Ideal railway

[Intercity110]

what would your ideal railway be?- mine would be double decker stock, with bridges being lifted to fit them (this mark 6 would feature slam doors, but with an activatable sliding door in the middles and it’d bring back compartments, with 6a’s being a stopgap between current trains and 6bs)

 

[HSTEd]

Something resembling a driverless derivative of a Japanese Shinkansen, with double decker stock and high intensity clockface operation on a small number of stopping patterns. Failing that, a metro-ised Chuo Shinkansen.

Platform edge doors and a mentality of piling it high and selling it cheap.

 

[lxfe_mxtterz]

One where I actually have a chance of getting to work each day...

 

[yorksrob]

If you took the railway network as it was in about 1965, and combined it with rolling stock fleets as they were in about 1990, that would be ideal.

 

[Intercity110]

If you took the railway network as it was in about 1965, and combined it with rolling stock fleets as they were in about 1990, that would be ideal.

that'd be a perfect railway, perfection is sadly impossible.

 

[yorksrob]

that'd be a perfect railway, perfection is sadly impossible.

Alas, it is indeed.

 

[D365]

By ’ideal’, are we looking for something that’s technically and economically realistic?

 

[Intercity110]

By ’ideal’, are we looking for something that’s technically and economically realistic?

not within the realm of impossibility.

 

[sprinterguy]

If you took the railway network as it was in about 1965, and combined it with rolling stock fleets as they were in about 1990, that would be ideal.

I started giving the premise of this thread some serious thought after reading the opening post, and then scrolled down, saw this, and concluded that it succinctly and absolutely hits the nail on the head for me.

 

[yorksrob]

I started giving the premise of this thread some serious thought after reading the opening post, and then scrolled down, saw this, and concluded that it succinctly and absolutely hits the nail on the head for me.

Thanks, I suspected it might appeal to more than just myself

 

[bib]

If the Saudi Neom/Line thing ever gets anywhere in terms of actually getting beyond fancy CGI into practical design planning it'll be interesting to see what they come up with, given that the whole thing seems to be partially designed to allow a single high speed mass transit 'line' to move people when necessary. Its quite interesting sort of 'blank sheet' challenge to design the best possible way of moving people on a single transport corridor.
Presumably it will be much more efficient than having a network trying to cover a normal city blob, but how they'd go about deciding on station spacings and providing for local and long distance traffic in a 100km long 'line' would be challenging I'd think, but it must be a pretty good chance to build an 'ideal' railway

https://www.constructionweekonline.com/projects-tenders/neom-new-awards Seems like they've gotten further than I thought, looks like they are at least having separate freight tunnels

 

[Basil Jet]

Really long trains (maybe 50 carriages) travelling the length or width of the country every few minutes without stopping anywhere. Before every station a few carriages peel of the back and stop at the station, and after every station a few carriages which served that station couple on the front. Passengers all have their own lightweight enclosed buggy (like a more lightweight T5 transit pod) which decides for itself which part of the big train it needs to be in and moves itself forward every ten stations or so until the part which will peel off the back at the destination has joined the front, when the buggy can move there and wait for the carriage doors to open. Having the passengers in buggies removes any possibility that passengers can block doors or uncoupling gangways and so allows 100% of trains to be punctual to a fraction of a second. All the passenger has to do is enter the ticket hall and board a waiting buggy, key in their destination in any part of the country, and then be offered a list of movies/programmes which are the right length for that journey. The buggy will move itself from platform to platform if interchange is required. There will be a toilet button in the buggy which will rapidly divert you to the nearest ticket hall that has a toilet.

 

[Intercity110]

Really long trains (maybe 50 carriages) travelling the length or width of the country every few minutes without stopping anywhere. Before every station a few carriages peel of the back and stop at the station, and after every station a few carriages which served that station couple on the front. Passengers all have their own lightweight enclosed buggy (like a more lightweight T5 transit pod) which decides for itself which part of the big train it needs to be in and moves itself forward every ten stations or so until the part which will peel off the back at the destination has joined the front, when the buggy can move there and wait for the carriage doors to open. Having the passengers in buggies removes any possibility that passengers can block doors or uncoupling gangways and so allows 100% of trains to be punctual to a fraction of a second. All the passenger has to do is enter the ticket hall and board a waiting buggy, key in their destination in any part of the country, and then be offered a list of movies/programmes which are the right length for that journey. The buggy will move itself from platform to platform if interchange is required. There will be a toilet button in the buggy which will rapidly divert you to the nearest ticket hall that has a toilet.

so a bit like motorail

 

[The Ham]

The existing network (only with a lot more electrification and minimum of 8 coach stations, unless self contained branches lines) plus a load of High Speed lines.

With the existing network focused on creating webs of "metro" services around anywhere with a decent population size with new chords added to create new interchange options.

 

[Bevan Price]

It will never be allowed to happen in UK, but my ideal railway would be free at the point of travel, funded entirely from national taxation. The aim would be to discourage the use of private cars as much as possible, at least to/from big towns & cities. To meet that aim, free park/ride stations would be provided at key locations, and served by frequent train services.

 

[ShadowKnight]

A US loading gauge, European style railway. Maximum space and maximum efficiency

 

[The Ham]

It will never be allowed to happen in UK, but my ideal railway would be free at the point of travel, funded entirely from national taxation. The aim would be to discourage the use of private cars as much as possible, at least to/from big towns & cities. To meet that aim, free park/ride stations would be provided at key locations, and served by frequent train services.

I have wondered how viable this would be, in that is likely to be quite a bit cheaper to run as you'd not "have to" (although you may want them for other reasons) keep any of the gatelines, gateline staff, guards/RPI's for ticket enforcement purposes, ticket offices, delay repay, and probably several other staff rules.or procedures. There's also going to be some other costs savings (in theory there'll be less need for as many Twitter staff as well as lower energy costs from not having to run TVM's) and the potential for other income (renting out the space taken up by ticket offices).

The rail unions would be a little grumpy about the job losses so might try striking, but how they would play out is another debate.

Given that staff costs are about 1/3 of TOC costs, it's likely that we could see about 20% cut from the costs.

As such rather than the subsidy being £25bn (total costs) it would be £20bn, should that really be all that unaffordable for a country such as ours?

It would certainly reduce carbon emissions from transport, if it resulted in them halving then arguably the carbon cost per tonne would be about £350 (for the whole cost, although to justify the extra subsidy only about £180) and whilst quite a lot higher than the carbon cost used for value for money calculations, it's likely that it would have other benefits.

People may be fitter - as it maybe harder to justify car ownership so may walk or cycle more (the roads are likely to be less busy and so that becomes more attractive). As such could save the NHS money.

There could be reductions in road building and road maintenance costs.

There could be an economic boost as people aren't so limited in their ability to get about, opening up business opportunities the ability to do a better job, etc.

There's probably others, however there's also going to be issues. For example trains would likely be full and standing all the time and if staff levels are cut too far there may be anti social behaviour issues.