Railways Blog

On Pyramid Online there’s a thread on “Movie Goofs”, which ranges from such things as visible microphones to historical goofs.

Being a rail enthusiast, I have issues with just about every film featuring a train. Whereas filmmakers might make an effort to ensure cars or even planes are appropriate for the region or period in which the film is set, for trains they don’t bother. And if anyone complains they’re mocked as ‘sad anoraks’. Bastards!

For a recent example, on a BBC TV Sitcom about five years back, when we saw an northbound InterCity 125 pull into Leamington Spa station. Then we change camera angles and the HST turns into an older class 47 locomotive on a train of Mk2 coaches. Or the World War II film “Eye of the Needle”, featuring a train from London to Scotland starting from Marylebone(?) headed by a Southern Railway N class(!)

Of course I could mention such turkeys as Cassandra Crossing, except that the entire film is totally preposterous, from the ludicrous plot to the idea of O J Simpson as a Catholic Priest.

Since privatisation, British train companies seem to change their liveries as often as some people change their socks. Latest one to rebrand themselves is Midland Main Line. Opinions on mailing lists are divided over this one; it’s vaguely reminiscent of the 1990s Rail Express Systems livery. There’s also a hint of British Rail corporate blue as well. I’m not sure of the shade, as the two on line photos I’ve seen have looked different, and I have yet to see one ‘in the flesh’.

Why is it that train companies feel compelled to do this? The older MML livery was quite striking and stylish, why change it? I notice American railroads don’t feel they have to rebrand themselves every couple of years; doesn’t Union Pacific still stick to the same colour scheme they used in the 1950s?

One thing the photo does show is what a classic design the HST power car is. They’ve been the backbone of non electrified inter city routes for 25 years now, and are likely to be with us for some years to come.

This story shows the sort of people railways occasionally need to clear up the mess from a derailment.

Rabbi Yosef Grossbaum of St. Paul was hired by CPR to oversee the transfer Thursday of kosher canola oil from one big tanker car to another.

It’s an unusual blending of railroading with religion, admitted Randy Hansen, damage prevention specialist for CPR.

“We don’t do this very often,” Hansen said.

(Link from TrainNet)

From this BBC News story, a train has derailed on a narrow gauge tourist railway in Taiwan, killing 11 people. The cause of the accident is unknown, although excessive speed is one possible cause.

There are a great many narrow gauge tourist lines in Britain; some of them in mountainous terrain. To date there has never been a serious fatal accident on any of them, but this story makes you stop and think.

Update: The lastest report has the death toll at 17, and the suspected cause of the accident is brake failure leading to a runaway down a grade, until the train eventually derailed on a curve.

If that well-known Seattle corporation were to build locomotives, they might be something like this. (Link from TrainNet)

The Bern Lötchberg Simplon railway have some new locomotives; I can seen some of these running on the N-gauge Wominseebahn as soon as Fleischmann do a version in BLS Livery!

These two photos show the first Re485 in service:

In the company of a BLS Re465 (which the new 485s will be replacing) at Hohtenn on the south ramp with a Rolling Road train

Crossing the Luogelkinn viaduct just east of Hohtenn on a Italy-bound clay train; the second loco is a DB class 185

BBC News is now reporting over 100 dead in the South Korean subway fire. It’s being described as an ‘arson attack’; nobody has yet used the T-word.

Reports suggest the arsonist has been captured alive; presumably time will tell if he’s a lone nutter or part of an organised group. Whatever his motivations, an incident like this in a very volatile part of the world is not good news.

Update: The latest report suggests that the arsonist had a history of mental problems. He managed to kill over a hundred with a milk carton, some petrol, and a cigarette lighter.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | SRA ‘forcing freight from rail to lorries’

Looks like rail freight might have to pay the price of the millions spent on ‘boiling frogs’, with the lions share of budget cuts falling on freight schemes. All because freight, unlike commuters, does not vote. Except that most people, if they were actually asked, would like to see fewer heavy lorries on the road and more freight on the railwas. A single freight train carries the equivalent of 20 heavy lorries.

Compared with most other nations of Europe, and even with the free-market USA, the UK’s railways carry a pathetically small percentage of domestic freight traffic; rail has lost almost all general distribution traffic and is largely restricted to bulk traffics such as coal and aggregates.

While the true story is probably more complicated, I believe the long-term decline, especially during the 1980s, was due to deliberate government policy to strangle it in the interests of the road haulage industry. Why else did rail freight traffic increase quite significantly after privatisation, when the newly privatised companies no longer had to make artificially high returns on assets, as dictated by The Treasury.

Michael Jennings shows how a combination of Franco German rivalry and “Not Invented Here” syndrome means that despite the existence of high speed rail lines running all the way from Paris to Frankfurt, there won’t be a direct high speed train linking the two cities any time soon.

The main reason is that the new Cologne to Frankfurt line has been built with such ferocious gradients (4% or 1 in 25!) that only the latest generation of trains, the ICE3, can cope with them. And these German built trains cannot run on the French LGV routes because the signalling systems are incompatible!

Still, at least the French and the Germans have got a high speed rail network!

Update: On Transport Blog, Patrick Crozier compares this with the standardisation of gauges in Victorian Britain under a privately run system. But I’m sure I remember reading that the ‘gauge wars’ in Britain were only ended by an Act of Parliament setting 4’8½” as the standard gauge. Pity, because Brunel’s 7′ gauge was technically superior in many ways. A bit like Betamax, really.