phil-b259

TOTALLY INACCURATE REPORTING! The REAL reasons the Brighton main line was screwed on Monday was down to two point failures! One* outside Preston Park prevented all up movements until they had been clipped up - and even then the signaller had to caution past signals till around 14:00. The other one* was at Copyhold junction and until around 11:00 only 2 of the 4 platforms were available at Haywards Heath - and due to the track layout at the south end of Haywards Heath simultaneous departures and arrivals at the south end was impossible. The power cut which the media have latched on to (and Network Rail are reluctant to challenge because it wasn’t their fault in contrast to the REALLY disruptive points problems) occurred at 04:00 and lasted less than 10 seconds! It was admittedly a pretty big outage though as it was a National grid problem and affected a huge chunks of Surrey / Sussex. In terms of effects on the railway - all it did was drop out lots of the communication systems south of Purley which transmit information between Three Bridges ASC (note NOT Three Bridges ROC which doesn’t control any of the Brighton line south of Anerley / Thornton Heath) and the remote interlockings. Some were bought back by the techs at Three Bridges going downstairs and reasserting them but there were a few places like Redhill which required the techs to attend the relay room and reset the field end equipment. Had the power outage been the only issue then the Brighton line would have been back to normal well before the service started ramping up for the morning peak. *Preston Park was traced to a defective / rodent damaged cable that required point detection circuits to be diverted but as there wasn’t any good spares in the cable or another cable running between the same location cases which could easily be jumpered into so it took some time to fix. * Haywards Heath / Copyhold was due to points which had been damaged in weekend engineering work but the issue wasn’t discovered until the possession was being given back and as the points are of a new design spare parts were not readily at hand and took some time to source.

But, echoing Nortmoor’s comment, if that’s the case do you really need all vehicles? Particularly if many of them are the same?

Lots of re-signalling projects are running late - either through a lack of installers / testers ora lack of track access to carry out the installation works. There are also big supply chain issues - remember that modern signalling systems have dispensed with relays in favour of computer based solutions - all of which are dependent on the supply of microchips in sufficient numbers from Asia and as with the car industry supply issues are a real headache for the likes of Alstom and Siemens….

What part of ‘most congested’ is hard to understand? As desirable as reinstatement of Skipton to Colne is, that has got nothing to do with the business case for HS2 - which despite politicians trying to spin it in other ways to carry favour with various audiences is routed in the very real congestion issues on the EXISTING network, congestion which is most accuse on the WCML, MML, etc as they close in on London. HS2 would, if done properly have bought benefits to huge swathes of the country either in terms of releasing capacity for increased services on the current network or providing more seats between our major cities, not just faster journey times for some city pairings. Reinstatement of Skipton to Colne is fundamentally different thing - the benefits are far more localised (which is not to say they aren’t worthy), but in simple terms the proportion of the country which would benefit is tiny. In fact if you want to compare Skipton - Colne to anything than the EWR scheme between Oxford & Cambridge is a much better place to start….

Which still wouldn’t have addressed they key issues! Look how many times do I have to point out that, like it or not they areas of the rail network that are the most contested and would unlock the greatest benifits to the network as a whole the bits between the Midlands and London. Furthermore there would have been no chance of starting both the Leeds and the Manchester legs at the same time and what’s more given the political makeup of those areas the Government would have found it far easier to simply abandon the works half finished rather than complete them!

Indeed - and I do understand that. But romantic attachments can blind to the true value of something plus don't always align with what is practical or justifiable in cost terms. In the case of the Shenfield shark I seem to recall the problem it was manifestly unfit to be hauled by rail but its location under 25KV OLE and right next to a running line meant repairs were programmatic and it was impossible to recover by any other means.

Indeed there are but I still don't buy into the theory that makes something a celebrity in its own right as it were, particularly given the words overuse in social media and the way its become something lots of people seemingly seek to be. Rather its just the normal human reaction when something unusual / out of the ordinary happens - and a wagon sitting in public view for so long and gradually deteriorating as the weather takes its toll will naturally become a talking point etc, particularly when it finally disappears.

I really don't see how a brakeman being sat at the end of a siding for decades can be counted as a 'celebrity' - by that same thought process the open wagon which has been sitting in the siding by the north portal of Haywards Heath tunnel must also be a 'celebrity' As for people with industry influence trying to save it - with respect even within the industry its very easy for people to overvalue something and elevate in their mind to have a status which is not warranted in a wider context.

Why? Its not as though it was the only Shark brakeman in existence nor was it special in any way (other than being marooned at Shenfield for decades).

You should note that the speed link service finished in 1992 due to unsustainably high charges imposed by British Rail at the behest of HM Treasury (who seemed to be doing as much as possible to discourage Railfreight outside of block point to point trains. Once speedlink shut there was simply no way of moving less than trainload quantities of wagons about - and it stayed that way to EWS tried unsuccessfully to revive it in a small way in the early 2000s. As such the continued carrying of household coal by rail post 1992 was basically limited to where block trains to be operated - and as most coal yards did not warrant such block trains most of the remaining domestic coal flows (which had been declining year on year anyway as more people switched to central heating via gas or fuel oil) were lost to the roads.

Question is just exactly how many people are making that particular journey? I have pointed out many times that the number of people who make the Brighton - Bedford or Brighton - Cambridge trip are tiny yet it still makes sense to run them from a rolling stock utilisation and distribution of travellers over a number of Central London stations perspective. Although NSE did make a lot of noise about how the service made getting to Gatwick easier when the first introduced it, that rather overlooks that the real reason the service existed in the first place is it was a bolt on to something that was being provided for other purposes (i.e. services to Chichester / Portmouth). Another thing to throw into the mix is that since the DfT instructed Southern to ditch the 455 fleet with no replacements and with ongoing issues with drivers (again DfT driven) the new service pattern might well result in a more reliable service overall

This is largely because following the expansion of the Thameslink* the Littlehampton train forms the only direct service to Victoria from these stations... Yes I know you can in theory change at Gatwick or East Croydon but both stations tend to be overgrowded and are frequently trains are fully loaded with no seats. * The expansion of Thameslink has also reduced the number of paths available for other services south of Gatwick

Given the insane crush seen on many services that call at Gatwick there are very good reasons to maximise the number of services via the airport! Not that long ago I had to attend some training in Croydon and the incoming Thameslink was already well filled at Three Bridges and turned into a Tube train crush at Gatwick as large numbers of air travellers squeezed themselves on board.

I did indeed initially confuse which ex PTE area you were talking about but that doesn’t really matter. Under and Thatcher's bus de-regulation legislation of the mid 1980s the bulk of what you you talk about was illegal for at least 3 decades! Its only in the past couple of years that authorities like TfWM have been able to carry out the actions you describe. Hence 2 or so years against a backdrop of deregulation being in place for 30+ doesn’t sit well with the phrase ‘some time’

It depends how you define 'some time'..... Do not confuse the ability for regional transport bodies to subside routes or enter agreements with commercial bus companies to provide multi-mode / multi operator based ticketing schemes within their areas with the ability completely organise all aspects of bus operation as has long been the case in the Capital. The legal powers needed to do the latter and effectively copy the London / TfL setup were only granted in 2023 IIRC which is not exactly a long time ago.

No - but that was true of a number of models released around the same time! The 'super detailed' West Country / Battle of Britain locos (in original condition had this setup as did the Black 5 IIRC) and it was intended that you screw one of these R8099s* to the aforementioned 'lump' (which was actually specifically designed to receive it) People need to remember that this is 20 year old tooling (although defiantly not the same as the late 1980s tooling which preceded it) and as such is not up to current standards in many areas, including NEM provision *https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hornby-R8099-Assemblies-Couplings-Accessory/dp/B001IYOR2O/ref=asc_df_B001IYOR2O&mcid=e673d5c49bb639e4b895b3d75c858663?tag=bingshoppinga-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80264405731093&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4583863981501401&psc=1

Point of order - Marylebone station only EVER had 4 platforms to start with! Yes the GCR, LNER and BR only ever had 4 platforms to play with. Up until the 1990s Chiltern line modernisation by British Rail the span covering what is now platforms 2 & 3 merely covered the cab road (which is why platforms 2 & 3 line up with the large archway at the front of the station building). As such the 1990s changes did NOT reduce station capacity - though obviously what they did do by getting rid of the cab Road and demolishing the 3rd bay of the train shed was restrict any easy expansion (although the decision to install carriage sidings on part of the land formerly occupied by the removed train shed did at least give Chiltern the option of building 2 new platforms a couple of decades later).

But given it’s obvious the Tories have pretty much given up looking after their ex-red wall seats and are more concerned about shoring up support in their traditional heartlands do you honestly thing anyone in Government will care?

Cambridge does, as far as I know; have a good park and ride service plus a good train service (including a direct service from where I live which negates the need to use the multi lane car park that is the M25).

And what happens when the DfT come demanding cuts and that ‘someone knowledgeable’ no longer exists in house or NR are no longer able to afford to pay for external help. You forget that the whole reason why tree growth was allowed to happen in the first place was the ability to slash staff numbers once steam had finished rather than any deliberate policy to let them grow!

The Wonderlabs target audience is CHILDREN - and is tied in with promoting STEM* learning at school with the aim of increasing the number of young people considering related industries as career paths Adults may well enjoy some of its content (much like adults used to enjoy playing with the stuff in the ‘Launch Pad’ facility at London Science museum), but that is not the target audience for the facility or why it exists. * Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths

It considerably complicated things like welding - in case you aren’t aware not only is exposure to it without protective PPE likely to blind you / give you arc eye but there are stringent rules about fume extraction following concerns about the carcinogenic nature of the fumes. Now yes I agree that these things can be mitigate things with a hermetically sealed viewing gallery from which the public are excluded every time someone wants to use a Oxyacetylene torch, but the bottom line is such things get in the way of running a profitable and efficient enterprise - which is what any workshop facility at York would have to be.

Yes - which is going more less exclusively towards paying for new Piccadilly line trains. It is most emphatically not going towards TfL general expenditure - and moreover given the cost of new trains it’s not as though the money currently allocated to the Overground re-branding would buy many trains anyway.

Tea and Toys makes money for the museum - the workshop didn’t! As I have pointed out many, many times before with Government funded museums unable to charge an entrance fee but not given funding which keeps up with inflation it is critical that said museum seeks to boost its revenue stream by other means. Simply the selling of souvenirs and refreshments to visitors is not enough these days and as such ventures like the ‘Wonderlab’ where an entrance fee can be charged are increasingly being restarted to. There is also the practical consideration that in these increasingly safety conscious times there are many workshop activities which cannot be undertaken with the public present or where allowing the public to view the process slows everything down and thus affects the earning potential of such a facility.

Because some people cannot accept he is the democratically elected Mayor of London who has the right to Govern how he wishes and so resort to name calling because it satisfies their inner prejudices. It’s a fact that for centuries the naming of things in the U.K. has generally followed the pattern of honouring rich white men and I for one welcome names that upset the status quo.