phil-b259

FIrst thing to say it depends on the specific signalling requirements rather than any mandated distances. Location case placement is determined by need alone, so it is entirely possable for a set of signals to not be immediatley adjacent to a case if the designer has decided that another place may be more benifical. For example on lines worked by track circuit block, in plain line areas, the track circuits do not start and finish adjacent to the signal because the standard 200 yard overlap is simply a continuation of the track approching the signal (giving rise to the sittuation where a signal stays green even after a short train has gone past it). Thus the designer may decide it benifical to put the relays controling the signal with the track circuit equipment and feed the signal by a long tail cable for example. In other situations it might be reversed and it is the track circuit equipment that gets moved to locations close to the signal. Another thing to consider is that in some places the distance between consecutive signals may be too long to be covered by a single track circuit. Thus what appears to the signalman as "AB" track actually consists two seperate tracks (i.e. "AB-1" & "AB-2") which will naturally result in a location case appearing at the join between the two and not asociated with signals. Regional practices and date of the installation can also produce variation the placement of location cases as can the technology used in the signalling scheme itself. For example axle counters can be employed to get rid of long multi section tracks and SSI based signalling has reducded the number of lineside multicore cables, but may end up requireing more location cases as the SSI modules themselves are not small. All rather complicated however I'm sure that others on the forum will be able to provide more details

To a great extent direct HS2 - HS1 trains will still depend on the UK government being willing to change its stance on UK border controls. At pressent all trains to / from Europe cannot be used by UK domestic passengers and can only stop at stations with extensive Passport and imigration facilaties. (Note that the reverse is not true in France - hence the seasonal services starting at Avignion & the in Alps can get away with tempory facilaties)

The thing is these days most people don't have much choice about comuting. Over the past 30 years or so traditional UK employment which tended to be localised has been decimated as globalisation has led to the closure of lots of the UKs manufacturing capability. Consiquently people are having to travel further and further afield for jobs. Also the rise in house prices has resulted in people being pushed further and further out from our majour cities, helped of course by the growth of the motorway network and fast trains. In some ways its a vicious circle of course as once comuting becomes feasable - house prices rise, jobs can become more centralised thus promiting yet more long distance comuting. Thus while saying we should not be comuting / traveling so far and so fast while is a very laudable concept, both from a enviromental and human wellbeing perspective, it does ignore the current economic model used by the Western world, where, if we are brutally honest with ourselves, usastaniable growth (be it the encouragement to spend yet more on consumer goods or a presumption in favour of development) is seen as all important for generating jobs, profits and life as we know it. Again reducing energy use and caring for the enviroment are very laudable goals but they simply at odds with the goals of capitalism and globalisation which govern how we live our lives today

Nope, as Oldudders says the offical term these days is signaller and that is the term all signalmen must use in offical communication, including to drivers, etc. (not that I have known anyone to be disaplined as such for using the term Signalman) The frightening thing is though is that as the older guys (and girls ;-) ) retire, the ammount of people who regard themselves as signalmen is getting smaller and I can see that eventually it will disapear from the national network entirely

How long is the dutch line and how much of a time saving are we talking about? If the line is short and the time savings are small then naturally the ammount of passengers attracted to the new line will be less. At first sight this statement may well seem to count against HS2 but that is only the case if you look at it in isolation. Yes the London - Birmingham time savings might be relativley small, however when complete (the y shaped network) London - Manchester / Liverpool, London - Leeds, London - Newcastle & London - Scotland will all get signifficant time savings compared to current journey times. In any case the whole point of HS2 is not outright speed (though naturally it makes sense to build new infrastruicture to take into account the latest developments) it is about providing more capacity on the WCML for freight and commuter trains - the equlavalent of an additional pair of tracks along the entire route from central London to central Birmingham. Adding passing loops here and there will not be enough - in fact the bits most in need of relief are actually those urban in charichter i.e. frequent stations (e.g. Coventry - Birmingham and Wembley - Milton Keynes). I'm afraid that this is something most of those against HS2 do not seem to apreciate - the alternatives to a new line have been well investigated and rejected for sound reasons. Unless we in the UK suddenly decide to stop traveling and importing ever increasing ammount of stuff via containers (unlikley given the way employment has evolved) we will need more capacity, full stop As many detailed reports have demonstrated widening the exsisting WCML or Chiltern lines would cause signifficant ammounts of property demolition in all the towns along the route as well as signifficant disruption while being built. Additionally in the privitised railway TOCs have to be paid compensation for such disruption and the recent reports show that because of the increase in trains over the past 10 years Virgin would be entitled to DOUBLE the compensation (which was a signifficant element of the overall project costs) for having to put up with the last upgrade. Similarly Chiltern have experenced a large increase in ridership so they won't be cheep to compensate either. What really ###### things up though is the need to have a spur to Heathrow in the later stages of the project. If it wasn't for that the natural route for HS2 would be to head directly north from Euston (tunnel from Camden northwards), running roughly alongside the M1 (although Luton might be a problem) and avoiding the most senic bit of the Chilterns

But disconnected from the network a couple of years ago when Earlswood north end ladder was renewed. Trains stoped running back in the late 80s acording to a collegue

The remaining platform at Crewekerne was widened by NSE in preperation for the introduction of the 159s and this invoved slewing the track towards the centre line of the formation so the aparrent 'space' for the second track is actually a good bit smaller than you might think. I believe this was done because the platform was extended back under the overbridge at the Exeter end of the station to allow longer trains (although why they could'nt have demolished the redundent signal box and extended the platform at the London end is a bit of a mystery).

Recycled a second time perhaps,(the current one came from Buxted in Sussex when the Uckfield line was singled) although given the requirements for disabled access, I suspect it would have to be on a heritage line someplace. (Templcombe's orgional footbridge was oblitorated along with the rest of the buildings when the station was shut)

Shill bidding is where the seller through a second account, or through a relative / trusted friend conspire to artifically increase the selling price by making the item apear more on demand and force genuine bidders to place evr higher bids. Should the seller / relative / friend end up 'wining' the item no money or goods actually change hands and the same item will often reapear on e-bay later. Shill bidding is prohibited by e-bay and those suspected of it should have their accounts closed. Sniping is where the wining bid comes in in the last couple of seconds. This is perfectly legal and is the electronic equalivalent of someone in a traditional acution room putting their hand up once the auctionear has said "going one, going twice" but before he has had a chance to say "sold to ......." and allowes any potential bidder to remain hidden untill the last minute. This can help keep the cost of the wining bid down by simulating a lack of interest in an item but in the e-bay format also allows the entry of a killer bid before anyone else has a chance to respond. As others have said there are computer programs & 3rd part websites avalable (some charge for their services) which allow the placing of a user defined bid seconds before the auction ends automatically.

When the Axminster loop was in the planning stages one of the options was to extend it to encoupass the Chard junction loop as well giving continious double track between Chard Junction and Axminster. Aparently this would have allowed a 30 minute frequancy as far as Axminster which was one of the things called for in the Devon Metro plan. It could could have also potentally speeded up certain SWT services as the plan was for the extra services to be provided by FGW as part of their Exeter operation and would not have required extra SWT stock. It could have also allowed a more optimised calling pattern with the likes of Pinhoe & Feniton served by FGW only and thus speeding up SWT services (admitadly at the expense of those passengers looking to travel between Feniton & Yeovil for example) I admit that in an ideal world and given its stautus as a diversionary route, the Yeovil - Exeter bit should be double track throughout. Passing loops are fine but it only takes one points failure to totally screw things up where as plain double track is far more resilant when failures occur (and dispite managements current obsession, all the condition monitoring in the world will not stop things failing.)

I don't think its that strange. With Bachmann, correcting the EPB error only required the manufacture of new bodyshells a relativley cheap process. Also all the mis-printed bodies can in theory be reycyled by sending them back to be stripped and re-painted for use in further batches. With Hornby and the VEP, the changes required require the tooling to be altered which is a far more expensive process. Also if Hornby said they were going to alter the tooling, judging from the responses so far, many people would defer / return their VEP purchase leaving Hornby with large quantaties of VEPs stuck on the shelves. Thus it may well be the case that Hornby internally acknowledge the problem but will not say or comit themselves to anything untill the current batch of VEP units have all been sold

No two at most, but then Bachmanns first venture into EMUs, the CEP (in its origional condition) only had 3 and this did not afect sales. As other posters have pointed out though, the 350s do have a wide opperating range geographically and are a 'nice fit' with things like Pendalinos, Voyagers, 66s, turbostars, 153s etc all of which are avalable in RTR

Erm I asume that is a typo and you mean the "six foot" as 3rd rail units would have a bit of trouble picking up the juice from between the running rails (which is what the "four foot" stands for). Now if we are talking about the London Underground.....

If you want to record one channel while recording another then yes you need two tuners be that two seperate boxes or one box with two tuners contained within the same device (be awere that some devices may have more than one output yet still only contain a single tuner).

Indeed, but this is what happens when sites like e-bay get 'discovered' by those in the comercial sector who then buy out the founders and then continually revamp the site to obtain every grater value for their shareholders. Not that this is necessarly bad of course, after all history has many examples of inovative ideas that were slow in developing due to lack of capital, but when big buisness does get involved, profits must be seen to rise year on year. With e-bay this manifested itself with signifficant increases in listing costs, changes to the feedback mechanism for sellers, the mandatory offering of Paypall and as you have correctly observed a big push for 'buy it now' deals. Also over the past few years there has been a concerted effort to get more stores to use the site, especially those related to high street brands. Again nothing unique about this trend (which is similar to the tactic used by Amazon marketplace when branched out from just being a book / DVD retailer) but it does give an indication of where the company believes its future lies. Given this I can see we will eventually get to a point where e-bay ditches private sellers as being not worth the hasle, At which point we will hopefully see something else come along to fill the void.

IIRC Hornby have acknowledged the problem and have aranged the manufacture of replacment chassis units (as an add on to the next batch of class31 releases) to replace those which have failed. Hornby have gone on record saying anyone having a problem should get in contact with them to arange getting the faulty chasis replaced under warenty and free of charge but go on to say they will not be 'selling' them on the open market

Basically an extra long crowbar

The Scotish government has said it is sticking with the RPI + 1% for domestic Scotrail services. Those opperators who cross the border into England fall under the national rules of 3% +RPI. The Welsh assembly have yet to decide their policy although cross border opperators will be in the same situation as those opperating into Scotland. The obvious complication is that an awfull lot of Welsh rail services start, finish or travel through England (Unlike Scotland where apart from the sleeper routes, the only Scotrail service to cross the border are Dumfries - Carlisle services) meaning that in theory at least some of the fares will end up increasing by 3% regardless of what the Welsh decide.

As a generalisation (based on nothing but my own thoughts I hasten to add), I would suggest that those people who buy stuff then tinker with it will tend to have a higher IQ than those who are happy to leave things as they come. Thus with computers it doesn't seam particularly suprising that those with a higher IQ are more inclined to experement with other browsers rather than sticking with the default IE that gets bundled with every version of Windows.

Correct. Hence while they apear to be 4 seperate channels, they only actually ocupy 2 slots on the didital multiplex

To drag a model HST from the pointy end, surgery is required. On the real thing a flap on the lower nose is removed and a long coupling bar is attached, one end of which is designed to fit over the coupling hook on the assisting loco. As to how best to replicate this, others on the forum will have a better idea, but in principal its just a case of cutting a hole in the front and adding a suitable piece of rod with your preferd coupling on the end of it.

IIRC Bullied removed the number plates in faviour of painted numbers in the Sunshine style, Thus they should not be present with Sunshine lettering. Also being relativley new engines I imagine they would be quite a way down the queue for overhaul / repainting

Seeing as the Felixstowe branch, the cross country route via Peterborough and many other terminals built over the past 10 years or so lack overhead wires, not to mention the modern aversion to loco changes en route, I fail to see how a new batch of electric locos would have prented freightliner from needing the class 70s (although I take your point about perhaps not needing as many). Lets face it untill electrification moves beyond a couple of main lines (with connections between them only avaleable at the extrematies) and forms a real network, Diesel traction will reign suprime for freight for many years to come.

Tavistock is on the main road between Plymouth and Oakhampton thus replacement bus services were easy to organise when it came round to shutting the line which was not the case for stations on the Gunnislake branch. Equally at the time I can well see someone decideding that axing Tavistock in favour of Gunnislake was an ideal way of making the remaining bit an ideal candidate for closure at a later date. As it stands the current terminus at Gunnislake is halfway between Tavistock & Callington so I would imagine it captures a certain ammount of comuters from each town who wat to avoid the traffic jams heading into Plymouth

Realistically Bere Alston - Tavistock is the only viable rail re-opening in the region because of road improvements to the A30 and the ability of express coach services to serve the towns better.Indeed if thought out correctly with a suitable parkway station Tavistock could well end up performing a similar frunction to Tweedbank on the proposed borders line with onward coach connections to Launceston, Bude & Oakhampton. Also if avoiding the see wall becomes necessary as various studdies have proved it is far more cost effective to build a new inland route betwenn Netwon Abbot and Exeter therby preserving the important through services between Exeter and Torquay rather than re-opening the SR route throughout.