NSE from the Government franchised TOCs but that wouldn't really change anything that maters. In any case passengers overwhelmingly don't care WHO operates trains (perhaps unwittingly recognising the basic truth that rail mostly competes with road and air travel not itself) - what passengers want is for trains to run on time, not be delayed or cancelled due to staff shortages (or strikes) and as lower fares as is possible. Tinkering with branding or who runs what won't fix any of those problems...

You have to admit that a predominately white / grey livery is:- (1) A difficult one to keep clean in a railway environment - and Siemens seem to be pretty inept at that task given the grime build up on the lower sides / around the doors (2) A dull and depressing one for travellers to see when using the railway - partciaulalry on days like today (low grey cloud and drizzle)

It plays well with their core supporters who generally speaking haven't got a clue about the way the industry is structured right now. Its no different to the Torries banging on about cutting taxes (despite there being overwhelming evidence public services need every penny they can get).

Because they know big business and City Spivs / Hedge Funds / Offshore tax exiles who donate lots of cash to political parties would be outraged - party funds would dwindle, the right wing press would pillory the Government etc.

Because most shareholders these days seem to be driven by short term greed rather than taking a long term view*. The mantra most work to (and which the City of London spivs, sorry share traders) work is they expect large dividends every year and if the bosses of the company don't comply they will be replaced by those who do. * Things like rolling stock have a 40 year lifespan and they are also not things which you can easily find other uses for - so lends themselves to long term deals were remuneration is low on a yearly basis but which mounts up to be very profitable over a 25 year term. Not that long ago Unilever came under pressure from shareholders to dump the ice cream sections of the business - and its important to note the justification wasn't it was loss making, rather it wasn't making the bumper profits city investors demand these days. We also saw the profitable chocolate maker Cadbury subject to a hostile takeover by craft - and this was only possible because Kraft mounted a sustained campaign to shareholders based on greed and claims that they weren't getting full value from the company. Of course once the deal was done Kraft took no time in shutting down the ex Cadbury plants in the UK making hundreds of people redundant. There is also the issue where thinks like the shareholders (like those of the big ROSCOS) are headquartered in tax havens so pay no tax on their dividends and have concern over what problems their demands cause where the operations take place.

Then please explain how the Bluebell Railway were able to hit back when the owners of the Thomas the Tank Engine IP sent threatening letters stating the railway was committing IP theft as regards Stepney and big monies had to be paid. By rights its the Bluebell who should have been demanding royalties from TTEs use of Stepney not the other way round! Furthermore there have been plenty of court cases where companies alleging IP infringement due to colour / shape have been told to get lost by judges who generally say colour / shape is not enough to claim IP infringement.... https://www.keystonelaw.com/keynotes/nestle-loses-its-european-trade-mark-for-the-shape-of-the-kitkat https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/20/kitkat-nestle-loses-high-court-bid-trademark-shape https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47113644

Technically yes (though obviously before the NRM resisted as an organisation then permission would have been required from whoever owned the loco at the time). However back in the 1970s and 80s the NRM probably weren’t that bothered about enforcing it or seeking to profit from it. In recent decades however the Government grant which the Science Museum group gets has not kept up with inflation plus there has been a strong Whitehall push to ‘reduce the burden on hard working taxpayers’ as one party puts it - so organisations like the Science museum have to put a much bigger effort into protecting their IP rights to make ends meet and generate additional funds. The upshot is that today, reproducing a model / artwork / signage which is owned by the SMG will require express permission (and a finically contribution to the organisation) to do so.

Probably because someone at Hornby realised that when looking through photos of British trains the position and number of lamps varies hugely and it dawned on them that simply offering one configuration would be a bad idea. Thing is I get the appeal of working lamps on steam locos as a feature - and the fact it’s generally easy to do on European / North American prototypes will have furled the ‘why can’t we do the same for British modellers thoughts’ The problem is all down to how British Railways used and deployed their movable lamps - it makes any attempts far more difficult and costly than has been the case for other countries….

In other words European prototypes with built in lamps that do not move / disappear like most British locos.

I doubt it - mainly because of the quality control issues which have emerged. Whats the point of fancy gizmos like working lamps if the model itself can’t be used to haul trains….

Yes and very crude it looks too! In this day and age we expect considerably finer and better detail so simply whacking a couple of large immovable lamps on the front doesn’t cut it.

As you well know the automotive industry does not use the railway rulebook* nor rail industry* norms….. Hence why they (and society at large uses ‘bulb’ to mean an electric light source). As such given the way motorists are able to replace / repair / service vehicles themselves it makes perfect sense for things like the MOT test to refer to what the motor industry calls them rather than applying railway industry rules to non railway stuff! However in terms of trying to describe the purpose of the lamps on UK locos and how they differ from most of the rest of the world comparisons with motor vehicles is a useful yardstick. Once the above is properly understood by both manufacturers and designers it becomes apparent that it’s a much more tricky thing to realise with what might be termed ‘standard’** electrical components / techniques than is the case with other countries railway locos. * Being something entirely new the pioneers of the railway industry used the British army as a role model in terms of how they structured themselves - hence the emphasis put on ‘rules’, the various job titles seen in the industry with the word ‘officer’ in them and the culture of preserving its own way of doing things. As any military commander will tell you making sure that choosing one term and sticking with it helps eliminate confusion within the ranks and delays while clarification is sought when quick responses are needed. ** That is to say items which are already mass produced - I’m sure it would be possible to make I insanely tiny LEDs for example but if the only thing which is going to use them is RTR OO gauge British steam locos then the cost of developing them far outstrips the potential sales and is thus not worth it.