phil-b259

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.

I'm guessing that as TfL trains are deliberately timetabled / run as all station stoppers there is relativity little point reeling off all the station stop en-route any more than it would be to go through the lists of all stations a train stops at on the Underground. Besides splitting the lump that is the Overground into separate and distinctive service groups will make it easier for folk to use maps and signage to work out where a train is going to call at anyway.

If it’s any consolation the funding for the re-branding is being provided by TfL from its own funds! In other words NOBODY who lives outside theGLA area is spending any money on it and moreover many of those who live inside the GLA area have actually been requesting the various Overgound lines to be seperated out as it makes it a lot easier to understand which bits are open and which bits are shut during incidents or closures for engineering works.

A ‘very old model’ - certainly NOT! An ‘old model’ (as something that was freshly tooled up from scratch during the 2000-2010 time period like this incarnation of the 8F - Yes. Only Hornby can tell you why the latest release has seemingly used the smoke box door from the 1980s model (which subsequently was released as a ‘railroad’ model) but it could be something as simple as a factory error. Its also the case that only Horny can tell you why it’s so highly priced - and on the face of it the RRP for what is now dated toolings does seem excessive.

IIRC the issue was more that because it was incredibly difficult to path the service over lots of intensively used lines it ended up running at odd times and stuck behind other traffic which meant that journey times were lengthy. Although there are some passengers who appreciate direct trains its rare that they will be enough to make a train service in itself viable - Thameslink trains may well go from Bedford to Brighton but well over three quarters of customers do not actually pass through to the other side of London.

Don’t pedal lies! Both the 8F and the Fowler 4P got completely new tooling for both bodies and their chassis (at the same time I hasten to add) between the years 2000 and 2010 They owe NOTHING to their 1980s predessors! At the time of release they were a world away from the 1980s versions they replaced and stod up well to other models being produced at the time. Naturally 15-20 years on they are showing their age as manufacturers have increased detail and features during that time - much like a Ford Focus from 2005 is pretty dated by todays standards yet was the bees knees when first released.

That might be because if your chosen era / location requires an 8F, it doesn’t matter how much cheaper / better detailed an Acurascale manor is the Hornby product is what you are going to buy. Its a concept which a certain internet reviewer completely fails to comprehend when he reviews stuff - though to be fair he doesn’t really care about accuracy and just wants stuff that looks pretty / fun as he runs them round his floor. However as a model it cannot be denied that Hornby 8F tooling is dated by todays standards and as such the model is definitely overpriced. But if you need an 8F then it’s what you have to pay….

As ever it depends where you are going…. There is no way on earth I will drive within Grater London for example and more locally to home I wouldn’t drive into the centre of Brighton however expensive the trains get - its simply a far too stressful experience. The same would be true with respect to visiting the centres of Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester or Leeds…

HM Treasury (and the DfT) have always lived in a parallel universe when it comes to rail reopening despite plenty of evidence from the devolved administrations… To their mindset any rail expansion is bad because even a line / station is very successful then it’s not going to generate enough revenue to compensate for the extra subsidy they will have to shell out. As such it is far better from a financial perspective to sit there saying “the computer says no” (I.e. poor BCR ratios using conservative ridership figures) and pat themselves on the back for the taxpayers money they haven’t spent….

To be fair given the awful state of many of our trunk roads I don’t think they are in that better position. What both suffer from is an over abundance of management drones churning out pretty brochures and webpages or buying fancy IT kit thinking it is a good substitute for proper maintenance. Of course that suits HM Treasury just fine…

The link was fully funded in the early days of the EWR project - but was one of the things that got dropped / sacrificed as the price to be paid for HM Treasury letting the project itself continue as costs rose. The pandemic didn’t help matters as the masive decline I ridership was eagerly siezed on by said Whitehall mandarins who insist that a Aylesbury service would never attract decent patronage….

If you thought it was bad back then - let me tell you its many many times worse now. But as the bean counters in Whitehall keep telling us the railway costs the taxpayers too much so cuts, cuts and more cuts to staff are essential to deliver tax cuts.... ahem, I mean 'value for the taxpayer'....

Effectively yes. Basically the interior of the tank was glass lined so as to keep the milk free from metallic corrosion / contamination.

(1) Bats are not extensively strewn across the countryside in terms of colonies - if they were they wouldn't be listed as endangered! (2) Where a railway has been in existence for 100 - 250 years then the Bats will have evolved to take account of it presence. The issue with HS2 is that something NEW is being introduced into the Bats habitat which was not there before. (3) What part of Endangered species is hard to understand? If a particular creature is classed as 'endangered' then its reasonable to assume that there aren't that many of them in existence and the consequences of a significant proportion of the population being killed while the colony 'gets used' to the new situation is very likely the threaten the viability of the whole colony and lead to its collapse. For far too long people have been taking the selfish attitude that nature doesn't matter or is somehow not worth spending money on and things we desire like tax cuts or cheap goods / services are of paramount importance. Just because the Victorians say were quite happy to decimate Bat colonies when building railways doesn't mean we should be doing the same today (4) If the proposed site of a wind turbine is found to be in a location where endangered species are found to be present and the turbine can reasonably be expected to cause issues to said species then it probably won't get approval.

Like many creatures Bats tend to hunt for prey / transit along the same routes day after day using eco-location (sound waves bouncing back from physical structures to keep them correctly orientated and avoid collisions) Thats why you sometimes see wire netting used to create 'Bat bridges' across roads where the construction of the road has smashed through a hedge line / field boundary which Bats use for navigation. In this case the contentious roof like structure is meant to mimic the trees which were there before HS2 was constructed thus preventing the Bats losing their way or mistaking the railway line for a strip of open ground (and if they think that way then there is obviously a chance they will get low enough to be electrocuted / hit by trains)

Horses are not listed as endangered species - bats generally are! Moreover stout fencing will easily prevent horses coming into contact with trains but as bats are flying creatures its virtually impossible to stop them ending up foul of the line and being killed. Also, although the possibility of horses being 'spooked' by train horns may sound trival, as many horse riders who interact with motor vehicles will testify, being thrown from / trying to calm an out of control horse is a dangerous situation to be in. That said, like humans, it won't take long for horses to become acclimatised to the sound of trains once they are exposed to them for a couple of months so the increased danger is temporary.

Then why did you feel the need to put down something that was not relevant to Klein's? Given Hattons (the owners of Klein's) have just shut themselves down because the owner did not wish to continue trading then its fair to assume that the same orderly winding up of the business will be taking place to the North American entity. Ensuring that the owners of gift cards / vouchers don't lose their money is, in my view, very much a part of winding down a solvent business and hardly an unusual step in that context.....

You are mixing up insolvency / bankruptcy and an orderly business closure! Under insolvency / bankruptcy laws then it’s true that holders of gift cards and suchlike are the bottom of the pile in terms of creditors to be reimbursed and given the whole reason for insolvency / bankruptcy is a lack of funds then said card / certificate holders usually get nothing. However if a full solvent business is simply closing down because the owner wishes to cease trading (as opposed to being forced to cease trading) then it’s entirely possible sufficient funds exist to compensate gift card / certificate holders as part of the orderly winding down of the business.