Railways Blog

Nuclear train crashes in Kent! Thousands not hurt! Don’t panic, Mr Mainwaring!

This Guardian report has the full story, along with some hysterical quotes from the Usual Suspects, such as the local Green MP

Turns out the damage was severe, the locomotive had a broken light, and the lorry it ran into got a buffer-shaped dent. Can you guess who’s fault it was? Railtrack? Stephen Byers? The lorry driver?

Would people really prefer irradiated fuel rods (or any other hazardous material) to go be road instead? And be trusted to the tender mercies of White Van Man? If something needs to be transported at all, surely rail is the safest transport mode there is.

Stephen Byers has resigned. Clearly he’s had enough, and he’s got too many enemies. For all his mistakes, he probably did the right thing with Railtrack, who’s shareholders seemed to be ignorant of Capitalism 101 (Sometimes the company you invest in will go ‘phut’, and the shares will go down the toilet’).

Unfortunately for New Labour (but fortunately for everyone else), the bad news hasn’t been buried, because India and Pakistan haven’t yet gone to war. On BBC2′s Newsnight last night, Malcolm Rifkind claimed this was the worst international crisis since the Cuban missile crisis in 1963, and sadly I’m inclined to agree with him. In 1963, the American and Soviet leaders proved to be rational, and the flakier Dr Strangelove characters on both sides lost the argument. I wish I had the same confidence about the religious nationalists in charge in India and Pakistan.

The Health and Safety Executive had completed their interim report on the Wominseebahn freight derailment (see yesterday’s entry). The derailment was caused by a collision between the pantograph of the Minitrix Ae6/6 locomotive hauling the train with a Kato dummy catenery mast. The recoil from the sudden stop caused two wagons from the middle of the train (a Roco SBB Hbis van, and a Minitrix FS Hbis van) to derail and overturn on the mid-point of the 180deg curve at the end of the layout. The SBB van appears to have suffered no damage, but the FS van has cracked between the roof and the end. The damage is assessed to be repairable with a bit of superglue. Their recommendation was the immediate purchase of some foam-core board to be fixed to the ends (and ultimately sides) of the layout, and to remove the dummy catenary poles.

When building an N-gauge layout, and you lay track to within an inch of the baseboard edge, put a barrier along the edge!!

Fortunately it was only a wagon (well, two wagons, but only one seems to be damaged), and it’s repairable.

Visited some former colleagues at SX3 in Alderley Edge. I had to pick up a parcel containing six Roco Swiss BLS EWivs which had been mistakenly delivered to my former workplace, as good an excuse as any to have a beer at lunchtime with some of the people I used to work with.

On the way home I decided to take a detour, and ride the famous train from Stockport to Stalybridge. This is one of the (in)famous so-called ‘parlimentary trains’, a ghost train run as a token service on a line to avoid having to get a parlimentary act to close it. This one runs one a week, on a Friday afternoon, in one direction only.

Today must have been a slow news day; Granada TV decided feature it on their evening local news programme, and they had a camera team on board. After filming the interior of the train as it set off (and carefully not using any pictures with me in it!), they got off at the forlorn and weed-strewn station at Denton.

Those of you who have been watching the news, and live in the UK will know we had another fatal rail accident on Friday. Seven people died when London to Kings Lynn express derailed at 100mph.

Now the dust has settled, it seems the cause was a faulty set of points which moved under the train, and the cause of the fault looks like inadequate maintenance. And the cause of that seems to be the fragmentation of responsibility following privatisation, with a maze of contractors and subcontractors all passing the blame around.

To anyone on continental Europe reading this – Don’t privatise your railways. Not only will services deteriorate, but it will cost lives as well

Of course, I do have to point out that despite all this, rail is still far safer than going by car. The sort of measures that would reduce the 3000-a-year death toll on the roads are politcally impossible, things like strict enforcement of speed limits, black boxes on all cars and not giving driving licences to those who are psychologically unfit to get behind the wheel of a White Van.

Haven’t said much here lately – but I have bought a new scanner – so I’ll post a couple of pictures from my Cornish holiday

The signalman at Lostwithiel passing the single-line token to the driver of a loaded clay train bound for Fowey

The weekly Penzance to St. Blazey oil tanks at Par, just about to run round.

Well, the on-line games continue. An adventuring party have returned to the city in some disarray, having to explain how they managed to lose all their red-shirts, meanwhile the one who thinks he’s to blame suffers from large amounts of angst. Over in Calbeyn, the Anthill has caught fire.

Meanwhile, the other adventuring party get closer to their goal, having eliminated the guards.

A long time since any updates, because I’ve been on holiday.

After a couple of days RP-ing at Gypsycon with the people from Dreamlyrics, I headed off for a few days in Cornwall, staying in the Mount Royal Hotel in Penzance, just above the station. Regrettably there are no longer any class 37s in action this far west, but the 47s are making a final stand.

Another weekend, another railway exhibition, and Minitrix have declared all-out war on my bank balance. Not content to bring out those grain hoppers, they’ve now re-released the Swiss Euro-City coaches, and They Must Be Mine!!

Overall the show was a disappointment, though. Far too many traders, especially box-shifters, and not enough layouts, especially modern ones. Not as bad as Doncaster, but nothing like as good as Nottingham.

I have just virus-scanned my brain using the Human Virus Scanner, and it appears that I’m infected by the Prog Rock virus. As if I didn’t already know that…

Why is it that as soon as I move into a flat conveniently situated for work, they decide to move offices leaving me with a 70-minute commute?

Still, it has meant my reading time has dramatically increased, now I’m reading on average a book every week-and-a-half, which means I’ve had the chance to re-read Lord of the Rings after seeing the film. (See Mark Rosenfelder’s comments about film and book – I find myself agreeing with much of what he says)

Of course, being a railway enthusiast, a commute out of Manchester Piccadilly has it’s attactions; I’m seeing the last stand of the Virgin Cross Country 47s, and even more venerable 43-year old class 101 DMUs, of which half-a-dozen or so are still running on services to Marple or Rose Hill, including the green-liveried one known as ‘Daisy’.