Railways Blog

From this BBC report, South West Trains are getting rid the troublesome class 458 trains built by Alstom.

A commuter rail company is to replace 30 of its newest fleet of trains because they keep breaking down.

The Juniper trains, costing £90 million, were introduced four years ago by South West Trains.

In that time they have have suffered from leaky roofs and failing electronics.

The Juniper rolling stock will be replaced with new German-built Desiro trains, when the lease on them runs out next year.

The article also mentions the fact that the most reliable trains of all are the 40-year old slam-door Mark 1 stock, the veteran 4-VEPs and 4-CIGS, which have got to be replaced by next year because they don’t meet modern standards of crash-resistance.

What will happen to the hapless Junipers is anyone’s guess. I suspect the leasing company owning them will be reluctant to consign almost new trains to the scrapheap (although this happened to some equally useless new trains from the London Underground a few year back). My bet is they’ll attempt to rebuild them to eliminate the design faults, and find some other train company prepared to take the lemons.

The tragedy is the Astolm’s Birmingham works used to be the workshops of Metropolitan Cammell, who built reliable workhorses like the venerable class 101s (recently retired after 45 years) and the 156s, as well as generations of London tube trains. Then it all went pear-shaped when the French took them over.

Steve Jones of Electric Nose has excelled himself today. (No permalinks, scroll down to the Tuesday 13th entry)

Laurence Simon (I’ve spelled his name right this time) of Amish Tech Support has put up some photos and video clips of the new Houston Light Rail system.

Southbound Train: This is the last thing you’ll see if you make an illegal left turn, right before waking up in Ben Taub’s ER

The trains look pretty stylish and futuristic, and make the Manchester Metrolink vehicles looks like relics from another age.

After 150 years, the final Travelling Post Office trains are running tonight. The distinctive blank faced coaches in which postal workers sort the mail on the move will be no more after the last arrivals tomorrow morning.

Up and down the country, groups of enthusiasts have gathered to mourn their passing.

Chris Collins at Redruth on the final Cornish TPO

Quite a large crowd of enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts there too. Many waved her through, and the driver gave a particularly fine horn solo!!!!! Also a great clenched fist salute in return to ours! Good man!

As the marker lights disappeared into the tunnel, there was a genuine lump in my throat, as yet more of Cornwall’s railway variety disappears.

James Wells at York on the Newcastle – Bristol and the Newcastle – London trains

Quite an interesting outing, both trains were ‘piped’ in and out by Bagpipes and a lot of non-enthusiats seemed to have gone to see it; I noticed quite a few people posting letters.

For five months last summer, commuters into Manchester from Stoke, Macclesfield and intermediate stations had to endure the dreaded Rail Replacement Buses while that bunch of cowboys commonly known as Jarvis Rail were busy making a complete hash of rebuilding the railway line.

Now it’s the turn of passengers on the Wilmslow and Crewe line. And it sucks.

What had been an eleven minute commute to work has turned into a journey not much short of an hour, and that’s when things are running smoothly. Sadly the timetable, presumably the same one as they used during the earlier weekend closures, has proved hopelessly optimistic in the face of peak time road congestion. And far this week, not only has one bus failed to materialise because the driver ‘got lost’, but I’ve also missed one because it departed before the scheduled time.

I don’t even know how long this disruption is supposed to last. The line was originally going to be closed until May, but the timetables are showing times ‘up to March 24′. At the moment it’s anybody’s guess.

They say these lengthy blockades are the most efficient way of doing things; I’m not convinced. I strongly suspect it’s all the cumbersome rules imposed by the empire-building Health and Safely Executive that make it impossible to a decent amount of work in traditional weekend or overnight possessions.

From Annie Mole of the “almost awardwinning” Going Underground

..bangs head against a brick wall – I DON’T WORK FOR THE LONDON UNDERGROUND, seriously I do not. I would rather stick needles in my eyes than work for the London Underground. It’s bad enough having to use the tube every day, imagine what it would be like knowing they were paying your mortgage and bills and paying for your food, nightmare.

Annie of Going Underground is right. Pantomime celebrity spotting on the tube is indeed an order of magnitude sadder than mere trainspotting. It’s in the same league as the possibly apocryphal people that collect the numbers of shipping containers.

But then I’ve been told off on at least one model railway mailing list for saying that I though wagon spotters are sad. They’re the people that aren’t satisfied by just collecting the numbers of the locomotives, but all the freight wagons behind them as well.

The Ghoul’s Travel Travails remind me to post what I didn’t have time to post about in the days before Xmas. It wasn’t my journey south from Manchester to my parent’s place in Slough that was the problem.

It was the 11 minute commute into work in the morning.

The 8:24 from Cheadle Hulme ground to a halt just north of the station, and not only was the unit declared a failure, but it managed to damage the overhead catenery. Because of the fact that in the present day railway, each type of train has a different type of coupler that won’t couple to any other type, they couldn’t just couple a rescue locomotive and tow the failed train away. It was two hours before they could summon a second class 323 to drag the failed train into the station (which meant re-energising the damaged section of overhead so they could move the second unit into the section). This released the passengers that had been trapped in the failed unit for two hours. After first telling us to get in the replacement bus sitting outside the station, they then changed plans, and sent the bus to Manchester, and put the Wilmslow and Crewe passengers into the ‘rescue’ train, which then set off south dragging the failed unit behind it.

I eventually got to work two and a half hours late, for what was only going to be a half day anyway.

The long journey south was much more uneventful; rather than risk Virgin Trains’ short formations, overcrowding, and unreliable reservation system, I opted to travel by Midland Mainline’s “Operation Rio” via the East Midlands, which delivered me to London precisely on time. And even the Circle Line was working properly for once.

In a few months the Royal Mail will be transferring carraige of mail from rail to air and road. This posting (from another lists) was posted to the Diesel & Electric Modellers group, indicates that all might not be well.

Air:
EDINBURGH-EMA-EDINBURGH
De-icing at Edinburgh.
Following de-icing at Edinburgh the aircraft departed 30 mins late and arrived at EMA 20 late. Departed EMA 23 late and arrived at Edinburgh 8 late. Due to the late arrival 30,000 Inverness itwms failed to connect to the plane amd were forwarded by road.

BRISTOL-SPEKE-NEWCASTLE
Aircraft went tech (engine) at Speke.
The aircraft was repaired but subsequently went tech again with a different fault and eventually departed 155 late. Arriving Newcastle 152 late, all mails were offloaded and sent to Newcastle to be forwarded later that day.

SPEKE-BELFAST
Aircraft went tech (steering) in Belfast prior to positioning to
Speke.
The aircraft could not be repaired, the operator provided a back up plane which positioned into Speke from Glasgow (delayed refuelling & pushing back in Glasgow). Departed Speke 155 late and arrived Belfast
147 late.

Rail:
NO PROBLEMS

Road:
47 breakdowns.

There are continuing rumours that the Royal Mail is in negotiation with some train company other than EWS, using some rolling stock already owned by the Royal Mail. If the above figures are typical, let’s hope they concentrate minds. Otherwise we’ll have to get used to a lot more late mail.

Like most railway modellers I’ve got far too much rolling stock. I’ve reached the point where the limiting factor for for an operating session is the capacity of the layout, not the amount of stock available. In thinking of plans for future British outline layouts, I’m wondering how many trains you really need to give a representative selection of the trains for any specific location. This will determine how many storage roads I’ll need in the fiddle yard (that’s staging roads in American).

I’ll take as an example the line that I’ve modelled before, and is likely to form the subject of any future British N-gauge layout I’m likely to build; the Cornish main line between Plymouth and Penzance. I’m most likely to model a location east of Burngullow. There’s too little freight traffic at the far western end for my tastes, although I have considered the terminus of Penzance as a subject for a model.

I’ve identified the following six trains as the ‘signature trains’ that any model of the Cornish mainline will be incomplete without.

• Paddington to Penzance Inter-City
• Cross-Country Inter-City
• Plymouth-Penzance local
• Parcels
• Local china clay working
• Long distance freight

This is of course the bare minimum; with more space and rolling stock available I could easily double up on all of those. What follows is a the formation of those six trains for three different time periods, 1987-89 (the period I began modelling, for which I have the most stock), the post-privatisation 1999-2002 era, and turning the clock back to the 1976, the final year of the ‘Westerns’. Most of the stock required for each of the three periods is from the collection I already own; but there are a few gaps, which I will use a guide for future purchases and kit construction.
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