Locomotive Insanity: Murder on the BNSF Mixed Consist doesnt have the same ring to it

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Automotive Insanity > Locomotive Insanity: Murder on the BNSF Mixed Consist doesnt have the same ring to it

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Axeman Jim: Nov 21, 2010; The Canadians replied that they would rather ride a moose.

First class: Same delays, higher price

# ? Apr 8, 2014 09:57

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 11, 2024 11:08

Kia Soul Enthusias: May 9, 2004; zoom-zoom; Toilet Rascal

The point is you don't have to sit next to smelly weird hobos, I guess.

# ? Apr 8, 2014 10:11

Zeether: Aug 26, 2011

I've been hearing rumors that Walt Disney World is going to be phasing out the steam locomotives they use around the park perimeter and replacing them with those diesel powered ones that look like steam locomotives but aren't. Kind of sounds farfetched to me since they just sent off Lily Belle for maintenance like a year ago but that would suck immensely if it is true since those engines have had an amazing history.

If Ward Kimball was still alive and found that out he'd be pissed.

# ? Apr 8, 2014 15:38

Axeman Jim: Nov 21, 2010; The Canadians replied that they would rather ride a moose.

A potted history of British Rail � how not to run a railway.

I've pretty much gone through the major individual classes that failed on British Rail and its successors. One question that is asked again and again is "how did a nation so renowned for its engineering, one that built an empire and stood up to Hitler, manage to gently caress up so badly?" It's a fair question and the answer is very complex - but, I hope, interesting. So I'm going to go through the way I see it in the next series of posts over a week or so.

This is where things get a bit political. Maybe contrary to the general zeitgeist of SA, I do fundamentally believe in capitalism, and that free markets do a better job of most things than a centralised state-run economy. I do accept that some things are better off done outside the market. I don�t think capitalism is usually the problem, nor is it accurate to say that the state is the problem. The problem is when the state and big business collude with each other � state corporatism. Where capitalism has poo poo the bed, nine times out of ten it�s because the government has changed its role from regulator of the market to a biased participant in the market, and where politicians are lobbied into making laws that entrench companies from being competitors in a fair market to effectively being clients of the state, combining the state's tendency towards corruption and inefficiency with the private sector's tendency towards monopoly, profiteering and screwing over the little guy. My dad has a saying: �Whenever the government interferes in a market it has no business being in, someone somewhere makes a huge amount of money without doing any work.�

I like to think I have some decent evidence to back up my theory, but that�s all it is � my way of looking at the world based on my learning and my experiences. This isn�t D&D and I�m not here to start a fight. But every time I post a story about one of BR�s disasters, people ask how a country that once ruled a third of the planet couldn�t produce a train that didn�t fall apart halfway to its destination, and why things didn�t improve after the railways were privatised. This is why I think that is the case. I will try to evidence everything as best I can. Form your own conclusions; I�m not here to try to convince anyone.

Part 1 � when men were men and hats were tall

This is the dismal story of British Rail.

British Rail, as we have established, was a national joke, and stories of its gently caress-ups have sustained my posting for months. How did it get that way?

The British, as we know, were the first to build railways. Railway-building in the early days was very much the preserve of private enterprise. Men with tall hats and impressive moustaches laid rails, built trains and hauled people and goods to where they were needed, providing the lifeblood of the industrial revolution and building impressive Victorian estates with the proceeds.

Building track required an Act of Parliament, and thus were the early seeds of corruption sown. The MPs voting on railway-building schemes often had stakes in the companies behind them, or were flat-out bribed. That wouldn�t have been such a problem if the railway schemes were designed with either the good of the country or profitability in mind, but often they weren�t. Many lines were little more than �pump-and-dump� investment scams, or outright economic blackmail, such as this example:

This is the route of the first railway built from London Waterloo to Portsmouth by the London and South West railway (LSWR):

As you can see it�s not exactly a quick route, following the LSWR�s main line from London to Southampton as far as Bishopstoke, where it branches off, double-backing on itself to reach Portsmouth from the West. The alternative line, running via Brighton and operated by the London, Brighton and South Coast railway, was if anything even longer and more inconvenient. The reasons for the long diversions were geological � the formidable South Downs hills stretched from Winchester in the West to Hastings in the East with very few ways through. The trains of the time had a tough time with steep gradients and so it was usually best to go around an obstacle than go over it, even, as in this case, if it meant a detour of an hour or more.

A group of Portsmouth-based businessmen saw an opportunity to ~~massively enrich themselves~~ provide better transport to the people of Portsmouth, and ~~bribed~~ persuaded Parliament to let them build a �direct� line to Portsmouth in spite of the following facts:

1 � They had no experience of building or running railways
2 � They clearly had no intention of doing so
3 � There was no way on Earth that a direct line to Portsmouth was practical or economic with the engineering or railway technology of the time.

Undaunted, the consortium started building the line, which would feature some ridiculously heavy gradients and no stops at any economically significant places between Godalming (where it joined the LSWR�s existing line) and Havant (where it joined the LBSCR�s line from Brighton). They didn�t care. They guessed, correctly, that the LBSCR and the LSWR would tear each other�s throats out, not so much to own it as to deny it to the other. A vicious bidding war for the unbuilt (stupid) railway broke out between the two companies, finally ending in the LSWR�s favour in 1858. Even then the LBSCR refused the LSWR access to its tracks at Havant and for a year passengers had to travel the last few miles by a rail replacement stagecoach until the LSWR took legal action to force access.

^{We still have those, and they still stink of horseshit.}

The �Portsmouth Direct� line was a nightmare to run, but as they�d spent so much money on the drat thing the LSWR ran it anyway at huge losses, having to run short, double-headed trains to cope with the gradients. The speculators counted their cash, twirled their impressive Victorian moustaches, and headed off into the smog.

Every local mayor or aristocrat wanted a railway to their little Podunk town or estate. Some of the wealthier aristocratic landowners built their own railways as little more than toys, giving them something to go sightseeing with across their estates and impress women.

This chap, the Duke of Buckingham:

^"M'lady"

Built a whole railway network across his land, ostensibly as a way to deliver goods to his estate, but more in an attempt to get into the corsets of easily-impressed Victorian ladies (remember this is before people used badly modified hatchbacks to do the same thing).

^{�I'll see your Escort XR3i and raise you a MOTHERFUCKING TRAIN�}

Some large public schools and hospitals had not only their own railway station, but their own entire networks, carrying people and supplies from one part of the site to another. How on Earth could you afford to run tiny little railways like this? Well the people who operated them weren�t exactly well paid, for a start, and the extent of safety equipment consisted of a glass of whisky and a revolver to end it all quickly if the brakes failed. After a series of horrific accidents the government finally began to intervene and impose safety standards, which, along with passenger demands for greater speed and comfort, drove up costs to the extent that many of the smaller railways were no longer economically viable, and those that were not subsidised by the aristocracy began to disappear. By the outbreak of World War 1, most of the micro-lines had been swallowed up by bigger neighbours or had disappeared.

During the war, the running of the railways was taken over by the government, and it was discovered that actually running the railways as a single integrated service had quite a few advantages - and passengers certainly enjoyed the end of practices such as railway companies deliberately loving with the timetables so that their services wouldn't connect with the services of rival companies that they were trying to drive out of business. The great exodus of manpower from the railways, combined with increased wartime traffic levels, played hell with the track and trains and by 1918 the railways were in a dreadful state with a huge maintenance backlog. Some proposed nationalisation, but the investors who had put their entire fortunes into the railways rebelled at the possibility. So, as a compromise, it was agreed (or the government forced everyone, depending on your point of view) that the railways would be combined into four mega-companies: the Southern (SR), the Great Western (GWR), the London and North Eastern (LNER), and the London Midland and Scottish (LMS). Sale of stock in the new companies would finance the badly-needed restructuring costs, and it was clear that many lines were doomed unless substantial economies of scale could be achieved, so it was a deal that investors ultimately accepted.

Next, Part 2: The brief period when things actually worked until Hitler hosed it up. Thanks, Hitler.

# ? Apr 8, 2014 22:30

ChickenOfTomorrow: Nov 11, 2012; god damn it, you've got to be kind

Speaking of micro-lines, how about the London Necropolis Railway?

# ? Apr 8, 2014 22:56

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

ChickenOfTomorrow posted:

Speaking of micro-lines, how about the London Necropolis Railway?

I'm pretty sure I saw a bit about that on Great British Railway Journeys.
E: Yeah, Series (season) 2, episode 2.

Axeman Jim posted:

Next, Part 2: The brief period when things actually worked until Hitler hosed it up. Thanks, Hitler.

loving Hitler.

# ? Apr 8, 2014 23:03

evil_bunnY: Apr 2, 2003

Axeman Jim if you didn't exist someone (not british) would have to invent you.

# ? Apr 8, 2014 23:05

0toShifty: Aug 21, 2005; 0 to Stiffy?

What is this contraption? It's right behind the drivers cab. I'm in the end car of a SEPTA Hyundai Rotem train.

# ? Apr 8, 2014 23:13

Rude Dude With Tude: Apr 19, 2007; Your President approves this text.

Axeman Jim posted:

A potted history of British Rail � how not to run a railway.

As a rebuttal, an old effortpost on the history of British Rail and the clusterfuck we have now by noted trains chat poster and Network Rail signals engineer (I think?) Bozza, archived for posterity here: http://leavesontheline.tumblr.com/post/3487259985/why-privatisation-sucks

Bozza posted:

Why Privatisation Sucks.

We now spend more money subsidising the rail network than we ever spent on British Rail, yet ticket prices are going up, engineering works overrun to the tune of billions of pounds (looking at you West Coast) and our best trains were built in the 1970s, all while shareholders seem to be making lots and lots of money! This doesn�t seem right, how is this happening?

Short answer? Because privatisation sucks.

This article is aimed at explain just how and why privatisation sucks, the various arguments that can be had about how we can �improve� the situation from a series of perspectives (aka �free the market!� versus �nationalise the bastard!�), why the latter is correct, and how we can achieve it without having to sell Scotland to pay for it.

First, I will start with a critique of the current system, how it works and why it sucks.

The current system (aka this loving mess we are in)

This depends on what you define as the �current system�, or more clearly, if we are talking about the era of Railtrack, or the era of Network Rail. I could probably write an epic on the privatisation of British Rail (which started in the late 70s), including some cool bits you�ve probably never heard of, which were literally selling of the family silver (BR Research for instance was probably one of the most advanced rail R&D facilities on the planet). However, for the sake of clarity, we shall start with the era of Railtrack as this is where our problems arose; i.e. with the Railways Act 1993.

The first thing to understand is that, as much as it pains me to admit, John Major is not to blame for what follows. He favoured the system of splitting the behemoth back into the �Big 4� which I shall cover later, in the latter half of the free market solution. His grey underpantsness himeslf however, was convinced by that hotbed of knowledge of railway operations, maintenance and investment, The Adam Smith Institute, to go for the follow system of utter madness.

In theory, it was supposed to encourage competition, thus drive down the costs to the taxpayer, whilst government kept an eye on oversight only. However, what the Adam Smith Institute either failed to understand or willfully ignored is that the system they created is basically just a series of natural monopolies, interlinked together. Let�s look at a couple of examples of this:

Firstly, trains. They are not owned by the companies that run them, but by Rolling Stock Operating Companies (RoSCos), which are usually large capital investment funds. The idea was that having three (as current: Alpha Trains, Porterbrook and HSBC Rail) companies supplying trains would drive competition and investment in new rolling stock.

However, certain trains will only work in certain places, no good taking a third rail train to Scotland, as they only work south of the Thames. Diesel trains have massive maintenance and fuel costs compared to electrics, so no need to use them where there are overhead wires. No use taking a high-speed electric train on the West Coast Main Line, as they won�t be able to get up to 125 due to the cant unless they can tilt.

Train Operating Companies (TOCs) were locked into buying stock fit for their bit of track, and the RoSCos didn�t see fit to buy any new stock at all.

Now we come to TOCs themselves. When you get a train you get one from the nearest station to your house, to the station nearest to where you are going. Unless you live in Central London and are going to Clapham Junction, this gives you zero choice, so companies cannot compete against each other. TOCs are given a service agreement with the DfT and they are told to operate a certain part of a route, and this is locked in with a watertight contract, which stifles any sort of competition. Open access operators (like the recently failed Wrexham and Shropshire service) can run specialist routes which have local or national interest, but the contracts signed by the larger TOCs will lock them out of the profitable bits of shared infrastructure (such as Birmingham New St and Coventry in this case) meaning that they find themselves short of business and inevitably go bust. These contracts are written by a bidding process, so larger operators have a very large advantage over smaller ones (and can run essentially loss-leading services to maintain a monopoly), along with having the advantage of being able to make a large political donation to whomever happens to be in government at the time which in no way will influence the bidding process.

A good example of how the madness of this contracting strategy produces a badly integrated rail network based on money, rather than sense, is with the Heathrow Express service.

Heathrow Express are a premium TOC which offer a non-stop journey from London Paddington to Heathrow Airport for about �10 more than the slower service (which takes about 10 minutes longer but somehow manages to not appear on National Rail Enquiries unless you know how to spot it�).

As part of its service agreement, signed under the Railtrack era, it has rights to an unimpeded run from Heathrow to Paddington, which means that if their trains are held up or delayed, they are entitled to massive delay payments (the delay minutes attribution system is vastly complex and probably a topic for another time).

This means, you end up with a crazy system where a First Great Western High Speed Train (HST) running from Penzance to London will be running late (this means anything from a couple of minutes to HOURS) so misses its slot on the main lines into Paddington. What will then happen, no matter how delayed the HST is, it will be slowed down from 125mph, and likely brought to a stand at West Drayton (west London, just before trains from Heathrow rejoin the main lines) to allow an almost certainly empty Heathrow Express out of the tunnels in front of it! This is because its cheaper to incur (more) delay minutes on the HST than it is to check the Heathrow Express train by even a couple of minutes. This drives the signallers trying to regulate traffic and timetabling people who plan this sort of thing absolutely mad, as you can imagine.

These are just two examples of how privatisation is poo poo, but it is fair to say that everything from the Potters Bar crash to the �6bn over-budget West Coast Main Line upgrade can be traced back to this idiotic system.

Ever the company man, I would have to say that Network Rail taking charge and renationalising maintenance was a step forward in many aspects of how things are done, but compared to the expertise and sheer sense of BR we are in a right old lovely state.

Some aspects of the railway have got better under privatisation, let us be clear about that. However, the TOCs tend to spend lots of money on �look at the shiny shiny!� distractions, like better catering and less grotty bogs whilst not investing any money in infrastructure that might be useful (we�ll get to this when we look at BR in the late 80s, but needless to say, the reason the stations didn�t get painted very often was because they were stealing money from the budgets to do this to build things that were useful). This is somewhat of a bluff on their part, because when you see that refurbished and nicely painted train, you forget that it now only runs once every hour rather than once every half hour, all while your ticket is nearly twice as expensive� Unfortunately for them, the mask is slipping.

Next, let us look at the 'free market solution' (aka party like it�s 1846¹)

The freer the market, the freer the people, so say ~~utter bastards~~ certain aspects of society, so perhaps the problem with our current system is not that privatisation is poo poo (though it definitely, definitely is), it is because the system is too heavily regulated, and we need to allow the free market to sort out all these problems.

First thing to recognise about the railway is that it can never be a true, unregulated, free market system, and basically hasn�t been since the Regulation of Railways Act 1889. Avoiding the history lesson, the railway companies of the day refused to install certain technologies because it was �prohibitively expensive� and lots of people died, so the government stepped in to regulate and demanded that they take certain steps to prevent crashes.

Since then, regulation has only got tighter, and this website contains all the high level Railway Group Standards and the Rule Book, which you WILL comply with. As even a cursory glance reveals, you can see there are hundreds of items mandated here, from the shape of speed signs, to train braking regulations, to what to do if a train has doors out of service, all mandated and regulated by the Railway Safety and Standards Board. Don�t even think about not complying with them, or you�ll find yourself on a corporate manslaughter charge should anything go wrong.

There is a saying on the railway, which reflects almost the laissez-faire the regulations were developed, in that the Rule Book is written in blood. No rule has been mandated just because; there is some best practice and some �nice to haves� but for anything that has been explicitly mandated, you can be 99% sure that it�s there because not having it killed someone. There is a reason people in my profession (signal engineering) are often seen as conservative and reluctant to take chances in the engineering environment, because of this very fact. Your decisions can literally kill someone.

So, that�s blown your true free market out of the water straight away.

However, you could say: well, fair enough, but that wasn�t what I meant, how about we just free up the tendering and franchise arrangements so we get a nice, safe, internal marketplace instead?

As I�ve already said, the natural monopolies exist, and there is no way of defeating them. Ever. You could theoretically build a new line between A and B, but your capital outlay is going to vastly outstrip your return for at least the next 50 years, and that is only if you can provide marked improvement over the current route between A and B. Railways are inherently uncompetitive, which is why the free market doesn�t work, but we could perhaps explore a theoretical free market solution..

Firstly, for this to work, we will assume all RoSCoS have been dissolved and the trains given to the franchisees, removing one of the more protectionist aspects of the modern railway, eliminating one of the most exploitive of the monopolies that stifle the free market. However, the question is how far do you block natural monopolies from developing? More to the point, how do you create competition in an uncompetitive environment? Short answer is, you can�t.

Assuming we keep a Railtrack/Network Rail type body in charge of the track and other fixed assets, but come up with a far more free franchising system, whereby this problem of heavy regulation about who can stop where is removed by everything other than timetable space.

In a true free market franchise system, I would suspect that quite quickly, one or two TOCs would dominate out all competition (likely First Group and Stagecoach for passengers, with DB Schenker² running freight), and then use their new found clout to block all new up-starts. Running trains is expensive, and like we often see in other industries, the huge private companies will undercut the new operators by subsiding their own services by the profits of other parts. This is already apparent, as I said earlier, in today�s �free market�, and will only get worse with less regulation. At least the British government has to pretend to block this sort of thing, while the market has no such qualms.

You will, quite naturally, get to a system with two or three huge companies running the show, with zero competition, so there is no point in competition in the first place, because the companies cannot possibly compete against one another. Railways in the 21st century are not competitive with anything except cars and air travel.

One argument that often comes up is that the best free market system for the railway is to split the companies back into the �Big 4� of the pre-war era, and if you suggest this you are an idiot who knows nothing about railways.

First thing to recognise about the �Big 4� is that they were vertically integrated businesses. They dug their own ballast (stones that hold the track in place), they built their own signalling systems, they built their own trains, they ran their own hotels at stations, they ran their own parcel and freight marshalling yards within their regions, with their own delivery networks attached to them.

Cross regional traffic was always an interesting prospect because of this and there were complex arrangements either regarding changing drivers, engines or just detraining all the passengers and shuffling them off onto new ones because of it. It was a system so vastly different around the country that we still suffer from its throwbacks now, for instance, Western Region semaphore signals still go down when they�re off (meaning go), everyone else�s go up� It took a special meeting of the signalling engineers (under the banner of the Institute of Railway Signalling Engineers) from all over the country to agree on the practices of colour light signalling in 1923, or undoubtedly, it�d would have been green for stop and red for go in one of the regions just because.

In short, the Big 4 were bloated organisations which acted as little fiefdoms, which worked solely because people were locked into using them. Some of this was good, for instance the Great Western Railway (GWR) provided a cradle-to-grave care for its workers at the Swindon works which became almost the basis of the NHS, but not all railway companies are equal, and none looked after its workers like the GWR did (which is probably why it is still the most revered of the Big 4 today). The network was not built with any sort of cognisant plan which is why it struggles with the joined up 21st century world we live in today.

Unlike the French system, which was built with heavy government oversight and regulation, this is mostly a throwback to the worst of Victorian laissez-faire, which means that while our system gives us tiny little branches from Bumfuck-on-Thames to Arseend-upon-Nowhere, it also meant that our current system misses out towns who insulted the great railway pioneers or just didn�t like the idea of trains. Reading supposedly has a far less grand station than it deserves as a major junction because the Corporation of Reading annoyed Brunel.

Would this have been a sensible model to return too? In short, no. It�s a smaller world these days, and this system couldn�t have possibly lasted. National procurement and strategy are required to drive down equipment costs, and large banks of rules would be required so that neo-GWR doesn�t go designing lower quadrant in-cab signalling which is completely incompatible with the neo-LNW�s system. The RSSB already has such regulation and approval rules just to stop this from happening within the regions of Network Rail, so the level of national regulation would be stifling. It would require a large organisation just to watch over these issues independently, whilst still allowing the companies to be autonomous in their decisions.

This brings me to an interesting point, the above is almost an exact description of the BR of the 1940s-1970s era, which is when it earned its reputation as a rather bloated and inefficient organisation. I think trying to emulate such a system when a coherent national strategy for provision of travel is needed would be at best rather idiotic, and at worst, likely make the whole system collapse in on itself.

How about then, a fully nationalised system? (aka Bring Back British Rail!)

BR of the late 80s was a fantastically efficient, well run company which should have been left alone and had money literally thrown at it. There I said it, and pinned my colours to the mast.

Let me start by telling you why, before we critique how this can be reapplied in the 21st century, which is a far more interesting prospect.

The 1980s for BR brought a lot of challenges, not least one Maggie Thatcher. Though Thatcher wasn�t exactly wild for privatising the railway (she was a scientist after all, even if she was an awful sociopath), people could see the writing on the wall as parts of the non-operational business were systematically sold off, often to the nationalised rail operators of other countries! It also saw BR�s budget cut, and pressure increased to cover more of the cost of the network through ticket price rises.

The BR board panicked and in 1983, ordered a vast, sweeping restructuring which turned the bloated ex-Big 4 regions into the more streamlined �Sectors�. Express services were made into the famous �InterCity� brand, south east and London commuter routes became �Network SouthEast� and everywhere else became �Regional Railways�, non-passenger stuff went to �Railfreight� and �Parcels� (who are fairly self explanatory).

The sectors stripped out the bullshit of the Big 4, focusing on the business aspirations of three major subsets of passengers, and enhancing their services and requesting engineering developments where needed. Engineering functions (maintenance, enhancements, renewals) operated both integrated directly into their local sector, but also within their national engineering functions, thus the Head of Enhancement Engineering for Network SouthEast would report to both the Head of Network SouthEast and the Head of Enhancement Engineering, meaning that joined up thinking was applied throughout the nation. BR really cut a lot of fat during the 80s despite rather harsh financial pressures put on it by the government.

BR suffered from only one major problem during this time, and that was budget. BR received an annual budget, which had to be allocated between maintenance, enhancements, renewals and day-to-day operating costs, and not receiving any sort of long term investment.

It is hard to plan a large scale resignalling scheme (which will take at least a couple of years to design and probably at its most efficient a year to build, test and commission) when you only know where the money is coming from for the next 12 months. Long term vision was virtually impossible without ringfenced money (this was how the electrification of the East Coast Main Line was achieved, for instance, by direct government investment) so a short term �patch and make do� approach was taken rather than big investments which would have made a real difference.

When people argue about how efficient BR was, this is the era they use. If this model had been kept, but with five year budget allocations like NR receives through huge government consultation about what it needs and why, the British Rail network would look vastly different to how it does today. For one thing, the BR HQ Signal Engineering team wouldn�t have been sold a packet of magic beans like the dynamic business leaders who ran Railtrack were on the technology for the West Coast Mainline upgrades (this is perhaps a story for another day).

I, as you can probably tell, am all for the return of this model. However, unless we literally tell the TOCs et al to get hosed, this won�t happen. You would literally have to renationalise the entire asset again, probably at huge cost, which will then gently caress the Department for Transport�s budget for the next century.

So, getting to crux of this history lesson, I propose a new approach to nationalisation. Network Rail is a great place to start; it currently owns all the infrastructure and has built up in the last several years a lot of engineering expertise. This needs to be expanded on and grown back to the levels BR had, with contractors used to prop up big engineering jobs, and also return to their more natural environment of developing new technologies (lots of money in this if anyone is interested!) with central guidance.

The first thing the government needs to do to make this plan work is simple. Get back our loving trains! Either buy back or order new builds of rolling stock and systematically block the RoSCoS out of the market, because these are the biggest arseholes in the whole bloody set-up. This will require long-term planning and investment from government that must be free from meddling or it won�t work.

Secondly, create a new TOC under either a similar model to Network Rail, or perhaps as a mutual. The latter was actually suggested, by an alliance of the three big railway unions (ASLEF, the RMT and the TSSA, who are collectively perhaps worthy of their own article) as an option for running the currently nationalised East Coast franchise, which operates under this model currently, but with profits heading straight to the DfT. This was unsurprisingly blocked by the government for bullshit reasons so some other bus company which may or may not donate large quantities of money to the Labour or Tory Party can take it over instead.

In this fantasy world, this TOC will then inherit the franchises one by one as the current ones run out, and we will end up with a pseudo-nationalised TOC working for a pseudo-nationalised Infrastructure Controller (Network Rail). We could seriously leave it here quite frankly, as most of the bullshit between the TOCs and NR is legal wrangling, with no respect for overall vision for the future of the network, as it is short-term profits over long-term investments and gain.

In keeping with EU competition rules about open access, this will also allow small operators to bid for access from NR for specials which can�t be provided by the nationalised TOC. The best way to think of this is that the NHS provides you core healthcare, but if you want to get something fancy that is outside of its budget, you have to go private. This is how I envisage services to the continent beginning, but it could also work the other way, with the nationalised TOC being able to expand into the European markets through an era of interoperability that is beginning to emerge through the European Rail Authority.

So, there we have it, a grand summation of why privatisation is poo poo, why BR was more awesome than you thought and why we really, really need to sort things out.

I will add as a caveat that nationalisation won�t be the panacea to all the industries ills. The lack of investment in the UK rail infrastructure means that it will likely be 10 years of sustained payouts from the government before we see a marked improvement. You can�t solve a cut artery with a plaster and we should stop pretending that there are short term solutions to long term problems and get our loving national wallet out and pay for serious remedies.

1 � 1846 represents the zenith of �Railway Mania�, a 19th Century speculative bubble not unlike the dot-com industries of the 1990s. Some people got very rich, while most people lost considerable sums of money. The epitome of Capitalism at work.
2 � DB Schenker is a subsidiary of Deutsch Bahn, the German national railway company. They are technically a private company (through a quirk of the unification treaty between East and West Germany), but owned almost entirely by the German government.

e:corrected some spacing

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ? Apr 8, 2014 23:27

Disgruntled Bovine: Jul 5, 2010

That's the hand brake, it uses a ratchet mechanism attached to a chain to set the brakes when the train is stationary.

Fun Fact: in the bad old days prior to the invention of the airbrake, hand brakes were all that trains had. The brakemen would use walkways on the roofs of the cars to walk from car to car, setting the brakes as they went. Since this was done no matter what the weather, and was particularly necessary on mountain railroads where the weather tended to be the worst, it was one of the deadliest jobs of all time. Thankfully the airbrake was invented and the need for roof-top brakemen was eliminated.

Disgruntled Bovine fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Apr 8, 2014

# ? Apr 8, 2014 23:27

Axeman Jim: Nov 21, 2010; The Canadians replied that they would rather ride a moose.

Well, er, thanks for rebutting a post I haven't even made yet but cheers I guess.

# ? Apr 8, 2014 23:48

Rude Dude With Tude: Apr 19, 2007; Your President approves this text.

Axeman Jim posted:

Well, er, thanks for rebutting a post I haven't even made yet but cheers I guess.

Well you seem to be conflating railway madness of the victorian era with This Is Why Nationalised Railways Are poo poo so I thought better to get it in sooner than later.

e: snide response: it is the free market at work, efficiency

Rude Dude With Tude fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Apr 9, 2014

# ? Apr 9, 2014 00:04

Axeman Jim: Nov 21, 2010; The Canadians replied that they would rather ride a moose.

Why not get it in if/when I actually say that? (Hint: I won't)

Edit: you know, if people are going to attack posts that I haven't even made yet because they've decided that I'm going to express a certain opinion that I don't actually hold, maybe this "tell the story of British Rail in a way that is entertaining" thing is going to be more effort than it's worth.

Axeman Jim fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Apr 9, 2014

# ? Apr 9, 2014 00:10

evil_bunnY: Apr 2, 2003

Jim, don't be a nancy and write the drat post. It'll be funny, which is all we can really ask for.

Also Mahmoud is literally hitler

E: :-]

# ? Apr 9, 2014 00:19

Das Volk: Nov 19, 2002; by Cyrano4747

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posted:

Well you seem to be conflating railway madness of the victorian era with This Is Why Nationalised Railways Are poo poo so I thought better to get it in sooner than later.

e: snide response: it is the free market at work, efficiency

How about you go back to D&D and keep your autism to yourself? I think we all would prefer to read Axeman Jim's effortposts.

# ? Apr 9, 2014 00:30

SocketSeven: Dec 5, 2012

with your tumblrina poo poo Mahmoud. I want to read Axeman's writing, not see your lovely quoted posts and links. You are a terrible poster and you should be ashamed of yourself.

# ? Apr 9, 2014 00:36

kastein: Aug 31, 2011; Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.

Das Volk posted:

How about you go back to D&D and keep your autism to yourself? I think we all would prefer to read Axeman Jim's effortposts.

Agreed.

I'm here for the horrible trains, not the ridiculous arguments that will change no one's mind.

Good trains are cool too, but they don't give me that same strange curiosity as the... sorry... trainwreck ones do.

# ? Apr 9, 2014 00:36

sincx: Jul 13, 2012; furiously masturbating to anime titties

sincx fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Mar 23, 2021

# ? Apr 9, 2014 00:59

Axeman Jim: Nov 21, 2010; The Canadians replied that they would rather ride a moose.

Thanks all. To be clear: I don't mind people disagreeing with me. I just want to get to the end of my write-up first so that I can present my case as best I can. At least let me state my position and my reasoning for it before you decide that it's wrong. As I said in the post, it's complex and simply boiling it down to nationalised/privatised railways are great/terrible doesn't come close to explaining why Britain's railways have problems that other places don't and why privatising them didn't work.

Hopefully I can get part 2 written up tomorrow if work isn't too busy.

# ? Apr 9, 2014 01:13

Regarde Aduck: Oct 19, 2012; c l o u d k i t t e n; Grimey Drawer

Axeman Jim posted:

A potted history of British Rail � how not to run a railway.

I've pretty much gone through the major individual classes that failed on British Rail and its successors. One question that is asked again and again is "how did a nation so renowned for its engineering, one that built an empire and stood up to Hitler, manage to gently caress up so badly?" It's a fair question and the answer is very complex - but, I hope, interesting. So I'm going to go through the way I see it in the next series of posts over a week or so.

This is where things get a bit political. Maybe contrary to the general zeitgeist of SA, I do fundamentally believe in capitalism, and that free markets do a better job of most things than a centralised state-run economy. I do accept that some things are better off done outside the market. I don�t think capitalism is usually the problem, nor is it accurate to say that the state is the problem. The problem is when the state and big business collude with each other � state corporatism. Where capitalism has poo poo the bed, nine times out of ten it�s because the government has changed its role from regulator of the market to a biased participant in the market, and where politicians are lobbied into making laws that entrench companies from being competitors in a fair market to effectively being clients of the state, combining the state's tendency towards corruption and inefficiency with the private sector's tendency towards monopoly, profiteering and screwing over the little guy. My dad has a saying: �Whenever the government interferes in a market it has no business being in, someone somewhere makes a huge amount of money without doing any work.�

I like to think I have some decent evidence to back up my theory, but that�s all it is � my way of looking at the world based on my learning and my experiences. This isn�t D&D and I�m not here to start a fight. But every time I post a story about one of BR�s disasters, people ask how a country that once ruled a third of the planet couldn�t produce a train that didn�t fall apart halfway to its destination, and why things didn�t improve after the railways were privatised. This is why I think that is the case. I will try to evidence everything as best I can. Form your own conclusions; I�m not here to try to convince anyone.

Part 1 � when men were men and hats were tall

This is the dismal story of British Rail.

British Rail, as we have established, was a national joke, and stories of its gently caress-ups have sustained my posting for months. How did it get that way?

The British, as we know, were the first to build railways. Railway-building in the early days was very much the preserve of private enterprise. Men with tall hats and impressive moustaches laid rails, built trains and hauled people and goods to where they were needed, providing the lifeblood of the industrial revolution and building impressive Victorian estates with the proceeds.

Building track required an Act of Parliament, and thus were the early seeds of corruption sown. The MPs voting on railway-building schemes often had stakes in the companies behind them, or were flat-out bribed. That wouldn�t have been such a problem if the railway schemes were designed with either the good of the country or profitability in mind, but often they weren�t. Many lines were little more than �pump-and-dump� investment scams, or outright economic blackmail, such as this example:

This is the route of the first railway built from London Waterloo to Portsmouth by the London and South West railway (LSWR):

As you can see it�s not exactly a quick route, following the LSWR�s main line from London to Southampton as far as Bishopstoke, where it branches off, double-backing on itself to reach Portsmouth from the West. The alternative line, running via Brighton and operated by the London, Brighton and South Coast railway, was if anything even longer and more inconvenient. The reasons for the long diversions were geological � the formidable South Downs hills stretched from Winchester in the West to Hastings in the East with very few ways through. The trains of the time had a tough time with steep gradients and so it was usually best to go around an obstacle than go over it, even, as in this case, if it meant a detour of an hour or more.

A group of Portsmouth-based businessmen saw an opportunity to ~~massively enrich themselves~~ provide better transport to the people of Portsmouth, and ~~bribed~~ persuaded Parliament to let them build a �direct� line to Portsmouth in spite of the following facts:

1 � They had no experience of building or running railways
2 � They clearly had no intention of doing so
3 � There was no way on Earth that a direct line to Portsmouth was practical or economic with the engineering or railway technology of the time.

Undaunted, the consortium started building the line, which would feature some ridiculously heavy gradients and no stops at any economically significant places between Godalming (where it joined the LSWR�s existing line) and Havant (where it joined the LBSCR�s line from Brighton). They didn�t care. They guessed, correctly, that the LBSCR and the LSWR would tear each other�s throats out, not so much to own it as to deny it to the other. A vicious bidding war for the unbuilt (stupid) railway broke out between the two companies, finally ending in the LSWR�s favour in 1858. Even then the LBSCR refused the LSWR access to its tracks at Havant and for a year passengers had to travel the last few miles by a rail replacement stagecoach until the LSWR took legal action to force access.

^{We still have those, and they still stink of horseshit.}

The �Portsmouth Direct� line was a nightmare to run, but as they�d spent so much money on the drat thing the LSWR ran it anyway at huge losses, having to run short, double-headed trains to cope with the gradients. The speculators counted their cash, twirled their impressive Victorian moustaches, and headed off into the smog.

Every local mayor or aristocrat wanted a railway to their little Podunk town or estate. Some of the wealthier aristocratic landowners built their own railways as little more than toys, giving them something to go sightseeing with across their estates and impress women.

This chap, the Duke of Buckingham:

^"M'lady"

Built a whole railway network across his land, ostensibly as a way to deliver goods to his estate, but more in an attempt to get into the corsets of easily-impressed Victorian ladies (remember this is before people used badly modified hatchbacks to do the same thing).

^{�I'll see your Escort XR3i and raise you a MOTHERFUCKING TRAIN�}

Some large public schools and hospitals had not only their own railway station, but their own entire networks, carrying people and supplies from one part of the site to another. How on Earth could you afford to run tiny little railways like this? Well the people who operated them weren�t exactly well paid, for a start, and the extent of safety equipment consisted of a glass of whisky and a revolver to end it all quickly if the brakes failed. After a series of horrific accidents the government finally began to intervene and impose safety standards, which, along with passenger demands for greater speed and comfort, drove up costs to the extent that many of the smaller railways were no longer economically viable, and those that were not subsidised by the aristocracy began to disappear. By the outbreak of World War 1, most of the micro-lines had been swallowed up by bigger neighbours or had disappeared.

During the war, the running of the railways was taken over by the government, and it was discovered that actually running the railways as a single integrated service had quite a few advantages - and passengers certainly enjoyed the end of practices such as railway companies deliberately loving with the timetables so that their services wouldn't connect with the services of rival companies that they were trying to drive out of business. The great exodus of manpower from the railways, combined with increased wartime traffic levels, played hell with the track and trains and by 1918 the railways were in a dreadful state with a huge maintenance backlog. Some proposed nationalisation, but the investors who had put their entire fortunes into the railways rebelled at the possibility. So, as a compromise, it was agreed (or the government forced everyone, depending on your point of view) that the railways would be combined into four mega-companies: the Southern (SR), the Great Western (GWR), the London and North Eastern (LNER), and the London Midland and Scottish (LMS). Sale of stock in the new companies would finance the badly-needed restructuring costs, and it was clear that many lines were doomed unless substantial economies of scale could be achieved, so it was a deal that investors ultimately accepted.

Next, Part 2: The brief period when things actually worked until Hitler hosed it up. Thanks, Hitler.

I'm sorry but the whole premise of "free markets rule" can be countered by the very existence of modern day Britain. Britain is THE country to watch capitalism gently caress it up for everyone but the people at the top. Or is that capitalism working as normal? I guess it depends on your definition but almost everything privatized in the UK has gotten very much worse right from the start. Nothing got more "competitive", cheaper or faster.

The difference, which is obvious to me but apparently not to others, is that free market solutions are working for their shareholders primarily and providing a good service to the customer is only a means to an end. Every shortcut that can raise profits WILL be taken. After all this is expected of any well run company. Maximize profits, please shareholders. A state run service is primarily trying to improve the country in an effort to support growth as a result. It's primary reason to exist is to improve the life of citizens of the state. Why free markets are so aggressive to state run infrastructure I don't understand. It's supporting capitalism by supporting the easy movement of customers and workers. But some people just can't get that and think everything must be a business. And here we are, with a fragmented, dangerous railway that most people can't afford to travel 100 miles on.

# ? Apr 9, 2014 16:59

joat mon: Oct 15, 2009; I am the master of my lamp;
I am the captain of my tub.

If you don't mind, I'd like to hear what Axeman Jim has to say. Whatever it is , it will be:
1. Knowledgeable about trains
2. Entertaining regarding trains
3. Have a point of view about trains.

Seeing as this is the train thread in AI and not D&D or GBS could we please please stop pre-making GBS threads the thread with nationalization vs. privatization whargarbling?

# ? Apr 9, 2014 17:31

BrokenKnucklez: Apr 22, 2008; by zen death robot

Less politics and capitalism, go to D&D.

I wanna see how a country that also makes some brilliant machines, can also royally gently caress them up.

Also, the Castle Class locomotives that the GWR used are the best looking steam engines ever made, even over American steam.

# ? Apr 9, 2014 17:38

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

I don't even know how you could say that, when the A4 class exists.

# ? Apr 9, 2014 18:20

SybilVimes: Oct 29, 2011

BrokenKnucklez posted:

Also, the Castle Class locomotives that the GWR used are the best looking steam engines ever made, even over American steam.

Best looking ever, you say?

:shepicide:

# ? Apr 9, 2014 18:20

BrokenKnucklez: Apr 22, 2008; by zen death robot

No, this thing.

It looks magnificent. Simple, clean lines... If there is one things the Brits are remarkable decent at every once in a while, is making mechanical things look great. Now I said every once and a while, not all the time.

# ? Apr 9, 2014 18:49

SybilVimes: Oct 29, 2011

BrokenKnucklez posted:

No, this thing.

It looks magnificent. Simple, clean lines... If there is one things the Brits are remarkable decent at every once in a while, is making mechanical things look great. Now I said every once and a while, not all the time.

But that's a hall class, and the pic I posted is Manorbier Castle...

# ? Apr 9, 2014 19:17

Axeman Jim: Nov 21, 2010; The Canadians replied that they would rather ride a moose.

Part 2 � the brief period in which everything worked, until Hitler hosed it up. Thanks, Hitler.

With the newly formed �Big Four� flush with cash from stock sales and the 1920�s boom, the period from 1923-1939 saw unprecendented investment in the quality, rather than the reach, of the railways. Competition, with the exception of a few routes, was no longer between the railway companies but between the railways and the newly emergent road network. And for long-distance travel, the railways won by a mile. Which would you rather use to get from London to Glasgow � one of these:

^{Likely cause of death: severely vibrated spine and exposure to lower classes}

Or one of these:

^{Likely cause of death: being a character in an Agatha Christie novel}

For passenger travel the railways beat the roads on speed and luxury and were competitive on price. Whilst they lacked door-to-door convenience the extensive network of branch lines meant that few people were more than a 30 minute walk from a railway station. And that station probably had its own goods yard, with road transport only being competitive in the very final, to-the-door delivery stage of goods. A huge fleet of small tank engines operated �pick-up� freights moving goods from town to town. The Southern invested heavily in electrification, building a cheap, efficient commuter railway for London. Life for the railways was good.

Then Hitler bombed it all to poo poo

^{Made the trains run on time MY ARSE}

WWII had a devastating impact on the railways. On top of the loss of manpower to the armed services and over-use that had also affected them in WWI, this time around the rail network came under direct attack, with trains, track, factories and maintenance facilities targeted by the Luftwaffe. And this time there was no way for more shares to be issued to repair the damage. The only organisation with any money in Britain was the government, with its Marshall aid from the USA.

^{The train now arriving at Platform 1, Platform 2, Platform 3, the Cafe and the car park is likely to be delayed}

The Labour government of 1945 was elected in a landslide victory on a platform of establishing a welfare state and nationalising industry. The railways were the least of what was to end up in state hands � between 1945 and 1951 the government also bought up the coal industry, the electricity generating industry, the telephone system, the canal network, the lion�s share of the road haulage industry. the iron and steel industry, the gas supply industry and even Thomas Cook holidays. The government also owned airlines, car-builders and broadcasters that had a virtual monopoly in their industries due to the state-backed financial clout.

Some of these purchases were pragmatic, buying up strategic assets that had been bankrupted by war, and some were ideological � the way that the Soviet Union had beaten Nazi Germany by essentially out-manufacturing it impressed many in Britain and there was a genuine belief that state planning of the economy was the way forward. The railways, nationalised in 1948, probably fell more into the former category. They would be vital for Britain�s economic recovery but there was no private cash available to even so much repair the war damage, let alone improve or modernise them.

By the mid-1970s, successive governments of both left and right had managed to run all these industries into the ground, the railways included. I mention this because it�s important to understand that BR was not isolated in being a nationalised industry that fell apart in the mid 20th century, it was part of a generalised industrial decline with multiple causes, some of which stretched back decades.

Ironically, the railways in Britain would ultimately end up run on the corporatist model favoured by defeated Nazi Germany � state-directed but privately operated. More of that later.

It�s easy to forget that the so-called �Golden Age� of Britain�s railways lasted only 16 years between 1923 and 1939. That�s not long enough for any structural problems to become evident, and the legacy of the over-reach of the network and historic doubling-up of routes between rival companies was something that BR would have to deal with alongside the war damage, antiquated equipment and vastly more effective competition from the roads and air travel. And as we will found out, they dealt with them very, very badly.

Time for a brainstorming session. List the personality traits required to succeed as a politician. Chances are that your list looks something like this:

-Superficial charm
-Ability to know when to brown-nose and when to backstab, often both at the same time
-Ability to convince people you can deliver things that you don�t even understand
-Ability to talk a lot without saying anything
-Ability to tell everyone what they want to hear
-Borderline-sociopathic levels of ambition
-Ability to change your mind on almost anything without admitting to having done so
-Willingness to betray anyone so long as you get ahead
-Ability to win elections on 4-5 year cycles

Quick question: How many of those traits would you like in your boss?

Another quick question: How many of those traits would appear on a list of traits that make an effective manager of a large, complex industrial concern?

^{"I've managed a nanny AND a butler, I'm sure a multi-billion pound industry is the same general idea."}

This is the problem that occurs when you put politicians in charge of railways, or any large, complex organisation, and it is what chronically afflicted British Rail throughout its life. As a politician, your life revolves around the election cycle. Anything can happen in an election, so there is no point in planning more than five years ahead. Anything that looks like it will deliver something within 5 years but will actually cause disaster in 10 is a good policy, because you'll be out of office by then and sitting on the board of the organisation concerned. This was the precise opposite of what the railways needed, but that was what they got anyway. From nationalisation in 1948 to privatisation in 1993 and beyond, successive governments made multiple, fundamental changes in what Britain's state-owned railways were supposed to be for and how they were supposed to work. Most of BR's huge failures, and the failures that followed BR, stem from Britain's politicians pathological inability to decide what the railways for for or to leave them alone to actually become that thing before it was time for them to become something else. We'll look at the first massive cock-up in the next post:

Next - Part 3: The Modernisation Plan: Not modern, and not much of a plan, either.

Axeman Jim fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Apr 9, 2014

# ? Apr 9, 2014 19:32

BrokenKnucklez: Apr 22, 2008; by zen death robot

SybilVimes posted:

But that's a hall class, and the pic I posted is Manorbier Castle...

Whoops, I just typed in Castle class and thats what popped up. Ok then Hall locos are the best looking.

# ? Apr 9, 2014 19:46

Bozza: Mar 5, 2004; "I'm a really useful engine!"

Axeman Joe - I'd come in here ready to tear you a new one about BR (linked from my D&D comrades) but so far your analysis is fairly ok but you are focusing a lot on the overarching vision and management level issues which while important are actually not what BR was about especially if you are comparing to today's railway.

BR in a lot of ways was way ahead of everybody else, especially in regards to interlocking and signalling development (even though this doesn't actually become apparent until well after it had died in the 90s).

I also disagree with your opinion on a lot of BRs trains, which are starkly utilitarian in many ways but worked. The experimental trains not so much but they were good in their own ways, APT might have had a silly gas turbine engine but its tilting and braking systems were 20 years ahead of their time.

BR of the late 80s/early 90s was the best the railway in the UK has ever been run with the least money. I'm sorry if you don't agree, but this is absolutely true, take it from someone in the industry.

I won't have it out with you in here cos this is AI not D&D, but come post in the trainchat thread. I won't poo poo your thread up any more!

# ? Apr 9, 2014 21:24

Cygni: Nov 12, 2005; raring to post

Gas/ban D&D, excited for part 3 Axeman.

# ? Apr 9, 2014 21:43

Pigsfeet on Rye: Oct 22, 2008; I'm meat on the hoof

Cygni posted:

Gas/ban D&D, excited for part 3 Axeman.

Seconding this. :allears:

# ? Apr 9, 2014 22:10

PhotoKirk: Jul 2, 2007; insert witty text here

SybilVimes posted:

Best looking ever, you say?

Yeesh. That's pretty unfortunate looking.

I've been reading Axeman Jim's posts in Clarkson's voice, now I can hear all three Top Gear hosts snickering and making jokes about that locomotive.

# ? Apr 9, 2014 22:12

sincx: Jul 13, 2012; furiously masturbating to anime titties

sincx fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Mar 23, 2021

# ? Apr 9, 2014 22:19

SybilVimes: Oct 29, 2011

PhotoKirk posted:

Yeesh. That's pretty unfortunate looking.

I've been reading Axeman Jim's posts in Clarkson's voice, now I can hear all three Top Gear hosts snickering and making jokes about that locomotive.

In fairness, Collett only did it because they pretty much said 'everyone else is doing streamlining, so we must' and he felt that the raw power of the Castle & King classes were sufficient (he was right), so basically did the botch jobs on streamlining Manorbier Castle and King Henry VII as a kind of 'piss off and leave me alone' move.

In the end, streamlining proved to be a waste of time really, the extra power gained didn't offset the weight of the streamlining, nor the maintenance pain in the rear end, so everyone else (except the LNER) took their streamlining off.

Everyone drools over the A4s, but in my opinion, the P2s were the prettier streamlining, in both forms:

form1:

Cock O' The North as built with evolved A4/B17 style streamlining.

form2:

Cock O' The North in it's revised semi-streamlined form

Also as a bonus, there is the pragmatic streamlining of the W1 'hush hush' high pressure locomotive:

And because it's bad to leave the castles looking like Manorbier Castle, here's how they normally looked:

# ? Apr 9, 2014 23:09

9axle: Sep 6, 2009

0toShifty posted:

What is this contraption? It's right behind the drivers cab. I'm in the end car of a SEPTA Hyundai Rotem train.

It's a mechanical handbrake lever.

# ? Apr 10, 2014 01:08

StandardVC10: Feb 6, 2007; This avatar now 50% more dark mode compliant

SybilVimes posted:

In fairness, Collett only did it because they pretty much said 'everyone else is doing streamlining, so we must' and he felt that the raw power of the Castle & King classes were sufficient (he was right), so basically did the botch jobs on streamlining Manorbier Castle and King Henry VII as a kind of 'piss off and leave me alone' move.

In the end, streamlining proved to be a waste of time really, the extra power gained didn't offset the weight of the streamlining, nor the maintenance pain in the rear end, so everyone else (except the LNER) took their streamlining off.

Everyone drools over the A4s, but in my opinion, the P2s were the prettier streamlining, in both forms:

form1:

Cock O' The North as built with evolved A4/B17 style streamlining.

form2:

Cock O' The North in it's revised semi-streamlined form

I'm sorry but the name of this locomotive has really brought out my inner 12-year-old. :laugh:

That second semi-streamlined version looks really boss though.

# ? Apr 10, 2014 03:29

IOwnCalculus: Apr 2, 2003

I realize that keeping politics completely out of this is impossible since so many rail / train projects are done as public works but... for gently caress's sake this isn't D&D. If you want to argue the merits of nationalization versus MAH FREE MARKET then head on over there and start a thread to beat that horse to death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2x-p9PV7hM

# ? Apr 10, 2014 04:07

Cocoa Crispies: Jul 20, 2001; Vehicular Manslaughter!; Pillbug

Axeman Jim posted:

^{The train now arriving at Platform 1, Platform 2, Platform 3, the Cafe and the car park is likely to be delayed}

Is that St. Pancras? That hotel is fuckin' decent these days.

# ? Apr 10, 2014 04:29

Das Volk: Nov 19, 2002; by Cyrano4747

Cocoa Crispies posted:

Is that St. Pancras? That hotel is fuckin' decent these days.

I couldn't stop myself from calling it St. Pancreas. King's Cross manages to be a charming ~~mashup~~blend of Brunel and Bauhaus, probably my favorite station. As an American who experienced British rail in all its horrifying glory I find these accounts both deeply fascinating and honest.

My favorite journey was Reading, which could either take 45 minutes from Fulham Broadway, or 3 hours. Always depended on things like leaves on the track, or mice in the belfry, or whatever ridiculous excuse they came up with at the moment. I always assumed delays were the result of hung over union employees myself.

# ? Apr 10, 2014 05:29

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# ? May 11, 2024 11:08

Cerv: Sep 14, 2004; This is a silly post with little news value.

sincx posted:

I am amazed that, in 2014, there are still passenger trains in the UK without automatic doors. The fact that the manual doors are opened and closed by passengers themselves is astounding. No agency in the United States would trust riders enough to shut the doors when they are supposed to be shut.

They are quite annoying because once you've lowered the window to reach the handle on the outside, people forget to put the window back up. Which leads to quite a breeze through the carriage.

# ? Apr 10, 2014 08:13

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Automotive Insanity > Locomotive Insanity: Murder on the BNSF Mixed Consist doesnt have the same ring to it

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