phil-b259

43 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

in short Hornbys pushed out of modern image imo, but its not as if they didnt had their chances they were too busy duplicating Terriers, 4-4-2Ts, class 71’s, LN’s, 61xxs and one hit wonders like W1, Turbomotive and doing duplicate P2’s etc.. which has to be a strategy decision not coincidence.  

 

Oh come on - how can Hornbys super detailed LN be said to be 'duplicating' an the ancient split chassis Bachmann design which hasn't been available for years....

3 hours ago, thegreenhowards said:

If WCRC are not providing stewards when they ought to do so, then they don’t have a leg to stand on, and I would accept that as a reason to take action against them. But not against all operators of such doors.

 

I don’t think I’m being selfish to ask whether £10 per ticket is a reasonable price to pay for a tiny reduction in risk. I can afford it, but the Jacobite is already quite expensive and there are many who I will be put off by the price. Even worse, if the end result is the end of Mk 1s on the mainline, then I probably won’t be paying the fare in the first place.

 

Andy

It’s a statistical fact that Humans are very bad at repetitive tasks and in terms of H&S measures there is an alarming trend for people not to do things….

Have you ever considered why cars now come with seatbelt sensor that make a racket if it detects you are driving along but they are not deployed for example or why electric lawnmowers come with the need to press 2 buttons (one with each hand) to get them started?

Both the above will be more expensive to build than products which didn’t have these features…..

Good H&S practice / regulation seeks to automate or build saferty into the device being used precisely to avoid human mistakes - and the railways are no different.

Yes stewards can be effective but they are human and y can forget / go off sick / be distracted where as an automated system cannot!

Also stewards have to be paid, accommodation be found for them etc where as an automated system after it’s initial fitment has relatively low ongoing costs.

Therefore assuming WCR still want to operate the Jacobite for the next 10 years then I bet the actual cost of CDL with regard to ticket prices will be less than paying for the army of stewards (including having enough spare people so that in cases of sickness the train still ins with the required numbe)

21 hours ago, GrumpyPenguin said:

Parents are also responsible for keeping their brutes under control & out of danger.

That defence does not work in a court of law!

The law nowadays works in the premise that  parents / guardians / caters may not always be able to keep minors in line and organisations which interact with minors need to make sure they take appropriate mitigation.

Stop looking through rose tinker spectacles and wake up to how the REAL WORLD - particularly AS DEFINED BY THE UK COURT SYSTEM works!

21 minutes ago, Reorte said:

If the alternative is treating everyone with contempt, assuming they're unable to do anything for themselves, well, I'd prefer to take my chance by assuming most are sensible and having the risk from those that aren't.

One persons treating with contempt is another 'sensible precautions'....

Thats why when it comes to safety regulation the law rejects personal viewpoints and sticks with facts and evidence which can ultimately be boiled down to 'yes' or 'no' answers and not 'it depends....'

10 hours ago, steve1 said:

Here it comes again, another cynical attempt to screw money out of gullible punters. 

 

Or is it just a wind up…😆

 

steve

 

 

 

Its from Bamford Exchange..... Need I say more?

(They were also behind this monstrosity.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sk4RxnnIJw&t=521s )

6 hours ago, thegreenhowards said:

No, but there might be a common sense approach 

No such thing - you try arguing that in court and you will be slapped down!

There is no such thing as 'Common Sense' in legal terms and it CANNOT be used to justify ANY decisions for which are being investigated in a UK court.

23 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

 

What is common sense? Most of the time it is used as a crutch to support a point of view but in a regulatory context it is meaningless.

Indeed, and more generally -I wish more people on the forum would appreciate that the UK courts (who are the ultimate arbiter of everything) have made it very clear that there is no such thing as 'common sense'!

Any persons trying to use that argument will be swiftly told it carries no weight and they had better come up with something better if they want to avoid being found guilty.

(Note there are legally recognised concepts as "The Duck Test" - which although superficially looking like 'common sense' are in fact something else entirely and they are allowed by UK courts  allowed precisely because they centre around the concept of evidence based reasoning and not assumptions).

1 hour ago, MikeParkin65 said:

Although having spent a large part of the weekend at the Severn Valley Railway (its local to me and it was the Spring steam gala) I was struck at just how many 'glowing fireboxes' on the prototype I saw! Maybe I was looking for them to prove the point to myself:)

The point about glowing fireboxes is that if you leave the firebox doors wide open as the loco moves off you will very rapidly find it causes massive problems with the fire and thus the steam raising capability with the loco probably grinding to a halt not long after.

When working the doors covering the fire are closed (or nearly closed) thus regulating the airflow and ensuring the fire burns in a way to produce the optimum amount of steam.

Yes when stationary at a station (the place most folk will get to see the inside of the cab) then having the doors open is quite common but do NOT assume this is the situation when you are watching the loco move along.

5 hours ago, adb968008 said:

 

oh look is that an unlocked cdl door, hanging off the platform end ?

 

At Tame Bridge Parkway it got even more dangerous as its only a 4 coach platform, and CDL is not SDO….on a 12 coach train… but fortunately there was stewards to protect them… but stewards arent recognised as being required for CDL once its in place… phew it was lucky that someone thought to be safer than that… disaster avoided… could have been really ugly…. But nah its not a wcrc operated train so no one cares.

 

Thats a loophole in current ORR rules and has its roots in the fact that it wasn't though viable / possible to fit selective door opening to the legacy BR slam door fleet* such as the HSTs which would routinely stop at stations whose platforms were too short to accommodate a full set in places like Cornwall. Its unlikely such an exemption would be considered acceptable were CDL being invented as a concept today  

Given the retirement of the HST fleet we are now in a situation where the only trains which have slam doors and could be longer than the platforms are charter trains - and given the RAIBs investigation into a passenger on the Great Central Heritage Railway who suffered an injury when not alighting from a door which ended up adjacent to the platform ramp I suspect we will see regulations tightened up in this area - which could range from simply having enough Stewards that all non platformed doors can be monitored / bolted to something more technical...

As to the comment " No one cares" - I think you will find the ORR DO CARE! - its just that at present operators of trains which are longer than the platforms at which they call are undertaking proper risk management activities. If such activities are done properly then it will obviously help prevent the ORR from feeling the need to take action in the short term, though as I said above, with slam doors being history as far as scheduled train services go it would be prudent for Charter operators to start thinking about the situation in the long term...

*BR stock fitted with power worked doors were not given such a dispensation - if they didn't fit they couldn't call unless SDO was installed. In occasional cases where SDO wasn't fitted but the Guard could control a single set of doors directly then passengers could be let off / get on via said door, but this obviously wasn't suitable for stations with more than a few people boarding / alighting.

2 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Oh dear.

I admit it was strong (and in hindsight shouldn't have included an insult) - but I won't let "I'm perfect and I don't care about anyone else" type thinking go unchallenged!

If that wasn't the sentiment the OP wished to convey (and I accept it might not be) then can I politely suggest they think about how they phrased their post.

The bottom line is there are many factual / statistical based routes people can go down if they wish to challenge CDL and which form the basis for sensible debate and which I have no problem with folk expressing.

The most important point in any debate about safety is to put personal traits / actions / behaviours aside and consider the wider picture - and when it comes to slam doors the simple fact that outside of railway enthusiasts many ordinary folk haven't got much of a clue about how to use them safely / properly. Coming to the table saying 'I'm alright so why should we think of anyone else' is not the right approach...

3 hours ago, adb968008 said:

If it were my child, they would be standing behind the yellow line like me… obeying the army of staff who tell bystanders, often quite forcefully, to be rightly standing behind that yellow line.

 

 

And how many station staff are there in the Scottish highlands....

9 hours ago, thegreenhowards said:

How would my child be hit, if there is a steward by the door and a bolt across it? Yes I know that someone once overpowered a steward, but the risk is minuscule and the cost not so. My child is in far more risk crossing the road.
 

Have you ever considered that the child might be on the platform as the train runs in, the steward is elsewhere / distracted (or not present as the ORR repeatably discovered when they visited the Jacobite operation last year) or your garden gate bolt not been done up because the Steward forgot and someone flings the door open so they can be first off to get a pic of the loco...

Stop being selfish and consider others - not everyone (or everyones children) is / are as perfect as you think yourself / yours to be...

5 hours ago, Legend said:

Yes I know one runs at 25mph and the other at 40mph . is that 15mph so significant?

 

 

(1) A line has to be drawn somewhere and its perfectly logical to use the traditional 25mph limt formerly specified by the now defunct Light Railway Order legislation as the boundary

(2) As those investigating road deaths have repeatedly shown over for decades the chances of surviving a big impact get dramatically less once you go over 30mph -hence all those "hit me at xxmph and there is an 80% chance I will live, hit me at YYmph and there is an 80% chance I will die....

(For the purposes of survival it doesn't matter if the case of that impact is a car hitting the person or the person falling out of a door and hitting a hard surface at 30mph...

On 20/04/2024 at 20:01, Adi said:

Check other reviews out before cancelling 

While other reviews may well have locos which work flawlessly and lack glue marks - their models are not going to magically come with a flywheel, a closer coupled loco + tender or lamps that are more to scale / less bright / easier to remove are they?

1 hour ago, rodent279 said:

It does in the sense that doors can't be opened until released by the CDL mechanism,  which is what i was getting at.

CDL is a stand alone secondary lock fitted to the door - it does not prevent people from Turing the door handles and disengaging the primary lock. It can also be engaged with the door standing wide open….
 

That secondary locking function is not ‘controlling the doors’ as would be understood by those in the industry or the wider public because once the CDL is released the doors are not fully unlocked (passengers still need to operate the primary door lock themselves) nor does CDL cause the door to open by itself or shut and lock itself after use.

47 minutes ago, Legend said:

 I’m puzzled why they need the RMB .  And surely they can find/buy/hire further mk2s that would extend train to 5 coaches ? 

Erm… the clue might be in the title “RESTAURANT MINIATURE BUFFET”!

A RMB will potentially allow for a grater amount and variety of refreshments to be carried and on any form of charter train sales of refreshments is an important addition to the revenue the train generates.

On 14/04/2024 at 16:19, Mr chapman said:

Looking at the big 4 limited editions. Is the southern joyous gard in 1923 condition? I know it's pre deflectors but that is longer than you would think. 

Given it took some time for the newly formed Southern Railway to settle on what we would now term its cooperate image then a 1923 Arthur would be without a name (that was a SR marketing department initiative) and in LSWR livery!

5 hours ago, phil gollin said:

 

Also, why did they have steam heating pipes as I thought fish needed to be kept cold  -  were they just steam through pipes ?

 

Because if you run them as part of a passenger train and put them in front of the coaching stock (as might happen from smaller ports) then passengers might be a bit pissed off to have a cold train to travel in (even if the fish don't mind the cold).

Well lagged steam heat pipes a will avoid this problem

4 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

It would seem that Hornby are convinced that there are masses of potential customers who will buy anything with a new 'feature' - prototypical or not. I do hope not!

 

Given how popular Sams trains website is and the sort of feedback which get posted in the comments section is I fear there is a large segment of 'don't care about prototypical nonsense' train set types out there who will hoover them up regardless. The only thing which might stop them is the high price....

8 hours ago, MikeParkin65 said:

 The rear tender lamp is he said a permanent fitting with no alternative lamp bracket provided. 

Thats rubbish! Come on Hornby even you can't be as thick as to think lamps were left on between locos and their trains....

If Hornby can go to the trouble of having a plug in lamp for the smokebox door then there is no reason whey the same cannot be done for the tender...

7 minutes ago, Adi said:

I was not dissing him at all. 

I meant 'you' in the general forum wide sense, not the personal.

Its just there are a lot of people on this forum who find him objectionable in one way or another.....

2 minutes ago, Adi said:

He got a loaner off Athens and Hattons

He did - BUT (1) he never went and gave either item a final score nor (2) entered into his own 'league table'

Whatever else you might say about Sam his adoption of the system used by the Consumers Association / Which? for decades (only reviewing items / services they have purchased from providers the general public can buy from) does show integrity.

On 01/04/2024 at 11:19, PhilJ W said:

Most of the Hatton's generic coaches sold out on pre-order but the Hornby ones didn't do so well judging by the numbers discounted by many outlets. This could be put down to several factors such as Hornby's 'bandwagon jumping' such as with the Titfield Thunderbolt. When Hatton's announced their generic coaches Hornby had some Victorian/Edwardian coaches in the pipeline and decided to produce them in several liveries as generic coaches though they were based on a specific railway.

And also the fact that Hornbys efforts:

(1) Are done to a far lower standard with much more reliance on moulded on detail

(2) Are very much a LBSCR Stoudley body design

(2) Have rubbish interiors

(3) Are fitted with Westinghouse air brake equipment and Stroudley emergency communication system (which means no external items visible)

As such I have only purchased 4 of Hornbys efforts (all LBSCR versions) but have many times that number of the Hattons offering in a multitude of liveries....

On 15/04/2024 at 21:58, rodent279 said:

But if the doors are under the overall control of CDL, there would be no more risk of that than with a door with conventional manual handles under the control of CDL. All the push buttons would do is allow the door to be pushed or pulled open once CDL has released the main door lock.

CDL does NOT ‘control’ the doors!

All it does is prevent them from being unlocked - once they are unlocked then it’s down to the forces acting on them which governs how fast and with what force they open outwards.

Plug or sliding doors will either retract into the train body or say very close to it and as such there is very little chance of them hitting a passenger standing on the platform as they open.

Hinged doors swing out on a wide arc - plus have door furniture (latches /catches) which stick out and could cause injury.

A person controlling when a swing door is opened and then the actual the rate of a swing can ensure that it is done in a safe manor - including stopping the door or deferring the opening until a passenger has moved out of the way.

A door which uses gravity to swing out when released cannot do this!

Finally you should take note that in places like France for decades they have had doors which require the user to manually open them - but which can be closed by power when commanded to by the train guard. This is by far a better way of doing things….

2 hours ago, rodent279 said:

Would they need a new safety case?

If you've got CDL and a power supply, why not fit push button door locks, such that pushing the button releases the door lock, allowing it to swing open under is own weight, in a controlled manner?

Simply swapping one type of manually operated mechanical locking mechanism to another would, in railway terms probably considered in much the same way that swapping one type of point machine to another is dealt with - I.e. providing no changes are made to the controls then it can be done as a maintenance activity by maintenance staff and tested using maintenance testing procedures.

By contrast re-inventing the whole door system and simply letting a door swing open under gravity and in an uncontrolled manor* would not be considered as replacing a manual mechanical lock with an ‘operationally equivalent’ system due to all the new elements which were not present on the old system and as such mean far more approvals / testing would be needed.

Such a system would also probably cost far more than simply making a drag batch of manually operated mechanical locks….

* Given the dangers of an uncontrolled** hinged door hitting passengers on the platform as it opens and potentially causing injuries I doubt it’s a solution which would pass a proper risk assessment
 

** if it has to be moved by a person then that person can be said to have the ability to control and stop the opening process if needed.

13 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

Who’s going to be your internal door lock supplier then ?

 

Any engineering firm capable of making them!

Door locks are not jet engines and as such it’s perfectly possible to get a new batch made  (particularly if you make use of ‘off the shelf’ solutions rather than seek exact replicas of BR locks)