Pandora

I have attached the pdf for "the Beeching Report" ... the Reshaping of British Railways. Let us not forget Richard Beeching was a high-flyer of great intellect, even a Visionary Post WW2 Britain had little choice but to maintain a loss making railway, simply because there was no alternative method of transporting goods and people around, however that changed during the late 50's as roads / and motorways were constructed, and lorries and cars improved in speed and availability,austerity declined, people became better off. The post WW2 railway losses were initially manageable, but then the losses escalated quickly to the point of excessive burden on the Exchequer. The 1955 modernisation plan helped but did not arrest the losses, the railways had become a political hot potato, Govts did not act quickly, by the time Beeching was offered the Chair, it needed rapid decisive response, that rapid response was possibly where a mistakes were made in the closures of certain routes. Beeching as a visionary. He identified the strengths and weakness of the railway, the inefficient handling of unprofitable wagon traffic goods, his solution fully fitted liner trains,, eg Freightliner, the low-cost container loaded / unloaded at a terminal leaving the expensive part, the wagon, free for more trips (at 75mph) . He identified that 50% of the coaching stock was held for excursion traffic, traffic which was vanishing rapidly as the population bought cars. He identified the range of costs, some lines had revenue of only 1/7th of operating cost, others with revenues 7 times that of operating costs. Please read the Report attached to my post and feel free to criticise my views BRB_Beech001a(1).pdf

The work written in parallel to the Dr Beeching Report is the Stedeford Report by Sir Ivan Stedeford. Beeching and Stedeford held conflicting opinions, Stedeford was not published until many years after Beeching Does anyone have either a copy of, or, a link to the contents of the Stedeford Report? It may be an interesting study for the purpose of comparison of the thinking of two powerful minds tackling the same problem. postscript according to Hansard, officially, the Report does not exist; https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1989-11-27/debates/05edf432-9b1e-4f63-95ac-a91d95b11df5/StedefordReport Is there an unofficial copy of the report? The background to the Railway issue: Hansard: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1960/oct/26/british-railways

I retired last year, so It's about time I took a trip to the Cromford & High Peak to walk the trail. Will the forum please recommend book titles for the C&HPR so I may study the history of the line?

A Paper from the University of Birmingham concerning the technicalities of High Speed Train Operation and line capacity with a references to UK HS2 is attached, the author promotes the opinion, HS2 have used an too high a figure for braking deceleration, and considers considers 16 tph to be a sensible figure for HS2 operation high-speed-railway-capacity.pdf

Lord Berkeley is pro-HS2, but objects to the current form of the project, reading his personal "Oakervey Review" his stance being the project is over-specified and therefore of excessive cost,. His vision is an HS2 with a modest reduction in line speed with a reduction to 14 trains per hour capacity to save £40 bn , an HS2 of 14 trains per hour and a line speed reduction would align HS2 with other world-class high-speed lines and In the light of the risk to the HS2 leg to Leeds, slated for cancellation to save money, the Berkeley specification would permit the retention of the Leeds facility within reduced budget.

The above is post 1 of the thread for HS2, it seems the originator of the thread did not constrain posts to the bricks and mortar of the construction of HS2, note the first two of the three links. Recent posts have concerned the issue of the budget for the project, the rumours of the mothballing of the Leeds phase to save £40bn

I have never seen £150bn in print, Lord Berkeley of the Oakervee Committee quotes a figure of £142bn in a recent letter to the Cabinet office

One of the earliest costings to create WCML capacity had figures of £9bn to upgrade the existing WCML, or £12bn to build an entirely new railway. How times have changed!

"Yes Minister , No Minister" A piece in the "Canary" website about HS2 concerning the ministerial code and parliament https://www.thecanary.co/exclusive/2021/08/26/exclusive-cabinet-office-wont-investigate-ministers-who-broke-the-ministerial-code-over-hs2-scandal/

If a fitted vehicle at the rearmost position has a failure on open road, and the vehicle brakes have to be isolated, with the Signallers authority, you can clear the line at low speed and not more than 5 mph over points but the line must be level or falling gradients, no uphill gradients in case of a detachment. If available, also a rider in the defective vehicle who can apply the vehicle parking brake if there is a detachment. Of course it is never simple, the rule varies with the type of coupling such as bar coupled formations which are less breakable than 3-link

The E5001 electric locos, the tales I have heard from retired drivers, light engine at the end of a turn "job and knock" 120 mph on the speedometer.

The consist of a single HAA wagon and a brake van behind the 31, if the HAA has air-brakes in full working order, is there a need for the brake van? Is it possible the HAA has a brake system defect and needs the brake van for the trip?

https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20150410070816/http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/photo?group=Horwich&objid=1997-7059_HOR_F_987

You have made an important point about the 2019 timetable, a milestone we cannot forecast is the date when the economy has recovered from Covid to match or exceed the level of activity pre-Covid, of the 2009 financial crash, activity levels of most countries, required several years of sustained growth to restore to pre-crash levels, some have never restored even after 10 years, eg Italy and Greece, it may therefore prove to be sound financial management to turn back the clock, in the short-term, even the 2019 timetable may be more trains than passenger demand can sustain during 2022

The ICI bogie hopper wagon behind the 37, are they kit built or RTR? Who makes them?

What are the opinions of the forum on the changes? How will the reduced number of services tie in with the dates in 2022 with the renationalisation of of railway services in Scotland? Will the changes be implemented in advance or after the termination of the Abelio franchise? "It was announced on 17 March 2021 that ScotRail is to be renationalised in March 2022 as ScotRail Trains. Since 1 April 2015 ScotRail has been operated by Abellio. This franchise will end in March 2022. From 1 April 2022, a Scottish Government-owned operator of last resort would take over from Abellio the day-to-day operations of the ScotRail service, maintaining the ScotRail brand."

I recall the line and the det placer at London Bridge, movements of engineers trains in possessions used to regularly bang the dets, there was a det placer a New Cross station for L217 signal, to protect a conflicting movement from the adjacent L219 signal over the crossing to the down slow when L217 at danger, the overlap for L217 signal being only around 30 to 40 yards in length and not the full overlap 200m typical of the area, the det placer did save an incident in around 1998 or 1999, a driver pulled away against a red, as a non-stopper was running through the platform, a side-swipe collision was prevented. Schoolchildren would steal the dets or drop bricks and set them off. The placer mechanism is still there but badly damaged, not being required after the resignalling of the area

I read that electrification of the Woodhead line commenced in the 1930s, and the portals were used as sighting aids by enemy bombers.

The modern anniversary releases to celebrate Rovex, the bodyshell castings in metal, are they: 1) new tooling to the drawings of Dublo but with enhancements in detailing over and above the original Dublo tooling. 2) new tooling "in the spirit of Dublo" to replicate the Dublo look and feel. 3) The Dublo / Wrenn tooling returning from storage for a further lease of life

Scorbiton, new to me , what a fine layout, how did I miss this one? Does Scorbiton still exist and or is it retired from the exhibition circuit?

Exactly as Dr Beeching observed, railways have a specific strength in transporting bulk freight, long distance block trains such as container-borne goods traffic, whisked from handling point to handling point at high-speeds as per the intention of the FreightLiner scheme , the daily pick-up goods on a branchline was had little virtue , the demise was long overdue.

Here is the National audit Office Update into HS2, the report which examined the rise in estimated costs from £20.6 bn to £30.1 bn in 18 months, the only costs which fell were for rolling stock, the train fleet cut from 60 to 54. Figure 7 and 8 in the report are a summary of the costs broken down into the key categories of the project High-Speed-Two-A-progress-update(1).pdf

There is a piece in Private Eye published 6th August 2021, titled "Red Alert" reporting the opinion of the Govt infrastructure and Projects Authority, phase 1 is status Red-Amber meaning delivery status "in doubt" phase 2 is full red, "unachievable". assumptions in the HS2 business case were 2% annual growth of the economy from 2015 to 2035, a figure somewhat dubious due to Covid and the great reset of a post-covid economy. Private Eye's assessment of HS2 Status "White Elephant"

There is a piece in Private Eye published 6th August 2021, titled "Red Alert" reporting the opinion of the Govt infrastructure and Projects Authority, phase 1 is status Red-Amber meaning delivery status "in doubt" phase 2 is full red, "unachievable". assumptions in the HS2 business case were 2% annual growth of the economy from 2015 to 2035, a figure somewhat dubious due to Covid and the great reset of a post-covid economy. Private Eye's assessment of HS2 Status "White Elephant"