phil-b259

1 hour ago, zr2498 said:

Not sure why Hornby need the 8 pins as the firebox glow is on constant and fed from the loco pick ups I assume. However 8 pin would be better for those that want to have DCC control of firebox glow

Because there are the working lamps as well as the smoke unit which needs to be considered!

The 4 pin is fine if you have no gizmos so all you need is two wires from the pick ups on the loco and 2 wires to take power to the motor!

2 hours ago, adb968008 said:

A lot of my locos spend long periods out of use, and one thing I can say, is the wheels on my stock has never gone egg shaped from standing still…I think your stretching it a bit with that one.

😀

The point is rubber doesn’t like being compressed for long peroid, nor stored in too damp, or too dry conditions.

put rubber round a metal wheel (be it a car or a model train) and the tyres will suffer - even if they were made to perfection

By contrast the metal wheels will (assuming they were made correctly will not be adversely affected by climatic conditions or being left compressed for long periods.

On 26/04/2024 at 11:21, adb968008 said:

Everything rots with age… the motor wears out, parts become brittle, mazak can rot, gear teeth wear out… thats not really an excuse.

Mazak only becomes brittle if it’s contaminated during manufacture! If made properly Mazak will never become brittle or crumble.

As regards motors and gears - a lot depends on the amount of use they get - and will typically last several decades with normal use, particularly if the motors don’t have brushes to wear down and the gears are metal.

Traction types on the other hand are very much a short term consumerable item in the way the other things you mention are not - and just as with car tyres their life is not just connected to usage!
 

Go look at a car which has been parked up for ages and even though technically the tread may be fine, sitting still with all the loading on one spot decades the tyre structure and it doesn’t take long before you need new ones even though the vehicle hasn’t moved an inch.

1 hour ago, Mike_Walker said:

 

Would you want to run a business for such tiny return?

 

 

(1) Because they (or their shareholders) are greedy*

(2) The contracts are too short.

(3) There are insufficient bonus incentives in there for good performance.
 

Railways are a LONG TERM industry with payback measured in decades.

A return of 2% might sound crap but a solid 2% over 25 years adds up to a tidy amount at the end. If you add in the ability for top up payments to be given for good performance then, as part of a balanced portfolio such a contract would be a good one to hold.

* People as a whole have got far too greedy / selfish over the past 3 decades -  a trend which started with the me, me, me / ‘loadsamobey’ culture unleashed by the Tories in the 1980s

1 hour ago, Mike_Walker said:

 

Adrian Shooter's autobiography and his book about Chiltern are well worth a read.

 

And where did this person first get the opportunity to shine - why the state owned BR!

Yes who contrary to what the popular press / Tories have spun BR was actually pretty good at spotting and promoting talent within itself!

The only limiting factor was the unwillingness of the Government to invest in the railway without BR offering up huge cuts / cost savings - in most cases the BR board actually would have loved to take the ideas forward.

So yes, once these dynamic and enterprising managers finally got the cash post privatisation they did do marvellous things - but it certainly wasn’t a case that privatisation bestowed them with talents they didn’t have under BR….

10 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

Also, in your scenario (1) above, if the DafT leased the trains directly, you've introduced a new level of cost and risk.

They are already effectively doing that anyway, by taking out a long term lease indirectly .

 

But at the expense of extra layers to the contracts - all of which don’t come for free. Then there is the need for fresh contracts to be drawn up every time the TOC changes.

A single digit percentage mark up might not sound a lot - but given the sheer amounts of money involved it’s hardly trivial.

One of the biggest wastes in the industry is the profit mark up everyone changes and why REDUCING the number of players would go a long way to generating big savings in what the industry costs to run.

33 minutes ago, Mike_Walker said:

 

None of these would have occurred if BR had not been privatised and a similar programme would be unlikely to be repeated in future under the present renationalisation plans.

 

 

 

 

WHAT ROT!

The level of modernisation applied to the Chiltern line was dictated by what subsidy the Government would provide.

There is plenty of evidance out there if you can be bothered to look

The Government only giving enough money to pay for ECML electrification to Newcastle is one example - it’s extension to Edinburgh had to be self financed by BR (which meant an even flimser OLE and significant restrictions on the number of electric trains north of Newcastle.

Or how about electrification to Kings Lyn - again the Govsrnment would only fund it if BR singled large chunks of the route plus no new rolling stock was to be sourced.

Or the Hastings and East Grinstead lines electrification - on both limited Goverment funding meant BR was FORCED to do it on the cheap with a maximum of 8 car units and a limited number of trains in each electrical section - oh and no new rolling stock either.

BR didn’t sell off land at Marylebone because they wanted to - they HAD TO as a condition of Government funding.

Similarly with track layouts rationalisation HAD to be done because the Government demands a reduction in maintenance costs - and a reduction in physical track mileage to be maintained produced cost savings.

Chris Green was no fool - he KNEW that the modernisation would produce a significant lift in passengers, but with a DfT whose policy was ‘managed decline’ there was no way anything other than a ‘do minimum’ was permissible.

Pay attention to what I posted earlier where Roger Ford presented SOLID FACTUAL EVIDANCE that in 2003 the amount of subsidy given to just ONE TOC WAS 3 RIMES THAT GIVRN TO THE WHOLE OF NSE IN 1990

Had NSE been given that amount of money and been to go all out for growth all of the things you are so keen to attribute to the private sector could have been done by NSE for a fraction of the price it cost Chilterns to do.

40 minutes ago, Rugd1022 said:

Nothing will really change 'on the ground', it's another Labour pipedream which won't really go anywhere. As a railwayman, a former Labour voter and a member of a trade union which used to be the most militant on the planet I ought to be onboard with it, but I still don't believe a word of it.

 

 

Of course nothing much will change on the ground!

The country is massively in debt and as such is heavily reliant on what the global finically markets think to keep itself solvent.

We have seen with the Lizz Truss experiment what I funded borrowing does to the global financial markets - and more importantly for many voters what it does to their mortgages etc

As such Labour simply don’t have the ability to go round nationalising things - which I seeing as we don’t live in a communist state involves Nope dating shareholders based on the market price of their shares.

Nationalisation of Britains railways therefore HAS to be a slow process done over many years (if not decades) and largely relies on a strategy of not renewing contracts when they expire.

Of course the problem with that is after 5 years if the Labour Party hasn’t done enough other more important (to voters) areas they will be kicked out!

As I have said in the HS2 thread even if Labour do win the next general election they will be forced to limit their plans and what we will get is effectively more of be same’ until they can get growth up and debt down while also continuing to reassure any ex Tory voters they may have picked up that the Labour Party of Corbin is well and truly dead.

In effect a Labour victory would be much the same as Tony Blair’s victory in 1997 - but with a much worse set of exominc figures!

However as with Labours 1997 victory the REAL PRIZE is to be in power for longer than a single term thus allowing other more challenging policies to be introduced without significant backlash as the party has ‘proved’ itself as competent.

17 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

But nobody will supply trains to a a short term tenant without some cast iron guarantee, or the cash up front.

.

And THAT is the REAL PROBLEM with the system of leasing trains in this country!

Given….

(1) It’s extremely unlikely that the trains are a good fit for any other country

(2) Whoever gets the franchise / contract is still goji g to need trains

(3) Trains have a 40(ish) lifespan (with a mid life refresh around 20 years in.

…. Why on earth are we doing leasing deals for 5- 10 years - thus increasing the risk for the ROSCOs and therefore causing them to charge higher leasing rates!

For those forum members who have a mortgage on their property just work through what happens if you get a big loan but only agree a 10 year term instead of a 20 year one - your repayments will be significantly higher!

Thats why in a sane world train leasing should either:-

(1) Be done by the DfT who lease the trains for 25 years at a minimum and then sub lease them back to the TOCs (thus allowing the TOCs contracts to be let for short periods of time (e.g. 5 - 10 years)

OR

(2) The DfT issues 25 year contracts to run the TOCs (and guarantee to take on the lease  should the TOC fail financially causing the TOC be run by the Government pending re-letting, at which point the new operator takes on the remainder of the lease)

Both the above would have the benefit to the taxpayer of lowering lease payments and also incentivising rolling stock leasing companies to offer good long term deals (plus incentivise train builders to offer a better product in the first place).

Instead the U.K. seems to have a train leasing system which is all geared around diverting state cash into offshore banks who pay large dividends with it. That may suit certain political parties and their mates in the Ciry of London but it’s a poor deal for the U.K. tax payer in the long run and over inflated the costs of leasing trains.

As I said in another post leasing trains is in itself a perfectly sensible and can be a cost effective way of dealing with the problem of smoothing public spending / avoiding large one off hits to HM Treasury. The issue is the way the U.K. has gone about it…..

15 minutes ago, AndrueC said:

..and is carrying far more passengers 😉

 

I'll admit that I posted that graph more as a cheeky discussion point than because I believe that it shows a definite causal relationship. But still I'd be interested in whether you think that is 'more cost per passenger' or just 'more overall cost to run'.

 

Because those are two different things and depending which you believe (or maybe both?) surely affects future planning.

And?

If for example BR had been able to buy a fleet of voyagers and this significantly improve the frequency of the cross country network are you trying to say passenger numbers would have not grown in a similar fashion to how they did when Virgin did the same?

There is plenty of research out there over many decades that the more frequent / ‘easy’ / accessible a service is the more people will take advantage of it.

We have seen this play out on the roads for years - before the M25 how many folk would regularly commute from Sussex to the Thames Valley on a daily basis, how many people counted by car fron Swindon to London before the M4.

Yes some costs like operating personal, depot / maintenance staff etc would have increased due to a better service trying to link that to privatisation is nonsense - it is a function of an improved service to passengers.

You also might want to consider how about that until the mid 200s many 3rd rail commuter routes were still using exactly the same BR slam door units which BRs Network SouthEast used but passenger numbers grew significantly in spite of that.

So yes although some costs would still have increased had privatisation not happened, it’s rather far fetched to link that to better passenger services as a whole.

And on the subject of increased passenger growth there is plenty of evidence that this was driven primarily by an improving economy, roads becoming ever more congested, insurance costs for newly passed drivers increasing rapidly, more environmental awareness (the latter two being significant when it comes to younger people using trains), etc

1 hour ago, Bernard Lamb said:

Not according to Sam.

Bernard

Sam said nothing of the sort - he merely said they ‘might’ be glued in - but as his model was obviously faulty he wasn’t going to try messing round with them!

Had the loco performed well during the initial running in then I suspect he would have investigated the lamps more throughly when he did his disassembly / mechanism examination.

10 minutes ago, GrumpyPenguin said:

Interesting discussions.

 

However, where is the money coming from ?

(unless I've missed that bit).

The Labour Party know the nations finances are in a bad way - hence their proposals are actually more about talk than action.

For example simply not re-letting contracts / franchises as the current contracts expire costs nothing - yes the state takes on paying for things but it also isn’t handing over huge quantities of cash to a private sector operator so in Government spending terms it costs nothing.

However in the long run there might be options for sharing back office functions e.g. HR or Payroll between state run operations plus disputes between different state run operators could be conducted without armies of expensive lawyers getting involved. There also might be cost savings in procurement of  consumables etc…

GBR was a Tory invention and as such requires no new spending over what is already planned to set the ring up.

Network Rail is already state owned and we are told it’s use of private sector contractors will continue - so no cash needed to change anything there.

14 hours ago, adb968008 said:

My little one is 13, when she was 11 she was using slam door stock, without my help.

weve got very short memories…

25th April 2021…3 years ago today I took this…

 

even in 2019 5 London Termini had regular cdl slam door services everyday…

If I goto Paddington tonight, I still can, six nights a week.

 

its not that long ago… mk3 cdl slam doors only retired during covid, even in 2021 thousands of passengers a day were using slam doors.

 

 

The issue is not whether slam doors still exsist - it’s how widespread (and thus what percentage of the population might be familiar with them) which is important.

Up until the mid 2000s any train traveller in the South East of England was likely to be vary familiar with both slam doors AND THE ABSENCE IF CDL!

If any of those people (and bearing in mind the sizeable population of the region it could be a lot of people) went up to Scotland for a ride on the Jacobite it would be around 15 years since they encountered a slam door - that’s enough time for a whole new generation of rail travellers to be born and start to go travelling round unaided!

By contrast users of the GWR InterCity Network would have been familiar with slam doors with CDL up until the late 2010s so for them if they went for a trip on the Jacobite then slam doors would still be a relatively recent thing and it’s far less likely you would have someone using the trains unaided who hasn’t seen a slam door.  However they key thing is it won’t stay that way for long….

This the ORR are now trying to harmonise the situation across the entire rail network so ALL PASSENGERS, REGARDLESS Of THE TYPE OF TRAIN THEY USE are provided with the same basic level of protection when it comes to doors.

Lots of people seem to be going on about windows  - they have no relevance to the core of this thread as there are no absolute requirements set out for windows by the ORR -unlike there are for Central door locking and the ‘Mk1 coach’ design

Yes once CDL compliance is achieved across the network for all operators then opening windows may become an issue - but you need to have CDL in place in first.

Thats because:-

(1) To get rid of windows in doors which can be fully lowered to reach external door handles it is necessary to fit internal door handles

(2) Given the increased danger of internal doors being activated /turned /etc (accidentally or deliberately) while the train is in motion then it is necessary that a CDL system is employed.

15 hours ago, AndrueC said:

It brings to mind this graph which appears to show an unfortunate corelation between ownership and passenger numbers.

 

Try adding the level of state subsidy to that graph!

Its a FACT that towards the end of its exsistance British Rail was very efficient in terms of using the subsidy extracting the maximum it could from every pond it spent.

However HM Treasury realised that the level of subsidy BR was getting was far too low to make privatisation work - all these extra players with their contractual interfaces and a need to return a profit to shareholders would increase administrative costs and start taking money out of the industry as dividends.

Therefore the level of subsidy the privatised industry got was something like 4 times that British Rail received - yet in fact progress in many areas like new trains electrification and resignaling schemes stalled - sometimes for decades!

Although the original intention of HM Treasury may have been to wind the subsidy levels back down - that was in the assumption there was lots of ‘waste’ and ‘public sector inefficiencies’ which the private sector could eliminate. In reality (and something which caused several of the original franchise owners to almost go bust) BR was VERY efficient and there simply wasn’t any ‘waste’ to cut - so subsidies have remained way above what British Rail received - with a good chunk of it wasted on legal / administrative costs or taken out as dividends.

Roger Ford, the very respected of modern railways magazine fame has tracked these extra post privatisation costs (including factoring into account inflation etc)

Back in 2003 he said the following to a Transport select committee

 My submission is that a railway costing twice its historical average cannot represent value for money, even if quality of service had been maintained. While this submission has focused on infrastructure costs, the subsidies to franchises are also increasing. As an indication of the likely scale of the problem, the recently signed Southwest Trains franchise will pay more subsidy in each of the three years than the whole of Network SouthEast—that is, all London commuter services—received in 1990-91.

Just stop and think about that for a minute - ONE TOC was costing the taxpayer MORE than it cost BR to run the WHOLE of NSE for a year!

In subsequent years he had contracted to track this trend calling it the ‘Ford Factor’ and has shown that for every £1 BR would have spent the privatised industry now has to spend £4 to achieve the same result. That extra £3 is not coming out of the private sector - they existing to make money for shareholders - not lose it! Thus it is the taxpayer who is ultimately paying for this extra cost - something persons of a certain political perspective completely refuse to acknowledge when they bang on about passenger rises or ‘record investment’

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmtran/145/145web50.htm

8 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

They appear to be putting a lot of emphasis on making big savings and efficiencies, by removing duplication and complicated interfaces.

If you really want to achieve those sort of savings it would inevitably lead to lots of job losses.

.

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!

31 minutes ago, melmerby said:

How many multiple units does GWR own?

How many Aeroplanes does BA own?

How many buses does National Express own?

 

The most expensive assets are normally leased these days.

 

 

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.

9 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

I wonder what sort of arrangement Bradford Exchange has with the NRM, to allow them to come up with the tat, that they do for Flying Scotsman?

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!

14 minutes ago, fezza said:

I've often wondered if a return to the 'big four' wouldn't be a bad thing. Companies would then control their infrastructure, giving them the choice where to invest and allowing them to raise investment for long term planning.  This would also allow for a modicum of competition, at least on long distance routes.

 

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...

29 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Could this be construed as a political remark I wonder or does that only come into play when we get round to the choice of livery?  (sorry no emojis but I'm sure you'll treat it in tthe spirit in which it was meant)

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)

21 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

 But the oddest thing about Labour's stance is that it keeps on about nationalising NR - which was effectively nationalised by the Conservatives some years ago.

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). 

20 minutes ago, C126 said:

 

As an ideological fool, can I just ask why a suitably composed law can not prohibit challenges?  If a theoretical govt wished to make freight go on a monopolistic railway (and was able to pass a law thus - a big caveat), why can it not pass a law to do this?  Sorry to open a can of worms, but I have often wondered why govts are made out to be impotent with things like this.  Thanks.

 

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.

3 hours ago, bmb5dnp1 said:

Hello,

    I've never understand why people have problems with shareholders (which may include your pension scheme) making money as without them there'd be no investment or jobs anyway.

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.

1 hour ago, Grovenor said:

Owning a locomotive does not automatically give any rights to either the copyright in the livery design or its name as a trademark. The copyright for LBSC livery as an example may well have expired and if not may or may not have been sold with tloco.

 

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

25 minutes ago, Steven B said:

 

I find this very hard to believe.

 

Does this mean that anyone who's ever produced a model of "Mallard" has asked permission from the NRM?

 

Steven B

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.
 

1 hour ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

Where did the idea of changeable lamp positions come from?.

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….