Railways Blog

Guardian | Business | Rail modernisation – the difference between us and the Swiss
The difference being that the Swiss Bahn 2000 project has come in on time and 20% less than budget. Compare and contrast with the Boiling Frogs of Railtrack, and the ill-fated West Coast Modernisation. The reason?

Chris Jackson, deputy editor of Railway Gazette , said: ‘The difference in Switzerland is that the same organisation runs the tracks, trains and projects, and they know what they are doing. Simple.

Pity the Observe chose (in the dead-tree edition) to use a photo of the narrow gauge Wengernalpbahn rather than a modern Re460 and the double deck stock mentioned in the article.

This came up on the Ngauge mailing list

If you had more money, and British N gauge gear wasn’t as rare as rocking horse droppings (as it appears to be at present, especially the models) and so on – What layout would you have if you could be totally let off the leash with it? E.g. Features, Loco’s, etc?

My dream layout would be a US-style ‘system layout’ based on Cornwall. The layout would start with Penzance, including Long Rock carriage sidings. The other end of the layout would consist of the china clay hubs of Burngullow, Par/St Blazey and Lostwithiel.

That’s the minimum; if there was even more space I might include Fowey docks, Goonbarrow and Parkindillick clay works, Liskeard and Moorswater including the viaduct and the spiral, and Plymouth North Road which could function as a terminus. And of course Saltash Bridge as a set-piece scene.

Time period would be mid-80s to present day. The sad thing is, I’m probably got enough stock to populate all this.

Dream Layout ‘B’ would be the Bern Lotchberg Simplon main line from Speiz to Brig, incorporating Frutigen, Blausee Mitholz, Kandersteg and Goppenstein.

An enthusiast charter marking the farewell to the Class 58 hits the buffers at Walton-on-Naze in Essex. The train, named the “bone-breaker” after the nickname of the class 58, “Bones” ended up breaking bones of two passengers (one with broken leg, and one with a couple of cracked ribs) after a 5mph collision with the buffer stops. The cause is so far unknown. 29 other people suffered minor injuries.

Walton-on-Naze has a reputation for being one of the most snobbish towns in England. The place was notorious for refusing to give planning permission for a chip shop because it would attract “the wrong element”. Not sure what they make of a trainload of stranded class 58 fans.

I’m not in total agreement with Patrick Crozier.

Or take the airport. OK, so arriving there by road is a pain but once you’ve entered the terminal building it’s a piece of cake. You check in, go through passport control, go through security, do some shopping, go to the departure gate, board your plane. Easy peasy.

Boggle? One of the big advantages of train travel is that it isn’t as cumbersome as air travel. No two-hour check-ins, lengthy boarding procedures or nonsense like that. As for shops and facilities, how many railway stations in Britain deal with the same number of passengers daily as an airport? And what proportion of those passengers arrive an hour before their train is due to depart?

I travelled from Slough to Manchester today, and experienced four stations (and three trains) in the process. I thought about yesterday’s comments as I travelled.

Slough: Arrived about 15 minutes before the train was due. There’s nothing in terms of passenger facilities at all on platform 2 – There is a buffet, but it’s on the wrong side of the revenue protection barriers. There’s another one (when it’s open) on platform 5 over the bridge. There’s also no gents loo on that platform; you have to cross the bridge to platform 5 again. Room for improvement here.

Oxford: I waited about 35 minutes here, due to a missed connection (for once it was Thames Trains, not Virgin, that was to blame – the Virgin Cross-Country train I’d planned to catch had left on time for once). This is a fairly simple station with two main platforms; I had time for a coffee in the buffet on platform 2. There are a number of shops in the concourse on platform 1, but you have to pass through the revenue protection barrier to get to them (which means I technically broke the journey, which I was allowed to do on my ticket). The bridge linking the two platforms is wide, covered and non-flimsy, and supplied with a passenger lift on both sides. Also the freight lines through the middle are good for taking photographs; I got a good shot of Freightliner’s 66520 on the Avon Bin-Liners.

Crewe: My original itinery didn’t include a change here; but since I’d missed the direct train from Oxford to Manchester I ended up on the Portsmouth to Liverpool as far as Crewe. This was one of the few trains where a Voyager is a definite improvement on what had gone before; the four car class 220 unit was well-filled, and the passengers would never have fitted in the 2-car 158 they’d previously used on this service. Crewe is a confusing station which had grown piecemeal in Victorian times, with platforms all over the place. Again there’s a substantial covered bridge with a lift at each end, although I found the lift on platform 6 hard to find.

Finally, Manchester Piccadilly. Thanks to the Commonwealth Games it’s got a shiny new concourse with a growing number of shops, which they’ve managed to fit in without putting one of those infernal concrete rafts over the platform. The blend of modern and Victorian works, and the 19th century train shed looks a lot better than it must have been in the days of steam. To me, this place is a template for how a major railway terminal should look.

On UK Transport, Patrick Crozier wonders about stations.

I find almost all stations disappointing. And it’s not just the graffiti, the vandalism, the tatty appearance of many of them or the fact that so many have been rebuilt by modern architects – modernity’s answer to the Luftwaffe. Even if none of those things applied I would still be disappointed.

Any why is it that some of the surviving Victorian stations seem to be so much better than the ‘modern’ ones? I hate the places where they’ve put a bloody great concrete raft over the platforms, leaving a dark and dingy environment for the passengers. I realise this releases real-estate above the station for retail and office development, but what’s the value of the more pleasant passenger environment? Star prize for the most awful station has to be Birmingham New Street, narrow cramped stairways, dark and claustrophobic platforms. Probably the reason Birmingham has such a bad reputation is that New Street (or Spaghetti Junction) is most visitors’ first impression of the place. Not that it’s a uniquely British problem either; Bern in Switzerland is pretty horrid too.

There are better stations around; I like Manchester Piccadilly, especially now they’ve built the new airy concourse which compliments the modernised and cleaned-up Victorian train shed. Pity half the trains use the desolate and windswept platforms 13 & 14 ten minutes walk from the rest of the station.

There are a few places where there are decent wide footbridges under cover; Carlisle comes to mind as a pleasant station to use; so does Chester and York. All three are refurbished Victorian buildings complete with overall train-sheds. I think there is a pattern here.

As for confusing layouts, that’s not confined to large stations. Dawlish in Devon is horrible in that respect; the place is a maze, it’s difficult to find the way out or in, especially when the booking office is closed and you have to get in through the gate at the side. Walking to the corner of the building you’re presented by a flight of steps that you naturally assume lead up to the platform. Wrong! After about six steps it leads to a blank wall, where a doorway had been bricked-up. The real entrance is a little further on.

Of course, many smaller unstaffed stations have more in common with a bus stop than an airport in terms of the number of people that use them. I can’t think of a good solution to vandalism in a lot of the smaller stations that it’s simply not economic to staff all the time. One good idea is to sell off redundant railway buildings as private housing; this has been done in a few places in Britain. I’ve seen this in Switzerland, where the station buildings of now unstaffed stations are occupied by retired railway staff.

Apart from the hideous colour, what else is wrong with this railway coach? (Thanks to Simon Bendall for the link)

Stewart Watt posted this to the ModMod mailing list.

Subject: Last Virgin XC Loco Hauled into Padd

Hi all,
Just a quick note to say that last night was the last ever booked Virgin loco hauled service into Paddington (1V97) which then went to form the 1M02 0600 Padd-Manchester. And I had the distinction of despatching on its journey into Padd!!
Regards
Stewart

There’s an August 1968 feel about all this. Throughout the summer, the Virgin Cross-Country locomotive-hauled workings have been going over to shiny new Voyagers, one by one. Soon it will all be history and memories.

In his UK Transport blog, Patrick Crozier claims that rail fares haven’t really risen; although walk-on fares have gone through the roof (and are the highest in Europe), the availability of cheap inflexible book-weeks-in-advance tickets mean average fares have come down.

I’m not sure that’s a valid argument; the reason a greater proportion of travellers buy advance tickets is that that’s all they can afford. To me, a restricted ticket with no option to change schedule which has to be booked a considerable time in advance is worth rather less than a walk-up ticket which can be bought immediately before travel and gives a choice of return journey.

He gave me this reply to my emailed comment:

I hope to get round to a proper reply on fares – I’ve had quite a lot of feedback on this one. I would just say this: to me a cheap fare albeit with restrictions is lot more valuable than a more expensive, flexible one. It is the difference between travelling and not travelling.

I’m afraid I don’t buy his argument here; a heavily restricted ticket is worth less because of the restrictions; over the past couple of years I’ve made a lot of journeys by Virgin Trains; on all occasions I’ve had to purchase the more expensive “saver” tickets because either I haven’t been able to book far enough ahead, or I’ve needed the flexibility to change my return journey. This applies to an awful lot of journeys, especially business travel.

As part of the 1955 modernisation plan, British Railways ordered large numbers of diesel locomotives from just about every manufacturer that believed they were capable of building such things. Many companies with a good track record for building steam power took up the challenge. Many of those designs proved not to be up to the job, and many ended up on the scrapheap after ridiculously short lives, in some cases as little as six years in traffic. Such was the fate of classes like the Class 17 “Claytons”, the class 23 “Baby Deltics”, and everything produced by the Glasgow firm North British.

This posting by Hugh Dady to the South West Rail Gen mailing list suggests that history may be about to repeat itself.

Happy Anniversary 67014

Today 9th August 2002, General Motors ably assisted by Alstom can celebrate what is thought to be a ‘first’ in UK diesel traction for an almost brand new locomotive. One year ago today with the locomotive little over a year old, 67014 was declared a failure at Penzance on 9/08/01 before working 1C01 the 1930 TPO to Bristol and to this day has not worked a train again. Happy Anniversary for the first year out of service and good luck with the next!

This ultra reliable product (or so we were led to believe by Mr Fisk & Co) designed to replace the aging 47/7s has been off lease from EWS for some time dumped in the scrapline at Cardiff Canton – give, or take, 1.3 million pounds of scrap metal.

Even the worst examples of the pilot scheme diesels, Co-Bos, Baby Deltics, D8400s etc are hard put to beat this record – most of them were 5 years old before taking their rightful place decorating the depot yards of Britain.

The problems of the 67 design should have been no surprise to Ed Burkhart and his engineer Jim Fisk. They had only to look at the performance of the Alstom Mega class (Cl 67 clone) delivered to Israel Railways in June 98 to realise that they were buying a problem on wheels. Not only were Israel less than impressed with the Mega but they didn’t seem to think much of its big brother curiously named Semi-Mega which is a Co-Co. Alstom had offered the basic body shell in a number of configurations with various traction packages available. The contract signed by EWS was with General Motors, the locomotives technically built under license by Alstom at Valencia in Spain.

Given the mechanical problems which have befallen the 67s, it might have been a safer option to plump for the Co-Co variant rather then hover on or over the axle load limit by trying to get the whole lot into a Bo-Bo locomotive that is actually longer than a 47!

Despite the many shortcomings of the mechanical design which manifest themselves in poor ride quality, excessive wheelset wear, short bogie spring life, buffing and drawgear problems etc it would appear that it is the GM supplied power plant which has been the downfall of the once SWRG ‘pet skip’ 67014. The locomotive had been in trouble long before August 9th last year with all sorts of heavy current electrical problems and a rather unhelpful fault diagnosis system which itself was giving misleading information from the on board engine management system.

On that fateful Thursday, the locomotive worked from St Blazey down to Penzance with 5C01, the TPO ecs, to form that evenings 1930 service to Bristol. It would seem that trouble was anticipated for an HQ riding inspector was already with the loco following previous repairs. Clearly both he and the driver were not happy for the locomotive was left on the country end at Penzance while alternative traction was found to work the service forward. 67014 was towed dit on the rear of the train before being cut at Par to make its way l/e to BZ. Two days later it ran under its own power first to Barton Hill and finally to Canton where GM and Alstom engineers were contacted.

By November both GM engineers and ones flown in from Alstom’s Valencia plant had visited the loco but it appears they could not really agree what was wrong and perhaps more importantly who was responsible for putting it right! A vail of secrecy closed around the loco. The problems appeared to centre around the alternator which Alstom argued had been incorrectly manufactured by GM while GM declared that Alstom had fitted it incorrectly. Meanwhile with EWS struggling to keep the rest of the fleet operational it quickly became a Christmas tree for spare parts, first some wheel sets but later all manner of parts. The loco remains off lease with an unknown future while EWS finally announced three weeks ago that they were in effect back-peddling and would be embarking on a programme of light overhaul and what are politely referred to as ‘reliability modifications’ to selected examples of its elderly 47/7 fleet.

Plans to utilise 67s on charter work at the weekends have all but been thrown to the wind as those who watch the regular outings to Eden and elsewhere will realise. The higher Route Availability of 8 for a 67 as opposed to the 7 rating for a 47/7 is offered as the excuse, but that hardly adds up as the routes over which the Eden charters work are invariably cleared throughout for RA10!

Photograph them while you can – 67002 continues to languish at Crewe after its crash at Stapleton Road, and the class faces an uncertain future with EWS. On a positive note they have proved to be an excellent sales advert for the 57 conversion programme! Whether Britain’s only 125 mph rated locomotive will ever be able to flex its muscles at this speed remains to be seen. The extensive on-going modification programme to the class is showing some signs of success with ride quality improved if still short of the norm expected on UK built products. Whether they ever deliver the promise remains to be seen, but for enthusiasts they have all the ingredients for a future cult class – small, idiosyncratic, named, difficult to get milage behind, potentially fast and just generally strange looking.
H.D.