D854_Tiger

P.S. I just checked some Youtube clips of 5043 running tender first and there does seem to be an additional pipe fitted above the buffer beams. Doesn't answer my Pannier question though, unless they resorted to more conventional means of watering for Saturday's railtour.

I was under the impression that some kind of fixed connection (a feed pipe basically) between the GUV and the tender is provided as Tyseley museum claim the extra water tank extends the range of a Castle to 120 miles without need for a water stop. Certainly I believe they've taken the Castle from Tyseley to York without one.

Blocking the gangways in the Pullman Dining then. I though the 802's were being built to a WoE specification, rather than GW commute to Didcot specification, in which case you would hope someone has thought of that.

Trouble is, it only needs to happen once and given the number of trains per day, seven days per week and fifty two weeks per year, even the slightest of risks can become near certain. Then, couple the watching your back mentality with getting someone to actually sign off on it, rather than just agreeing it's a workable idea, is another thing altogether. I don't know, but am guessing, that in the event of an overrun, into an un-wired section, a pantograph can at least work out that it has run out of wires, due to its ever skyward progression in search of some power and then do something about it. Coming the other way, a failure to raise is somewhat less critical. The case here is a train needs to lower its pantograph but must rely on some external communication that, in the normal scheme of things could fail danger rather than safe, with no obvious back up, a bit of a no no in railway terms as is relying on human intervention as the back up.

Yes, sounds about right, though I never remember them so working, a 312 in multiple was usually with its own kind and nearly always for a show, shuttling back and forward between New St and International. The other regular multiple workings were football specials, round the loop, New Street - New Street via Witton. Incidentally, I believe they rarely (if ever) ventured further south than Bletchley, even then only for maintenance exams, and I also believe the operators on the ground were given very strict instructions that the 312s must not stray off their intended route i.e further south than Coventry. Something to do with WMPTE having financed their purchase. Having said that, I'm pretty sure they did stray.

P.S. The top speed currently on the WoE main line is only 115 mph and even then only for short stretches. The extra grunt the class 802s are to have (and more than likely only need) is for use over the Devon banks, having been that way many times with a HST it's probably fair to say all the power in the world isn't a great deal of use when the routes involved are so heavily speed restricted. An HST between Newton Abbot and Plymouth, with two stops, is currently allowed 43 minutes, a Sprinter, with only half the power, 47 minutes, just a four minute penalty. Even a 5 car class 800 would have an extra 100 bhp per coach over the sprinter and the class 802 nearly 200 bhp per coach extra. As an aside a Voyager with only one stop is allowed 39 minutes, a HST 42 minutes, so all that extra power of the Voyager earns you just three minutes, for a HST to match a Voyager it needs to be a 2+5. So the new 2+5 HSTs will only be around three minutes quicker over the banks than the 2+8 version and that's assuming the timings are all to do with power. Seriously, a couple of grannies, struggling with four of five cases at Totnes (no shortage of those that way), and any advantage offered by a HST is pretty much lost, that three minutes a Voyager has over a HST, you do wonder if that's down to the doors, rather than the engines, and the class 802 will at least have the same door advantage. Down that way, with all the stops, the tourist (rather than commuter clientele) and usually just the train manager to handle things on the platform, those automatic doors are going to make life a lot easier than managing all the slam doors on a HST.

So a taxi without a driver. Should be fun, at two in the morning, getting in one of those after a drunk has vacated.

The view seems to be that those HST schedules are already somewhat bloated anyway but, no doubt, for good reason. On a good day, the class 800s should be OK but when things go even slightly **** up ....... they have nothing left spare, unless you count those short (but getting longer) bits with wires.

The story I heard last week and from someone who should know is that the DfT are not prepared to finance the uprating of the class 800s to the full 940 bhp capability as they don't think it's worth the cost and effort involved, for just one year, until the electrification reaches Swindon. The view is they will live with any impact of punctuality and, of course, not hold GW to any commitments on it. The problem becomes somewhat worse when the nine car units are introduced as they are even more power challenged than two five car sets. Two five car sets have six power cars verses five only for the nine car sets. As for the class 802, it has been designed for the job of WoE, the Hitachi people have their performance graphs, they will configure the software accordingly and I think we can be confident they do actually know what they are doing. It's quite simple really, the under performance of the class 800 is the Dft and Network Rail's problem any under performance from the class 802 would be Hitachi's. Then I know who my money would be on when it comes to problem solving.

The Valley Rambler ran yesterday, taking two Tyseley pannier tank locomotives to the Severn Valley. It was running with the specially converted GUV that has been modified to provide an additional water supply. I can see how this would be a quite simple arrangement, when running with a tender locomotive and always running tender first, but I wonder how the water supply is fed to two pannier tanks and presumably regardless of direction of travel.

Yeah the 312s were 90 mph whereas the 310s were only 75 mph. In the West Midlands, we were given four new ones of our own but I seem to remember, for some reason, ours were limited to 75 mph. They bought them for a brand new station called Birmingham International, which they decided to gift with with a half hourly local service, rather then the previous hourly one, not long after the Euston service was increased to half hourly as well. Strange to think that not all of the London trains even stopped there, from day one, and the place was dead except for when a show was on.

I remember the last time I travelled it I was actually heading to Leeds. I had been working in the City (all night over the weekend) right opposite Moorgate station and I checked the times and thought why not rather than going via Kings Cross. It was all pretty easy, Moorgate to Stevenage then an IC225 to Leeds, I doubt it was the fastest way but it all seemed quite relaxing. Quite strange buying a ticket to Leeds in a Tube station.

I believe it's very easy to get carried away with the concept of driverless cars. They have defined three stages towards automation and they haven't got past stage one yet, which is where the car provides automated driver aids but still requires supervision. Then when considering we've had automatic gearboxes for well over fifty years and they still can't persuade the majority of car buyers to buy them .... you do wonder who will buy these.

Driverless cars bring other problems for road capacity. All I will say is that when they first brought out TV remotes to change channels, rather than getting off your fat arse to do so, channel hopping was invented. What's the betting driverless cars, getting you into town, are then promptly sent back home again to save on the parking charges or getting you to work are then sent home again for the school run. I can foresee lots of empty mileage but what else to expect when you invent a car that can do it.

I checked with someone who claims to know about the current state of play regarding GW electrification. Now this may be old news or maybe someone knows better but according to him, electrification to Oxford and Bristol has only been deferred (CP6) and the reason being is that both those schemes rely upon signalling immunisation being completed in the Bristol area and the same problem around Oxford. Deferred means could still go ahead but that both proposals would have to take their chances in a cost benefit evaluation against all the other schemes in CP6, although key to that could be that the class 801s, currently being delivered as class 800s, could then be converted back to being all electric trains as originally intended. Regarding switching to diesel at that level crossing, apparently somewhere in the loop back to MTU, the idea of diesels being warmed up and switched on (will nilly) has not gone down well, I guess that's code for only if you give us more money.

HS2 will get you into London quicker than a Birmingham bus will get you into Birmingham. I haven't been City of London way for a while but I'm guessing it can't have got any better. Aren't they merging all the Euston stations into one and presumably the Hammersmith and City will get relief from Crossrail, though my recollections of Euston Square was most trains coming off the Metropolitan Main Line and absolutely heaving to the point where you couldn't get on.

Then the Japanese are the first to acknowledge it, they are in thrall to the likes of James Watt, the Stephensons and Brunel and every Japanese schoolkid knows about them. It made national news over there when they were chosen as the IEP suppliers and the significance of Stockton being chosen for the location of their new factory was not lost on them either. Apparently, James Watt's workshop is a must do at the science museum, for many Japanese tourists, wish we could say the same for British ones.

I reckon HS2 will only save one path per hour between New St and Coventry and that's assuming Coventry's Pendolino service is reduced to two an hour, from three. If the intention is still to supply Coventry with its existing service frequency HS2 may save zero paths. I suppose they could start Euston trains from Coventry but that still leaves Wolverhampton to be served somehow. I'm guessing they're not planning to say to someone booking a Wolverhampton - Euston ticket, take the next Birmingham train, then walk to Curzon Street and take HS2.

Video 125 did some archive films based on cinema out takes but that was all on film stock, presumably 35mm. What I find frustrating with the old archive stuff is that I believe most of the film stock, from those days, could withstand remastering into HD quality but no one seems to have made that leap. Someone,who claimed to know, once told me that even 16 mm film could benefit from HD which, if true, is particularly frustrating as most of the best stuff around, like Ivo Peters, was shot originally on 16 mm. I assume for anything originally shot on 8mm (and there's a lot of that out there) it would not be worthwhile. I'm guessing for sure 35mm will stand up to HD, judging by the large number of old films on blue-ray claiming so, but would 16mm hack it as well.

So is the maintenance cycle the same for a class 800 as a class 802. Somehow I doubt it and I know software inside out and I know how they those product managers package it up. You can upgrade Windows, whilst that's in service, but Microsoft will still demand 150 quid (or whatever) for doing so. Sorry but I've seen two word patches (less than a line of code) end up costing 20 grand to deliver, if there is any impact on testing that has to be revisited. I do not speak from any inside knowledge but in a previous post you clearly stated that all these changes have had Hitachi laughing all the way to the bank, which kind of contradicts what you are saying now.

I was quoting a popular myth held to by Premiership footballers. The theory goes that goalkeepers only get noticed when they make a mistake, normally sending the crowd into abject despair, whereas when a striker makes a mistake the crowd just thinks better luck next time, so where would you rather play. Apologies, if you're offended, but I played a lot of football in my younger days and developed quite a thick skin myself, the way I played (up front) you had to with, "Yee yaw" ringing in your ears, I hope your son develops a thick skin too, most especially when he makes a mistake, trust me he will need it.

Yeah but without any little guys to boss around, the big guys haven't got a job either. I was told a story, from back in the 1980s when Michael Edwards was brought in to sort out BL. He called his management team and said, "Go away and find me 15% cost savings." When a meeting was reconvened a rather desperate looking production manager had to admit, "I can't do it, the production facility dictates the staffing levels but if I had more modern production facilities maybe (and he went on to specify what he needed)." One of the smug commercial managers had it sorted though (he even had a little list prepared), Edwards took a look and said, "Well done, now add your own name to that list unless you can explain to me why you have been running a department, all this time, with 15% more staff than you ever needed.

It's down to group standards, or whatever they're called nowadays, so, more to the point, how do we arrive at that position whilst not imposing those same standards on other modes. I believe the Cambrian used to have halts without any lighting and, once trains with automatic doors were introduced, the trains were not allowed to stop after dark,. So the alternative was the bus, after dark, with no guarantee of street lighting at the bus stop and, indeed, no guarantee of so much as a pavement. I never did understand how that was supposed to be safer.

I actually believe the concentration of resources by closing multiple stations in city locations was one of Beeching's better ideas, huge saving on costs, potentially very little impact on services and has to be better for the passengers spared the pain of transferring between stations. Some of the pain that resulted from having pre-nationalisation multiple main line city centre stations is still suffered today, such as in Manchester or Glasgow, and still hasn't been completely rectified. But he did close all those railways and just before I would have been old enough to explore them (in 1970) and that's what's so frustrating and hard to forgive. I have just three vague childhood memories of old Snow Hill, a family holiday in 1963 to Dorset, hauled by what I swear was a Merchant Navy (but everyone tells me couldn't have been), a trip to London around 1964, hauled by what must have been a Western (it was maroon) and a DMU ride to the Malverns, guessing around 1966. There was nothing wrong with the idea of having only one main line station in Birmingham but arguably New St has never really coped and, of course, doesn't today despite Snow Hill being reopened. Though, I've no idea how you could go about putting that right because it's not just about New St, the double track routes from Coventry and Wolverhampton can't really cope either.

I believe there has been more than a few spec changes, since the original IEP specification, especially through the design stages (expensive) as well as what appears to be the latest reconfiguration. But just taking the engine reconfiguration, the engineering effort in the change would be substantial. First specifying it, costing it (that's new braking system, radiators and engine configurations), working out the cost of a completely new maintenance regime, the cost of resourcing that regime, the impact (cost) of taking trains out of service to implement the change and finally any impact on the commissioning and testing phases (most likely revisiting a sub-set of the entire test suite, including bringing forward any testing originally planned for the class 802 specification). Then more testing cost loads once you consider the human resources involved to do it. Then, all that is all I can think of, off the top of my head, there's probably other stuff I haven't even thought off, like any additional training required. Thus we see how a tweak of the software can have huge impacts and I'm assuming generic software where the software versions all offer the same configurable options, it may be that the higher powered configuration means buying a completely new version of the software because the version you originally bought doesn't support what you want to do.