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Sideshoots - associated subjects / The Lighter Side / Re: Where have I been?
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on: April 24, 2024, 20:16:07
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I was looking at that sign in the background of no. 4, and thinking it was trying to say "Coop" in the approved approved green Swedish lettering - but for some reason could not do any better than "Cooo". But that does look the best bet; inside the Coop in Stockholm Centralstation.
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Sideshoots - associated subjects / The Lighter Side / Re: Where have I been?
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on: April 24, 2024, 11:28:33
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According to that clue, what's left must be all Germany or all Sweden. Number 7 is a case of "pick any one from a large field - like the field called Sweden", and the other two show Swedish tendencies too.
There were pictures - and a very enthusiastic write-up - from Haparanda, and 2 looks very like them. As for 4, Picadeli is (still, mainly, I think) a Swedish chain, but one that concentrates on a uniform brand image rather than individuality of its outlets. So one of the stops in Sweden; maybe Lulea?
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Sideshoots - associated subjects / The Lighter Side / Re: Where have I been?
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on: April 22, 2024, 09:32:25
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And here is the picture in the quiz, taken very roughly a week later  Of course - I thought when I saw that picture that the decorative wood framing down the sides looked familiar. I must have seen news coverage of the station's restoration in 2015-2019, which kept that framing while turning the offices behind into retail units. I was in fact in the city in 2017, but didn't get to the station (which was in any case en travaux) as top priority while passing through was the reference library. |
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All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture Overseas / Re: Slow but sure. New services on France's underutilized railway lines.
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on: April 17, 2024, 11:32:46
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This lot have not been making much news for a while, but it now appears they have been trying to find backers with real useful money to spend on stuff - and failing. There is, of course, no substitute, even if you do have some keen volunteers line up. This from Railway Gazette International: Railcoop on brink of liquidation as financing gap stymies restructuring hope
By Railway Gazette International17 April 2024
FRANCE: Open access co-operative Railcoop is expected to be formally liquidated on April 29, the company President Nicolas Debaisieux has confirmed.
The collapse of the co-operative comes after it was placed into judicial administration on October 16 for a period of up to six months. With this period now expiring, a hearing was held at the administrative court in Cahors on April 15 to begin arranging the formalities for creditors, two weeks ahead of the formal liquidation.
While this would bring to an end the idea of using a co-operative model to launch open access trains such as Railcoop’s planned Lyon – Bordeaux service, Debaisieux believes that the project could still be salvaged through outside investment. Railcoop had been planning to restructure itself into an operating business and an asset management ‘opco’.
The co-operative has been negotiating with investment fund Serena Partners and a rolling stock leasing company with a view to progressing the proposed restructuring. According to Debaisieux, these investors had secured 60% of the €11m required to establish the planned Lyon – Limoges - Bordeaux open access service, but this still left a €3·5m gap in the business plan...
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All across the Great Western territory / Introductions and chat / Re: Our first Interrail tour
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on: April 10, 2024, 11:42:37
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Although an Interrail trip can be planned just using the app, I really wanted a rail map of Europe to do my planning, so went to Stanford's in Bristol to buy one. While I was there I found that a book of all the timetables for European railways can also be bought - something I didn't realise still existed, and which I bought straight away. They come out quarterly and in early March I bought the Spring copy for the actual trip. I found having both a paper map and the timetable book invaluable - I carried both with us on the trip as well - and would certainly make use of both again for any other trip.
John Potter, who brought the old Cook's timetable back to life as the European Rail Timetable, has now put the business that produces it up for sale. So its future may be in question, though if it does cover its costs and make any kind of surplus you'd think it will keep going. After all, long-distance rail travel does seem to be coming back into fashion. I can only see the summary in this from Railway Gazette International, which is enough: European Rail Timetable business for sale
By Railway Gazette International 9 April 2024
INTERNATIONAL: Director and Editor-in-Chief John Potter has decided to sell European Rail Timetable Ltd, publisher of the famous red book which contains almost 600 pages of detailed schedule information for 50 000 trains, as well as maps and useful travel information for Europe and beyond.
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All across the Great Western territory / Fare's Fair / Re: Who should get discounts?
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on: April 04, 2024, 10:46:26
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It’s odd how we sometimes use the name of a unit instead of the dimension it measures. It’s pretty inconsistent; you wouldn’t ask someone their ‘footage’ if you wanted to know how tall they were, but you would probably refer to the ‘acreage’ of a farm rather than its area. These quirks aren’t limited to US Customary units either; you’ll hear people refer to current as ‘amperage’ for example.
A more striking case is voltage - which has largely displaced EMF and PD except where the slightly different definitions matter. Simmons, in his 1912 book "Electrical Engineering", doesn't start with a section on units, so it's hard to spot where he introduces them. But he still uses EMF and PD when talking theory, and a few cases of the older pressure, but voltage especially for voltage drop. However, so much of the machinery he is talking about operates at a nominally fixed supply voltage that most of the time he just uses 400 V, and doesn't need to say the voltage is 400 V (which is awkardly repetitious anyway). This usage as a rating is where the -age forms are commonest, I think. So the voltage and amperage of a machine are on its rating plate, but the current varies with the load so needs a separate term. I imagine the acreage, yardage, square footage, tonnage, and similar are also used for rating or ranking. And chainage, of course, on railways. |
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Sideshoots - associated subjects / The Lighter Side / Re: Dreaming of Severn Beach
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on: March 31, 2024, 10:48:31
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Graal-Müritz is at the tail end of a line from a major city (in this case Rostock rather than Bristol) and is located in a smallish community a short distance from the beach (in this case of the Baltic Sea). The train turns around there in a very few minutes (like it used to at Severn Beach) and there is evidence there that the line used to carry on beyond. The train is 2 carriages in length and starts quiet from the terminus but picking up along the way has become quite busy when it reached the city. And it's a diesel.
The line has been shortened, but only by less than 500m, abandoning the old station to other uses (a restaurant and a health spa). Confirmed by Wikipedia - which also informs me that "After the timetable change on 10 December 2006, the new halt of Graal-Müritz Koppelweg opened. This has a special feature: the 100-metre-long platform is made entirely of glass fibre composite." So not so much like Severn Beach - which never had a station to abandon (nor even a village, come to that). Portishead springs to mind, though there must be better examples. |
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All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture in the United Kingdom / Derailment of a passenger train at Grange-over-Sands, 22/3/24
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on: March 28, 2024, 15:59:23
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This was a few days ago, but the RAIB▸ have now announced their investigation: I nvestigation into the derailment of a passenger train at Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria, 22 March 2024.Published 28 March 2024  The rear of the train following the derailment.At around 06:05 hrs on 22 March 2024, a passenger train travelling between Preston and Barrow-on-Furness derailed after crossing over a section of unsupported track which gave way as the train passed. The track had become unsupported because a cavity had opened in the embankment on which the railway sits. The train was travelling at 56 mph (90 km/h) when the accident occurred, with the front three carriages of the six-carriage train becoming derailed. The train struck a wall situated at the top of the embankment following the derailment. It remained upright and came to a stand with the rear of the train around 31 metres beyond the cavity. There were four staff and four passengers on the train when the accident occurred. There were no injuries sustained by anyone onboard, although significant damage was caused to the train and to railway infrastructure. Our investigation will seek to identify the sequence of events that led to the accident. It will also consider: - the condition of the railway and nearby drainage
- the planning and management of relevant railway maintenance activities
- how the railway infrastructure at this location was managed in response to local flood risks
- any underlying management factors.
Like many accidents, this one raises some questions specific to it. Some those are about where and how the railway was built, across part of Morecambe Bay (the Winster estuary), by heaping up the sand and silt from the marsh. Obviously others are about what has happened, as "management" or otherwise, since. The picture RAIB used looks bad; this one from Phil Barrett on X shows a scarily deep hole, and may be worse:  Why was there a big void under this embankment-cum-"sea"-wall? Note that there is no obvious place for that much stuff to have come out; the seaward side is stone faced and there is a closely observed ditch to the landward. Was a void always there, perhaps due to the difficulty of building a railway across a tidal estuary? You can see the outlet hoses of some pumps NR» have been running to try (with limited success) to stop the area behind it flooding; was that in any way a cause? Is nature getting its own back, resenting the Ulverston and Lancaster Railway's interference? The course of the Winster before it was diverted away ran just under here; is that relevant? |
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All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture in the United Kingdom / Re: Return of the BRUTE?
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on: March 28, 2024, 11:18:47
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train has had all of its passenger seats ripped out so that it can be transformed into a dedicated cargo freight train and loaded up with industry-standard cargo cages. Hasn't something similar been reported before on the forum. Yes ... proposed by Varamis ... in 2020. At that stage there were four such proposals, though I think that was really two stock conversions and three potential operators. Varamis came in as outsiders, so had to wait to go get an operator's licence. They are using class 321s converted (at least initially) by Eversholt under the branding "Swift Express". Recently Varamis have been buying them, not just leasing more. It does look as if they (and their backers, presumably) rate their performance so far as a success. Porterbrook converted some of their rusty old 319s for parcels use, becoming class 768. At first GB▸ Railfreight were announced as operators and ran trials, but it was ROG who ordered several of them for their planned Orion subsidiary. Then they both went very quiet, and seem to have dropped the idea. It's hard to be sure as no-one give much publicity to such abandoned plans. |
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All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture in the United Kingdom / Re: Nice work if you can get it ??
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on: March 25, 2024, 00:29:34
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The Sunday Times, which the BBC» cites, says it is a flat £600 in place of £125 plus an hourly rate, which they don't specify. That's not how the BBC put it; they say both are in addition to the driver's salary. But as an extra day, it would be - wouldn't it?
Unless they mean, but neither exactly says, that the day is paid an additional standard day's salary (i.e just time), and this bonus is on top. The Sunday Times does quote £67,000 for four days per week - which for 48 weeks is 67,000/192 or £350 per day. So £600 flat is up from £475 average, if that's what it means, and it probably does as it is plausible. £950 average would up up much more!
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