|
1847
|
All across the Great Western territory / Buses and other ways to travel / Re: Should electric cars be allowed to use bus lanes?
|
on: October 23, 2019, 15:52:40
|
In Britain you can effectively make your own number plates with whatever registration you fancy
[...]
It would therefore be whole minutes until the first green-plated petrol or diesel burner took advantage of this.
You can make your own number plates with whatever registration you fancy, but you may not fix it to a motor vehicle on a public road unless it complies with the rules. I'm sure anyone fixing a green plate to a burner vehicle would face a stiff penalty charge. Burner vehicles are likely to find green plates too conspicuous for a while yet; better to stick with standard yellow clones or none at all. Or wasn't that the sort of burner you meant?  |
|
|
|
|
1850
|
All across the Great Western territory / Buses and other ways to travel / Re: Should electric cars be allowed to use bus lanes?
|
on: October 23, 2019, 09:27:48
|
|
It's a very bad idea because of the effects on congestion and thus on journey predictability, attractiveness of cycling and walking, and other ideas mentioned above. I would also expect opposition from taxi drivers and motorcyclists. In effect, it turns a bus lane into a general traffic lane.
The green number plates are also a bad gimmick, especially if allowed on hybrids too. In Britain you can effectively make your own number plates with whatever registration you fancy – you, the responsible Coffee Shoppist, might never dream of doing so, but there are none of the holograms, special embossings and so on that are used elsewhere, and so it is done. It would therefore be whole minutes until the first green-plated petrol or diesel burner took advantage of this.
This scheme couldn't possibly be pre-electioneering, could it?
|
|
|
|
|
1852
|
All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: IETs into passenger service from 16 Oct 2017 and subsequent performance issues
|
on: October 21, 2019, 16:46:40
|
Waiting on P1 at Bath today, a 9-car IET▸ drew up on the opposite platform heading for London. I noticed that the first two or three coaches had a metal grill over the wheels and brake discs, but the following six or seven did not. What is the grill for and why would it be only partially present?
There are two bogie designs, but that doesn't sound like it! Trailer vehicles (1,4,6,9) have bolsterless bogies (like Voyagers) showing the shiny brake disc, while motor vehicles (2,3,5,7,8) have ones enclosed by a frame. That's what I saw but instead of being vehicles 1, 4, 6, 9 it was several consecutive cars. I did wonder if some of the frames/grilles might have been removed in the course of routine maintenance (perhaps to check or replace the brake pads?) and not replaced. If you remove the bogie frames the whole thing falls apart and the train falls on top of you - so no. But I must correct what I said before, as it's only the intermediate trailers that get the inner-frame bogies (Hitachi's term). So none on a 5-car, and just 4,6 on a 9-car. A significant weight reduction, Hitachi say. What I saw looked to me like a metal grill or mesh over the wheels and brake discs, but it might well have been more than that. If there are only two of them on a 9-car, then I reckon that's what I must have seen, and that's actually 4 and 6 rather than 1 and 2 or whatever is explained by the fact that I wasn't looking for them but just noticed that some had them and some didn't. By the time the train was stationary opposite me, its front end was out of sight due to the slight curvature of the platform. I've actually looked (briefly) for some photos of IETs to see what they show but they all seem to be taken from the end not the side. |
|
|
|
|
1854
|
All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: IETs into passenger service from 16 Oct 2017 and subsequent performance issues
|
on: October 21, 2019, 10:33:06
|
Waiting on P1 at Bath today, a 9-car IET▸ drew up on the opposite platform heading for London. I noticed that the first two or three coaches had a metal grill over the wheels and brake discs, but the following six or seven did not. What is the grill for and why would it be only partially present?
There are two bogie designs, but that doesn't sound like it! Trailer vehicles (1,4,6,9) have bolsterless bogies (like Voyagers) showing the shiny brake disc, while motor vehicles (2,3,5,7,8) have ones enclosed by a frame. That's what I saw but instead of being vehicles 1, 4, 6, 9 it was several consecutive cars. I did wonder if some of the frames/grilles might have been removed in the course of routine maintenance (perhaps to check or replace the brake pads?) and not replaced. |
|
|
|
|
1855
|
All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture in the United Kingdom / Re: Climate Change Emergency - Implications for UK Transport Strategy
|
on: October 21, 2019, 10:31:19
|
Giving evidence to the Commons Transport Select Committee on Wednesday, he [Shapps] said: “I’m also hugely concerned about the idea that we could still have new partially diesel-run trains up to 2040.
“When I look at my comments on cars, where at the moment the policy is 2040 to end the sale of petrol and diesel but I recently said that I’m going to investigate (bringing this forward to) 2035, I also am of course very interested in the earlier extinction of diesel trains.” But the so-called end of petrol and diesel cars only means an end to new sales/registrations of purely petrol/diesel vehicles, it actually allows for hybrid vehicles to still be registered beyond that date, including the many "plug in" hybrids which can only manage about 30 miles before they need to use fossil fuels. And of course it only applies to cars (possibly light vans? not sure about motorcycles) not HGVs and buses or anything vaguely approaching the size of a train. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
