|
Endjinneer posted:Bozza's a signalling engineer. Politely, they're like the witch doctors in the railway engineering tribe. They traffic in a world that touches only lightly on our own, concerning themselves with the rites of flank protection and the proper ways to appease the sighting committee. Something as mundane as a collapsing wall wouldn't even register. 😂 Putting this on my CV
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2017 15:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 18:38 |
|
|
kingturnip posted:I remember in the Network Rail documentary series a few years back they showed a section of track that had flooded after heavy rain and an engineer was stood trackside, pointing out the drainage the landowners had installed to take all the water away from their land, straight onto the track. my favourite part from that documentary (if it's the same one) was some ginger twat at King's Cross absolutely ripping into Network Rail for the bank holiday delays and closures and that they should be working at night that weekend, which then cut to a scene of engineers working on the track at night
|
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2017 18:56
|
|
|
Metrication posted:The EU, which the tories blamed for forcing them to privatise the railways 20 years ago, has now decided to force all member states to privatise their railways via a 'gradual liberalisation'. They cite the UK's rail privatisation, which it supposedly forced the UK to do, as a great success. This post was 2015, did anyone in the EU actually follow our brilliant privatisation to get a similar world class train service?
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2017 15:14
|
|
|
ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:my favourite part from that documentary (if it's the same one) was some ginger twat at King's Cross absolutely ripping into Network Rail for the bank holiday delays and closures and that they should be working at night that weekend, which then cut to a scene of engineers working on the track at night That scene has been stuck in my mind for years. Sometimes I'll be making a cup of tea or having a shower and suddenly remember it and get angry. I hope the journalist pointed out his error off-camera. "LAZY UNION BAARSTARDS" he said. pinkacidbootson fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Apr 3, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2017 15:36
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/go2lisa/status/849311750163976194
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2017 19:13
|
|
|
Wait, what? It can be cheaper not to use a Railcard? How? The pricing of railway tickets remains utterly bewildering to me. There must be someone out there who understands it but it's not me.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2017 19:26
|
|
|
forkboy84 posted:Wait, what? It can be cheaper not to use a Railcard? How? I want to say that there's a glitch with the ticket machine and it's simply got the prices round the wrong way, but this is the UK in the 21st Century so anything's plausible
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2017 21:17
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2017 21:34
|
|
|
There are special ticket types which you can't get a railcard discount on, such as the (now defunct) Northern Rail Evening Return, which was 50% off.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2017 23:14
|
|
|
josh04 posted:There are special ticket types which you can't get a railcard discount on, such as the (now defunct) Northern Rail Evening Return, which was 50% off.
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2017 00:41
|
|
|
forkboy84 posted:Wait, what? It can be cheaper not to use a Railcard? How? There's a (presumably £13) minimum fare on Railcard fares before 10am on weekdays, meaning that it can be cheaper to get a normal ticket. Except, of course, in June, July and August. Doesn't excuse the laziness of whoever designed that machine's interface though.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2017 19:48
|
|
|
forkboy84 posted:Wait, what? It can be cheaper not to use a Railcard? How? Look all you need to do is follow the formula:  Simple!
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2017 20:04
|
|
|
16-25 railcards are subject to a minimum fare at peak times, people always moan about this despite it being clearly outlined in the terms and conditions they agreed to when getting said railcard.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2017 22:01
|
|
|
yes it's perfectly clear, how could you not knowRailcard Terms & Conditions Conditions of issue and use of the Network Railcard and reduced priced tickets ('discounted tickets') bought with a Network Railcard ATOC Limited enters into the contract for the issue and use of the Network Railcard on behalf of the Train Companies. Reference to a ’Train Company’, or the ’Train Companies’ means those Train Companies which, pursuant to a franchise agreement, operate Passenger Rail Services within the area identified on the Network Railcard area map. You must sign the Railcard before use to show acceptance of all the conditions listed below. The Railcard and tickets bought with it are not transferable and must not be given, loaned or resold to anyone else. Only the named cardholder can use the Railcard. You must be aged 16 years old or over to purchase a Railcard. Tickets for your journey should be purchased before boarding the train and when buying tickets you must show the Railcard. You must carry the Network Railcard with you on your journey and when asked by rail staff, you must show a valid ticket and valid Railcard. If you fail to do so, you and, where applicable, each member of your group will be required to pay the full price Standard Single fare for your journey as if no ticket was purchased before starting your journey and in some cases a Penalty Fare. This does not apply if there was no ticket office at the station at which you began your journey or if the ticket office was closed and there was no ticket machine from which you could buy a discounted ticket. You will be asked to pay the difference between the price of your discounted ticket and the full price Standard fare (or the Penalty Fare if travelling in the Penalty Fares area) if: a) you travel beyond the station for which your ticket is issued; b) you travel to a destination beyond the area shown on the Network Railcard map, without having first obtained the correct ticket for your journey; c) you travel on a route for which a higher fare applies or at a time when reduced fares do not apply. Network Railcard discounts only apply for travel after 10.00hrs Monday to Friday (excluding Public Holidays) and any time on weekends. See time restrictions page for more details. A £13 minimum fare applies to all journeys Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays. A £1 minimum fare applies to child fares at all times. Travelcard minimum fares also apply - see minimum fares page for details. Please note, minimum fares are subject to change during the validity of your Railcard. The maximum group size is up to four adults (aged 16 years and over) and four children (aged 5 - 15 years). Additional accompanying passengers for whom discounted tickets are purchased must travel with the Railcard holder throughout the journey. Discounted tickets entitle you to travel only in Standard accommodation on the services of the participating Train Companies The Railcard and all tickets issued to the holder are issued subject to the National Rail Conditions of Travel and the conditions listed on this website (and, where appropriate, to the Conditions of Carriage of Transport for London, Red Funnel Ferries and Wightlink). Copies of the National Rail Conditions of Travel are available online at https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/nrcot. The Railcard will not be valid if it is damaged. The Train Companies do not undertake to issue refunds on unused/unwanted Railcards, or to extend their validity. In the event of loss or damage an application for the replacement of a Railcard may be made: where the original Railcard was purchased at a rail station this may only be requested at a staffed station ticket office in the Network Railcard area (the completed ’Receipt’ voucher from the original application form must be produced); where the Railcard was purchased online, customers may only request a replacement online. Only one replacement may be issued in a 12 month period for lost or damaged Railcards and a £10 administration fee is payable. No fee will be charged for the replacement of a stolen Railcard provided you have a crime reference number/documentation issued by the Police. You will be requested to show some form of identification if obtaining a replacement from a station. The Railcard does not become your property and if requested must be handed in to a representative of any Train Company. The right is reserved to revise these conditions and availability of the tickets detailed on the Network Railcard website. The Train Companies will endeavour to give three months’ notice of any changes before they are due to come into effect. Fraudulent use of Railcards and Railcard discounted tickets may lead to a criminal prosecution. Terms and conditions are valid up to and including 20 May 2017. Train Companies providing Network Railcard discounts: c2c Chiltern Railways † CrossCountry † East Midland Trains Gatwick Express Great Northern Great Western Railway †† Greater Anglia † Heathrow Connect Heathrow Express London Midland † London Overground Southeastern Southern South West Trains (including Island Line) Stansted Express TfL Rail Thameslink Virgin Trains Virgin Trains East Coast † † Some restrictions apply on services provided by these train companies. †† Some restrictions apply on services provided by Great Western Railway. Network Railcard discounts are not available on tickets routed Evesham/Stroud.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2017 23:26
|
|
|
But never mind the legalese, most of it is basically irrelevant. That one, simple restriction which could very easily lead to you travelling on an invalid ticket is very clearly signalled in the literature, so you've no excuse really. Oh.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2017 23:32
|
|
|
Why they state a charge of thirteen quid rather than just spitting out the non-discount price i don't know. Punishment for not looking at the screen closely enough when ordering your usual ticket on autopilot slightly earlier than normal? I've noticed this as well on the scotrail ticket machines.
Angepain fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Apr 7, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2017 00:38
|
|
|
Has the railcard ever applied at peak times in the past?
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2017 00:48
|
|
|
pinkacidbootson posted:Has the railcard ever applied at peak times in the past? It has always applied during both morning and evening peak - the only restriction is the minimum fare thing before 10.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2017 08:57
|
|
|
Angepain posted:Why they state a charge of thirteen quid rather than just spitting out the non-discount price i don't know. Punishment for not looking at the screen closely enough when ordering your usual ticket on autopilot slightly earlier than normal? I've noticed this as well on the scotrail ticket machines. Soon you'll be suggesting that ticket machines should be able to sell more than one railcard journey at a time
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2017 18:23
|
|
|
Endjinneer posted:Bozza's a signalling engineer. Politely, they're like the witch doctors in the railway engineering tribe. They traffic in a world that touches only lightly on our own, concerning themselves with the rites of flank protection and the proper ways to appease the sighting committee. Something as mundane as a collapsing wall wouldn't even register. I sadly don't read this thread enough. This is perfection. How is the UK faring right now with larger scale signalling projects? I know Thameslink is still underway, has Reading finished now? Is there any other large scale resignalling of note?
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 13:29
|
|
|
Not sure about signalling projects but I know some electrification has been delayed or kicked into the long grass. The biggest project in my area (North West) right now is probably the Ordsall Chord, which is a viaduct junction that will connect all three Manchester stations, hopefully spreading the unit traffic between the three (as it stands, when you leave Salford Crescent you can either go to Oxford Road/Piccadilly or Victoria). The big project we have had pushed at us on the TOC side recently is the On Time Railway stuff, which Bozza may be able to explain as viable but to me seems very difficult to pull off. Essentially trains are currently assessed as 'on time' if they depart their origin station within five minutes of the advertised time and arrive at their terminating station within five minutes of the advertised time. The argument is that during the journey the train could be running later than that at points, affecting passengers onward journeys yet be wrongly classed as 'on time' by the stats. The new system wants to assess every train's running by giving it a 60 second margin at every station it calls at. For a Virgin intercity service that's got green signals and priority all the way from Glasgow to London that sounds viable, when you're a class two passenger train running trips on the branch lines is when things get tricky, especially when I've regularly seen such services delayed to allow empty freight trains through first. I think the intent is noble but the reality will be disastrous figures regarding the performance of trains, even if they're running no worse than they currently do.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2017 08:31
|
|
|
Bacon Terrorist posted:I think the intent is noble but the reality will be disastrous figures regarding the performance of trains, even if they're running no worse than they currently do.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2017 08:40
|
|
|
TACD posted:I don't see the problem with this. It sounds like the current methodology is erroneously reporting higher-than-actual performance and this would represent something closer to what passengers actually experience. This is true but currently TOCs pad horrendous timetabling Diagrams so a train can leave a penultimate station late and terminate on time, under the new system it's just late across the board despite no actual changes to running.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2017 20:01
|
|
|
A load of electrification has been kicked into the next control period (post 2018) because the one in the Western region is going horrendously over budget. We're delivering one scheme for the price of three. I think that region is getting resignalled too because it makes sense to while you're stringing up overhead wires - old signalling systems aren't immune and you more or less have to replace them. As far as padding timetables goes, it was reported in Private Eye that the London to Newcastle train is timetabled to take 20% longer running from Durham to Newcastle than the London to Edinburgh train is over the same section. The only reason for this is to allow it to make time up on the last leg and not be recorded as late. The change is going to align the rail definition of late with the passenger definition of late which I think is a good thing, though inevitably there'll be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about it.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2017 21:47
|
|
|
I may be misunderstanding the change but padding the last leg will not be a fudge when the new 'On Time' system comes in, as that is a current fudge we use.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2017 07:51
|
|
|
Endjinneer posted:A load of electrification has been kicked into the next control period (post 2018) because the one in the Western region is going horrendously over budget. We're delivering one scheme for the price of three. Western E10k signalling is notoriously budget (though very robust and highly templated) so you can have direct feed lengths from the relay rooms to signals of nearly a mile, auto signals strung along the cess for miles too and a lot of single cut circuits which are vunerable to OLE false feeds. In addition to that, only Swindon B was built with OLE in mind in the 90s so none of the structures are gauged for wires going under them. From London out, it meant replacing Slough, Reading, Swindon and Bristol signal boxes (90 miles of railway, a lot of it 4 track, when you exclude Swindon B and Slough New) plus recontrol of Swindon B and Slough New into Thames Valley Signalling Centre at Didcot. Throw into the mix the remodelling at Reading and Bristol, Crossrail and basically designing a new type of OLE system and the overrunning project makes a lot of sense. It was pushed through with unrealistic programme dates to be honest.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2017 09:32
|
|
|
Gentlemen, gentlemen. When discussing the western region of the U.K railway, you should always remember to prefix it with "Great" And on another note. How extensive is the OLE rollout in the Great a Western? Is it Paddington to Bristol mains and reliefs only or are they including major branches? Any plans to electrify Bristol to Plymouth as well for instance? Pinball Jizzard fucked around with this message at 22:55 on May 9, 2017 |
|
#
?
May 9, 2017 22:50
|
|
|
Tube Challenge alumnus Geoff Marshall has started his project to visit all the stations in Britain called… All the Stations  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoA1OTQJoxQ
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2017 18:56
|
|
|
Endjinneer posted:As far as padding timetables goes, it was reported in Private Eye that the London to Newcastle train is timetabled to take 20% longer running from Durham to Newcastle than the London to Edinburgh train is over the same section. The only reason for this is to allow it to make time up on the last leg and not be recorded as late. I'm not trying to suggest that timetable padding doesn't happen, but there's plenty of other reasons you can get different timetabled durations between stations. That journey is around 15 minutes - it's not unreasonable at all to imagine that time spent waiting at junctions might cost 3 extra minutes.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2017 19:23
|
|
|
It's pretty common to spend a couple of minutes waiting to get across the Tyne (I think there's only six tracks between the two bridges so it's a bit of a bottleneck) and it's not really a surprise that trains with an onward journey would take priority over those terminating.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 07:33
|
|
|
Pinball Jizzard posted:Gentlemen, gentlemen. When discussing the western region of the U.K railway, you should always remember to prefix it with "Great" When I worked for Western route in NR we were explicitly told not to refer to it as Great Western. So we used to allude to it instead 😂 gently caress ya rules. Branches were planned originally when I was working on Crossrail, so Windsor and Bourne End/Marlow but not sure if it was just pie in the sky. Imagine that's been shelved. Bristol South resignalling is electrification ready I believe but until Exeter and Plymouth PSBs are resignalled with something other than relays it's a non-starter. Think the plan is currently electric to Temple Meads, Swansea and the south Wales valleys. Everyone else gets bimode. Not even sure how much of the Westbury diversion is going to be wired...
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 16:47
|
|
|
Party Boat posted:It's pretty common to spend a couple of minutes waiting to get across the Tyne (I think there's only six tracks between the two bridges so it's a bit of a bottleneck) and it's not really a surprise that trains with an onward journey would take priority over those terminating. Having pretty severe vertigo I do not appreciate being parked on the outside line in the middle of the bridge for five minutes.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 18:41
|
|
|
what's the deal with the goblin electrification ? they installed the wrong gantries apparently?
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 19:26
|
|
|
Bozza posted:When I worked for Western route in NR we were explicitly told not to refer to it as Great Western. So we used to allude to it instead 😂 I sadly don't think there's enough benefit to resignalling Exeter beyond life expiry issues, Plymouth on the other hand needed it 15 years ago, I can't remember specifics but I remember the approaches were pretty testy, and the TDM system failed on a weekly basis (from my very old memories of the place). Cardiff and Swansea were electrification ready when those jobs were done weren't they? I know Cardiff would have been about 10 years ago when it was resignalled.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 04:04
|
|
|
Would electrification of those branches be worth it, they're not particularly long after all
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 20:49
|
|
|
ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:Would electrification of those branches be worth it, they're not particularly long after all Electrifying branches is necessary to make full use of electrification by avoiding having diesels running under the wires to get to them, as well as meaning you get to totally eliminate diesel from the fleet for that area. I guess the economics of this changes when bi-mode trains are a thing but still, you probably want as few of these as possible - they're really for unlocking efficient through-service capacity to longer stretches of non-electrified track.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2017 00:53
|
|
|
Why do so many train stations not have enough ticket machines? Victoria is awful. And why are the machines so bad?
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 09:29
|
|
|
pointsofdata posted:Why do so many train stations not have enough ticket machines? Victoria is awful. And why are the machines so bad? Burnham station in Slough has one machine and one person staffing the office, which is great at non-rush hour but I've seen the queue for tickets be about 20 or 30 people deep on a Monday morning
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 19:29
|
|
|
Reviving the thread to throw out this article from a New Yorker raving about how great the trains are in London. I'm not sure if it's more the equivalent of tourists talking about how great public transport is in Japan or if he really does have a point though.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2017 12:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 18:38 |
|
|
It does seem like London transport gets significantly more investment than New York. However, this is arguably to the detriment of transport outside of London which gets significantly less investment per head of population, especially the North.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2017 10:55
|
|