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Bozza posted:As it is, I've just spent four years redesigning the Maidenhead Station signalling (due for approval for construction next week!) for gently caress all reason other than "er, can't quite afford that last 10 miles of OLE". Does the result cost more or less than the missing OHLE? I'd be unsurprised if it's more... kingturnip posted:I dunno, a combination of there only being a train every 30 minutes and the loving Stansted Express being a priority service means my station is pretty low on the priority list. I'm lucky enough to live at one of the larger stations along there, and can often hop on a Stansted Express for a portion of my journey. Unfortunately, it's countered by the fact that I need to get down to Silvertown, which means I need to go to Stratford (or fork out an additional grand-ish a year to go through zone 1, which I definitely can't afford). And Stratford trains are less frequent, and are almost entirely slow services. Brovine fucked around with this message at 17:40 on May 16, 2013 |
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May 16, 2013 17:34
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Jonnty posted:In other news, there's been a "sequel" of sorts made to brilliant BBC documentary The Tube: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01sjtzw/The_Tube_An_Underground_History/ Just finished watching that myself; it wasn't bad.
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May 17, 2013 22:09
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Bozza/others: Any idea what particular work they've been doing on the West Anglia the last few weekends? Cheshunt-Tottenham-Stratford/Liverpool Street seems to be closed most weekends at the moment. Just maintenance, or something else?
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May 18, 2013 19:43
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Bozza posted:Stratford - Liverpool St is in the Crossrail area so it might be to do with that. It's off district for me so can't give you a proper answer, sorry. No worries, thought it was worth a shot!
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May 21, 2013 23:38
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Much fun on the way home today. Points failure on the north side of Stratford, so nothing could leave northbound from platform 11, which on the plus side meant I didn't miss an earlier train because it was delayed a little. Then the train out of Tottenham had a hell of a lot of smoke start coming out of the heating system, which appeared to be going full blast as well, so that was failed at Harlow. And yet I still got home earlier than if I'd been on the train I expected out of Stratford. Oh well, not everything ends badly!
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May 31, 2013 20:01
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Bozza posted:I was in charge of the scheme design for the project, so can't pretend to be an expert in what is actually being delivered on site, but given the general location, they are probably out with the teams which are installing the new cable troughing route alongside the railway. Trough route is the grey concrete box stuff that houses all the signalling comms and power cables which you can see alongside the track at most locations. Join the ranks of the portacabin dwellers! Which reminds me: I noticed a rather huge portacabin block going up in the Tottenham Hale S&T facility over the last few weeks. It looked to be as big as everything else there put together. On the subject of Crossrail, there seem to be a lot of busy people working on the old Connaught tunnel the last few weeks. I understand a chunk of the dock above the tunnel has been drained, as far as I can see from the bridge. The gangs up behind the Excel centre seem to be making plenty of noise as well, last few times I was round that way. As I recall there isn't going to be a particularly convenient station near LCY on Crossrail, unfortunately...
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Jun 18, 2013 22:35
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I'm curious how the partial handover of local West Anglia services to TFL is going to end up. As I understand it, the current plan is to hand the entire Seven Sisters route plus the Chingford route over to TFL. How's that going to work out for engineering work on the Tottenham Hale route?
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Jun 30, 2013 20:10
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kingturnip posted:I'm intrigued by this as well. The Tottenham Hale branch is part of one of the Crossrail 2 options, so there could be major work on that line. And even if that option isn't chosen, Enfield Council have put in a request for the line to be upgraded, which would mean major work on the line. The suggestion I'd heard on upgrades was four-tracking from the Stratford junction up to at least Brimsdown, as virtually all the trackbed and bridges are still intact from pre-electrification. The idea seemed to be increasing local all-stations services along there, sending them down to Stratford via Lea Bridge. No idea if that was still the case. Getting the slower trains out the way of semi-fasts from Stortford and points north sounds like a good idea to me.
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Jul 1, 2013 10:24
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kingturnip posted:Given how much stuff is right next to the railway most of the way, the easiest (cheapest?) option would be to expand Brimsdown or Ponders End stations to 4 tracks. Those stations aren't far off halfway between Broxbourne (which already has 4 tracks) and Tottenham Hale, where every train stops anyway. So suburban services could stop and wait there while a fast train goes through. Everything from Brimsdown to Coppermill Junction (south of Tottenham Hale) has plenty of space on the eastern side for another pair of tracks. In places you can see where the old bridges are still in place. There's even a couple short sections of ancient track left in the undergrowth. If you look at Tottenham Hale's platform 1, you can see it used to be double sided as well. And if you're going to just quad one station, why not make it Tottenham Hale for improved interchange, rather than somewhere smaller? You've already got Broxbourne and Harlow Town further north for the same purpose.
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Jul 2, 2013 21:18
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All the rail companies owned hotels and similar at their major stations. Most if not all also owned ferries. I've seen photos of railway-company-liveried barges, and of course they owned delivery carts and lorries. The LMS (and possibly others) even had its own airline for a while.
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Jul 16, 2013 21:43
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thehustler posted:Manchester Piccadilly got lit the gently caress up this morning. Lightning also killed the signals between Bishops Stortford and Harlow on Tuesday. Service was back to only one train every half hour, stopping most places - instead of the usual eight or ten or something. Luckily enough, the one that was still running was the one I had intended to catch anyway! It's not only trains that don't like lightning - planes, too. The BBC decided to go with a completely unnewsworthy story about a Ryanair flight that got hit with no significant damage, but there's always the odd lightning strike here and there, and some of them do end up causing visible damage. Still perfectly safe in most cases, though.
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Jul 25, 2013 16:33
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Jonnty posted:Incidentally, a run-down of the facts as I'm aware of them - they initially suggest driver error caused by poorly designed infrastructure. Driver has now been arrested: BBC News Hopefully any investigation will be thorough enough to address the design issues, rather than just stopping at blaming the driver.
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Jul 26, 2013 16:49
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Anyone know the nature of the overhead wire problems between Broxbourne and Cheshunt today? The line was closed for most of nine hours with followon cancellations even this late in the day.
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Aug 2, 2013 19:59
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There's... seven? eight? Something like that, between Stortford and Tottenham Hale which I get the satisfaction from every day. Not counting all the occupation crossings. Screw you, cars.
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Aug 4, 2013 17:53
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kingturnip posted:There are seven between Broxbourne and Tottenham Hale alone, and that stretch gets 9 trains each way per hour off-peak. I think my dad's record is 13 minutes waiting to cross. There's definitely another two, maybe three between Broxbourne and Stansted - one at the station for each of Roydon and Sawbridgeworth, and I seem to recall one more to the north of Broxbourne. That's not including any foot or occupation crossings, either, just the public roads.
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Aug 5, 2013 19:46
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Today, I got to experience the "STOP ALL TRAINS" button on the DLR. They do stop pretty rapidly. Unauthorised people on the track somewhere, apparently.
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Aug 30, 2013 19:59
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Bozza, OHLE related question: Just to the north of Coppermill Junction (Tottenham Hale --> Liverpool Street/Stratford), there are some strange spirals, balls and discs attached to the cables that run between the top outer corners of the overhead line masts. What are they for?
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Sep 2, 2013 22:09
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Jonnty posted:Do you mean this stuff? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_line#Tensioning Nope, I mean bright red plastic-looking balls and springs, and dangly discs. If they were near a vegetable patch I'd assume they were to scare birds. But I don't see why you would put them up to scare birds for a couple hundred metres there, and nowhere else.
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Sep 2, 2013 23:01
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I think HS2 in a nutshell comes down to: Many other options > HS2 > nothing And "nothing" is probably what we'd have on the agenda right now if we didn't have HS2, not those other better things. Given that choice, I'd go for HS2.
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Sep 23, 2013 22:19
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In case it matters to anyone else: most trains in the south and east are cancelled entirely until at least 0900 tomorrow morning, and are expected to only run a reduced service for the rest of the morning. Most operators are advising people not to travel if they can avoid it; most specific-day tickets will be accepted on Tuesday instead. Seeing as I'm supposed to be at work at 0700, I suspect I might be a little late...
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Oct 27, 2013 21:56
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Depending on the local area, there may be multiple (level and non-level) crossings in relatively close proximity. You probably don't need to have multiple bridges if the traffic is light enough, so you would just completely close some of them and force traffic to use one single bridge. That's just one possible situation where closing a crossing entirely is a good choice.
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Oct 31, 2013 23:19
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Whilst on my rather epic trek to work and back today - via Broxbourne, Chingford, Liverpool Street, Stratford and Canning town, involving three trains, a bus, a tube and the DLR - I noticed something. On the Chingford line I saw a hell of a lot of different designs of OHLE masts/gantries - at one point I think there were five different styles in the space of six masts. I suspect this is due to reusing components on minor lines that have been removed during re-wiring on major routes - is that right? And is that common?
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Nov 16, 2013 22:35
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Endjinneer posted:Oooh, interesting question. OLE masts come from a standard catalogue so they are in theory reusable, however they are usually Of the at least five designs I recall seeing, three were gantries and two were masts. In no particular order, either. I think there was lattice column with lattice gantry, lattice column with beam gantry, beam column with beam gantry, beam mast, and some form of braced girder mast. As far as I know it was also a section of plain double track. It could have been end-of-wire related, but the inconsistency seemed to continue for quite a while. I'll try to keep an eye out for the same section on Saturday as I have the same line closure fun this weekend. It may have been just on the Chingford side of St James' Street, but I'm not particularly familiar with that branch. At any rate, it seemed unusual.
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Nov 21, 2013 21:20
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Manny posted:Train Bros - I have a ticketing question: From the TFL website: TFL posted:When you buy an adult rate annual Travelcard on an Oyster card you are automatically issued with a separate printed Gold Record Card
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Dec 15, 2013 14:05
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). If I put a yearly Z1-4 travelcard on my Oyster card, do I also get this Gold Card thing that applies a discount to off-peak national rail journeys? Or is that just for people coming in from outside of London on a season ticket? I'm finding it hard to confirm either way.
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The various Network Railcard related deals do seem good if you're gonna do much leisure travelling. Unfortunately I can't afford an annual ticket up front so no gold card for me!
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Dec 15, 2013 22:56
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I'm not certain, but: You should be able to get a not-quite-complete refund if you haven't used any of the ticket. If you have used part of a return, you may be stuck with it - I'm not sure. Check the website of the operator or of the place you bought them for any information they may have. I believe if you haven't collected your tickets from a machine yet, it's easier. I believe you *can* get refunds for unused tickets even after the date of travel - something like 28 days after, perhaps. For Greater Anglia, there's a £10 admin fee for refunds, and if you haven't collected your ticket you can do it entirely online. If you have already collected your tickets you generally have to post them back, unused, with a refund form. Check your seller/operator for any variations on that. EDIT: You may also be able to get your ticket changed, depending on ticket type. Check that as well before you go for the refund - you might find it easier to get the time/date of travel for the return trip changed. EDIT THE SECOND: Actually, at least for GA (again) a change is exactly the same as a refund + new ticket, including the admin fee, with the advantage of doing it in one phone call and the disadvantage of having to use a phone call rather than doing it online. So might not be worth it. Brovine fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Dec 15, 2013 |
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Dec 15, 2013 23:19
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Ooh, didn't know about this one - and it works in the Pasty Shop at Liverpool Street! Excellent, I'll grab one of those I think. Venmoch posted:EDIT - Brovine: You can also get a Network Railcard independant of a season ticket for about £26 (I think) which with the UK's current rail pricing will pay for itself with one journey! Unfortunately, my main journeys outside of commuting are to Carlisle - which isn't quite covered by the Network Railcard area!
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Dec 15, 2013 23:39
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Gat posted:The other thing I'd always do is check the difference between an Advance ticket you want to buy and the Off-Peak/Anytime ticket that you would have to purchase otherwise. Advances start off very cheap, but after a while they will closely match (or even exceed!) the price of a normal ticket. If you are only saving a few pounds with an Advance it often isn't worth the inflexibility. As an added note on ticket price ridiculousness: A year ago I was travelling up to Carlisle. It turned out to be cheaper to get a First ticket than a standard class one for that particular trip, somehow - I think all the Standard Advance tickets were gone. So it's always worth double checking for that one! Brovine fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Dec 16, 2013 |
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Dec 16, 2013 19:17
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kingturnip posted:Overhead power lines problems on the Liverpool Street - Cambridge line this evening. So, cancellations and delays, which is understandable. Also, lots of effort to make sure pissed-up Hammers fans could get to White Hart Lane; which is again understandable. As I understand it, "overhead power line problems" in this case means "a large tree fell on them and took them out completely in the Harlow area". A limited service was running to Broxbourne, and whatever replacement buses they had managed to scare up were running from there to various points up to Stortford. I believe trains were running northwards from there. There were also earlier problems with a level crossing at Roydon - where "problems" means "some moron drove into the barriers, AGAIN" - and the knock on disruption getting all of those trains out the way from both incidents probably caused some of the unrelated cancellations. As to the unused trains - that's pretty much where they would be spending the night anyway, I think. It at least keeps them available for when the service does resume! Took me four hours to get from London City to Bishops Stortford this evening. I am kinda cold and drenched. Plenty of respect to the Greater Anglia people actually out in the rain with us, marshalling buses. Brovine fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Dec 19, 2013 |
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Dec 19, 2013 00:13
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Munin posted:I'd been wondering why the First Capital Connect service was out essentially all day whilst the Jubilee line etc was only out briefly (even after a tree fell onto the tracks). Something that might affect it: the Underground tracks are not maintained by Network Rail. Network Rail had a hell of a lot of work to do in many different places, whilst most of the Underground is, y'know, underground - and therefore free of trees. I suspect that there were probably more available track workers for each problem on the Underground than there were on the mainline rail network.
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Dec 19, 2013 22:24
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"Poor weather conditions" can ultimately cover anything from wheel flats, acceleration/adhesion problems, slower running therefore disruption, previously unidentified damage to pretty much anything, delayed staff, etc. Also, "not having enough staff" could in many cases be entirely a result of the weather. They have to get to work, same as the rest of us.
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Dec 24, 2013 10:59
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The engineering work recently along the Lea Valley lines, which is (as far as I know) total track renewal moving northwards, has got me wondering. Any chance someone in the know can do an effortpost on track laying/renewal processes and so forth?
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Jan 6, 2014 21:02
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Unstaffed stations will never happen for safety reasons. And that isn't the proposal. The major part of the proposal is closing ticket offices and instead providing better portable equipment so that staff out in the main areas of a station can do everything they currently do in the ticket office. As only three percent of journeys involve buying a ticket from a ticket office, the theory is that the same person can be more useful out in the station ticket hall rather than locked away behind a window. It does involve a staff reduction, and a very widespared re-grading of existing staff as I understand it. Some stations will actually gain staff, though, and the theory is that it'll make better use of staff rather than purely cutting them. We'll see how well that works. London Reconnections did an article going into a bit of detail, see here: http://www.londonreconnections.com/2013/big-changes-gonna-come-part-2-new-approach-ticket-sales/ Note that nothing I said above should be taken to be against the strikers. Brovine fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 22:55
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Hezzy posted:Plus you could argue that planes are more reliable than trains. Planes aren't really subject to signalling failures, suicidal persons and cascading delays like trains are. Um... Well, there's less people throwing themselves in front of planes, I'll give you that. ATC failures are fairly significant if relatively rare. Weather has far more effect on planes than trains in most cases so there's always that - winds or fog can make for a very bad day. Cascading delays? Hell yes there are, if not always so obvious to the general public; a security staff strike in Germany a few days ago cancelled, amongst other things, a flight between London and Edinburgh. As for timing: that also depends exactly where you're starting from. If you happen to live near a major airport than planes get more advantage; if you happen to live near a major railway and not an airport than the trains get a head start.
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Feb 23, 2014 15:01
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Jeoh posted:Don't let RyanAir hear you. Manchester will be 'London North Airport' (like Brussels South). We already have eight London airports as it is. My favourite is London Oxford.
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May 4, 2014 13:28
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Install Windows posted:Most high speed trains won't be able to do that, due being built to European loading gauges, but some trainsets will be available that can run through taking advantage of what should be less congested HS2 tracks as an express route. Also gives access for engineering trains and any other flexibility you might need.
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May 5, 2014 21:58
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Also the driver has limits on his allowed working hours - he might not have enough hours to get to the end of the line and back due to delays and there might not be anyone available to take over from him, so it's better to turn him round and get him back to where he's supposed to be rather than strand a train blocking the line.
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Jan 14, 2015 20:42
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kingturnip posted:Does anyone know what it is about the 379s that makes my nose go mental the moment I step onboard one of them? Never had any problems like that on the 379s myself that I recall. Until I bought a car again early last year I used the WAML to get to London and back every day. I do recall the conditioned air being noticeably different though; I'd guess you're probably more sensitive to it that I am?
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Apr 16, 2015 15:32
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thehustler posted:Have any of you guys played SimSig? Hoooly poo poo my loving brain. It can be pretty challenging, yeah. I've poked it around a bit. Better with other people.
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Jun 2, 2015 11:16
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Peel posted:I never really understood how people (other than injured, kids and so on) managed to get hit by trains on foot crossings. Trains are pretty loud. A train at 70mph or more isn't loud for very long before it hits you. If you have other background noise (road traffic, wind, headphones) you won't hear the first sounds of the rails and wires hissing. Also: thanks for the effortpost, Bozza!
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Aug 22, 2015 18:42
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