Railways

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El Pollo Diablo
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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:27 am

You've all given this almost certainly more thought than Network Rail have. The key point is that (a) they want to spend as little money as possible; (b) this will be as standard a bridge as possible, unless English Heritage are going to get on their case; (c) all the abutments and retaining walls are staying as is, so there's no reason to touch the pavements.
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Re: Railways

Post by Gfamily » Tue Jan 18, 2022 11:24 am

Sciolus wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 9:39 am
Looks to me like they've rotated the view for part of the drawing, so the bit underneath the left hand end of the yellow stripes, labelled "new cell beam" and "existing concrete springing stone" (?), is as viewed from underneath the bridge rather than approaching it. You can see the kerb drop matching the other side.
Yes, I gather one of the features of the original bridge is that it's set on the skew across a curve in the road, so the view isn't straight through,
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Re: Railways

Post by Grumble » Tue Jan 18, 2022 11:45 am

Tracks have been replaced behind my house, they didn’t half crack on with it, replacing half a mile over a weekend.
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Re: Railways

Post by TimW » Tue Jan 18, 2022 5:00 pm

[crap deleted]

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Re: Railways

Post by Matatouille » Sat Feb 05, 2022 6:11 pm

"Best Contribution to COVID Emergency", not sure that's an award anyone wants to win. Otherwise nice that there is some concerted effort to highlight and reward ecological successes on railway networks.

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Re: Railways

Post by Grumble » Fri Apr 22, 2022 8:25 am

On the train right now into Manchester. Was reminded that a long train shed north of Levenshulme used to say L’Eurostar Habite Ici. With HS2 is there any chance of reviving the idea of Eurostar travel to the north?
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Re: Railways

Post by wilsontown » Fri Apr 22, 2022 10:05 am

Not as far as I know. I don't think it was ever planned to link with HS1, although you'd think that would be a fairly obvious thing to try to do.
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El Pollo Diablo
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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Fri Apr 22, 2022 10:19 am

There was originally a plan to link HS2 to HS1, but it got nixed quite early on. TBH with the way the government are going, at this rate we'll be lucky if HS2 links to Manchester.
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Re: Railways

Post by jimbob » Fri Apr 22, 2022 10:30 am

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Fri Apr 22, 2022 10:19 am
There was originally a plan to link HS2 to HS1, but it got nixed quite early on. TBH with the way the government are going, at this rate we'll be lucky if HS2 links to Manchester.
Or London
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Re: Railways

Post by Aitch » Fri Apr 22, 2022 12:49 pm

According to the latest issue of Rail, some MP (Sir Graham Brady) is claiming that the government is going to cancel the Golborne link, forcing Scotland bound trains onto slow lines.

Anyway, on a lighter note, the Iron Bridge replacement is in place:
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One thing struck me as a bit odd. The bridge plates are being replaced/supplemented by newer oval ones as opposed to the square white/red ones. Same number, 3/62. However, the bridge before it is 3/60. Can't see anywhere in the embankment where 61 could have been. Mind you, the big bridge before Staines Station has two bridge plates, one at each end, which have different numbers, 3/58 and 5/58. I'd guess because the line splits into the Windsor and Reading lines, though it does that after the station.
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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Sat Apr 23, 2022 6:29 am

The government is going to cancel the Golborne link, yes. The DfT haven't confirmed it yet in public, but HS2 has been instructed to prepare business case modelling without it in. Fwiw, removing it worsens the business case by about 2 decimal points.

Once again, the DfT are choosing to make an insane decision. The official sense is that they're doing it because they want to allow London to Scotland in less than three hours, and by connecting HS2 north of Preston, they can achieve that. The unofficial sense is that it's happening because Shapps got lobbied and the government is in trouble. But regardless, they're choosing not to build a very short piece of track which will allow much better connectivity and benefits. Mad.
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Re: Railways

Post by IvanV » Tue Apr 26, 2022 1:35 pm

It's a "short piece of track" costed at ludicrous £3bn.

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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Tue Apr 26, 2022 2:09 pm

Indeed - just imagine how much more the much longer piece of track will cost to connect north of Preston, if indeed the DfT decides to do that. What's more likely is that the DfT will postpone and postpone until it eventually collapses in on itself like a sort of indecision black hole.
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Re: Railways

Post by IvanV » Tue Apr 26, 2022 5:44 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Tue Apr 26, 2022 2:09 pm
Indeed - just imagine how much more the much longer piece of track will cost to connect north of Preston, if indeed the DfT decides to do that. What's more likely is that the DfT will postpone and postpone until it eventually collapses in on itself like a sort of indecision black hole.
Since they weren't committing to it, I took it as read that it was cancelled without replacement. So, what you say. And once they'd got away with cancelling the Leeds branch, probably an obvious next step.

It has always astonished me that it was the Tories who gave the go-ahead for HS2. It did not seem the kind of extravagant use for public funds the Tories have recently been known for. It was the Major govt that refused to give the go-ahead for Crossrail, a project with a much clearer and stronger business case. By pruning a few bits off HS2, to save money, they revert to some kind of typical Tory-ism.

On the subject of prunings, I've been on the train from London to Bath a couple of times recently. Where we have to travel in a dual-mode Azuma because they pruned off the electrification of the Swindon to Bristol Temple Meads branch, among other prunings of that project. That seemed a much more mean-minded pruning than this one. Especially when we were told last summer that the government's Transport decarbonisation plan is based on the principle that fixed electrification is the main approach for rail. Though the only promise they made in relation to that was to subsequently devise a specific rail decarbonisation plan. If it's not worth electrifying that bit, it seems absurd to claim that fixed electrification is your main approach to decarbonising rail.

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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Tue Apr 26, 2022 9:59 pm

Well, to be fair, network rail worked out that full electrification is the best answer for 95% of the rail network. And, presumably, given the DfT's typical expediency and wisdom, by the time they agree to electrify up to 70% of the rail network there'll be about 4 years to do it in. Easy.
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Re: Railways

Post by IvanV » Wed Apr 27, 2022 9:18 am

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Tue Apr 26, 2022 9:59 pm
Well, to be fair, network rail worked out that full electrification is the best answer for 95% of the rail network. And, presumably, given the DfT's typical expediency and wisdom, by the time they agree to electrify up to 70% of the rail network there'll be about 4 years to do it in. Easy.
Without going to go back to find the reference in the NR document which I did download and flick through a few days ago, for another purpose, I think that might be 95% of the traffic rather than 95% of the network length. There is an awful lot of very lightly used bits of network.

But yes, indeed, the origin of this is NR's analysis that a great deal of electrification should happen. And the government has uncritically accepted that in their overall transport decarb plan, while saying that their promise for rail is to devise a specific rail plan. Meanwhile, the government's recent spending plans for rail did not reflect that. I rather suspect NR might be told, that's the money you've got, devise your own priorities for it. So HS2 might need a lot more pruning given so much of the spending budget is HS2. Meanwhile, lots of bits of network do need renewing more often than once per century.

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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Wed Apr 27, 2022 10:09 am

Meanwhile, Network Rail is currently going through its once-in-a-generation self-immolation process at the moment. Strikes ahoy and all that. Fun.

Wales & Western region's director of comms accidentally insulted everyone, and my former colleagues report that whilst in public NR top brass are styling it out, behind the scenes they've received three texts, four emails and a video from Andrew Haines, CEO, begging them not to go on strike. Not sure if the TSSA will follow suit, but probably.

The pretext for all this is, of course, the compulsory redundancies that the rail industry has decided are required ("Modernising Maintenance" and "Modernising Management" are the names for the reorgs in NR's case - both euphemisms for "get rid of people"), because people aren't travelling on trains as much any more. Note that sacking people is infinitely preferable to, say, understanding why they spend so much money on track renewals and figuring out how to spend less money on track renewals, because it's fast and doesn't require any sort of expertise or effort.
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Re: Railways

Post by JQH » Wed Apr 27, 2022 10:36 am

Double post
Last edited by JQH on Wed Apr 27, 2022 10:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Railways

Post by JQH » Wed Apr 27, 2022 10:38 am

Note that sacking people is infinitely preferable to, say, understanding why they spend so much money on track renewals and figuring out how to spend less money on track renewals, because it's fast and doesn't require any sort of expertise or effort.
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Re: Railways

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri May 13, 2022 9:57 am

I see Crossrail's gonna open on the 24th, which is cool. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-61415714

I'm gonna be in London in June so might go for a joy ride.
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Re: Railways

Post by headshot » Fri May 13, 2022 10:04 am

Meanwhile, I'd like to travel to London from Birmingham on 12th June, but I can't because there are no trains available to book because of engineering works...on either the Chiltern of Avanti lines...

What a load of sh.t.
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Re: Railways

Post by Gfamily » Fri May 13, 2022 10:21 am

headshot wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 10:04 am
Meanwhile, I'd like to travel to London from Birmingham on 12th June, but I can't because there are no trains available to book because of engineering works...on either the Chiltern of Avanti lines...

What a load of sh.t.

West Midland Trains seem to be running (or at least, they're offering tickets on the National Rail website).
Search link for departures after 11:30 on 12th
https://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/ ... 2/1130/dep
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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Fri May 13, 2022 10:22 am

That's strange, national rail enquiries is showing a few options:

https://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/ ... 2/1200/arr
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Re: Railways

Post by headshot » Fri May 13, 2022 3:51 pm

I’ve decided to travel very early on Monday instead. 🤷🏻

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Re: Railways

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue May 17, 2022 10:27 pm

Queen learns how to use an oyster card, and now her line is officially open!
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-61465207
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