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 Welcome posters old and new to a thread about the railway. More specifically the British railway and the sorry state of affairs it's currently left in. Since it's auspicious beginnings with Robert Stephenson and his 'Rocket' running over and killing a Member of Parliament in 1830, the British railway network has had many ups and downs. A product of the worst excesses of Victorian laissez-faire (before producing the 19th Century equivalent of the dot-com crash), the system has had many shake ups, reorganisations and changes. In 1948, Clement Attlee (aka Britain’s greatest Prime Minister) nationalised the rotting carcass of the 'Big 4', which were the remainder of the privatised British railway network as they stood post-war into British Railways, starting what would be four and a half decades of government mismanagement, balls ups and bad decisions which would eventually lead to the government of one John Major killing off British Rail with the Railways Act 1993. This remains, perhaps, the worst decision he ever made. Since privatisation, the British taxpayer now funds the railway to the tune of 5 times more than it used to do under British Rail. Add to this fares which have jumped inordinate amounts (being linked to RPI, we have recently seen fare increases of 8%) such that travelling by train was stated to be a 'rich man’s toy' by the Secretary of State. It is little wonder that renationalisation of the railway remains perhaps the most popular topics amongst the electorate of the UK that goes against the current political grain (and isn't racist). Much of this stems from the insanity of the privatised railway network, here is a diagram:  The worst part? This diagram of the jumble sale of conflicting interests, little oversight and private profit over public need is much simplified compared to the actual industry. So, for those not so familiar with the way this madness is run, let's do a run down of the major player in the British Railway system. The Department for Transport  The DfT are the central government organisation responsible for the railway network. They have oversight of all other forms of transport too (hence the name) but with regards to the railway they are perhaps most known for overseeing the franchising agreements which form the British railway. These are the contracts signed with private companies to run certain services on certain lines, and are probably where our problems start. The DfT is generally formed of civil servants, economists and very few actual railway people so the actual understanding of the industry by the department which runs it is fairly negligible. There are good people who work for the DfT, but they are so outweighed that the might as well not work there. Most recently, they released the 'McNulty Report', an investigation into why the industry was costing so much compared to railway companies on the continent. “Realising the Potential of GB Rail” as it is more formally titled is not a thrilling read, however if you do manage to slog through the hundreds pages you will be struck with one solid conclusion: the Executive Summary and the Conclusion in no way represent the actual body of the report. If the railway rumour machine is to be believed, the DfT took issue with the report which basically exposed the weakness of privatisation, mostly the employment and funding of hundreds of lawyers and largely superfluous staff to argue over contract disputes, which is a major money sink for the industry as every private interest fights against everyone else and the state-backed Network Rail to try and maximise profits, while nobody is really acting in the best spirit of the passengers. However, the report instead concluded (despite evidence in the report to the contrary) that there were too many staff and they were paid too much. As a railway employee, I and my bank balance can categorically argue against the latter assertion at least. Railtrack and Network Rail  Railtrack are such a maligned company in British politics that they are now used as a go-to example of bad privatisation by the press. Yes, you did read that correctly. Railtrack became what is known as the Infrastructure Manager at privatisation. They owned everything that wasn't rolling stock and the staff that went with it, a divorce of train and track far above and beyond the EU mandate that supposedly asked for it. This separation leads to many, many problems, but Railtrack itself is perhaps the biggest failing of privatisation. Crash after crash, budget overrun to budget overrun of the 1990s-2000s can be assigned to the piss poor decisions of Railtrack. Believing that railways weren't actually that complicated (I am doing a Masters Degree in Railway Engineering and can confirm that they are), rather just another business, Railtrack wrote its own death warrant. Failing to understand the industry they were led up the garden path by companies who claimed they could implement moving block signalling (still not implemented anywhere in the world properly) on the busiest line in the UK, that privatised maintenance based on contracts would continue the safety culture of the railway (the dead of Hatfield and Potters Bar rail disasters, of course, beg to differ) and that money was the best driver in an industry where safety critical decisions taken every day could kill people was a sensible idea. Unsurprisingly, this spectacular bunch of imbeciles failed. Labour, despite being elected on a promise to renationalise the British Railway network in 1997, managed to almost fulfil a manifesto promise in 2002 when it handed the control of the infrastructure of British Rail to Network Rail, a 'not for dividend' company backed by the British state (full disclosure at this point, they are my current employers). NR ever since has been fighting to bring the industry back to a level of respectability, and has in some quarters managed, but they are in many ways an island in a sea of poo poo. Current movements within the company hint that due to being far too good at actually getting poo poo done compared to private industry their monopoly will be smashed to let the free market rule once more. This is paranoid speculation on my part, but it is not too unlikely, particularly given the current bunch of arseholes we've got in government. The Train/Freight Operating Companies Train Operating Companies are the guys who actually run the trains you sit in when you come to Britain. They are all private interests, generally run by companies who made their money during the bus deregulations of the 1980s, with First and Stagecoach being the two biggest players. Let it not be said that the TOCs have not made improvements since taking over from BR. However, inevitably, these improvements are mostly cosmetic. Railway station bogs no longer resemble an open sewer, staff all have very nice new professional uniforms and many trains have had fairly cosmetic overhauls; but never let this detract from the fact that you are now a customer, not a passenger. For most 'customers', this has seen an aggressive campaign to capture fares (anyone who has had to deal with the unreasonable Revenue Protection Officers of the railway will attest to this) and a borderline contempt for people who travel. There are always hilarious platitudes made about the fact that there are cheap rail fares available, but only if you don't travel at time when everybody else is (thus, writing off every 9-5 worker in the UK), but generally the privatised companies act exactly as you would expect from companies who have a captive market who literally cannot leave. Prices go up and people simply cannot chose to move to other modes of transport. The biggest bugbear for most people is that companies are not competing in the way that free-market adherents want because it's not possible. While you may be able to theoretically be able to take three competing services from London to Birmingham, it in reality is not done. The price structure and pathing of trains means that the competition is now who travels on what services rather than the quality of services themselves. HS2, which I broadly support, will only make this worse, with social classes forced onto certain services simply by price. Rolling Stock Leasing Companies (ROSCOs) The great scam of the British railway is built on a fallacy of a free market and nowhere is this more prevalent than the ROSCOs. 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 125mph due to the cant unless they can tilt. These guys have a stranglehold on the industry, and their reasons for existence are increasingly dubious. Dickheads of various stripes have claimed that new trains would not have come into existence without the ROSCOs, point to the failures of crappy Pacer trains of the late 1980s and the much ballsed up Intercity Express Programme as to why we need private industry to drive new train development. WRONG. While the tilting Pendolinos are perhaps the crème of the crop, they represent a technology that was developed and trialled by BR 30 years previously. We are literally buying our own poo poo back off other people. While I cannot quote any sort of survey, any sensible person who has been in a BR Mark 3 or 4 coach vs. a 'modern' Voyager stock will tell you that the latter had terrible leg room, inadequate luggage space and while the underfloor diesel engines may give your arse a nice shuffle, the ride comfort is nothing compared to the older stock. Not mentioned in the above diagram, but perhaps the biggest players of all: the Railway Trades Unions  The railway is broadly covered by three specialist trade unions (with some areas covered by the Unison and other broad brush unions): the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT), the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA, my union), and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF). Born in the fire and blood of the late 19th Century, the modern railway unions are perhaps the most powerful unions which still operate in modern Britain, with the ability to bring the country to a complete standstill with relative ease. The RMT are the new bogeymen of British trade unionism, with their leader Bob Crow being regarded as an enemy of the British industry. This is perhaps most evident in the fact that the RMT have been successfully growing their membership across the industry, particularly targeting low paid manual jobs like train cleaners and forming up unions to fight back. Big Bob is a hate figure in the press but despite that is perhaps the most successful union leader in modern history. The inevitable showdown between him and the government will by the new Miners Strike (whether it'll be the 1974 or the 1986 version is yet to be seen). The TSSA are the white collar union who were always sold to staff on the basis of not being the more militant National Union of Railwaymen (the precursor of the RMT). However, the assaults on staff have meant they have taken a more hard line stance and have been coordinating strike action with the RMT on London Underground with major effect. There were talks of merging the two into one union but ideological differences prevailed and it fell through. Generally the represent the skilled technical, middle management and project staff. ASLEF is perhaps the best example of a powerful craft union in the country, as it is exclusively for train drivers. Doing incredibly well out of privatisation by playing ignorant potential employers off each other like a fiddle they have elevated train driving to likely the best paid blue collar profession in the UK. Holding powerful sway over the railway network, they generally get what they want before it comes to industrial action and are more off the radar than the RMT, but no less militant. Perhaps their greatest contribution to society in recent memory is getting a member booted out of the union for being in the BNP (a fascist party) for not conforming to the values of the organisation. So is it all a mass of crap? Yes and no. The structure of the railway industry is so imbecilic that even a minimal amount of scrutiny shows what a pile of shite it is, however, this is an industry that is never far from public conscious and is undergoing a major resurgence in investment. After being basically starved in the hopes it would die through the 1980s and 1990s, rail has done the opposite, now carrying more people and running more trains than any other time (despite the network being half the size it was in the 1960s). Eurostar, despite a shaky start, has basically destroyed short haul flights from London to Paris / Brussels and high speed is the new buzz word of the British railway. Announced this year, we are about to start design and construction of our first proper high speed link from London to Birmingham, before continuing to the north, This is a topic that has been analysed to death (not least, by me, here: http://demandnothing.org/high-speed-2-white-elephant-or-national-investment/) so we won't talk about it too long. However, there are other things afoot. We are about to see the electrification of the Great Western Main Line, from London to Cardiff, over the next 8 years, with the first electric services starting to run as soon as 4 years from now. This is a huge programme of investment, constituting many changes to quite old systems. Simultaneously we are seeing the installation of the European Train Control System, an interoperable signalling system which is to be standard across Europe as a driver of commerce (supposedly). While we have already seen Level 2 ETCS rolled out in the UK, it was on a comedy branch line and a real hash was made of it, second and third times should be fairly less painful, with the ETCS being overlaid on the existing system rather than simply replacing it. Operations on this will start on the north-south Thameslink route through London and on the Great Western Main Line by ~2016, then followed by the East Coast Main Line soon afterwards. Though much delayed, we will eventually see the High Speed Train, perhaps one of the greatest engineering achievements of British Rail, finally retired and replaced with the Intercity Express Programme trains (or the Hitachi SuperExpress to give it the name that nobody calls it). Rail is making a comeback, being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, but despite high levels of excitement in the industry as it resurges, nothing changes the fact that privatisation has put back all these achievements by about 10 years. British Rail was not a perfect company, and suffered greatly from inadequate, short-term and short sighted budgets, from hostile governments and a huge level of internal industrial hostility between powerful unions and grumpy management that held it back. However, it can be said that no matter how bad BR was sometimes, it somehow managed to be very good at simply getting poo poo done. Like the NHS, it worked with tight budgets to provide a highly efficient service that was value for money for the taxpayer. Perhaps the most laughable anecdote I have heard about privatisation was that when the 'dynamic business focused leaders' of Railtrack et al took over from BR management was that they looked everywhere to cut back and reorganise to make the running of the railway more efficient. They simply couldn't because no profit motive can drive efficiency quite like a government budget and the looming fear of being privatised. In conclusion: Bring Back British Rail (or modern equivalent form) This thread Chat about how terrible the British railway is and the foibles of privatisation. I can give more in-depth analysis of technology or the structural/organisational issues within the network. In addition to this, my actual day to day job is signalling design for Crossrail and the aforementioned Western Mainline Electrification programme. Generally though, I have a fairly broad knowledge of rail in the UK generally, so while this D&D not Ask/Tell, do feel free to ask questions. Note - I work on the main line railway NOT London Underground, so while I do know quite a bit about metro railways they are far from my area of expertise. Some further worthwhile reading: The Guardian Special Investigation into the West Coast Main Line upgrade which is a very good read. Christian Wolmar talking about McNulty. Wolmar is good and bad, he does talk some right old poo poo about technology sometimes, but his economics analysis is usually spot on. FINAL NOTE: No train spottery poo poo! While I do understand that people might want to post nice pictures of steam trains and such, bugger off and do it somewhere els, ta.
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May 7, 2012 11:09
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kingturnip posted:Talking about weird infrastructure, the line that's run by First Capital Connect that goes from Moorgate to Alexandra Palace (and beyond) is, I'm told, unique in that it uses both overhead power lines and a third rail. The overhead for most of the line, the third rail for the section from Drayton Park to Moorgate, where the line goes underground. If you sit on the train at Drayton Park, you'll notice the train powering down briefly as the overhead connector (thingy) retracts and the third rail connector (thingy) extends. The weirdness is one of the reasons the rolling stock is poo poo, because I guess it'd cost quite a lot to design a train just for one freaky line. Pantograph (AC overheads) and Collecter Shoe (DC 3rd Rail)  Yeah, 319s are a bit of an oddity, they run Bedford to Brighton too, which is the line that my Dad drives. Farringdon used to be the place they switched over from AC/DC but I think that is going to change with Thameslink, the wires being extended down to City Thameslink I believe. It's an odd bit of track, the newer 377s are replacing the 319s as we speak so they're a little nicer. Believe me, the 319s are certainly far from the worst trains in Britain. For those look no further than the Pacer railbus. The WORST trains in the UK by a long stretch: 
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May 7, 2012 18:02
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Goatman Sacks posted:US size and property rights make a large scale rail network pretty hard. Pssh, property rights. We still have a landed gentry to deal with. In terms of quality delivered, the UK probably has one of the more impressive networks in the world. People like to hold up the French and the Japanese as excellent services but in many ways they excel because they have seperation of services. In terms of mixed traffic operations, people come to us to see how it's done, simply getting that many trains of different speed, acceleration and braking rates through the system with the volume that we do is actually rather impressive. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/video/2012/jan/12/high-speed-2-hs2-rail-britain-mapped-animation This is a pretty cool video that shows the sheer number of trains running around the network at any one time (plus the difference with HS2)
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May 7, 2012 19:13
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Noreaus posted:How does the movement of freight traffic work in this country? (UK) Is it like passenger movement, where there are freight TOCs that a haulage firm or other business needs to book time on? Or do haulage firms charter trains and have to negotiate with Network Rail for a time to move their poo poo? Bit of both, freight in run by three big players (known as the FOCs, Freight Operating Companies), GB Railfreight, DB Schenker (aka the German national railway company, still publicly owned... kinda) and Freightliner. I think Eddie Stobart are trying to break into freight too, and theres a few other little operators. Generally, they shift heavy haul goods, along with container traffic from the ports. Stone trains for construction, jet fuel to Heathrow is the major trade where I work on the Great Western, along with cars from the Honda/Mini plants in Swindon. There has been a move to start shifting other bulk goods by rail, I know Tesco have started to use container traffic to ship stuff around the country. Also depleated nuclear fuel is moved by rail but that's all very  If you need to move a lot of heavy poo poo regularly (but perhaps not frequently), rail is a good way to do it. There is talk of reinstating the parcel deck on the top of Euston Station as a freight terminus of sorts when it is refurbed for HS2 because then shops can ship their goods into central London by rail, and distribute in vans rather than trying to get a HGV round the streets.
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May 7, 2012 19:27
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Orange Devil posted:Is this really true though? Because the same is said about Dutch rail all the time. Yeah, the corporate spin machine via the Intranet loves to post about the Japanese coming over to check out Network Rail stuff. It's mostly operational planning and timetabling stuff generally though. It's probably been bigged up a lot, but the UK runs more trains a day than half the continent combined so it's not a big stretch. Don't know a lot about Abellio to be honest, but I do know a guy who works for them as a rolling stock engineer so I could email him maybe and see what's what. Sounds like your old man is a combination of a Local Operations Manager (basically in charge of the signallers) and what we call 'Control' who are the central boys who make decision about cancelling services etc. This is one of the major inefficiencies in the UK rail at the moment, as each company has their own 'Control' who then ring round each other to sort poo poo out rather than having one centrally run operation because of penalty fares etc. It's a proper dogs dinner. Stations - All owned by Network Rail but managed by their respective train operating companies, with the exception of the big London terminus', Birmingham New Street, Manchester Victoria (I think) and some of the ones in Scotland. The companies (and Network Rail at it's managed stations) make an absolute packet off the shops in stations, it's had huge net growth over the last few years and makes us tons of money by all accounts.
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May 7, 2012 21:13
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Jet fuel is also massively subsidised by the government if my memory serves me correctly. Mostly though, the perception of cost with a flight is a lot lower than it actually is, the perception of cost with a train is a lot higher than it actually is. When you consider the time and money it takes to get to and from the airport relative to the railway station, the cost of the ticket and the time taken, they are actually fairly comparable (rail is still more expensive). Rail is expensive generally because you have lots of fixed assets the length of the network which require looking after, whereas in air travel, you just base all your maintenance guys and their equipment at a couple of airports. If they plane is knackered, it won't even take off, but a train can get hundreds of miles before it hits a fault or fails.
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May 8, 2012 08:11
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This cancelling of trains etc is lovely because it's mostly a statistics fudge. Better to cancel one late train than to let it delay several others because that costs money in penalty fares. Signallers often moan (a lot generally...) about having to make late running trains even later in their regulation decision because if they delay an on-time service they get a bollocking - due to causing Network Rail further penalty fares. It's a total bullshit situation based that has arisen out of the contractual way the industry is now run.
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May 8, 2012 17:47
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Benito Hitlerstalin posted:This might be slightly off topic (as it doesn't concern glorious Albion), but deregulation has left rail in an equally sorry state of affairs in Sweden too. Not very surprisingly it was pushed through, here as in other places, as a means of getting things done in a more cost efficient and reliable manner. Even less surprising is the fact that it made things more expensive and less reliable, as per usual with these sort of things. It's no longer uncommon for trains to be canceled or delayed because of bad weather and/or snow. In loving Sweden, of all places, where snow is very much a thing. It boggles the mind. Sweden is an odd one because it's privatisation wasn't quite as extreme as the UK (I believe it split all its operations into seperate companies but a majority are still owned, though may not be operated, by the Swedish state). This all stems from a rather obscure and misunderstood EU directive, namely EU Directive 91/440. It asks for the seperation of accounts so nations can be determined to be anti-competitive against new operators, with the theory being it will stop SNCF, who were by and the far the most militant about keeping others off their network, from blocking international freight. The whole thing is based around trying to allow North-South, East-West freight transit more than anything. There have been other developments for passengers, but these are based around the Trans-European Network lines, which have a mandated set of standards for how they are constructed/signalled/electrified to allow international passenger travel without load of different signalling systems etc on the same train. Poor old EU gets blamed for this one by left and right by people that don't really understand it.
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May 9, 2012 08:16
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I think it's a bit a bullshit to call the railway a "rich mans toy". Commuting certainly is, but travel in general is not. Far be it for me to defend ATOC, but there are cheap fares out there and it is by far and the way the best method of travel if you are willing to vary your travel time or date. The major issue is that economically, these are two seperate groups of customers who are in no way really linked. The broadly inelastic commuter will always travel and will always pay the maximum fare, the highly elastic leisure or casual traveller will broadly travel whenever is cheapest but whatever transport delivers it. So rail competes in two very different markets which generally conflict with each other. This is what I alluded to with the competing by socio-economic class in the OP, if you want to go from London to Birmingham, you have three rail options: Virgin trains, fastest but most expensive. London Midland, slowest but cheapest. Chiltern Railways, middle ground but goes to/from different stations. Virgin filter off the LM customers by higher prices (thus driving down demand so they can deliver a higher quality service... supposedly. Similar to how business/first class works on a plane). LM offer cheap, no frills tickets and services so attract the student/minimalist/poorer customer. Chiltern are trying to break into both markets by offering something in the middle, but from less overcrowded stations. Make rail a market and it plays to the market, gently caress the socio-economic benefits of a highly mobile population.
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May 9, 2012 22:52
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Zephro posted:It's hard to do a proper straight-up comparison because if you want to be really http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalised_cost This is what they do all the funny benefit/cost ratios for railways on, and it's not really a normal way of thinking (while being sensible to human nature). Like all good economics, its bullshit with just enough whiff of truth to make it useful.
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May 10, 2012 22:40
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about it you need to consider the cost of insurance, road tax, MOTs, servicing and the fact that you can't do anything while driving other than driving, but given that those are sunk costs for anyone who already owns a car, yeah, it's very often cheaper unless you book three weeks in advance and don't mind leaving at five in the morning.
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I use my work ID to blag free pissing. Best use of safety critical competence cards going.
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May 13, 2012 17:53
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My favourite story of railways in the Victorian era being shits to each other is that the platforms at Basingstoke are numbered backwards to the rest of the stations on that route, so the Great Western Railway platform wouldn't be number 1. Also, got my design licence approved today!
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May 14, 2012 18:11
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Lengthening platforms is actually pretty bad for capacity, you're better ff just making trains more frequent, especially on a metro.
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May 14, 2012 19:09
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False equivalence I'm afraid. Making trains longer increases your headway distance thus buggers your capacity. This is particularly key in platform reoccupation times. I'll draw a diagram, cos I'm probably not being very clear.
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May 14, 2012 20:48
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HTJ posted:Trains are scheduled to run about every two minutes on the tube lines with modern signalling; the Jubilee has 30tph in both directions and the Victoria will have 33tph in a few months. In practice, slight (and inevitable) delays during the rush hour lead to trains entering the platforms as the train in front is leaving. If the trains were longer, they'd have to move the signals farther apart and increase waiting times on platforms, which would be a problem at major stations where the only way to prevent dangerous overcrowding is by getting rid of passengers as quickly as possible (Victoria, for example, has to close if more than several minutes pass between trains). Entirely this, the run-in/run-out time is largely determined by how quickly a train can clear the station platform, which with modern metro stock which can accelerate very quickly, is largely determined by the length of the train. The back of the train has to be clear of the overlap of the platform starting signal before the following train can proceed. Ideally, you want it so that the train is braking for a red on the platform starter, but can leave on greens. As for tunnels, 4 track commuter routes with something like Thameslink or Crossrail aren't really required when you've got overground sized trains at a 24tph frequency.
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May 15, 2012 10:05
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The percentages are also bollocks because I'm fairly sure you can offset a 5% rise (for example) in a Reading->London season ticket by dropping the price of a Reading->Bourne End (a lovely little station outside of Maidenhead) by 5%. One of the many tools in the scam bank.
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May 15, 2012 13:06
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Itzena posted:Bourne End is not a lovely little station. As someone heavily involved in dealing with that station post-electrification I can assure you it is, though this may be because it's getting on my tits. Though not as much as the Slough-Windsor branch where we've been told that we can't modify it lest if interfers with the future aspirations of the Royal Family. My suggest to install a set of points on the Windsor viaduct that dumps the Royal train in the Thames was not accepted as a solution though 
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May 23, 2012 21:22
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Nah, but Maidenhead Station is my baby, been working on the layout on and off since I started in design (so about 4 years) from concept to approval in principle/ready for detailed design phase. wrt non-European systems, bluntly, no. There is an EU agency called the European Railway Agency which sets down the standards for interopability on the Trans-European Networks, with the theory to make a common rail market in Europe. Stuff like use of Standard Gauge (seemingly obvious, but Spain/Portugal uses Iberian gauge and Russian Gauge stopped the Nazis!), 25kV 50Hz overhead wire electrification etc are mandated, along with the use of ERTMS, the European Rai Traffic Management System and it's component parts GSM-R (mobile phone technology, applied to railways) and ETCS, the European Train Control System, which is the common signalling system for all of Europe. I think China are going to move towards ETCS in the future by all accounts, though it will likely be the China version, not directly compatible with the EU version, but close as dammit.
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May 24, 2012 14:58
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APT is an interesting beast. My old man went on it in the 70s (?) I think when it was still in it's trial period and said it was a bit odd. The real problem was two fold: Firstly, the gyroscope was far too good, and the thing literally compensated for curves perfectly, so despite the fact you could see you were going round a bend, you couldn't feel the acceleration associated, and that made people feel a bit sick. Secondly, in addition to the above, on the first APT service BR made the classic error of getting all the hacks drunk as gently caress, so when they felt a bit sick they chundered and bad press was kinda inevitable. We sold the APT stuff to Italy, and now buy it back via the tilting Super Voyagers and Pendolinos. edit: We don't really need them other than on the WCML and the Midland as most of the proper mainlines are fairly straight. Western has been rocking 125 since the 70s and ECML (with the exception of the mess at Morpeth) is 125 most of the way up.
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May 24, 2012 19:34
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Vando posted:You could do London to Beijing via Moscow in around 10 days or so, if you'd like. Not eyewateringly expensive either, especially when compared to UK prices. You could also do it by steam train for £18,000 per person... No I am not joking.
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May 24, 2012 21:14
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Kerbtree posted:Bozza - have you done any work on/studied much on level crossings? It came up briefly in the UK Could do mini effortpost on Level Crossings if you like, there's lots of sorts that the average person doesn't really notice.
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May 25, 2012 15:52
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Zero Gravitas posted:Additionally, whats your take on this development: The infrastructure is fail safe so this literally does nothing except delay trains. But it could so easily not be, and I don't think that this anarchist group really knows what they are doing. I spent 3 hours in the pissing rain once trying to reroute signalling circuits through spare cable cores because it is complicated poo poo and if you do it wrong you get Clapham Junction.
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May 25, 2012 20:38
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Nah, best thing about safety critical work is using the mega to give your mate an electric shock  I'm all for anarchist distruption, do whatever the gently caress you want, just cut the cable cleanly not burn the bastard cos you could get shorts. Hacksaw chaps, no fires required (and it's harder to find).
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May 25, 2012 20:59
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Jonnty posted:I only found this out recently myself - as far as I know, they record the track's vital statistics like cant and twist along with what should be the measurement from the red slidery thing to the track itself so that someone can come along and check it from time to time. Keeping these measurements strict is obviously rather important near platforms where slight errors can (and do) result in nasty scrapes.  Spot on. It's called a datum plate. (text shamelessly stolen from some website I had written in some lecture notes) A datum plate identified as chainage point number (C.P.N°) 58. The letters "DN" (on a red background) denote that the information on the plate relates to the Down line. "Offset" is the horizontal distance from the plate to the running edge ("R.E.") of the nearest rail of the relevant track, in this case 2915 mm. The track is canted at 35 mm. The top of the movable slider block is normally set at the level of the nearest rail. If it is necessary to fix the datum plate at a higher level than the track, the number above the slider block indicates the difference in height between the rail head and the slider block (300 mm in the example illustrated). A red slider block means that the data on the plate refers to the actual position of the track at the time when the datum plate was installed. A green block denotes a track design position, to which the track should be returned in the event of it moving out of alignment.
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May 26, 2012 09:31
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W6/W8 gauge are pretty much the standard in the UK which is 3 and a bit metres to 2 and a bit metres (think it's 3.5 x 2.5 but not really my thing). I know they just spent a ton of money on making the route from Southampton W10 gauge for shipping containers. I believe I saw a figure quoted somewhere that the average cost of increasing loading gauge is ~£3k per mm per metre... edit: it may have been £3k per mm per km but I can't find the reference right now
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May 28, 2012 20:34
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It's halfway done! I was gonna finish it yesterday but I went to the pub instead,
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Jun 27, 2012 12:58
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Keeps our £27.2bn net debt off the government books too!
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Jun 27, 2012 14:35
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Shockingly, the last major electrification programme initiated by central government was the East Coast Main Line in the 80s, also by the Tories. I reckon there's some BR entryists milling around in CCHQ somewhere.
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Jul 17, 2012 10:10
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Gat posted:Thames Valley GOD loving DAMNIT. Literally just finished the design on these shitters assuming 3 car turbos cos "there's no way these branches are getting electrified any time soon". Urgh, got a meeting presenting this to FGW et al today so that should be 'amusing'. PS sorry about your pub, Crossrail shut the Astoria in London and I'm still annoyed about that
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Jul 19, 2012 08:46
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I think it sums up the whole problem with the franchising system if First Group get their grubby hands on West Coast. The little scam they pulled with the Great Western should have got them thrown out but no, they're gonna get WCML and look to be moving into the territory of gulping up the whole Network South East system. Bollocks. It's all just bollocks.
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Aug 14, 2012 18:29
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They allegedly have large quantities of parliament on bungs of various sizes. I'm sure for a while they were the largest corporate donor to the Labour Party.
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Aug 14, 2012 22:11
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posted:Empty quoting is forbidden in D&D, but they've got the WCML. Here's the key part of the bid: Grun posted:FirstGroup said it would add around 12,000 seats, with 11 extra trains, and new services to stations including Blackpool, Shrewsbury and Bolton. It will also strip out catering while reconfiguring the Pendolino trains to add more seats. Also from Tim O'Twat: quote:"We will be making significant improvements including reduced journey times and introducing new direct services. We will improve marketing and deliver a smart ticketing system, refreshed and improved train interiors, station upgrades and even better catering." Trolley service it is then. More later, I gotta go to work and moan about this.
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Aug 15, 2012 08:44
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If you flick back to the OP, there is an excellent Guardian investigation into the WCML gently caress up. Well worth the read.
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Aug 15, 2012 09:55
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People with the nicest long distance trains in the UK are Grand Central and East Midlands Trains because they both use HSTs with the original seating layouts. The Mark 4s they use on East Coast are pretty good if they're in the original layout too, but I'm not sure they are. re: USA, not really sorry, not without a fair bit of research. Generally though, the USA had a large infatuation with the car and an incredibly strong car lobby which devestated their steel on steel public transport.
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Aug 15, 2012 12:03
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goddamnedtwisto posted:Let's not forget John Major was an honest-to-god trainspotter in his youth, and genuinely believed that breaking them up in this way would rekindle the days of the Big 4, with them competing out of pride to be the fastest, cheapest and best. Mix that with his Tory conviction that the post-War nationalisation had ruined the railway system and it's pretty easy to see where this was going. To this day there's probably some sad bewildered part of his soul wondering why the ECML and GW franchises aren't competing to have the fastest train any more. Major wanted the whole thing broken up into the big 4 basically, with seperate rail and infrastructure components, however he was talked round by the Adam Smith Institute that this wouldn't work so he needed to go further, with competing rolling stock companies, one large infrastructure manager and lots and lots of TOCs (I believe 20 something?) because this would be totes amazeballs and the magic of the free market would shine apon it. Yeah. As for the transfer process, while some of what Hezzy said is correct, except a lot of the lower and middle management will go in too under TUPE arrangements. Board and exec level will be made redundant I think, though some of the exec might get brought in if they are technical / operational experts, but the rest will be getting their P45.
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Aug 15, 2012 22:47
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Gat posted:Well for a start... http://www.dft.gov.uk/publications/dft-business-plan-indicators-input-01/ CP4 at Network Rail was about £36bn, which covers 2009-2014.
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Aug 16, 2012 00:20
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Munin posted:Apologies for my ignorance but what is CP4? It doesn't ring a bell for me. CP is Control Period, 4 cos it's the 4th one. It's basically the block grant NR gets every 5 years after about a years worth of arguing with the ORR and DfT on their spending. There was a big focus on 'efficiency' in the CP4 application so now when carrying 4 pints back from the bar instead of 3 you can 'hilariously' call it "CP4 efficient" etc... Railway humour right here ladies and gents.
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Aug 16, 2012 11:40
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Install Gentoo posted:It depends. Let's say we built a Shinkansen-quality line from London to Glasgow. To ensure the best speed, there's no stops along the way so you can stay cruising at 186 MPH all the way through. The train trip would still take 2 hours 10 minutes minimum, longer if the route was built so that there was other cities stopped at along the way. To compare to the schedules you get in Japan where they actually have these trains, and stops along the way, the Tokyo to Osaka route, which is 50 miles shorter than direct London-Glasgow, takes 2 hours 20 minutes. Flight London to Glasgow meanwhile is apparently 1 hour 10 minutes. And I'd have to think that if the for-profit private operators got to run the high speed trains, there's little chance of them costing less than the flight would. You forgot that you've got to get to the airport, check in, sit about, get onto the plane, sit about, take off, land, get through security, get out of the airport then get to where you're going. Train: get on train, sit about, get off train. Slight exaggeration, but think you need to look up the generalised cost function.
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Aug 17, 2012 00:04
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Get this literally all the time, or Network Rail getting called 'National Rail' which is a totally seperate thing. Get's right on my tits. Most people simply do not understand how the privatised railway works, and those that do think it's stupid. Sigh.
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Sep 4, 2012 16:21
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Install Gentoo posted:You also have to realize that with all the already heavily built trains in passenger use, any lighter built stuff would have to be able to withstand collision with them! And that'd require being about the same strength if they hit a freight. No system for preventing crashes is fool proof, so it's really important to mitigate the damage when crashes inevitably occur. Um. Well I don't like bold claims, but we solved this in the UK by using something called TPWS (Train Protection and Warning System) whereby all stop signals are fitted with overspeed and overrun sensors that jam in the emergency brake as if the signal is at red, thus vastly lowering the consequences of a collision if it will occur. These days, the system is deemed so robust that it's practically impossible (without circumventing the system) on a modern TPWS design for two trains to actually collide.
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Sep 5, 2012 19:13
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