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Journey by Journey / London to Reading / Re: Fire on train near Twyford - 18 May 2016
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on: May 18, 2016, 19:10:45
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Are there no engine fire/overheat sensors to give a warning to the driver in the Class 180 cab?
How many people have died as a result of train fires in recent years, particularly on DOO▸ services?
I wonder if the RMT▸ could supply that information.
It probably depends on how you define "recent". 1999 Ladbroke Grove? |
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35
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All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: GWR is apparently improving...
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on: February 06, 2016, 17:20:04
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The options to improve capacity at Paddington are - Add an upper/lower deck to Paddington, fortuneatly it is at the edge of the underground system so possible. Would be very interesting to link a low deck at Paddington with a low deck at Victoria, Waterloo or Kings Cross to allow through trains
whilst there may be space for a lower or upper deck, is there enough space in the station throat for the necessary remodelled approach lines? Lower deck - Crossrail tunnels would get in the way. Upper deck - say goodbye to the Victorian and Edwardian train sheds. |
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36
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Sideshoots - associated subjects / Campaigns for new and improved services / Re: Portishead Line reopening for passengers - ongoing discussion
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on: January 22, 2016, 19:18:18
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NRs» needs to increase its competency and experience even if outside contractors do most of the work. I get the feeling that NRs sometimes lacks the experience to manage contractors properly. You only get experience by doing something. If you don't have the opportunity to do something, you don't gain the experience in doing that thing. If you contract someone in to do it for you (because you don't have the experience in doing it) you don't gain any experience in doing that thing. If you cock it up, you can either throw up your hands and say "I'm not doing that again, someone else can do it!", or you can look at what went wrong, work out why it went wrong and not do that thing when you have to do a similar thing again. Remind me - were there any catastrophic over-runs of the Christmas/New Year engineering works this time? |
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37
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All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: Great Western Main Line electrification - ongoing discussion
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on: January 05, 2016, 22:29:28
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Of course, to maintain an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, we really need to get rid of all of the man-made monstrosities that detract from the natural landscape - the roads and houses.
No only the modern ones (say post 1800) and you could just restore the roads to cart tracks. Surely that would be the landscape that was to be preserved. Nope, unless you can prove that the thatch on the cottage was placed there by the wind, and the walls were the result of sedimentary rock formation, you're out of luck. Cart tracks - you must be kidding.  |
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40
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All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture - related rail and other transport issues / Re: Network Rail industrial action 2015.
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on: May 21, 2015, 21:07:20
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Striking typically isn't very popular with staff who loose pay when they're not working, so I'm not surprised that it's no longer happening next week. It's had the effect of concentrating minds on the matters of concern, and it's done so after the general election, at a time that the concentrating of minds won't impact negatively on the Labour party's representation in parliament (thus chance of government).
If you're going to call a strike you do it at the time that it would have the most impact - tube strikes are during the weekend, because they would cause disruption to the commuters; postal strikes are during the run-up to Christmas, as that's their busy time; coal strikes used to be during the winter (year-long ones excepted). So, why call a strike for a Bank Holiday? Nothing to do with the General Election, nothing to do with causing disruption to holiday makers or football supporters going to Wembley. No, it's because it's the last long weekend that Network Rail had before the end of August to carry out serious engineering works. |
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All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture - related rail and other transport issues / Re: Network Rail industrial action 2015.
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on: May 20, 2015, 21:01:32
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A victory for the unions from the point of view of the aim of a strike is to cause as much disruption as possible to further their cause in negotiations. It's causing disruption now to those who have to travel next Monday and Tuesday who are having to change plans or maybe not change plans.
It's never going to win favour with the public, who as you say are fed up strikes on the railways on top of all the disruption caused by over running engineering work, a system falling apart because it can't cope with demand, the high cost of fares and in some cases tired worn out rolling stock.
Another victory for the unions will be the complete shut down on the West Coast line as that will be the headline story in the propaganda war in the media next week not the fact that FGW▸ were able to run some trains on the Western Region.
A victory for the union is the strike being called off because a settlement has been made. |
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43
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All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture in the United Kingdom / Re: Up to 30 cycles per train - ban axed on next trains
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on: April 10, 2015, 18:49:05
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I often remember the "gentleman" at Maidenhead who used to position himself to be first aboard the Bourne End to Paddington service so that he could dump his Brompton in the vestibule and mooch off to find himself a seat, leaving everyone else trying to get on board clambering around it (although, to be fair, it wouldn't be in the way at Slough).
His behaviour didn't change much when he changed his Brompton for one that just folded in the middle.
So glad that I commute away from London nowadays.
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Journey by Journey / London to the West / Re: Long delay on the 11:00 Penzance to Paddington - 04 Aug 13
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on: August 05, 2013, 23:08:32
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First Great Western's spokesman on Westcountry News has just said on TV that it was incompetence by the on duty staff for such an incident to take so long and cause such a delay. For future reference for revisiting on on-demand TV it appeared at approx 1804 on ITV Westcountry News.
If you've got spokesmen coming out and calling the on-duty staff "incompetent" in an interview, then things are getting out of control. To be fair the FGW▸ chap interviewed do not use the phrase "incompetence", that was the question put to him by the interviewer which was correctly answered by FGW that they are investigating Linky http://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/story/2013-08-05/6-hour-train-delay/ I've just had a chance to watch the news item now, and we can see how misreporting can give the wrong impression. See - the original quote was that the FGW spokesman said it was incompetence, when he didn't. To be fair, that was a bit of a loaded question if responded to directly - if he replied that it wasn't incompetence, it would be "FGW says six-hour train hell was just bad luck". As Electric Train points out, he did reply to the question appropriately (which I probably would have messed up if it was me being interviewed). When you calmly look at what's reported to have occurred, and take various things into consideration, you can see how this could add up to 6 hours delay. The key thing is to identify where the current processes failed in this situation, and what steps are necessary to prevent a similar occurrence. |
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