phil-b259

Quite possible as a prescient was created on the WCML where a footbridge was condemned but station usage figures (mainly due to the abysmal service offered*) couldn't justify the costs of the DDA mandated replacement. Of course the logical thing to have done is increase the service provision and see whether usage figures improved significantly thereby improving the business case for a new footbridge (BEFORE the existing bridge has to be removed), but that would have required certain parties at the DfT to actually look beyond the short term and get out of their Beaching mentality. * The other affected station had an equally abysmal service but because it didn't have footbridge issues, both platforms remained open and usage has increased massively now that it gets an hourly London Midland service to London and Stafford proving that the service offered plays a far more significant role than physical location when it comes to attractiveness.

Its not about rose tinted glasses, its all about blaming the right people when things go wrong. When it comes to signalling contractors NR are in the same position as you when you purchase goods or services. It doesn't mater how much planning goes into it, ultimately if said 3rd party doesn't deliver what they have agreed to do then its not the purchasers fault (unless they didn't specify what they wanted in enough detail at the outset). With the Thameslink flooding, it was quite clearly a 3rd party who was at fault - NR like your local roads authority or even you yourself as a householder don't plan your drainage systems around the off chance that a large 3rd party water main might burst and overload the drainage system that quite happily copes with heavy rainfall. Similarly NR don't pay SSL vast amounts of money for nothing. They won the contract and should deliver what they promised. If they don't its SSL that should get the blame. SSL screwed up on the GWML at Christmas so they get the blame. "Simples" as a merecat might say. Now if NR had decided to do all the GWML signalling work in house and it all went tits up during commissioning, then yes NR would be to blame. But the simple fact is they are not and you should be recognising that fact rather than lambasting NR for things that are outside their control (as opposed to things that are within their control such as the reliability of signalling assets they maintain on a day to day basis for example)

Closing stations is a difficult business these days and as such I am sure that the Shrub Hill station will still be open in 50 years time. What sort of train service it gets though is open for debate though as in theory the service could be whittled away to only a couple of 'parliamentary' trains a day. However realistically, I would expect to still see Oxford - Malvin - Hereford services call at all 3 Worcester stations - stopping at Shrub Hill as well as the new Parkway station is hardly going to extend journey times that much. North - south flows are a different matter of course, but as i understand it most bypass Worcester anyway so actually having them stop at a new Parkway station could be an advantage to people living in the general Worcester area (though they may well need a car to get to the Parkway station)..

Railway drains are gear towards disposing of typical RAINFALL. They are not and, never have been designed to deal with the quantity of water a 16" high pressure water main can discharge. Roads are the same, the drainage is designed around typical rainfall - remember a few years ago one of the underpasses on the A406 north circular in NW London flooded full of water because the drainage couldn't deal with the quantity of water. There is also the little fact that when a water main bursts alot of the surrounding soil / mud / earth / clay gets suspended in it and once it has entered the drains has a tendency to settle and inhibit the flow. Other factors are the fact that because of the very tight clearances, the track in the vicinity of the leak was of the slab track type and is not so porous as ballast - and thus had less capacity to deal with excessive volumes of water than might be the case elsewhere. But hey, its obviously a lot easier to blindly bash NR than actually consider things like fluid dynamics, or what is standard industry design practice when it comes to drainage as far as you are concerned. Once again you are talking rubbish. Behind the scenes NR and Thameslink were putting lots of pressure on Thames Water to get it fixed - what else did you want them to do? Have unqualified NR staff, etc come down and start digging up random bits of pavement so they could find the leak or ferry people across the floodwater on a row boat? Just because there was not lots of TV reports showing Mark Carne verbally abusing the boss of Thames Water doesn't mean nothing was happening between the two companies (particularly at the lower levels where the people who actually have the means, equipment, diagrams of piping / drainage runs reside) or that there was some sort of conspiracy to screw passengers. You must love Jeremy Kyle - lots of angry people shouting at each other which does nothing to help the underlying problems sounds like your perfect sort of TV Lots could go wrong, but let me put it in bold so you actually understand it. The responsibility for ensuring all the new signalling is tested and confirmed safe for trains WILL BE THE RESPONSABILITY OF A COMPANY CALLED SSL, NOT NR. Detail of SSL can be found here http://www.signallingsolutions.com/- (I have done this because you seem to have difficulty understanding they are not part of NR) Yes NR have commissioned them to undertake the project, have set up the possession dates, gone over the plans to check they are robust, etc BUT NR will not be carrying out ANY of the commissioning work themselves. Until the SSL tester in charge comes back and says to NR "Everything is tested and here are the test logs + certificates to say it is safe, then NR cannot reopen the affected bits of railway. Yes if SSL have problems, and NR are made aware they will no doubt deploy what resources NR have to assist, but as happened at Paddington over Christmas if SSL don't make that call or give reliable estimates THERE IS NOTHING NR CAN DO about the disruption that will result. NR will have contingency plans prepared but again the implementation of them will require SSL to provide accurate information. If SSL say that there will be a 2 hour overrun then what NR will do will be very different than if SSL say it will be an 8 hour overrun. This was the issue at Paddington - every time NR asked SSL for an update they got told "we will get it back to you within 2 hours". Oh and by the way Signal testing is rightly a specialist area of expertise so having the senior board members hanging around will be of **** all assistance if things do go wrong.

Since when have NR been responsible for water mains? If you bothered to check your facts you would know that the big issue re the Thameslink flooding was THAMES WATER PLC firstly took ages to find and isolate the main leak, but also then found several other smaller leaks which continued to flood the Thameslink tunnel after the main one had been dealt with. If NR keep being given inaccurate information from Thames Water about when the water will stop, and the pumps carn't cope / carn't fit into the tunnels while allowing space for the trains to run then there is not a lot NR can do. Similarly with the signalling screw up at Christmas on the GWML, if you actually read the report it makes it quite clear that despite repeated asking on NRs part, SSL the SIGNALLING CONTRACTOR IN SOLE CHARGE OF ENSURING THE WORK WAS SAFE did not provide accurate, timely or honest estimates as to when the railway would be handed back. NR can screen and shout all they like but it will make **** all difference to the situation. However what you say about the management in big organisations is to a certain extent true, HOWEVER in the two examples you cite, it is Thames Water and SSL that were at fault NOT NR. Going back to the forthcoming GWML blockade though, an awfull lot hangs on SSL getting their act together and having the right number of testers, the correct test plans, suitable spares, enough response teams to fix stuff that doesn't work when it gets switched on and most importantly a realistic testing schedule plus a system that captures exactly what has or hasn't been done. As with Christmass NR will have relatively little input to the physical commissioning itself (though obviously they have more involvement in some aspects of the planning) yet will be liable if SSL screw up agin, a point lost on some commentators if seems.

I know. This is where the railway really makes a fool of itself again in my opinion. Basically if it lets ordinary members of the public stand there without high vis on etc WHY do WE, who have undergone quite a lot of special H&S training, treated differently and are forbidden to stand in the same place?

???

I certainly recall reading it being a 3 / 3 split on each leg when the project was proposed and funding being sought a couple of years ago. It may of course be that the frequency has been upped since then, but even with the new loop on the Redditch branch I did think 3 tph was the maximum that could be reliably accommodated.

Didn't the Chancellor say it was going to all be turned into one of the next generation of "Garden cities" a few years ago (presumably because the Government owns it planning permission will be easier to get plus the treasury gets a nice windfall from developers).

While I don't mean to condone bad practices, a few thoughts spring to mind. While I do agree with what your comments as regards COSS and lookout I would just say it is possible (though unlikely I agree) that a line blockage had been taken for the work (signal protection only would be sufficient) - in which case the blue hatter standing were he is wouldn't be an issue as such (though if that was the case and the nearest line was still open to traffic or all where lines were blocked but the OHLE was live, the required 'Site Warden' doesn't seam to be present). Also can I ask why you assume the chain stock is metal? Not using such things myself, could they not be Fibreglass (or whatever else that strong plastic stuff is). Point taken about the dampness though and as I don't work with OHLE, I cannot comment on distances. As for the no logo - two out of the three are facing forwards and as you will know the names / logos on the front of the jackets / t-shirts, etc are very small so its not surprising you cannot see them from the distance the photo is taken. If the two people with coats had been photographed with their backs to you then the chances of any logo being readily visible would have been much grater. It is perhaps unfair to accuse them of not having any company names on their PPE when we cannot tell from the photo whether they do or not. I certainly accept the point about the chap without the coat on the platform although again we cannot be 100% sure he didn't have a coat (which may or may not have the sponsors name on it) and has taken it off because he is too hot for example - though obviously in such a case the correct procedure would be to remove his jumper and put the coat back on thus complying with the 'all orange' rules. Finally as for hard hats, yes I totally agree that the chap involved is not wearing it properly but.... ...While I obviously have to wear one, I have no problem admitting I HATE wearing the bloody things. I know that is no excuse for not wearing them properly but in my opinion they provide no additional protection when undertaking routine S&T tasks and nobody has ever been able to present me with a proper risk assessment that proves they are needed for undertaking routine S&T maintenance or faulting tasks such as dealing with a point failure or testing track circuits for example. As with the blanket imposition of safety harnesses to climb ALL signal structures regardless of how high they are I believe think that it actually gives H&S a bad name. By all means provide them and mandate their use when a risk assessment says you need them (I would love to see the justification for them when testing a track circuit for example), but a blanket instruction says to me (we are to lazy to do a proper assessment so we will pick the easy option and impose them in all conditions). Mind you there is a case of "if you don't know any different" here - I started back in 2001 under AMEC when we still had slam door trains with large windows people could chuck stuff out of and in theory the chances of something hitting your head was a lot higher than today. These days any new starter has never worked without hard hats being mandatory so is far less likely to have an issue with the things. However that doesn't mean I am not blind to changes in PPE policy - The "all orange" policy does strike me as entirely sensible in all situations (particularly after a near miss in Wales when someone wearing just a high vis jacket was bending over to look at something in the 4ft and without high vis trousers on became rather invisible to an approaching driver).

Bad choice of words on my part. When I said withdrawn I meant when it was withdrawn from the Bluebell active fleet in the late 80s pending its next preservation era overhaul (which thanks to the need for a new boiler and at least one new driving wheel) hasn't yet happened. Hence ny comment regarding UV exposure because IIRC the loco hasn't been re-painted in at least 20 years.

Please be awere that number 488 hasn't been painted for at least a decade - in fact I would not be suprised to find the paint it currently carries was that it carried when withdrawn (though it is possible it was withdrawn in BR livery and repainted shortly after) As such the effects of UV light etc will make the current livery look much paler than should be the case

Having been to last years event, I would thoroughly recommend the day to all RMwebbers (regardless of whether they are a supporter of the Chocolate, Cream and Green team). If there are spare places going then I would be interested - BUT of course I accept that priority should go to those who have not been before.

I beg to differ - In MOST cases, YES IT DOES. Many bits of signalling equipment installed on lines such as the GWML are NOT IMMUNE TO AC traction. In laymans terms that means the return currents from electric trains have the ability to false clear track circuits and cause Clapham Junction style crashes. (The same basic problem occurs with diesel lines that are then subsequently fitted with conductor rail by the way). Please note that a "Full resignalling" does not automatically mean that the track layout itself is changed (though I accept in many cases this does happen). While modern signalling installations tend to be traction immune by default - this is most definitely not the case of anything installed up to the mid 90s. Thus on the GWML the entire signalling from the Slough area (where the early 90s resignalling of the GWML to accommodate the OHLE installed for the Heathrow Express stops) NEEDS replacement as part of the electrification process with the possible exception of the Didcot area (which is early 90s in date and had signal structures compliment with OHLE installed). Certainly Swindon and Bristol require complete renewal and on the Newbury / Oxford routes most of the track circuits will need changing to a AC immune type. Reading of course is subject to a rebuild so new signalling has been installed here but it should be noted that NONE of the old installation was compliment with electrification.

Thats rather an assumption and one poster on the forum has already said that they had some inside knowledge about the scheme and it was far from plain sailing. Its already known from official archives that the original WCML budget was revised upwards several times and that the Government of the day seriously considered forcing BR to dump the scheme. The retention of mechanical signal boxes along the Trent valley and at the likes of Stockport being obvious examples of how not everything was done according to the original plan. We also have at least one poster on the forum who has some first hand knowledge of the WCML scheme and they confirmed things were not as rosy as the passage of time may make you believe. You also have to remember that as it was the first large scale overhead electrification project in the UK, skilled OHLE engineers weren't available and it would take time to build up the engineering skills. Why do I mention this - well NR is again struggling with training up enough OHLE engineers thanks to the total dis-interest in large scale electrification by UK Governments since 1989 when the ECML was done What is true of the WCML scheme however is that it was done in an age where the UK population was much more respectful / subservient to authority and as such details of cost overruns, etc would not have been publicised as much as such things are today. Ultimately its only when the GWML scheme is done will we be able to compare the execution of the two schemes. I bet when ALL factors are compared then actually they will come out as fairly similar as the fundamental basics (lack of OHLE skills, lots of resignalling needed, Infrastructure changes at key bottlenecks - i.e. Reading / Birmingham NS)

In theory the quicker a train clears a signal section, the sooner it can be occupied by another train so in one sense providing new stock capable of a better performance than current stock will provide a small increase in capacity. However the more trains you stuff down the route the less opportunity there is to recover from / get round or get techs in to sort the issue. It's these factors which are the main reasons why train operators struggle to keep services running on time, and chucking in more services to fill what little slack remains in route capacity is asking for trouble.

Maximum passenger services able to be accomatated are 10 x 23m or 12 x 20m. Freight can be longer but will foul pointwork if it uses some passenger loops (e.g. Up loop at Eastleigh station). Voyagers and 444 units use 23m coaches, the 450s (as with most EMUs) are 20m Anything longer than 5 x 23m won't fit in the west facing bays at Reading (plat 1,2 & 3) and using a through platform there would prevent platform sharing with terminating Turbos from London. When the London terminators go over to cross rail they will need the full length of a through platform.

This is hardly surprising news. As has been stated elsewhere Govia & current Brighton line commuters are distinctly un-impressed by the interior finishes / lack of wi-fi / lack of power points / lack of tables / quality of seating that are included in the new Thameslink stock (class 800) and they like he IEP had the detailed specification dawn up by Whitehall, not people actually involved in operating the routes they will be used on. While I'm sure the new franchise will do their hardest to get changes made, people have to remember that the contract with Hitachi is between them and the DfT, NOT the previous, or the future operator. Consequently its all a done deal from Hitachi's point of view and as with Siemens, if the new franchise want to make changes then they will have to get the DfT to pay Hitachi accordingly. As for getting DfT decisions altered, airborne pork springs to mind....... particularly if it means spending money and annoying their bosses in the Treasury.

Note this increase is all being handled by exactly the same signalling installation that was installed in the early 80s. No wonder its struggling to cope.....

Indeed, and I do apreciate you drawing my attention to the current situation

To be precise Wikipedia say "Following privatisation of Britain's railways, the track became the property of BRB (Residuary) Ltd, the body set up to own former BR assets that were not sold off. The track was leased for one peppercorn per annum to Serco and later to Alstom and Metronet (LUL). Following the abolition of the BRBR, ownership passed to Network Rail on 30 September 2013." Basically the only reason NR have it now is that it was given to them is because the current Government announced with much fanfare that they wanted to abolish lots of "quangos". When the BRB was abolished NR got some of the other BRBs liabilities too (bridges, tunnels viaducts, etc) although the baulk of them went to the Highways Agency. Thus my comment about the test track having nothing to do with Railtrack and hence Network Rail still stands - particularly as the current leasing arrangements were worked out when the test track was firmly under the ownership of the BRB (residuary) Ltd. In fact when they were trying to offload it after the Pendalino testing finished they did try and get Railtrack interested with little sucess - hence the very real threat of it all being dismantled.

High Markham was a mothballed colliery access line under Network Rail ownership and thus ideal for the company to try out new techniques and kit "in house" as it were. Originally used for testing various bits of "On Track Plant" like tampers, stone blowers, rail grinders, etc its also seen use as a place to test the various "High output" trains including those built to support the Governments renewed electrification programme. I believe it is easily visible from the A1 road but due to its nature as a test track train movements are somewhat unpredictable. Old Dalby was never part of Railtrack / Network Rail thanks to the privatisation process. It was bought from the British Railways board by Alstom who comprehensively rebuilt it for testing of the original Pendalino fleet ordered after privatisation. Once the Pendalino fleet was fully in service however Alstom had no further need for it and for a while it was looking like it would all be ripped up and the land sold off. Pressure was applied by various people however who pointed out it was madness to throw away such a valuable facility and Alstom eventually were persuaded to sell it on intact. I don't know who actually owns it now but the deal to keep it involved fitting LUL style 3rd and4th rails so that new Bombardier built Underground stock could be tested there after construction at Derby. NR don't and never had any interest in Old Dalby and if it wasn't for Alstom and now Bombardier it would have been turned into a footpath over a decade ago.

Being pedantic for a moment, IF Hornby were advised that the correct roof did not exist BEFORE production commenced and Hornby themselves OKed use the roof from a TSO or whatever, then technically the Chinese factory has in fact delivered exactly what Hornby have asked them to and it cannot be said to be a QC issue. If on the other hand the factory went ahead without Hornby's permission then yes the product could be said to have failed QC (the point of which is not to identify whether something is correct to prototype - QC is does the item match the specification the person who ordered them requests including any variation that is mutually agreed by both parties). The big issue here is that if Hornby are telling the truth and they deliberately elected to get the Chinese to fit an incorrect roof then the decision to do so should have been acknowledged at the time the decision was made (not months later when the models actually arrived) through their website plus a message sent out to all retailers due to receive stocks of the item so as to allow potential purchasers to make a decision whether this is acceptable to them or not. We should also beer in mind that while most modellers will obviously not wish to buy inaccurate models, and notwithstanding the fact that there are lots of modellers who had been looking forward to further Mk3s being released, certain sections of the market won't care about the issue and as such you can see why Hornby will have wished to bring the affected coaches to market and earn some money out of them.

True, but IIRC they were hardly in the best of condition which made it very easy for the anti diesel lobby to make the case that they would take resources away from more needy projects. To be fair though if Bernard and others we more open to the idea of a Thumper it probably would have happened - but they weren't so it didn't. Like I said earlier while Bernard may not be with us anymore, there are plenty of other long standing / respected members that still subscribe to his viewpoint.

The oppotunity to purchase a thumper was when (1) every penny was needed for the extension and more significantly (2) was in the period when Benard Holden was still president of the society. He made his feelings VERY clear on the matter "NO DIESELS" was his attitude and it was only once he had passed on did the railway cautiously begin to consider the possibilities that could come from them. Thats not to deny there was a point behind his thinking - as Gwiwer apply demonstrates being a guaranteed "Steam only" railway does have some advantages. Many on the railway still support this line of thinking and as a consequence its very much a case of taking things cautiously. Last years mini gala certainly drew the respectable numbers but as with last time many members will be watching the forthcoming Deltic visit extremely closely. It is worth saying that if numbers are disappointing it will definitely set back the diesel cause on the Bluebell a good five years or more..... Personally I am not particularly fussed by the idea of holding a diesel gala in general and I wouldn't object if I am restored to work down there over the weekend concerned. However I won't be making a special trip over to see or ride being the Deltics - sorry diesels just don't 'do it' for me. The main thing is it makes a profit for the railway - not a loss and that it doesn't do our reputation any harm - particularly as many of our casual visitors turn up expecting steam.