Pandora

BR became Railtrack on 1st April 1994. Excluding the SR EMUs , 1957 or 1963 stock, how long did those loco-hauled Mark 1 full brakes and buffet cars remain in service post-privatisation?

Euston to Scotland West Coast mileage is greater the Kings Cross to Scotland mieage, and the A4's did not have to master Shap or Beattock hence the brutal size and power of a Stanier Duchess compared to the gentlemanly elegance of an A4

Possibly this one numbered DB999500 (Spencer-Moulton bogies)? The car lasted until 1974, working as Derby RTC Test Car 2

The Duchess, 331 miles per day, 300+ tons at 75 mph, and mainly by a man and a shovel ! If only Crewe had built it properly, what would a fleet of locos based on 71000 have achieved in sustained speed and daily mileage?

It depends on th era, the increase in mileage a steam locomotive could be diagrammed for was one of the steady improvements in design, is it correct that the GNR express train north out of Kings Cross would change locos at Peterborough? By the 1930s the mileage was close to the peak at around 400 miles. The 1920s GNR A1 with the 180 psi boiler hurt the young Mr Gresley, he received reports of empty tenders at the end of their diagrams, Bert Spencer saved the day with improvements to reduce coal consumptions by the class (the A3). In the 1930s we had the A4s working 400 miles with high reliabilty and in the 1960s Peter Townend of Top Shed faced with under-performing diesels drove modifications the permit A3s to work diesel schedules and diagrams. From Townend, the A4s which achieved such high reliabilty , were cared for by the elite of the shed fitters who endured very poor working conditions to maintain them, especially firebox repairs.

Do we have any details of the coach behind DELTIC in the photograph? Is it a General Managers inspection coach?

The £100 Lenz convertor is a USB to RS 485 interface, try Ebay and search for usb to rs485 converter, they cost £5 to £10

Bachmann make a Conflat wagon, can you use the Triang containers on the Bachmann wagon.?

Please read post 1 of the thread, the formative post of the tread centred on the political/social aspect of HS2, not the bricks and mortar of the civil engineering of HS2, perhaps it is a good idea to create a new thread dealing with the plainwork of constructing HS2, however the politics of the troubled project which is HS2 are far more interesting

From BBC5, Mayor Khan is seeking £500m from December 11th, Tfl rail travel is running at 65% and bus travel 75% of pre-Covid levels. Attached are letters from Minister Grant Shapps to Tfl concerning the most recent tranche of Govt funds for Covid support measures to Tfl. One is somewhat "frosty", censuring Khan for disclosures to the Financial Times and shortcomings in the Tfl Review and path to financial sustainability where the Minister is seeking overhauls of Tfl to yield cost savings. The next 11 days could be very uncomfortable for Tfl, I would not be surprised for Tfl to mothball the Bakerloo line to save money and introduce revenue raising measures such as suspension of certain types of concessionary travel to raise political pressures on the Minister tfl-extraordinary-funding-and-financing-settlement-letter-1-june-2021.pdf letter-secretary-of-state-mayor-of-london-june-2021.pdf TfL-settlement-letter-with-annexes.pdf

London has an incredible generous free-travel policy, the over 60s Oystercard, provides free travel 7 days / week for those aged 60 to 66 on Tfl, Network Rail , bus, underground over a vast area Romford - Surbiton East-West, Hadley Wood to Epsom North - South. The days of the over 60s Oystercard free travel scheme must be numbered as Tfl place a begging bowl before the Govt again

A "tongue in cheek" column filler by the Standard. The non-performing much-delayed Crossrail , slated to be worth £500m then £1bn in revenues for Tfl must be part of the problem

Tfl has had a received a number of short-term Govt bailouts to continue train/underground/bus services, reasons, Covid, Crossrail delayed. The most recent bailout is soon to end in December there is a £1.9 bn financial hole to plug. Speculation is Tfl may issue a dreaded Section 114 "no way out of this hole" Notice. Press articles write of closures and service cuts , the Bakerloo Line is the favourite, and 100 of the 700 bus routes will close and reduced services on others.

The above illustrates the short sightedness of politicians, that £2bn/annum "windfall" condemned final salary pension schemes to death-row, workers are enrolled into weak money purchase pensions, at retirement those defined benefit pensions will give liveable incomes without the need for claiming social security benefits, those with money purchase pensions are more likely to need social security benefits, the latter will cost the exchequer dearly. The worst aspect of this, an attack on the working classes, it came from a Labour Party "Socialist" Mr Gordon Brown

Euston terminus for HS2 It appears there are potentially expensive civil engineering works required for the tunnels of HS2 into Euston, three single-track bores and a large cavern below the existing track structure are proposed through Camden, at least one of the bores will be very close to the retaining wall risking undermining of a structure which has required attention in the past. PDF file attached HS2EustonCamdenCutting.pdf

The speed profile, where the train needs 30 miles to accelerate from 0 mph to achieve 225 mph, and 7 miles to brake from 225mph to 0 mph , means station to station should be a minimum of 40 miles and probably 80 or 100 miles apart to justify such a high linespeed in the design. Any experts on the forum who could analyse the Liverpool -Leeds "HS3" for a suggested linespeed which will fit with the station to station distances of intended calling points on the new line?

Here is a prediction of a profile of speed vs miles of a High Speed Train service , for an HS2 service London to Birmingham the train takes a considerable distance of 30 miles to reach full line speed and then 7 miles to brake for the destination station, only around 60 miles of the 90 miles between OOC and Birmingham is at a speed greater than 90% of full line speed, high-speed-railway-capacity.pdf

An interesting post, Jim.snowdon, what was the long-term fix for the Combinos? Did they redesign the linkages? such as changing the specification of the torsion link system ( anti-roll bars) to something softer and more flexible than the original parts?

I do not have the 47 or the TTS Decoder, but have sufficient knowledge of electronics to make suggestions. Problems such as yours can be due to a faulty DCC socket on the loco chassis, the socket PCB could be carrying oversized blobs of solder or stray ends of wire on the BACK ot front of the socket PCB . So my advice is iift off the DC socket from the chassis and with a magnifying glass inspect the back and front of the socket pcb for defects such as solder blobs or stray wire strands which may be foul of others, off cuts of wire which are trapped on the socket pcb.

I'll throw my hat into the ring,. Simple conversion from OO to 18.83 mm gauge, as per Sutton Loco works, £20 for the option of P4 wheels on the Class 24, and you keep the OO wheels too.

Please post the title and author of the book, I wish to buy a copy

An update https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-57452252 The update (link above) is still too vague on the nature of the problem, , are the cracks on the plain metal of the under-frames, are they welds which are breaking , or cracks where holes have been drilled to attach components, or something else?

The orange sling, I think it rated for 10 long tons, when Class 50 Bulwark derailed at Paddington in the 1980s and was one one side under the main bridge, was it dragged out by the same method, and possibly by a pair of 47s

From 1948 BR Workshops carried on as before, repairing the run down stock using the tried and tested methods for which they were so familiar, modernisation in the change over to constructing small batches of diesels may have rocked the boat and the crew overboard, Private Industry were the ones to take on diesels, and they could take the risks and blame if the goods delivered were not suitable. Recall that nearly 2500 steam locomotives built by or for BR after nationalisation, only 999 were the Standards, the remainder Company designs such as the A1 class and the Castle class, the BTC did not formulate a much of Traction Plan, Bonavia was very critical of this , he raised the matter with the BTC and made no progress, his conclusion of the Motive Power Committee being only a paper exercise, these paths confirm the major content of this interesting and popular thread which has brought many facts and history before us, the Pilot Scheme was indeed a botch, a mad scramble, of wasted opportunity and too late.

Those GM/EMD Art-Deco or Streamline-Moderne E and F units are one of my interests, E units were 1800 hp, "E for eighteen", F units 1400hp "F for fourteen", to work heavy trains over their famous gradients , ascents for up to 2 hours at a stretch, certain railroads allocated 4 F units over 3 E units for the benefit of 16 weight bearing motored axles over 12.