Trivia: Ideas and concepts that didn't work out

[DanNCL]

De-electrification of the Tyneside suburban network. It was so unsuccessful that plans to re-electrify it were already being drawn up just a few years after the last EMUs ran, and the first of the new generation of Tyneside Electrics (the Metrocars) entered service just 13 years after the last third rail EMUs ran.

 

[Sun Chariot]

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Erie "Triplex" steam loco: a mammoth Mallet, a 2-8-8-8-2 compound with 6 cylinders.
The design flaw: those cylinders needed more steam than its boiler could provide and the locos often ran at barely jogging speed.
Still - they looked impressive!

 

[Shimbleshanks]

British Rail's Red Star Parcels arm developed a concept to carry heavier-weight consignments in the guards van on passenger trains called Track 29. I think it was fundamentally an excellent idea, but the execution was somewhat lacking. For instance, because of confusion or lack of enforcement of dimension limits, guards ended up having to try and get 30-foot long canoes or boats in and out of standard GUV parcels vans at intermediate stops.

 

[thenorthern]

Beam and whatever Chiltern and LM called it is (was?) a great idea, especially if you got stuck somewhere with no phone signal and were delayed

Problem was it only worked on the train so unless you were on a long journey there was little point in watching a film as you would have left the train by the time it had finished.

 

[Taunton]

There were a very large number of ideas with locomotives that didn't work out - steam compounds, the "Leader", the Irish Turf Burner, etc. You could go on for some time with these.

The typical 1960s-70s USA diesel, with four forward-facing cab windows, offered for a short time joining the two on the engineer's side together for better visibility. Sounded good, until the sheer cost of replacing the large, unwieldy, L-shaped piece of glass when broken was realised. Initial purchasers soon rebuilt them back to the conventional arrangement.

 

[signed]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned APT yet.

The main concept, tilting, is still somewhat used.

With the Pendolinos, the ICE-T, Acela, X2000, Renfe 102, RABDe 500 and 221s plus a ton in Japan. So it wasn't a failure per se

 

[Krokodil]

There were a very large number of ideas with locomotives that didn't work out - steam compounds

Compounding was successful in many countries.

 

[thenorthern]

Parry People movers didn't work out. They have been used on the Stourbridge branch line but that is it. 20 years ago they were seen as the future.

 

[Rescars]

The Lartigue system didn't really catch on, apart from the Listowel and Ballybunion.

 

[Spartacus]

Tavern Cars. While the concept, has found favour in some places on the continent it's never really taken off here, despite a few different attempts over the years.

 

[Blindtraveler]

Caledonian sleeper budget friendly pods
Concept meant to come with the new stock and be a a cost. Friendly alternative to a a more traditional sleeper, abandoned on grounds of safety which I never quite got. Especially now a very similar concept has been installed on the new night jet stock. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who now feels that a night in a recliner is beyond them. If you want to function the following day but cannot afford the prices now being charged by CS and so therefore are no longer supporting the service, I used to use it multiple times a year and my last journey was nearly 15 months ago

 

[Alfonso]

I don't believe the intermediate demand has gone up so exponentially while the end-to-end demand has remained static. What has happened is that intermediate stations services have been knocked back or consolidated into the longer-distance operations. To take the Glasgow-Edinburgh service as a similar example, the onetime stopping train which used to follow the high speed non stop services out doesn't run any more, and the main trains now stop at middle-of-nowhere places like Croy, and despite all the electrification expense take longer end-to-end than they did more than 50 years ago.

Isn't it just a matter of timing? East Coast, West Coast, GWR and to a degree Midland mainline have all had significant linespeed improvements and faster trains to go with them, which have all been exploited as it makes good use of the lines, and all four have also had a couple of headline-grabbing crack expresses (Royal scot, master cutler, red dragon executive etc) decelerated by adding a couple of stops so they fit within clockface (ish) timetables.

 

[Harpo]

Tavern Cars. While the concept, has found favour in some places on the continent it's never really taken off here, despite a few different attempts over the years.

Perhaps the idea has gone into preservation? Real ale trains.

 

[Tester]

That 40-50 year old poster is embarassing and shows the concept of fast GWML travel has been lost.

They’re probably headline timings on the poster but even after billions on electrification, ordinary journey times still can’t touch them.



London to Bath, now 74 minutes
London to Bristol now 95 minutes
London to Cardiff now 108 minutes
Only Swansea is 1 minute quicker:
London to Swansea 162 minutes

Bit in bold

Probably not - certainly London to Bath in 69 minutes was every hour.

Back then I considered commuting it - probably best that I didn't

 

[mike57]

Adverts where journey time is shown

Particularly as best journey time now appears to be 74 minutes to Bath and 88 minutes to Bristol.

 

[MadMac]

Perhaps the idea has gone into preservation? Real ale trains.

I recall seeing a news report on the Beeb in the late 60s on how someone got round the Welsh licensing laws by renting a train (possibly on the Vale of Rheidol) and having it run back and forward all day with an onboard bar: the BR Bylaws permitted a train to serve alcohol as long as it was on the move.

 

[Western Lord]

I recall seeing a news report on the Beeb in the late 60s on how someone got round the Welsh licensing laws by renting a train (possibly on the Vale of Rheidol) and having it run back and forward all day with an onboard bar: the BR Bylaws permitted a train to serve alcohol as long as it was on the move.

Not just BR, see The Titfield Thunderbolt.

 

[WestAnglian]

That never seemed like a good idea to me. I used it around London a couple of times for the novelty because I lived locally at the time but trundling round North London and avoiding the centre always seemed pointless and doomed to failure.

But you could buy a can of Adnams on board!

 

[Magdalia]

certainly London to Bath in 69 minutes was every hour

Even hour departures from Paddington stopped at Reading and odd hour departures stopped at Swindon.

The South Wales service worked differently with the odd hours non-stop to Newport but the even hours stopping at both Reading and Bristol Parkway.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Class 230 et al. Great idea and a lovely quirk, but in practice unreliable tat that has tainted anywhere it has shown up. The only consolation being that the generally great Adrian Shooter didn't live to see just how embarrassing it got in the end and the failure of the company

Indeed, as a whole, converting old EMUs to DMUs has been a failure, would have been better to build new bi-modes instead.

(There appears to be a dedicated thread on the folly of trying to life-extend old tat...)

 

[101DMU]

Virgin's "Operation Princess'' leading to the introduction of 4/5 coach trains on Cross Country services.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Virgin's "Operation Princess'' leading to the introduction of 4/5 coach trains on Cross Country services.

Notably I think that might have succeeded with a different rolling stock strategy that didn't result in an overall capacity reduction on busy routes while significantly improving the frequency and speed. Whoever signed that off should have been (metaphorically, not actually) shot.

(What's more criminal is that nobody is willing to invest in fixing the error some 30-odd years later!)

 

[D6130]

Tavern Cars. While the concept, has found favour in some places on the continent it's never really taken off here, despite a few different attempts over the years.

I can't help wondering whether they would have been more successful had they had windows, so that punters would have been able to look out and see where they were....in those far-off days prior to the advent of onboard announcements).

 

[duffield]

Parry People movers didn't work out. They have been used on the Stourbridge branch line but that is it. 20 years ago they were seen as the future.

I keep expecting to hear that they're life expired, no spares available etc. and them then being replaced by a class 153. Probably after a lengthy service interruption for driver traction training...

 

[Bletchleyite]

I keep expecting to hear that they're life expired, no spares available etc. and them then being replaced by a class 153. Probably after a lengthy service interruption for driver traction training...

There's a not unreasonable chance that if that happened it'd end up as a test bed for Revolution VLR. Just a newer version of the same basic idea.

 

[The exile]

Even hour departures from Paddington stopped at Reading and odd hour departures stopped at Swindon.

The South Wales service worked differently with the odd hours non-stop to Newport but the even hours stopping at both Reading and Bristol Parkway.

ISTR reading that prior to 1976 there were sonething like 12 holders of annual Swindon - London season tickets. How many in 2019, I wonder?

 

[Tetragon213]

Does the Turbomotive count as an idea that didn't work out?

It was a mechanically beautiful machine, but there's a reason it never really took off...

 

[D6130]

The "Fell" 0-4-4-0 prototype diesel-mechanical locomotive.

 

[Sun Chariot]

I can't help wondering whether they would have been more successful had they had windows, so that punters would have been able to look out and see where they were....in those far-off days prior to the advent of onboard announcements).

I thought similar. The companion dining cars were converted to closer resemble day carriages.
Perhaps those tavern cars could've had larger windows, with "fairground style" distorted effect glass - thereby making the punters believe they'd had a few too many en route...

 

[AY1975]

• At seat radios, seemed a good idea at first but very soon they were obsolete with many passengers having iPods and passengers wanting WIFI.
• VOLO, a similar idea on Great Western which seemed amazing but it didn't work out.

And on-train TVs on the Cross-City line in about the mid-2000s under Central Trains, on c2c at around the same time, and on the Great Western Sleeper in (I think) the early 2010s.

I never saw them in operation, but I believe that the Great Western Sleeper TVs offered (or were supposed to offer) a variety of channels just like a normal TV at home or in a hotel bedroom but they often didn't work, whilst those on the Cross-City line and c2c showed newsreels - I expect some commuters who didn't have time to watch or listen to the news before setting out from their homes would have welcomed it whilst others probably found it intrusive.

3. Rail Riders club

It lasted about 12 years, from about 1979 to 1991 as I recall, initially known as the Great Rail Club then renamed Rail Riders in I think 1981. There's now a latter day version of it, though. It was relaunched in 2020 and is now open to people of all ages, not just children, although kids can't join it on their own unlike with the original version but can join as part of a family membership: www.railriders.club