DY444

That'll be the closing titles of Series 4. The opening and closing titles were changed for Series 4 and, let's just say, it divides opinion amongst devotees. Personally I prefer the "classic" tinted stills opening and closing titles used in the first three series and I suspect I'm not alone.

I travelled out of St Pancras on Friday, and although I could only see the up line, it looked to me as though there were only two sections devoid of wiring. One just on the London side of Market Harborough (1 wire run missing, maybe 2 at the most) and the very last bit in the area shown in the picture. A few bridges being rebuilt and the feeder stations/HV stuff to "wire up" but a vast amount of progress since my last trip along the MML a few months ago.

I agree. However the point made was that all CD trains are the same type and colour. Dull they may be but they aint Electrostars and they aint Southern Electrostar Green.

Not entirely. Southern does have the red 387/2s operating on the GatEx/Brighton fudge and sometimes elsewhere. Also, and depending on how you define "railway", the erstwhile Central Division sees 700s and 165s.

Otherwise known as Stewarts Lane.

It's Nottingham. The 20s are where P7 is now. The 56 is at the east end. The pipe bridge visible on the left is still there.

I would dispute the assertion that the matter in hand is a "serious" safety issue. A serious safety issue is Wootton Bassett, those unlicensed clowns that spadded at Stafford, NR connecting signal wires back to front at Wingfield, ditto its cowboy, hacked point wiring at Waterloo, Lumo overspeed at Peterborough etc etc. The low probability of a slam door coming open or being opened on a single set of stock doing a couple of round trips a day in the summer is a safety issue but not a serious one. I am a vehement critic of the ORR because I believe it has done far more harm to the wellbeing of the railways than good. It has systematically redefined the "Reasonably" from ALARP to something no dictionary would recognise. I would have much greater sympathy with it in this case if it didn't have such an atrocious record of imposing enormous cost for negligible, and in some cases zero, safety benefit. Oh and for the avoidance of doubt, the court case did not rule that the ORR was right in insisting that WCRC fit CDL, merely that it had the legal authority to insist that WCRC did.

There's loads of them. Just in my neck of the woods in S/SW London and off the top of my head there's Carshalton, Wallington, Purley, Coulsdon Town, Raynes Park, Esher, Byfleet & New Haw, Leatherhead, Redhill, Wandsworth Town, Queenstown Road and Vauxhall.

Is that all? Luxury. In the leafy SW London suburbs we recently made the stupid mistake of taking the bus through Worcester Park. Took 35 minutes to go half a mile. Always a congested road at the best of times it is even worse now. Why? Because it is outside the ULEZ expansion zone but all the roads to the east of it are in the zone. Improve air quality by increasing congestion. See also LTNs. Genius.

In the previous Southern 377 major overhaul programme the 377/3s were the last to be done so I assume the fleet is being done in the same sub-class order as before.

I thought ASLEF's policy was to oppose RDW. Another example of their principles being expendable when cash is dangled. See also Thameslink K0 12 car DOO and expansion of Southern DOO. Imo RDW is an anachronism which should have no place on today's railway and it's about time it was consigned to the bin. A reliable service is more use to the public than a fairy story timetable so run the service for which you have the headcount. If that service is unacceptable to the public then ask them if they want to pay higher taxes or higher fares to pay for more staff. Then proceed accordingly.

I saw a report that the charging rails at West Ealing had been fitted in a position which made it impossible to fit two units in the platform whilst charging. The rails were going to have to be moved as a result. What is it about the railway today which makes it so exceptional at wasting money? If there is a requirement to fit two units in the platform, which it appears there is, then why on earth was this not factored in at the start? It's not rocket science and this expensive ineptitude makes my blood boil.

Quite the reverse. I have Heljan 47s from the dawn of time "tubby duff" period which just run and run and run with minimal attention. My Bachmann diesels from the same period are about due their 3rd major stripdown. Hornby I've lost count.

I spent much of my childhood in Derbyshire and it was always going into SR land, particularly the two big London termini of Waterloo and Victoria. It all seemed so completely different in so many respects to the wide eyed me. Waterloo with its strange old departure boards, large lettered cubes hanging from the roof from where enormous lines of holiday makers destined for the Isle of Wight, Bournemouth, Weymouth etc would snake across the concourse, the ornate platform barriers with their gates, ocean liner boat trains, class 73, 74, 33 and REPs, and 09s with high level air pipes. Then there was Victoria. All the hustle and bustle but for the most part the only train noise was the slamming of doors and the air being dumped by recently arrived emus. The South Eastern side in particular always seemed immensely exotic to me. Literally the gateway to Europe with a constant stream of Continental boat trains, MLVs on the stops sometimes on P1, P2 and P8 simultaneously, Class 71s, the Golden Arrow and the Night Ferry. There were obviously other places that were wholly different. Doncaster with hoards of kids crowding around every deltic. Crewe as it was in the 60s and 70s with its curious mix of ancient track layout, diesels, AC electrics and loco changing. Woodhead. The WR hydraulics and lower quad signals etc etc. To me though the SR was a unique world of its own and I loved it.

The 450s and 444s both had bogie modifications as they were hammering the track to bits. I have no idea whether the mods were the same as the 350s but the track access charges for both 450s and 444s were reduced after they were done which suggests the results of the mods were significant.

Admittedly that would be a classic modern day railway move. Abandon Waterloo in 2007, leave it unused for years, spend a fortune reworking it for Waterloo domestic services, then decide to use it for international again requiring another fortune to be spent to undo what you spent the previous fortune on. Even if you think that's going be approved (which it isn't) then you've got another issue which is that only the few remaining 373s are in gauge for HS1 - Waterloo. So that needs another fortune to fix. There's no getting away from one inconvenient truth. It's St.Pancras or nowhere and although there is no doubting its splendour as a building, operationally it is a disaster. There are insufficient platforms for any of the service groups that use it. It might be possible to add additional East Mids platforms to the west and/or Kent platforms to the east but I don't see any way of expanding the international platforms. The only thing I can think of is that the 2 unused outer platforms at Stratford become turn round servicing points. Once all the punters are off an inbound at St. P you work the empties away to one of the two platforms at Stratford. Cleaning, re-tanking, catering restock etc all take place there, then you work the empties back again to St. P for immediate boarding. Doing that with a few trains across the day might free you up enough platform space to fit a few more services in.

It is still possible to run St Johns/New Cross - Charing Cross in both directions but it's far easier from an operational perspective in the down direction than the up as going up requires just over a mile on the reversible line 7. Although it is reversible, Line 7 is heavily used by down trains so I suspect using it in the up direction would likely be something only done in extremis.

Without knowing what you are proposing to do it is difficult to comment. However it seems to me that one obvious suggestion is to try the change well before the show ensuring you make a note of the original values of anything you change so you know what to go back to.

There are Digitrax and Loconet fora on groups.io. Some of the contributors on there know the systems inside out right down to bit and byte level. Otherwise I've been using Digitrax since 2000 and know a bit about it and loconet's inner workings so there's a vague chance I may know. What is the problem?

If it is quieter it will probably be because it only has one motor per powered bogie rather than the typical two on a UK emu. I watched a video of it slowing down on the dynamic brake and it sounded pretty loud to me or at least no quieter than any other emu using the dynamic brake. Always hard to tell with dynamic brakes how much is motor and how much is blower but I'm assuming the generated power was at least party employed charging the battery and not just being dissipated

The boiler was obviously retained so it could work with the aforementioned air braked Mk2 stock, and heat it when required, which, as we know, is what happened for a while before it moved to South Wales.

I haven't had the "pleasure" of an IET on the GWML but I've done a handful of trips up the ECML, all on 801s, and the ride was terrible at speed. It felt like continuous hunting to me. I've not been on a bi-mode but I've seen reports that the GU sets can move relative to the vehicle body and make a banging noise when they do.

With the whole GWR allocated IET fleet, irrespective of ownership, suffering benefitting from "Japanese levels of reliability" ([c] DfT at contract award), I suspect it's a question of turning out any unit that will actually run.

No they haven't. The power systems and heat management systems will have been designed to accommodate the power inherent in a fast charge. The batteries however are still subject to the laws of physics and the properties of the chemical compounds they employ. Engineers (except those on the NASA Space Shuttle programme obviously) will be familiar with the truism that is the cost, time, quality mantra. Current technology batteries have a recharge time, charge range, service life equivalent. You cannot improve one without degrading one or both of the others. The optimum state of charge for maximum service life is 20-80% so that chops 40% off your range. The optimum rate of charge for maximum service life is as slow as possible. The best service life is thus achieved charging slowly and keeping the state of charge between 20 and 80% so you can't have fast charging and high range if you want maximum service life with present battery technology. A scaleable battery that offers all 3 is the holy grail and we're not there. If any routinely fast charged BEMU battery gets anywhere near the claimed battery life I shall be very surprised.

Yes, as long as the coaches weren't the aforementioned WCML Mk2 Pullmans with their as-built electrical system.