What an absolutely fantastic idea - I wonder why nobody else has thought of it...

People have spent the last couple of months on limited income, if indeeed on any income at all. And then a group of economistss/ accountants and sundry hangers-on come up with the brillliant wheeze of charging them more to get to their jobs when they are finally allowed to go back to them.

There is the real world, and there is a place where people who live in Cloud Cuckoo Land go to get away from it all. It's probably best if I leave my response there... 

South African Railways are hopelessly overmanned (as are indeed many other state owned industries in that country). They could mechanise if they wanted to, and they know it, but the government is very concerned about finding people jobs - even needless ones to hold down the unemployment levels.

Given the state the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) economy is likely to be in over the next few years, now might not be seen as the right time to adopt labour-saving measures.

Just a thought, not a prediction...

I think the more important point is that they were non-standard, and you could think of it in terms of VHS versus Betamax (if you're old enough to remember!) - one survived and the other didn't, and peoplewho used both of those old video recording systems are still arguing over which was best.

With a contracting railway industry in the 1960s and 1970s it was inevitable that standardisation on one system or the other was going to come, and come it did. I note from Wiki that the DB^» (Deutsche Bahn - German State Railway - about) V200s, on which the Warships were based, had a rather longer lifespan.

All that said, and bearing in mind that we still have a few of the 08, 20, 37 and 47 classes still running today, the "German Warships" didn't last anywhere near as long as they have.

I've never used Zoom, so if I can fathom it out it is a possibility

Thanks for that - all clear now. And I also agree with the conjecture that builing that chord would have been far cheaper than building the line from Bathampton to Trowbridge!

The class 50s replaces the last few hydraulics. In fact, although Wiki lists scrappings as late as 1979, I'm not at all sure that any were still in active service after 1975 or thereabouts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_52

As you know we are talking on another thread about inapprpriate acronyms.

Have you realised that this thread appears on he home page summary as "Coffee shop - online zoo"

I thought we might be setting up in online opposition to Longleat

The matter that these folk are unable to grapple with is that cycling is not age-restricted. Anybody from a toddler to an octeganarian is allowed to ride a bike. At the yonger end of that range you have individuals who are below the age of criminal responsibility. Are you going to put a "number plate" (or the other old chestnut - insurance) on that? And if they then come back with an age-related argument you can then point out how hard it is to tell a kid's age (unless you are still one yourself)


I wonder if its the same people who park on the pavement also complain about cyclists?

That is one of the failings of the human species in a civilised society. They want laws rigorously enforced that they are not going to be breaking, but want a more relaxed attitude taken about laws they are likely to break...

Not strictly relevant to this discussion, but an indication of how employer's attitudes vary, was illustrated by my work on Value For Money reviews of maintenance services provided by local authorities and Housing Associations. On the question of how to pay and motivate their "operatives" ie. the electricians and plumbers and roofers et al who actually went around the patch to get the work done, there was little consistency in the sector.

Attitudes varied from "they're all a bunch of wasters who need to be incentivised to get them off their backsides to do anything at all" to "they are all consciencous workers and want to give a fair days work for a fair days pay." As a result there were many payment systems, ranging from an all-inclusive annual salary through various incentive bonus schemes to payment by piece rates only.

What many of those employers often didn't want to hear was when productivity was measured in terms of turnover per operative there was little difference between any of the payment schemes, and certainly no clear "winner."

An employer gets the best performance out of their staff by good management. At the end of the day little else matters.

Whilst doing somerhing else this morninh with elderly Ordnance Survey maps, I stumbled across this pne that  was surveyed in 1885 and published in 1889: https://maps.nls.uk/view/102347986

This shows an "old railway" at Thingley that once provided the third side of a triangle.

For many years I have been under the impression that this chord was built as a WW2 measure, but it now appears that I was absolutely wrong and it existed back in the 19th century and had in fact been lifted by 1885.

Does anybody know any more about this chord?

If there was a railway from Box to Chippenham it could have ben transported that far and then transferred to the Wilts & Berks Canal, then onward via Lechlade and the Thames, or via Semington and the Kennet & Avon. Alternatively it could have gone overland (and downhill) to Bathampton and picked up the canal network there.

Not even a wild guess - just a thought!

I once worked for an organisation that set up a middle management goup and called it the Section Heads Information Team. The name lasted right up until the time that someone typed up the minutes of the first meeting...

This of course doesn't only relate to a short trip to Readiung but all over the country.

I am concerned when I read again the now hoary old subject of compulsory reservation, especially for fairly local journeys. Whilst it would have some superficial merit in the railway being able to regulate the number of passengers on a train, by which perhaps passenger confidence would be increased, I  wonder how exactly it would work. Taking the Didcot to Reading run as an example (and taking figures out thin air to illustrate the point):

Maximum capacity = 10 people per coach, so 40 on a four car train. Passengers 41 to infinity are told they can't travel on that train. 32 on at Didcot, another 5 get on at Cholsey, 3 allowed on at Goring and the train is at capacity, so its a bit tough if anybody wants to use it from Pangbourne or Tilehurst. Or of course 5 may get off at Cholsey, and/or 3 at Pangbourne. The number of people that you would allow to join the train at any given point would have to be calculated between each station. Are systems currently available to do that?

What if people with reservations don't turn up? Would GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) and other TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) expect a queue of people on standby milling around at each stop? If they do, how would you manage social distancing on an unstaffed station (or indeed a staffed one - where would you physically put 20 "standby" passengers at Didcot so they didn't get in the way of efverybody else)?

Practical issues like that would also need to be addressed, and I'm not sure that any TOC currently have the ability/ capacity to do it.

Limiting the number of passengers at any one point would actually be far easier on a bus, as a driver could simply count boarding and alighting passengers at each stop. I'm not sure that that would work on DOO^▸ (Driver-Only Operation (that is, trains which operate without carrying a guard)) trains...

_{Odditted for teepees beause I hit "submit" rather than "preview"...}

Given that we have heard on the news that air passenger traffic has fallen between 90% and 99%, I am not sure whether this is a case of locking the door after the horse has bolted or the government "being seen to be doing something." Whichever is true it would appear to be likely to make precious little difference to the infectio rate in this country.

A cynic might say this is a "dead cat" story, diverting the attention of the press away from scrutinising current policies and statistics.

Besides, given the way the figures have been going, with average deaths per day (7 day rolling average) being stuck at about 550 all last week, I suspect that the rest of the world has more to fear from the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) rather than the other way around.

One of the best things about advice Graham is that one is under no obligation to take it!   

Of course everybody should examine their own personal circumstances in detail, but many don't, and many (perhaps not necessarily anybody on this forum) may blithely assume that a pension deferral so that they get a bit more later is a good idea. I take a dissimilar view and my simple example (not in any way representing SWMBO^▸ (She Who Must Be Obeyed)'s finances, by the way) was given to illustrate it.

There may well be issues such as higher rate tax liability that might cnange the figures, that I accept, and that is another reason why everybody should look closely into their own personal circumstances.