D854_Tiger

I was playing devil's advocate there a bit. Yes highly unlikely unless Boris becomes the next PM and frankly that looks to be even more unlikely than his airport, considering the size of the anyone but Boris contingent that clearly exists in the Tory party. Say what you like about them, when it comes to stabbing in the front, they don't hold back.

I believe it depends upon the type of pension. Nowadays more and more pensions are no longer final salary schemes, in which case, you cannot lose your pension rights as it always was your own money. However with a final salary scheme (and public sector schemes) you could lose the employer contribution component of your fund, same as if you chose to leave their employment of your own accord, before completing any length of service requirement. But, as you say, an ET may see things rather differently, assuming that is you have the means (or backing) to take your case to an ET, and a lot of this has never been tested in the courts as most employers tend to choose the path of least resistance, unless the sums involved are so great. However, at the end of the day, even the highly unionised public sector has ways and means to get rid of those that refuse to pull their weight and you can be pretty certain lots of self certified sickness is as good a way as there is to get yourself placed at the top of the very next redundancy list, remembering that redundancy, especially for younger employees, is by no means a path to any kind of a comfortable lifestyle and always something that you would probably want to avoid.

But even with an official dispute, only for twelve weeks, and I believe (and I could be wrong on this) an official dispute is only official if your employer has first chosen to recognise your union. Employers are currently under no legal obligation to recognise a union, which is why I believe one political party at least has proposed that companies should be forced to recognise a union once a significant proportion of a workforce has chosen to join one. There are certainly more than a few companies in the UK that point blank refuse to recognise any trade unions, a certain Irish airline being one of them, so that must also tie in with current EU law as well.

Indeed, we have created a political process whereby effectively it's just not worth the private sector getting involved without first having the government behind them. The days of railway directors deciding to build along an entire sea front and more or less just doing it have now gone forever and probably a good thing to. But we do need to realise that maybe (by International standards) the pendulum has swung too far and the state must be expected to pick up the tab for such a process else stifle the private sector completely, which they certainly seem to have done, where transport is concerned, with the exception of the airlines. Then we wonder why everyone seems to fly on internal flights more and more these days.

The idea that was knocking around in the 1980s, in connection with the proposed super pit (how times move on), envisaged reopening the Berkswell - Kenilworth line and four tracking between Berkswell and Stechford, including a flyover behind Berkswell station. Well that came to nothing but HS2 will use part of the Kenilworth route and, guess what, will flyover behind Berkswell station. Of course HS2 will provide two extra tracks between International and New St (albeit via an entirely different route) what's the betting that line could see some commuter use eventually. I believe the service plan for that stretch is six trains per hour but only once the entire project is completed to the north west and north east, initially it will be just three trains an hour.

Another possibility was to close Heathrow Airport and move the entire operation to Boris International Airport. The highly valuable land so freed going a long way towards financing the new airport and allowing for massive new housing development where the transport infrastructure already exists.

I'm not aware that it was ever illegal for a company to sack any worker that engaged in strike action, official, unofficial or secondary. An albeit theoretical risk anyone takes if they choose to strike. A legal situation that was tested to the point of destruction by the infamous Grunwick strike and later by Rupert Murdoch's decision to go over the heads of the print unions and move his entire operation out to Canary Wharf. Bottom line is, no employer has any obligation to continue employing someone and they need not provide any reason for not doing so, provided they meet the legal requirements of redundancy, equality and non-discriminatory fair treatment. So go on strike and your employer could never sack you alone but he could sack all of the strikers, collectively, and without any compensation (including redundancy or pension).

HS2 is a highly charged and emotive issue, probably partly because it's high speed alignment and gradient profile makes it rather similar in some ways to a motorway, I know which I would rather live next to, HS2 will pass less than two miles from where I live, thus far, I am losing no sleep over it. I once lived less than a hundred yards from a main line railway and hardly knew it was there. One day I went to see a house that, unbeknown to me, backed onto the M42, the estate agent kept that little ditty quiet till he had got me there but you could see from the look on his face, that he knew and I knew, we were both wasting each other's time over something that was never going to happen, bloody awful noise and I dreaded to think of all the pollution. I worry a little that the concentration here seems to be entirely on passenger services and rail-bourne freight is still locked into the 'block/intermodal or nothing' culture it has been in for 50 years. A re-invention of the local goods yard principle where freight can be quickly and easily transhipped, perhaps using mini-containers on pallets, might remove much local and long distance freight from the overburdened road network, but nobody seems interested and I am a wilderness crying in a voice... You might think the technology exists nowadays but the trouble is most lorry journey are door to door and are short (less than forty miles) how rail could ever break into that market and affordably is the real headache.

Which is were the private sector could come in and find the money to build the infrastructure for us. They would want a return of course, on that investment, but up here in the West Midlands we already have a good example of private sector involvement in transport infrastructure and that's the M6 toll road. Now I know that is still contentious to this day but it's a toll that is readily affordable and personally I would always pay it rather than risk the hell that can be Gravelly Hill. Why that kind of thing was never developed further is anyone's guess because it sure gets the taxpayers off the hook for building these things. There was talk of the Chinese coming up with some of the money for HS2 (I believe there still is) and the reopening of some connecting routes, not strictly private sector, but it would still work as if they were. Trouble is, we seem to be plagued with a tribal political system where one lot believe only more private sector can be good and the other lot that only more of the state running things can be good. That might not be so bad were it not for the fact that, for the most part, both get it horribly wrong and are guilty of always putting their political ideology before the pragmatism our taxes rather need and should deserve.

The width and height of the train plus the extra that's needed once that train is swaying and bouncing up and down on its suspension is called the kinematic envelope.

I suspect though any potential reopening would still have to have Birmingham as its primary target and, as with all these West Midlands proposals, it would run into the New Street congestion problem. I believe they are now talking of a couple of new chords at Bordesely to allow the Kings Heath and Castle Bromwich routes to access Moor Street, though perhaps Curzon Street could be considered as well and afforded some classic rail access, not just the high speed trains. Perhaps another chord that might be considered is one near Soho to allow the Snow Hill lines to be accessed from the Soho - Perry Bar loop. Trouble is, neither Moor Street or Snow Hill have much scope for expansion either. Ideally, all the New Street electric suburban services could be put into a new underground station at New Street, a lot like Thameslink at St Pancras International, and free up some capacity above. I'm thinking Cross City, Walsall - Wolverhampton trains, quite possibly LNW services and even maybe some of the Virgin Pendolino trains. Also four tracking the Birmingham - Coventry line, quite a bit of the land required for that was acquired by the LMS as early as the 1930s. But surely the most important (and road congested corridor) is that over the former Midland lines through Castle Bromwich and Kings Heath (and perhaps the Sutton Park line) it's inconceivable that, in this day and age, such an important commuting corridor as that has no local train services whatsoever, despite the railway never having closed. It will be no consolation for the good citizens of Castle Bromwich / Castle Vale to ponder over those HS2 trains passing them by and getting to London in 40 minutes, whilst they have to endure an hour on a bus just to get into Birmingham city centre.

The passengers all seemed to be blissfully unaware of anything having gone wrong including those in the carriage with the pantograph. I guess they soon found out though but commendable that something as serious as this can go wrong and the passengers need not be spooked out by it at all.

You might be surprised how much of the fashion end of their lines does get flown in. Bung a nice little red number in a container coming from Asia and by the time it reaches the UK it's gone out of fashion. Needless to say, looking at my wardrobe, anything imported could have been delivered on a very slow boat from China.

I was actually parroting more than a few Labour MP's take on the SNP, there's no love lost there.

Sadly in this country transport has never been reserved for the greatest political talent available. Either a good one, on the way up, that doesn't hang around for very long or a bad one, on the way down, that usually does. I will leave it to someone else to decide which category Grayling is.

I wasn't necessarily promoting the idea myself just repeating the government's stated intention or maybe I should say Grayling's stated intention. However I would state that there are a surprising number of people nowadays for whom modal choice doesn't really exist. A lot of older people who can't or won't contemplate long car journeys which, in any case, can be so horribly congested as to be unworkable. As for the coach, it can compete on price but that price usually comes at a price. My mom recently had to get to Southampton for a cruise and ruled out the just one National Express direct coach per day as totally impracticable and it wasn't much cheaper either. The railway offered two trains an hour to choose from.

He was right on some things clearly having multiple main line stations in so many cities was something that needed addressing, both from a cost perspective and a passenger perspective, a pain all round. The joint lines were pretty much doomed, once there was only one railway company a lot of them lost their reason to exist. But too many lines were closed, instead of economies being made, and he was a clever man he should have known full well that producing a report for politicians was always going to be a case of them implementing the bits they wanted to hear and ignoring all the bits they didn't. That's what politicians do and Beeching trusted them to behave in good faith - rational and logical in their dealings with him and his report - and frankly that made him the biggest dumb arse ever to walk on the planet because he was left taking all the blame, the oldest trick in the book, just like the politicians had hoped all along and he fell for it.

PR is pretty much all that Branson does nowadays. He has turned himself into a brand, Stagecoach run his railways and Delta pretty much owns his airline. Same with his other airlines in the US (Alsaka Airlines) and his Australian one looks to be going the same way in a deal with the Air China and Hilton Hotels. Build something successful from scratch then flog it off. He's good at it though and it's notable that whatever the deal the Virgin brand never seems to be thrown away by the new owners. Notice how we always talk about Branson and the East Coast franchise never Souter.

I rather think the mistake was made early, when Beeching was mentioned, that's about as political as it gets on a railway forum. Rather like posting a cartoon of the prophet and hoping there won't be a fuss on Muslim TV.

Very close to the very busy cargo hub at East Midlands airport as well. No prizes for guessing where all M&S imported clothing goods must land then.

There used to be a few GWR ones as well. Oh crikey better not give them ideas.

The only dry side for Voyagers is east of Exeter.

The railways have coped under both private and state ownership. Where they have failed to cope, under either form of ownership, was when successive governments insisted on always considering them as a business that must aim for profit and show a return on investment, whilst their primary competing mode was never (and still isn't) considered in anything like that same kind of business-like way. Roads have always been built according to need, never according to profit, and only recently has the concept emerged of railways being afforded the same kind of treatment, albeit to a much lesser extent. There hasn't really been a level playing field for the railways since the days of the turnpikes.

I don't doubt it, recognising that devolved power generally has helped matters where transport is concerned. It's just that the main parties in Westminster do have a vested interest in stuffing Wee Jimmie Krankie. Sorry if that offends but the *** is about to bring in minimum alcohol pricing, she has already banned alcohol on Scotrail and separating me from my beer is politics beyond the pale, even though I am English, and anyway I've got a wife for that kind of thing without her poking her ore in.

I spent many hours spotting at New Street in the 1960/70s and it couldn't be beaten on a summer Saturday with a procession of XC expresses added to the mix. Then what a mix, class 45,46,47,8x and the odd Western, class 25 (always times two), class 37 and class 31 thrown in, even the odd exotic DMU (if you count numbers that began with E). Then never forgot the place going mad when Roebuck (still in maroon) turned up one day and a class 33 had my jaw dropping in disbelief. I was last there a couple of weeks back and the main difference now (since the HSTs have gone) is how quiet the place is, despite it being busier than ever,