Ron Ron Ron

Firstly I doubt that immigration checks on the move will be contemplated for the foreseeable future and the requirement for security checks isn't going away either. Secondly your timing comparisons are not consistent. Nobody starts and ends their journey at the railway stations at either end, so you need to add on the pre and post rail journey times to the actual rail journey itself. For LON - AMS, Eurostar has a recommended check-in and security check time of something like 40 mins prior to departure at SPI. Travelling from the point of departure to the station would be a the very least 10 to 20 minutes, if leaving a hotel or office etc, nearby. More likely 30 minutes to a hour or more from points of departure across Greater London. So that adds something between one to almost 2 hours before the train departure time. On arrival at AMS Centraal it's going to anything from 10 minutes to half an hour or more to get to your destination, unless that final destination is some way further out. You'd be very lucky to achieve a journey time of under 5 hours. It's more likely to be between 5 and 6 hours. From outside of London it could be much quicker to get to the airport than fight your way to SPI. The return Eurostar from AMS to LON takes between 4:40 and over 5 hours, before adding on the extra time at either end. .

You may laugh Mike, but many moons ago I used to live in the centre of Windsor and when out shopping one sunny spring day, when Heathrow was landing on Easterlies (where almost every arrival passes right over the town centre and castle), I actually heard an American lady ask her husband.... "Why did they build the castle so close to the airport ?" I kid you not. .

That open area to the south (right in your photo) of the runway is exactly where Gatwick's proposed new runway would be built. London City airport is about to see construction work start on a major expansion. No extra runways, but the terminal will double in size and the parking apron will be extended over most of the King George V Dock (left of the runway in your photo). .

I personally think the commissions analysis of Stansted as a candidate was deeply flawed. How it was dismissed so easily deserves severe examination. However, as it was crossed off during that exercise, I cannot see any government arbitrarily choosing Stansted without convening another commission or holding another enquiry, to overturn the evidence they already have in front of them. More delays, more cost, the grass gets longer. Absolutely true. For the benefit of anyone who didn't follow the issue that closely; the name Boris Island was actually given to several different proposals two of which Boris backed in turn. It ended up not being Boris Island at all, as Boris ended up backing Norman Foster's Isle of Grain/Hoo peninsula scheme and not an island in the estuary. .

That will suit people travelling between London and Birmingham Nick, but have you considered the practicalities of moving additional vast numbers of people over that distance, to an airport that's not only too far away from the city it's supposed to be serving, but almost halfway across the country? For arguments sake, in a worst case scenario, if you were to take all the passengers travelling from Greater London alone to/from Heathrow and put them on a HS2 train, the system couldn't cope. That's not including all those travelling to/from the rest of the SE who would also have to use HS2. Heathrow is handling some 80 million p.p.a. 56 million are non-transit passengers. Some 30 million plus are travelling to/from Greater London Over 365 days a year and 18 hours a day that equates to approx. 4500 passengers per hour, or 5,6 trains carrying 800 people per hour on top of the regular London - Birmingham rail traffic. But demand wouldn't be evened out like that. There would be peaks where demand would be four or five fold that average hourly rate. How could HS2 accommodate an extra 20 trains per hour in the peak period, let alone an extra 5 per hour? It would require another HS2 to be built. That hypothetical scenario doesn't allow for any growth either. Alternatively, if it was a case of capping Heathrow traffic at present levels and diverting additional passenger growth to Birmingham, then there's still a problem. With growth producing say an additional 20 million p.p.a., with those additional passengers routed via Birmingham, you would still need at least an average of 4 extra HS2 tph. In the peaks that would need 14-16 extra tph. You still need to build another HS2. I haven't mentioned any allowance for non-airport HS2 passenger growth. The figures can be played around with and other scenarios can be developed. It is food for thought and shows the scale of the problem when looking to put very large numbers of additional passengers onto an already busy rail network. .

According to HAL's own figures, it's actually 30%. Some is domestic to international and v.v., but the vast majority is international to international. On a wider note, I'm not sure if it helps, but in an effort to "inform the discussion", here are some factual statistics. (Source the CAA annual passenger survey and airline booking data) Looking at the number of Heathrow's terminating passengers (i.e. starting or ending their air journey at Heathrow and not transferring between flights). 76.1% are travelling to/from the SE of England. Of that number, 69.6% are travelling to/from Greater London (i.e. 53% of the total). to/from the S & SE of Heathrow. (Kent, East & West Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire & the IOW) = 13.1% (the same counties plus Berkshire) = 17.9% Therefore from the lower Thames Valley (Berks) in a lower arc round to Kent, plus Greater London = 70.9% Add Buckinghamshire (2.2%), Oxfordshire (3%) - the extremities of both are not that far away from the airport = 76.1% The percentage of Heathrow passengers travelling to/from Heathrow from the W Midlands (2.5%) and E Midlands (2.5%) = 5% The percentage of Heathrow passengers travelling to/from the NW, Yorks & Humberside, NE and Scotland, by surface transportation = 2.1% The percentage figures for the remaining areas served by Heathrow are difficult to interpret. The South West = 6.9% ...but from where? This includes the largish population centres of east Dorset (Christchurch, Bournemouth, Poole and the surrounding hinterland) and Wilts, which should really be included with Hampshire and the IOW. The rest of the SW includes Bristol and Glocestershire, which you could argue, is partially within reach of Birmingham. Then there is the SW proper, if you can call it that. A long way from any large airport. Wales = 1.8% Again difficult to access whether from the south, north or wherever. Eastern England = 8.3% This includes the M1 corridor, extending from just to the north and east of London - Herts, Beds & Essex to Northants, Cambridgeshire, Peterborough, Suffolk and Norfolk. Another wide and diverse area, including from just outside outer London, through the London commuter belt to the further reaches of East Anglia and the Wash. Cut the data anyway you want, but it demonstrates conclusively that Heathrow is predominately serving Greater London, the SE of England and the near Home Counties. .

You are absolutely right regarding surface transport infrastructure, however, if for whatever reason the decision to go ahead with Heathrow R3 is thwarted by, for example the HoC vote, legal challenges, or the weight of other political pressures, what is the (a) government to do? Do they attempt to kick it into the long grass again and instigate yet another commission? I venture to say that time has finally run out on that option as it's perfectly transparent that successive administrations have been doing this for some 30 years. It simply won't wash anymore and political opponents (of whatever hue) will make much (deserved) capital from such a crass move. The Davies Commission shortlisted 3 options and prioritised its recommendations. Whoever the government happens to be, the commission's recommendations provide a ready alternative if needed. As for geography, Gatwick is not located in the best place with regards to the whole of the SE of England, but one only has to look at the detailed analysis of where Heathrow's originating and terminating passenger traffic is coming from and going to, to see that Gatwick is actually not that badly placed for most of Heathrow's passengers. As you say, the existing surface infrastructure (Motorway, road and rail links) would not be able to cope with such an expansion at Gatwick, without major investment in additional routes and surface transport capacity. Ron .

Birmingham's runway has recently been extended. The site is now quite constrained. Any further expansion of runway length or capacity will require a new runway, positioned some distance from the present airport site. This would ultimately also lead to the need for larger terminal capacity, which would also have to be located towards the new runway site. The favoured location for this is to the east of the NEC, M42 and HS2 Birmingham Interchange station. However, Birmingham Airport is not going to be the solution to London and the south east's need for additional airport capacity.

It's those darned Chiltern hills. Who put them there? Seriously though, this is no longer a question of where best to put a new airport. The debate has been had and that ship sailed some time ago. The government has finally chosen to allow expansion at Heathrow. If for whatever reason, that doesn't come to pass, the fallback position will almost certainly be the Davies Commissions' second choice, Gatwick. .

Indeed Paul. The NMRA wording (May 2015) reads....... "Starting Jan. 1st 2010, this connector will not be recommended for new locomotive designs. This will not invalidate the conformance of existing designs. Controllers for these connectors will continue to conform, as controllers for this connector will be required as long as locomotives with this connector exist". (Note that the term "Controllers", with regard to DCC refers to locomotive (mobile) decoders.) The intention in retrospectively adopting the 21-pin MTC into the NMRA standards, was purely to tidy up, standardise or "legitimise" the use of 21-pin decoders in pre-existing models fitted with 21-pin connectors. i.e. for legacy purposes. .

From the 1990's UA's 747's were only ever used on a small number of trans Atlantic services, being mostly used on trans Pacific services. Today 777's and 767's still dominate on their flights to/from Europe, with a smaller number of 757's employed on thinner routes. BA have only 12 A380's and recently had the opportunity to take on a couple more from Singapore Airlines, who are now replacing some of their own A380 fleet with smaller A350's. BA considered it but decided not to increase the size of their present A380 fleet. Although some of the earliest ones have gone to the desert, they still have a sizeable fleet of 747-400's, but these are now very old and will be retired in a few years time. They have a large fleet of A350's on order, which will in part replace the 747's. The 787's are smaller and have replaced most of the BA fleet of 767's, of which only a small handful have been retained for use on European and domestic routes. .

The respective airports declare in their own figures.... Heathrow 33% are business passengers Gatwick 17% are business passengers. Both are predominately catering for leisure and visiting friends and relations traffic. Yields are another matter. .

United also use a lot of large aircraft between European airports and the US. On Manchester - NYC they compete with Virgin (B747's) and Thomas Cook Airlines (A330's), - both operating to JFK rather than EWR - who have built up quite a number of transatlantic services operating out of Manchester. ...

It is true that Heathrow saw little impact from the post 2008 recession. A large part of its resilience is due to the unsatisfied, pent up demand to add extra services due to the lack of spare capacity. The numbers were back to pre-crash levels within only a few years (2011, 2012, 2013 for most airports). Since then the growth has been at a much higher rate than at any previous time. e.g. The 2nd and 3rd busiest UK airport's passenger numbers, Gatwick and Manchester, have each grown by 30% , as have those for airports like Birmingham. If you don't mind me saying so, that's rather simplistic and in some ways rather inaccurate. The core of both airports business has always been quite different. Gatwick was for the first 30 to 40 years (from 1958) predominantly catering for the leisure market. Charter flights and inclusive tour operations accounted for up to some 80-90% of its business. In more recent times, Gatwick has become home to a very large number of low-cost flights. The low cost phenomena isn't the result of overspill from Heathrow. It's part a newly developed market (new travel opportunities), part replacement for the old inclusive tour business (package tour holidays) and part nicking passengers from the former "full fare" airlines. It's true that if BA could consolidate all of its Gatwick operation at Heathrow, it probably would. Their more recent increases in Gatwick services, notably the new long haul routes, are no doubt as a result in the lack of capacity at Heathrow. As well as the unavailability of airport "slots", BA's T5 at Heathrow is full and overflowing and they are having to operate a significant number of flights from T3 as well. If R3 and the new terminal do get built (the government's go ahead having now been given), then BA should be able to reconsolidate all its Heathrow flights at T5 and possibly the attached T6. I've no doubt most if not all of their Gatwick services will follow. However, there are supposed to be constraints being put into place to allow more competition and prevent total dominance, but to what degree that will impact BA, I've no idea. Indeed, but in this case, the Davies commission was way off the mark as they were deliberating. Never mind getting the future wrong, they got the present day wrong too. .

It is rather odd that they've kept the terminal numbering, but in light of how things have panned out up to now, the right time to rename the terminals probably hasn't arrived yet. I'm sure it will happen at some point. Incidentally, the new T2 is called "The Queen's Terminal". Not that anyone uses that name. As for the origins of the old T2 (formerly called the Europa Building), it was designed as the airports first proper passenger terminal and opened along with the adjacent Queens Building in 1955. The multi-story car park thing can be filed under "urban myth". .

Notwithstanding the impact of the Open skies agreement, the falls in passenger numbers at Gatwick and Stansted in 2008/09 are entirely consistent with similar falls in passenger numbers at other UK airports and many European mainland and major North American airports. For example Manchester went down from around 22 million pax per annum, pre-crash to around 18m p.p.a. post crash; recovering back to the pre=crash figures within 3 or 4 years. In 2017 Manchester had risen to 28 million p.p.a. BA have since gone on to re-grow their Gatwick operation. They've built up a sizeable long-haul network from there and continue to operate European flights. Whilst not disagreeing with Howard Davies main conclusion, much of the data, evidence and conclusions from his committee's report is significantly flawed. For example, his analysis of Gatwick's fortunes are basically laughable. The passenger traffic numbers his team predicted for Gatwick by 2030, were passed last year (2017) !!!!! The report stated that the scope for long-haul operations from Gatwick was minimal and cited only X long haul services/destinations served (I can't remember without fishing out the final report) at that time, with a prediction of only Y long haul services/destinations served by year dot (again I can't remember off hand but it was 10, 15 or more years away). In fact by the time the report came out, there were double the number of such long-haul routes being served and since then it has again gone up with increased frequencies too. As a forum devoted to matters of a railway nature, it might be of interest that the DafT provided a large amount of the analysis used. Mmmmm? .

Which is what is planned, if not exactly super fast. The Elizabeth Line will provide that link and if the faster HEX survives post 2028, then it's quite likely it will also call at OOC. Incidentally, the final stage of public consultation on the Western Rail link, is due to end in two weeks, this Friday (22nd June). The SoS is supposed to be reviewing the plan following this and if given the go ahead, which is IMHO very likely in view of the governments go ahead for R3 and its commitment to promote public transport links - CO2/NOx reduction or whatever), the formal planning application is currently scheduled to be submitted towards the end of this year. Construction of this rail link could commence sometime next year, or early 2020. . .

There are currently only 4 terminals at Heathrow. T2, 3, 4 & 5 The old Terminal 1 shut a few years ago and is slowly being emptied and demolished in sections. Terminal 2 is a large brand new terminal (the much smaller old T2 was demolished to make way for it). However, the new T2 is to be extended to almost double its current size, once the old T1 is finally cleared away. This will pave the way for T3 to be eventually demolished, leaving the much enlarged T2 as the only terminal in the central area. This will leave 3 terminals, currently named T2, 4 & 5. For a time the proposed final T2 arrangement was named Heathrow East, with T5 re-named Heathrow West. HAL's current proposal for R3 includes a new large terminal facility, which at times has been given the working title, Terminal 6. This terminal will be built back-to-back with T5, between that terminal and the M25 motorway. The proposal is that T5 & 6 will be connected together to form a large terminal hub. Some aircraft parking stands will be co-located with T6, but the bulk of them are to be located on a terminal satellite complex, between the new runway and the current northern runway (09L/27R); connected to T6 by high speed transit link. If all these plans come to fruition, then there will be 2 large terminal complexes (west and east), which leaves the question of whether there will be any future for T4. .

Most of the mainland European RTR brands have been switching over to fitting PluX sockets in new RTR models. The change has been gradual, but now PluX predominates in most new H0 releases. A couple of manufacturers have stuck with 21-pin MTC so far. The smaller PluX sizes haven't really taken off with N Gauge though, with the RTR manufacturers adopting the European (MOROP) Next18 instead. Going back a few years when the NMRA (and MOROP) were discussing the adoption of an agreed standard for a new multi-pin connector, the Americans rejected the adoption of the then, unofficial 21-pin MTC that was already being used by some European manufacturers. After a long period of working through the issues, PluX was chosen by the NMRA (and MOROP) as the new standard decoder fitting, as it had a number of advantages over the 21-pin MTC. (Note: the 21-pin MTC was simultaneously adopted for legacy purposes, to legitimise the pre-existance of the 21-pin, with a view to it eventually fading away). Ironically the US manufacturers, who up to that point in time had not fitted the 21-pin in any RTR, failed to pick up the new standard and after a gap of several years, realising they needed a connector with more pins, started fitting the 21-pin sockets instead. Further more, the 21-pin connector is gaining widespread use in some American H0 RTR. I am not aware of any US manufacturer fitting PluX sockets in any of their products so far. A truly bizarre situation. The Europeans proposed 21-pin as the standard, but accepted PluX instead and have gone down that route. The Americans rejected 21-pin in favour of PluX, but have gone down the route of using 21-pin. The UK market, as usual, fails to catch up and misses out on another positive advance in railway modelling. .

The FS is a bit of a nuisance all round then? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-44324691 .

Bearing in mind the contractual set-up for the supply of the IET's under the IEP, how does this work? Agility are contracted to supply XXX units per day to cover YYY diagrams . If it's Agility who are not able to provide the units, as per contract, I would assume that GWR are covered by penalty clauses. Unless there is an allowance built-in to cover the fleet introductory period. If GWR are responsible for reducing the number of trains in operation, I guess it's on their own heads? .

There aren't going to be any 5-car Bi-Modes as such Paul. Well not in the traditional sense. The Stadler Class 755 Bi-Modes are in 3-car (x14) and 4-car (x24) configurations. Each with the short diesel generator unit added in the formation. The all electric Stadler Class 745 is a 12-car EMU (x20). The GA Class 720 Aventra's will be in 5 and 10-car configurations. I'm not sure if that's of any help? Ron .

This video was posted on YouTube a couple of weeks ago.....

A taste of what's to come from France. Step by step, Paris is trying to rid itself of petrol and diesel cars, and persuade people to use other types of transport. So far the city has banned all conventional cars built before 1997 from entering the city centre on weekdays between 8am and 8pm. Diesels registered before 2001 are also prohibited. Drivers breaching the bans face heavy fines. Next year, the restrictions will be widened to include pre-2005 diesels. The clampdown will then continue in stages. Diesels are due to be outlawed altogether in 2024, and petrol cars in 2030. .