One of the few times I had any professional dealing with railways was investigating the use of a transponder system to detect and measure exactly where trains are. There are obviously ways to do that, but for a really reliable system the ideal is multiple senors based on different principles. What interest we got for the idea was to detect and count vehicles, both within the train and from fixed equipment. I was told then that the top of the wish list for better detection was train length - traditional signalling can't measure it directly. That came from someone doing metro systems, but I'm sure the same is true of heavy rail. Of course an axle counter does this too, but AFAIK^▸ (as far as I know) the actual counts never get sent onwards to the signalling system.

There was a report on BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) South local news tonight about a report for Network Rail on the vexed topic of he OLE^▸ (Overhead Line Equipment, more often "OHLE") at Goring Gap. I can't find that online with the BBC, nor Network Rail, but there is this from the Henley Standard (Goring page):

There is even more detail on some of those, though in part that shows the HS^▸ (High Speed (short for HSS^▸ (High Speed Services) High Speed Services)) have misundestood some terms:

The Goring RAG^▸ (Radstock Action Group) report similar proposals from a meeting with NR^» (Network Rail - home page) in September, which is cryptic but explains the bit about ATFs better:

I did manage to do my passport picture at home and send it digitally, despite the only white background available being the inside of the bathroom door. I did have a lamp trained on that to eliminate the shadows, and I was also controlling the camera, which was on a tripod, remotely from a tablet. With all that set up, the big problem is how to stop doing retakes to get the result just so! Then, after all that, when the passport came back the picture was printed with the colour very washed out - technical issues, no doubt.

Why do they use Brother like that?

Historically, brother would have been common in several kinds of groups that the unions either grew out of or felt some commonality with - guilds, secret societies and fraternities, and nonconformists during the revival of the early 1800s. While unions may not have been religious, those primitive methodists, brethren, etc. were clearly anti-establishment, and their habit of squabbling about rules and procedures and forming splinter groups pre-echoes left-wing politics (I'm thinking of the 70s). So brother was an obvious choice as an egalitarian greeting and title, even if some of those precursors had hierarchical titles like master too.

In Britain, the prior use in religious orders wasn't a problem, given the lack of monks. In France it was, as the left was universally anti-clerical and the church was powerful, so camarade was adopted from military and revolutionary usage. That was reinforced when the Russian communists took over the various internationals, and camarade became the standard translation of tovarishch. In Germany, Kamerad was not acceptable as it was used in right-wing militaristic societies, and presumably Bruder wasn't accepted over much of Germany either, so I think Genosse got adopted instead. Kamerad of course was and is much better known to non-Germans, no doubt largely due to WWI (and II).

But why do they still use it (and comrade)? On one level we don't use titles, or this kind of greeting, much today, so they probably could drop it if they really wanted to not look like they are living in a parallel but slower-moving universe. But similar terms are used by some sub-groups, or self-conscious minorities. Unions might justifiably feel they have been persecuted, and have become more of a minority, but surely not to the extent of preparing to go underground*.

Incidentally, is Bro' in the RMT's text just a written abbreviation, or do they say "bro" and risk being attacked for cultural appropriate or suchlike?

*Though the RMT of course already are Underground.

This morning's Met Office yellow warning for the South West was for rain only - no wind (the next one, for Thursday/Friday, is for both.) Both events have similar forecast winds patterns at Dawlish, east of south, then turning via south (with the peak wind strength) to south-west - normal for a depression passing to the north. The highest wind forecast was higher for this morning (30 mph) that Friday, which looks a bit odd.

The inshore forecast did mention gales, but not the main (land) ones - again as normal, the presence of land reduces the wind strength even when you are still at sea (e.g. at a pier head, or a little further out). Of course the sea is more important at Dawlish, and the waves are formed by winds acting well out to sea and some time earlier, hence they are hard to forecast and the causes are not obvious to a land-based observer. Network rail have their own hydro- and meteoro-logical forcasts. This came up back you-know-when; the service was/had been provided by Mouchel (see this post); I have no information on the current situation, but I'm sure NR^» (Network Rail - home page) were relying on that (or a development of it) and other specialist forecasting.

That line from National Rail is the only place that suggests a full week of closures after 18th November - all the other sources (the timetable, GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway), and Network Rail) say it's only the weekend. So I guess it's just carelessness - the head of that item gives:  Start date 27/10/2018, End date 25/11/2018; arguably that's correct. But as the closure and RRB^▸ (Rail Replacement Bus) aren't continuous, it's probably a mistake to put them in one item, especially as that set of data is meant to be looked up by date.

I did find its planning documents (application 180410), which don't say (that I can find) who owns the site - so perhaps it is the council and they are not proud of themselves. There is a heritage statement from the applicants, and an assessment from the planners which sees no adverse issues. But then "heritage" consists only of what's got a listing, so the Three Guineas and a few things further away. However, the five public comments (one from the owners of Thames Tower) and the Conservation Area Appraisal Committee are all agin' it, the CAAC quite vehemently so.

The bit of the heritage statement that refers to visual impact in general, rather than listed stuff, reads:

That bit about "it reads against the backdrop of the circa 2014 footbridge addition at the western end of the station" is a bit cheeky, isn't it? Certainly if you look back at the council's plans for the "public realm", and some councillors' aspirations for a station building of quality, the thing just looks all wrong.

But what did the plans say it would look like? This is Maxx Media's picture in the planning statement that's closest to mine. From there, of course you can't see the station - I went forward to the corner of Thames Tower, where you first can, so the lamp post is in my picture.

But to whom? Who owns that bit of land? (And it would still need planing permission, wouldn't it?)

Now reads:

Somehow that doesn't look like the whole story, does it?

You have to feel sorry for all those creative types at Grimshaw, who beaver away for years to make your new station look pretty, only to find one of these gets plonked down in front of it (this is your first view of the station from the end of Station Road).

I'll take that back - I think gravity might well have done it all alone.

It's not a familiar train or railway to us: very heavy (about 40,000 tons), almost straight after the first bit out of the hills, and a steady fall at about 1 in 300. It may be steeper at the start - though you do wonder why a stopping place wasn't level. At nearly 3 km long, it's a long run from near the back if you need to get to the front in a hurry - so it need not have accelerated from a stand very fast.

If it did average 110 km/hr, it must have gone a a lot faster in places, even if it did reach a balancing speed. So the first statement stands.

All you have seen is from the RMT^▸ (National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers). Obviously there is another side to it. It is just possible that the RMT's statement contained less than 100% of the known facts (including what is alleged and disputed), and it may even not have been perfectly objective in what it did say.

The reports now agree on those figures, more or less. Of course that just means they all used the same source, not that they necessarily checked further. But this is a local report, from The West Australian:

Clearly it was going a lot faster than you'd like to see something that big do - and given that there's little gradient approaching Turner Siding it can't have been just gravity what done it. That report has a picture of the mangled train, which supports the description; I couldn't get it the video to download at all.

How else do the Irish import from France, or indeed anywhere else? They are currently looking into a direct "Celtic Interconnector", for which some EU^» (European Union - about) money would be forthcoming.

There's at least one place in the Handbook where an aperture is called an aspect (a diagram, so proof reading may not have been at fault). After so many years when aspect could be used for either sense with no ambiguities, it's going to take a long time for habits to change.