The Night Mail

[Happy Hippo]

What has been lurking in the background of the discussion, but has only been touched on a few times is logistics and production capabilities.

 

For instance the build time for a Spitfire Mk V was 13000 man hours per airframe.*

 

The Hurricane was comparatively less

 

Of course the super efficient Germans were knocking  the Bf 109 G out at round the 4000 man hours each.*

 

One can ponder on the results should there be a Falklands II conflict.  Although the FI might be difficult to take, if and it is a big if, the Argentinians were to get a foothold on the islands, I fear that HMG would now be unable to raise a sufficient force to retake the islands.  It was a pretty close run thing the first time. Now the Argentine have F-16 (admittedly early block versions) and the RAF have a very much diminished AAR capability, so getting an air bridge established, where there is a potential for interdiction of flights becomes very problematic.^

 

The RN now has an even weaker Air Direction Frigate/Destroyer capacity plus a deficit in suitable ships, and more importantly, trained crews.  Put it another way...  The UK can no longer put it's own self sufficient carrier group to sea, but is reliant on her NATO allies to provide the additional support.

 

There are other major shortfalls in equipment and the logistic chain, but listing them is pointless,  the above is just to provoke a bit of thought.

 

I doubt whether it takes a mere 13000 man hours to produce a Tranche 3 Typhoon, and it would be interesting to see how quickly any UK  government could get any home gown production line running that could knock out aircraft, tanks or ships, if we were suddenly put into such dire straits. 

 

Despite a rich history of engineering excellence and innovation, UK no longer has the capacity to switch to mass production should a war footing be required.

 

History can be kind to the military man, and had the Germans looked in detail at Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, a century before, they would have catered for what Napoleon failed to do.

 

The British were equally to blame and threw away HMS Price of Wales and HMS Repulse in the South China sea in December 1941.  By then they were well aware of the IJN capability having been well aware of the devastations wrought at Pearl Harbour three days earlier:  They were also well aware of the vulnerability of warships to air attacks where there was no air cover having lost a number of ships to such earlier in the conflict, yet they were allowed to continue.

 

 

 

 

* Corelli Barnett: 'Audit of War'.

 

^  Had the Argentine been really serious about having another pop at the FI, they should have gone when we were involved with OP Granby during the first Gulf War.  In order to support the Single Armd Div we deployed, took the entire logistic resources of UK Armed Forces.  Units not involved were effectively cannibalised to provide sufficient spares and replacement equipment.  We could not have opened up a second front.

Edited March 5 by Happy Hippo

[SM42]

5 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Getting back on track (pun intended), I’ve been wandering through the jungle that is YouTube and came across a railway enthusiast who put up two intriguing videos about the two new SBB double deck EMUs. One from Stadler (so home grown) and one from Bombardier.
 

The Vlogger (who is British) was particularly scathing about the Bombardier EMU - highlighting the numerous technical problems and the (in his words) barely adequate seating whilst being very positive about the Stadler EMU. 

 

I like neither (but I agree that the Stadler EMU is better than the Bombardier EMU), preferring the “old fashioned” loco-hauled rolling stock - which I find far, far more comfortable. Now I understand the need for double-deck rolling stock - with essentially zero space in Switzerland for new track, double deck carriages double capacity at minimal cost. Capacity that is desperately needed on the high traffic Geneva-Bern-Zurich and Basel-Zurich corridors.

 

But why, for heaven’s sake, go for EMUs? SBB has double-deck loco hauled rolling stock - so could have just upgraded that fleet. So why fixed rake EMUs?

 

Can anyone clarify for me the advantages of having a fixed formation EMU (or DMU for that matter) over loco-hauled stock? You need the same number of staff for both types of train, but with loco-hauled stock if one carriage develops a defect it can be removed - leaving the rest of the train in service. Plus you can easily strengthen a formation at peak demand times (SBB know the loading well in advance - when you book tickets in advance online or on the SBB app, you will be informed if that particular train has low, medium or high occupancy).

 

Money and time. 

 

Loco hauled stock needs someone to couple and uncouple at the end of the line / turnaround point.

 

The loco has to run round or another very expensive bit of kit ( another loco ) is needed to stick on the back. 

 

Use and EMU / DMU and turnaround is as quick as the driver can change ends and driver's have 4x4 capability, even if they don't like using it off road.

 

The risk of losing a whole train for the sake if one vehicle is low, with multiple traction units in a set itt may mean  that it can still limp home / finish a diagram.

 

Lose  a loco and the whole train is lost anyway plus another loco to rescue.

 

Not having shunters or train crew crawling round between vehicles, lumping bits of pipe and chain about is a lot safer and you could cut out at least one person from the whole operation by the driver pressing a button in the cab to attach / detach. 

 

As for capacity, you know what you need and when from experience.

 

Cater for that with the size of the units and any brief changes, like a football match, will just mean heavily loaded on a few occasions.

 

You might even be able to double capacity ( in off peak times)  for such events at minimal cost. 

 

No need to keep hundreds of vehicles lying around just in case you need an extra one or two now and then. 

 

Cutting jobs, ( costs,) increasong staff safety ( less chance of squashing someone) and saving time in the timetable thus ccapacity to increase service levels ( better PR) means the multiple unit will always look attractive.

 

Andy

[iL Dottore]

2 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

...it would be interesting to see how quickly any UK  government could get any home gown production line running that could knock out aircraft, tanks or ships, if we were suddenly put into such dire straits....

Weeellll....

 

By the time the production line (and staff) had had

• Diversity training
• Inclusivity training
• White privilege awareness training
• Anti-Racism training
• "Unconsious Bias" training
• "elf and safetee" (not to be confused with the very important Health and Safety)
• Cybersecurity training
• Ethics training
• Gender awareness training

And the government had

• Negotiated an agreement with a dozen unions.
• Had legions of lawyers check everything and anything.
• Brought in the consultants to "advise" on "optimal production line techniques".
• Paid someone to pay someone to pay someone to pay someone to deliver something (usually late and substandard)

The Jackboots would already be marching down Whitehall....

[Happy Hippo]

47 minutes ago, SM42 said:

 

Money and time. 

 

Loco hauled stock needs someone to couple and uncouple at the end of the line / turnaround point.

 

The loco has to run round or another very expensive bit of kit ( another loco ) is needed to stick on the back. 

 

Use and EMU / DMU and turnaround is as quick as the driver can change ends and driver's have 4x4 capability, even if they don't like using it off road.

 

The risk of losing a whole train for the sake if one vehicle is low, with multiple traction units in a set itt may mean  that it can still limp home / finish a diagram.

 

Lose  a loco and the whole train is lost anyway plus another loco to rescue.

 

Not having shunters or train crew crawling round between vehicles, lumping bits of pipe and chain about is a lot safer and you could cut out at least one person from the whole operation by the driver pressing a button in the cab to attach / detach. 

 

As for capacity, you know what you need and when from experience.

 

Cater for that with the size of the units and any brief changes, like a football match, will just mean heavily loaded on a few occasions.

 

You might even be able to double capacity ( in off peak times)  for such events at minimal cost. 

 

No need to keep hundreds of vehicles lying around just in case you need an extra one or two now and then. 

 

Cutting jobs, ( costs,) increasong staff safety ( less chance of squashing someone) and saving time in the timetable thus ccapacity to increase service levels ( better PR) means the multiple unit will always look attractive.

 

Andy

I await br2975's comments on this concerning  TfW and how they have managed their fleet issues over the past few years 

[SM42]

Of course one of BR's money saving (?) shemes was to create push pull sets. 

 

Thus making a multiple units from the stuff they already had 8n those cash strapped years. 

 

Had there been a bigger pot of cash, things like the APT may have been in regular service for longer and flleets of electric locos would not have lingered on so long trogging up and down the WCML.. 

 

 

Andy

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

By the time the production line (and staff) had had

• Diversity training
• Inclusivity training
• White privilege awareness training
• Anti-Racism training
• "Unconsious Bias" training
• "elf and safetee" (not to be confused with the very important Health and Safety)
• Cybersecurity training
• Ethics training
• Gender awareness training

While I agree all these things exist, they are not universal except in the frenzied world of the Mail Online. I think some of the teachers at my sons primary school wouid have benefitted from doing most of that list.

Tony

Edited March 5 by Tony_S

[Winslow Boy]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

Weeellll....

 

By the time the production line (and staff) had had

• Diversity training
• Inclusivity training
• White privilege awareness training
• Anti-Racism training
• "Unconsious Bias" training
• "elf and safetee" (not to be confused with the very important Health and Safety)
• Cybersecurity training
• Ethics training
• Gender awareness training

And the government had

• Negotiated an agreement with a dozen unions.
• Had legions of lawyers check everything and anything.
• Brought in the consultants to "advise" on "optimal production line techniques".
• Paid someone to pay someone to pay someone to pay someone to deliver something (usually late and substandard)

The Jackboots would already be marching down Whitehall....

Couldn't we just buy it from Amazon/China. Be far cheaper and if we get it via Prime we'd probably get it the next day.

[Happy Hippo]

5 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

Couldn't we just buy it from Amazon/China. Be far cheaper and if we get it via Prime we'd probably get it the next day.

"Good Morning Minister, the  Typhoons you ordered on Amazon have been delivered to RAF Coningsby.

 

The ground staff have built them, but the pilots are complaining they are a bit on the small size."

 

 

 

[iL Dottore]

2 hours ago, Tony_S said:

While I agree all these things exist, they are not universal except in the frenzied world of the Mail Online. I think some of the teachers at my sons primary school wouid have benefitted from doing most of that list.

Tony

Hmm, I think that the problem with such “trainings” goes far beyond the caustic perception of the tabloid everyone loves to hate.

 

Even such august publications such as the Harvard Business Review have commented on the matter. Many, diverse, publications (including the HBR) have concluded about such trainings that much of it is pointless, most of it is inane, puerile and simplistic and little of it actually achieves what it sets out to achieve.

 

The thing is about newspapers on both the left and the right: sometimes they do get it right. Don’t discount them because they have a different point of view.

 

And as for having all such trainings in one place, well when a retired UK physician acquaintance of mine tried to volunteer to help out during the pandemic, the NHS insisted on her having to go through hoops in order to volunteer and - yes - these hoops DID involve “training” on most of the topics cited.

[Winslow Boy]

2 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

"Good Morning Minister, the  Typhoons you ordered on Amazon have been delivered to RAF Coningsby.

 

The ground staff have built them, but the pilots are complaining they are a bit on the small size."

 

 

 

Get the boffins at Farnborough to knock up a shrink ray thingebob and bobs your uncle. You see that's typical Civil Service thinking. There's me a civie I thought that up no problem. I bet the shrinkometer will even be on Amazon.

[DenysW]

10 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Can anyone clarify for me the advantages of having a fixed formation EMU (or DMU for that matter) over loco-hauled stock?

Adhesive weight. In the loco-hauled version you can apply (roughly) one-fourth of the weight of the loco as tractive effort before its wheels start to slip (worse with steam as not all locomotive wheels are driven). In the EMU version it's the weight of the train. This is why the London Underground doesn't go for locomotive hauled, and is successful despite some challenging gradients. At least until they stop doing heavy overhauls on 30-year old rolling stock to save money.

 

Fixed Formation, less obvious. You get some length advantages by close-coupling the carriages, but I think it's mostly they can't be ar$ed to split up sets and shunt them. Less sarcastic version: the cost of running extra carriages out-of-hours is less than the cost of splitting formations.

[bbishop]

Just checked my certificates:

First Responder on Scene - level 3 (this is the important one)

Medicines Management level 1 & 2 (not a bad idea)

Drugs and alcohol

Moving and handling principles

Counter fraud

Keep yourself safe

Introduction to safeguarding

Safeguarding level 1

General data protection regulation

Equality, diversity and inclusion

Care Quality Commission level 1

 

I don't think a Sergeant Major can shout "you horrible little **** man", any more.  Little is "sizeist";  ***** must avoid reference to creed, colour etc., and a fair proportion of the armed services are now female.

 

 

[coastalview]

Had an interesting day today with a visit to AFC Telford football club (I wouldn't recommend the sausage baps TBH). It was the Attingham Park annual property meeting to brief all of the staff and volunteers on what new initiatives the year will bring. The financial year of the NT is from the beginning of March and it was interesting to discover that in the last financial year we had almost 590K visitors and were the most visited NT site over Christmas.  We also now have the second highest number of volunteers of any NT site which was quite surprising.

 

It was fascinating to discover how Attingham is working with The Environment Agency as a pilot  project to help reduce downstream flooding from the Rivers Severn and Tern, as, with climate change this is only going to get worse.

 

On the point of training, the culture wars we have been subjected to would suggest that the NT is a "woke" organisation and only concerned with PC things and as such if you believe some of our daily newspapers  we volunteers spend all our time being trained in all sorts of woke things. However the only training we volunteers who meet the public every day have to do is around safeguarding every two years and Data Protection annually. The former is an online interactive course which takes about 20 minutes and the latter a two page refresher document  that takes about 5 minutes to read. Both are very practical and sensible and in my experience none of the volunteers really mind doing them. 

[Hroth]

 

@bbishop  The modern Sgt Major bawls "YOU NAUGHTY PERSON, YOU!" at the quaking squaddie...

 

[polybear]

4 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

@bbishop  The modern Sgt Major bawls "YOU NAUGHTY PERSON, YOU!" at the quaking squaddie...

 

 

Definite no-no, that.....

"naughty" suggests guilt has been proven, without a trial

"person":  does the squaddie identify as such?

[Northmoor]

14 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

There’s an interesting branch of serious historical study that looks at the “What Ifs” of history. Not the silly “what if the Romans had machine guns” sort of nonsense, but rather “what would have been the consequences if only one thing had been different?” One example being what if Halifax and not Churchill had become PM in 1940.

 

I have read an excellent book, "What Might Have Been" by Andrew Roberts which contains about a dozen such essays by various historians.  The most "recent" is what would have happened in UK politics if the Brighton bomb had resulted in the death of the PM.  I think the writer's conclusion was that the Conservatives would have remained in power until 1992 with Michael Heseltine as leader.

[Northmoor]

11 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

^  Had the Argentine been really serious about having another pop at the FI, they should have gone when we were involved with OP Granby during the first Gulf War.  In order to support the Single Armd Div we deployed, took the entire logistic resources of UK Armed Forces.  Units not involved were effectively cannibalised to provide sufficient spares and replacement equipment.  We could not have opened up a second front.

When it comes to the FI, do we make the mistake of assuming that we couldn't do things the same as last time - probably true - but then we would take advantage of things we didn't have then?  Why try to repeat Op Black Buck and all the AAR demand, trying to close a runway, when you could just pick a window in the Control Tower for a Tomahawk to arrive through?

 

As for the Argentinian military, they are probably less well-equipped than they were in 1982.  They have almost no Navy to speak of so are unlikely to be able to support a substantial garrison and it was the limitations of air supply that they struggled with last time.  Yes they have some F-16s but the serviceability of their Air Force is very poor; like the majority of less than First World air forces there is a tendency to buy some impressive-looking shiny things like what the USA has but be utterly unable to maintain them.

 

I agree though about the ability of UK plc to ramp up production though.  Lean, efficient production tends to be running flat out already - that's why it's efficient - and requires specialist skills to operate it.  Even if you could build a second line quickly, the spare personnel with the skills to manage and maintain it, don't exist.  However, we can be reassured that the UK does have an abundance of management consultants who can write reports on the feasibility of doing something, using information that the manufacturer knew already.

[polybear]

9 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

When it comes to the FI, do we make the mistake of assuming that we couldn't do things the same as last time - probably true - but then we would take advantage of things we didn't have then?  Why try to repeat Op Black Buck and all the AAR demand, trying to close a runway, when you could just pick a window in the Control Tower for a Tomahawk to arrive through?

 

As for the Argentinian military, they are probably less well-equipped than they were in 1982.  They have almost no Navy to speak of so are unlikely to be able to support a substantial garrison and it was the limitations of air supply that they struggled with last time.  Yes they have some F-16s but the serviceability of their Air Force is very poor; like the majority of less than First World air forces there is a tendency to buy some impressive-looking shiny things like what the USA has but be utterly unable to maintain them.

 

I agree though about the ability of UK plc to ramp up production though.  Lean, efficient production tends to be running flat out already - that's why it's efficient - and requires specialist skills to operate it.  Even if you could build a second line quickly, the spare personnel with the skills to manage and maintain it, don't exist.  However, we can be reassured that the UK does have an abundance of management consultants who can write reports on the feasibility of doing something, using information that the manufacturer knew already.

 

The previously mentioned 16000 hours?  BAe would scoff that up just doing the paperwork....

 

[Tony_S]

4 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

The thing is about newspapers on both the left and the right: sometimes they do get it right. Don’t discount them because they have a different point of view.

I spent many years subscribing (it was a lot cheaper!) to a newspaper that had a very different political viewpoint to mine. The opinion pieces were interesting as it was worth knowing so it was easier to argue with. When I cancelled the subscription, the very nice man asked if I minded saying why. I said I thought quite a few of their correspondents then were deranged. I don’t read a newspaper regularly now, though I browse via our local library online service. Aditi subscribes to the New York Times online edition. 

[Willie Whizz]

7 hours ago, Tony_S said:

While I agree all these things exist, they are not universal except in the frenzied world of the Mail Online. I think some of the teachers at my sons primary school wouid have benefitted from doing most of that list.

Tony

Always makes me smile how some people love to sneer at a newspaper that has one of the highest paid-for circulation figures (print and online) in the country and regularly wins awards for the quality of its journalism.
 

Yet the ‘right-on’ one many of those same folk allegedly love to read has to appeal for contributions to keep it afloat. Perhaps the people on those courses pass single copies around between them so as to study the public sector job ads on the cheap?

[Tony_S]

27 minutes ago, Willie Whizz said:

how some people love to sneer at a newspaper that

I don’t sneer at Mail Online, I despise it. 

[Oldddudders]

30 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

 Aditi subscribes to the New York Times online edition. 

Sherry and I daily play the NYT Wordle game - does that count? 

[Tony_S]

2 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Sherry and I daily play the NYT Wordle game - does that count? 

Aditi does quite a few of their wordy puzzles and enjoys them. She is also completely fascinated by the real estate pages where there are descriptions of houses. We seem to get meals inspired by their food pages too. 

[skipepsi]

1 hour ago, Willie Whizz said:

Always makes me smile how some people love to sneer at a newspaper that has one of the highest paid-for circulation figures (print and online) in the country and regularly wins awards for the quality of its journalism.
 

Yet the ‘right-on’ one many of those same folk allegedly love to read has to appeal for contributions to keep it afloat. Perhaps the people on those courses pass single copies around between them so as to study the public sector job ads on the cheap?

A left leaning newspaper that is tax avoidant...

[Willie Whizz]

47 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I don’t sneer at Mail Online, I despise it. 

And you are perfectly within your rights to do so. Just please don’t fall for the delusion that all those who take the opposing position are blind fools or evil by default. Nor that everything printed in it is automatically wrong or biased. It no more is than any other newspaper, just a different perspective. 
 

I learned long ago, with particular

reference to my ‘local rag’ in the days when such papers still had some power and influence in their communities, and I was working on an important and contentious local project, that one should only ever believe that 50% of what is printed in any newspaper is actually, factually correct. The trick is, of course, deciding which 50% - and one’s own preferences are not a reliable guide to deciding.