phil-b259

What station would this be then? As far as I'm awere the only stations proposed on HS2 are Old Oak common, Birmingham Parkway (carn't recall its propper name), Manchester Airport, East Midlands Parkway (Totton) & Sheffield Parkway (Medowhall) all these stations are designed to act as masive hubs with good motorway / rail connections into signifficant urban areas or to provide connections to key airports. Respectfully there is nowhere within the Chilterns that forfills this criteria - (Aylesbury,the most signifficant generator only having good road connections with London). Yes places like Stafford, Crewe and Stoke might get HS2 services but this will be via the connections to classic lines (though I believe Crewe are lobbying for a station where the route runs alongside Basford Hall yard)

Could that be because fitting headights to the large EMU fleet was considered more of a priority?

You are a bit behind things. The most recent plans have changed the route so it does not run on the surface in the Perivale area and will be a bored tunnel instead. Apparently once they looked at the surface route in more detail, the need to rebuild 20 plus bridges (including those at the incredibly busy hangar lane giratory system) meant that the tunnel option wasn't much more expensive overall with the added advantage of eliminating local residents concerns. This has been covered before many times. Basically stations reduce capacity as trains slow down stop then accelerate again. While you can mitigate this with long entry and exits to platform loops (as at the propped Birmingham Parkway station) with trains travelling at 200+mph you would need an extensive four track section. Also as the stations have to be able to handle 400m long trains (running shorter trains just to serve one station is a waste of capacity) finding a suitable site is difficult without causing significantly more environmental damage. Tunnels and earthworks are not maintenance headaches if they are constructed well with suitable staff and plant access. Part of the problem with the current network is that it was built before modern staff safety and material handling requirements came along so all clearances are not optimal, cutting and embankment slopes are steeper than todays engineering standard allows, etc. constraining what can be done. Furthermore unlike the current WCML, HS2 will not have any freight traffic so overnight inspections etc. will be easier and like the French LGV lines, having only a few specific types of train using it wear and tear should be less than a conventional line

Ahh but in these days of budget centres and a railway run by accountants, there is no direct relationship between that bit which governs the employment and training of signalmen and the bit that pays out compensation. Thus the accountants do not deem it worthwhile to have extra staff available in cases of operational difficulties apparently because the times when they would be needed are few and far between it is cheaper in the long run to take a hit occasionally.

The plans that I have seen don't mention the stock to be used and seeing as Southern and Gatwick Express are the same franchise these days I expect any Charing Cross to East Grinstead would use surplass 377s Platform 0 has been designed in such a way that it can still function as a freight holding point at quiet times (i.e. overnight and weekends) during the day (weekdays) it will be needed for the ordinary service pattern though

Work seams to be progressing well although most of it has been behind the scenes (ish) stuff up to now, relocating existing cables and trackside loaction cases, renewing cabling to point machines etc. as well as the obvious site clearance for the new platform and track. IIRC the plan is for the new track layout and interlocking to be installed over Christmas, which will involve some very strange goings on in general, because NR are also planning to completely renew Stoats Nest north junction (south of Purley) and replace Victoria (station area) interlockings as well. Draft plans include trains being diverted via Dorking and Horsham, the slow lines from Three Bridges to Gatwick being worked as two independent single lines (all pointwork clipped up) with 'one train working' applied to each one and a plan to run Gatwick Express services from Charing Cross to East Grinstead with onward connection to the airport by bus, the work at Stoats preventing access from the north.

do modern day staff receive such things after their half century? I don't know about retirement but NR still do 10 year and 25 year long service awards. Before anyone gets excied they are only a certificate and an allocation of 'points' to allow you to chose something from the 'cooperate rewards catalogue', but in this day and age it's a nice touch.

Stratford International (Eurostar platforms) were only built so that it could act as the 'London' stop for international trains coming from the north (Pick up only Europe only, drop off only Birmingham / Manchester bound) which would by-pass St Pancras. It also potentially provides a place Eurostar could terminate at in an emergency with the added bonus that onward travel is a damn sight easier than Ebsfleet. As you say Eurostar have said its not worth serving for St Pancras bound services, especially as people can use South Eastern services to Stratford from both Ebsfleet & St Pancras but they have also said that they wouldn't rule out using it if services were every extended beyond London. I accept I may have become confused with who does what but what I would say is, from a travellers perspective it really makes no difference what Government department does what. Customs / security / passport checks all form part of a single 'process' that must be gone through before boarding the train. What I would say - again as a traveller - is that the procedures in place for Eurostar do seem a tad excessive compared to those employed at other points of entry (e.g. Dover) although they are better than those experienced at airports but I'm not sure that in the light of almost 20 years experience some aspects of the process cannot be improved. Equally I have also been made aware that thanks to the way channel tunnel act is drafted changes to some aspects would require legislative changes and if I have got muddled up between departments there is a good chance the same would happen in the media. Hence my comment about politicians and immigration i.e. while any changes to the channel tunnel act would not affect anything other than perhaps some minor modification to the security setup it could be played by sections of the media as opening up our borders to mass migration. Besides the main thing, which I'm sure we can agree on, is that unless the current arrangements change the dream of some travellers to be able to simply jump on a Eurostar wherever they please and travel direct to Paris in the same way people in Germany, Belgium, Italy can will remain just that, a dream.

Billingshurst box is a listed structure being the last survivor of a design geared around having the signals mounted on the four corner post which extended upwards above the box structure (there is some debate as to whether Billingshurst actually had signals mounted in this fashion or whether the practice had been abandoned by the time it was built. Pulborough as far as I am aware is not listed and partly of brick construction is less easy to salvage By the way the reason the old 30s box at Horsham survives is because that got listed a month or so before it was decommissioned. Indeed NR were forced to put the lettering back on the outside afterwards due to it being specifically mentioned in the listing document

The plan is it will transfer into the existing 80s Three Bridges box and be added to panel 7, the panel put in for the Horsham scheme in the mid 2000s. The crossing at Billingshurst will become one of those full barrier obstacle detector types which have caused so much grief in Norfork though so the service might still have problems. The box at Billingshurst will be going to the Bluebell, to be put in at E Grinstead (though it will never be used as a signal box there). At a later stage the whole of panel 7 will migrate to the new ROC but for the moment, the first section to be controlled from there will be the coastway east scheme (Pevensey, Hampden Park, Eastbourne, Polgate & Berwick)

Well maintained lineside environment! No weeds, stubby trees, etc. and even the p-way remains are stacked neatly. If only NR could do this then the railway would be a much better place to work on and indeed photograph.

The option has been investigated but ruled out as far to costly. In any case we already have a "London International" station - its located over at Stratford and if Old Oak gets any international facilities then you will potentially be able to alight there also. In both cases Crossrail will provide a quick and frequent service into central London and Stratford also offers the DLR plus tube as options. As to direct services to the north, without any relaxation of UK Passport and Immigration controls the possibility of through services even after HS1 looks slim (although Birmingham Curzon St will apparently get a platform suitable for international departures). Current modelling suggests the best option would be a service from Heathrow to Europe, calling at Old oak for passengers from the north to transfer in. The passenger numbers under this scenario are much more healthy and can support a decent service frequency whereas services to the north would probably be limited to one or two trains a day and unless they run full, they will be subject to accusations that they are stealing paths from domestic services.

OK, they may not be related according to the various parliamentary acts but it does raise the question if customs checks are totally separate from the question of immigration why is there such a resistance to any relaxation. Passengers between other EU countries don't face them and if the passengers are EU citizens there technically is no reason from a customs point of view to check them (note: customs can still perform random or intelligence lead checks - as they do regularly at Dover). Yes checks would hopefully pick up any potential terrorist threat but in truth is the threat really that much higher or the potential for casualties that much worse than any other train service or even the London Underground? Besides the Channel Tunnel acts says lots of things, some of which have been shown to be unnecessary or unworkable over time - dividing trains mid tunnel in cases of fire, being able to walk right through the entire train (ref DBs plans) for example. Thus if a political decision were taken that checks were no longer necessary at all times (nothing to stop them being applied selectively) it would be possible to remove the requirement. Therefore my suspicion is that the need for customs checks is another 'useful' way of maintaining the current arrangements - to the detriment of travellers but which, from a political angle are any easy sell to an electorate concerned about the issue of immigration.

While all the above is true, what diversely routed communications, etc. cannot prevent is something like an air conditioning unit going bang and causing the box to be evacuated for 30minutes just as the morning peak is under way (as happened at Three Bridges last month). Even though the Fire service quickly established there was no fire and the smoke drifting round the air con system dispersed fairly quickly it still totally screwed the train service. Thing is its not just a case of being able to switch control to another location Every signalman needs to be trained to work each panel / workstation (much as they used to have to learn and be passed out on every box they worked in mechanical days), that is to say they must know learn routing restrictions, or special signal controls that may affect the choice of routing without needing to look them up in a book, etc. Again there are very few signalmen at Three Bridges that know all 9 panels, I can't imagine a centre with twenty workstations will be any better. While slave panels at remote relay rooms can be provided this doesn't actually help much because they can only be operated by a qualified signalman and the chances of being able to get one of those in a hurry is pretty remote. In fact they are only really useful in situations where the panel or workstation has to be taken out of use - say for resignalling alterations, in which case providing suitable staff can be planned in Also it is well recognised that the only people within the industry that can actually cause a network shutdown are the signalman's union. With train companies being separate franchises if say FCC are in dispute the Southern drivers have to keep working. If the signallers go on strike then nobody can run. Its something should be borne in mind because say one of these super boxes ends up having a local rostering issue (as occurred in Scotland a year or so ago) if all the signallers go on strike you screw up a much bigger area than equivalent action would do now.

But the whole point is Redhill DOESN'T have any need for freight handling requirements and perhaps more importantly there won't be any need in the future either. The only place likely to generate railbourne freight was the sand quarry - now a housing development. All other freight is merely passing through - either aggregates to Crawley or Channel Tunnel stuff to Tonbridge. Engineering trains from Tonbridge way are normally top and tailed or routed via London.

The first thing to remember is that the main reason for continuation of the 'security checks' has nothing much to do with security and everything to do with making it hard for illegal immigrants to get into the UK. Because the UK doesn't have any national ID checking system (once you are in it is very easy to slip below the radar compared to other European countries) the UK places a great deal of emphasis on checks at the point of entry. There is also the little mater of the schengen agreement that allows somebody who slips across the EUs external border to travel throughout Europe without checks. Technically if you wish to claim asylum then EU rules say then that should be done the first EU country you get to, but if there are no checks and you have destroyed any paperwork whos to say where that was. If the UK didn't have border checks then if they make it through its the UKs problem where as if they get picked up at St Pancras then - as with airlines they can be sent straight back to France / Belgium and told to claim asylum there. While I know this all sounds terably like the Daily Mail, unfortunatley the UK does remain at the top of the list when it comes to illegal imigrants top list of countries they want to get to - mainly because they know it is very easy to disapear and settle down without atracting much attention (Sandgate may have closed but there are still plenty living rough in the Calais region trying to get across). Indeed when a new neighbour from France moved in a few years ago they were astounded how easy it was to set up uility accounts, council tax accounts, get registered with a doctor, etc over here compared to France. Thus unless the UK population is willing to allow far more state involvement in their daily life to enable the state to weed out those who are not entitle to be here then 'security checks' will have to stay.

Thats not an unusual occurrence. For decades now the practice has been that when new ships are ordered for northern European waters (e.g. Dover - Calais) the older ships get bought buy Mediterranean operators who use them between the Greek islands and North Africa to Europe. Because the Med is a lot calmer weather wise than the north sea, regulations are not as strict and this combined with the practice of loading from the quayside without any fixed berthing equipment usually results in things like the bow doors being sealed and large non watertight drop ramps being fitted to the stern. The other interesting thing about these ferries is the operators frequently do nothing more than they have to in terms of refurbishment other than a new coat of paint on the outside and a few carefully positioned stickers to cover up the the previous owners logos. Thus you used to get the rather odd situation of say an ex P&O Dover based boat with a house style duty free shop not selling any alcohol if on the north African run for example. Sadly what with the recession and the money troubles in Greece and elsewhere quite a lot of operators have gone to the wall a situation which, combined with the general over capacity in the Med has seen quite a lot of 'iconic' ex channel and BR built ferries go to the scrapyards. For those interested in such things the following website may be of interest: http://www.hhvferry.com/HHVFerry.html http://www.doverferryphotosforums.co.uk/wordpress/category/pastandpresent/

Photos and videos suggest it was worked on a 'line of sight' basis - complete with a man waving a red flag as in the early days of motoring, though some sort of control must have been in place to prevent Mexican stand-offs - one engine in steam possibly? As for the points, again photos suggest they were worked in a similar manor to tramway points, i.e. a large crowbar is put through a hole in the metal cover over a spring based mechanism which is then used to 'throw' the points (if you have ever seen those funny fish tail keys used to switch on lighting in public places you will understand what I mean). Obviously in later years there was a tendency to remove the mechanism when the points were redundant and fill the hole left with tarmac but leave the points themselves intact.

Thats one of the big problems - nobody has any idea what the condition of the sleepers are like (I believe that they are indeed wooden burried under tarmac) and therefore nobody is willing to allow anything down there in case it comes off the rails. There also is the point that while pedestrians and trams do mix in city centre,s part the reason it works is that the trams are frequent so people, and indeed other road traffic gets used to their presence. Unless the Weymouth quay branch gets interoperated into some sort of light rail system, the risks of mixing people and 'occasional' mainline trains on Weymouth's busy quaysides will not be tolerated by the ORR / HSE While it would be nice to retain the tracks themselves as some sort of memorial to the past this does not come without risks. Steel rails present as hazard to cyclists (even if the flange ways are filled in) and the presence of the railway compromises the strength of the road surface (and drainage) leading to dips and trip hazards. It also makes utility works a bit of a pain so in the long run I can see why Dieppe opted for complete removal

Tunnelling to Euston is not 'nonsense' as you put it - it is being proposed for sound reasons. Dumping the large number of passengers on what are expected to be reasonably well filled Crossrail trains and using them as the sole link to central London is a recipie for disaster. Going to a rebuilt Euston adds the Northern, Victoria and Circle (Euston Square) tube lines to help take the strain while the bus routes are also far more suitable in terms of getting people where they want to go. In addition crossrail 2 is proposed to go via Euston providing further connectivity to places south of the river and no doubt some people will find the walk from Euston manageable not to mention St Pancras just being a short walk away. Besides terminating at Old Oak wouldn't actually save much because for any long distance terminal to function effectively it needs lots of platforms - St Pancras being a case in point. HS1 and the MML have the capacity for many more trains than St Pancras can handle and with the nearest stabling at Cricklewood / Temple Mills it is platform occupancy that proves the limiting factor. Unlike suburban ENUs you need more than the 6 minutes allowed at Charing Cross to prep the train for its return working - especially if a premium fare is going to be charged. In the case of Old Oak common increasing the footprint of the HS2 site so it is able to cope with the 9 or so terminating platforms necessary would entail the demolition of the current HEX and planned Crossrail depot which would then need replacing somewhere else at significant cost (Not to mention lots of political oposition - there is a reqason why Old Oak was chosen over a greenfield site near Romford). Then there is the issue of connecting to HS1, if you are going to build such a connection - it has to be tunnelled to Camden anyway. Tunnelling itself is also not particularly expensive as things go, what makes them expensive is adding underground stations with the extra excavation required to provide platforms emergency exits , escalators, cross passages surface buildings & entrances, etc.. Hence the tendency on later tube lines to go for the maximum station spacings possible.

Should the UK be planning to spend far more on replacing our "nuclear deterrent" / the trident submarine in the next decade or so. I would say not, in my opinion its just a w***y waving exercise designed more to justify our seat on the UN security council than anything else.

On the BBC news website their transport correspondent writes "But ministers have come out fighting following the report's publication. They feel they've made a great deal of progress recently, announcing the full route up to Leeds and Manchester, seeing off a number of legal challenges against the project, and putting two bills into the Queen's Speech. They keep reminding me of other schemes that had a weak business case - bits of the M25 and the Jubilee line extension, for example - schemes that the UK couldn't now live without". If what he says is true maybe the NIMBYs in Buckinghamshire, etc. should think more carefully. Most of the M25, (especially the bits closest to the Tory supporting Chilterns) were overloaded from day one and the Jubilee extension to get the bankers to the financial centre that is Canary Wharf wasn't exactly empty when it opened.

Very possibly. However frame is rarely a rational thing, for example I would say most off the x-factor / [insert other trashy talent show] contestants also don't deserve the fame and attention they get either. That doesn't seam to prevent them being successful in the short term at least. At the end of they day while there are legitimate grounds for debate by enthusiasts what we all need to recognise is that maintaining a working steam locomotive collection (be it the from NRM, those owned by private individuals or those or plodding up and down one of the many heritage lines in the UK requires an enormous contribution from the non enthusiast market (family groups, wine & dine services, 'land cruse' services, people who buy tacky FS clocks, people who drop in for a nice cup of tea and a cake, etc.) Given the name 'Flying Scotsman carries such weight with the non enthusiast market only a fool would fail to capitalise on the situation. Naturally this perpetuates the 'famous' status with future generations and leads to more debates from the enthusiasts as to why it should be the case.

Given the image shows the coach fitted with the orange central door locking lights, the description (a BR Mk3 Western region buffet) doesn't sound right

Steady on, its not a one deal yet. As I said above Chris already has plenty of special commissions in the pipeline all of which require substantial financial investment even at the initial CAD stage thus any decision to extend the number of variations offered carries a significant risk (e.g. will any Maunsell liveried orders be at the expense of the already announced versions or is the finance available to commission a further batch) - especially as money is not taken until the goods are ready to be dispatched. That said, on the plus side Chris does have photographic evidence (as seen at Taunton) of at least one engine in Maunsell lined green that matches the particular configuration of O2 he is planning to commission (by that I mean chimney, boiler and a host of other bits and bobs which varied on a loco by loco basis are the same as the already announced models). Its this determination for things to be correct that gave us all the different varieties well tank when many modellers would have been happy with just the one. Lets just wait and see what happens over the next 12 months or so - we may be lucky