Recent content by Crispy75

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_coach

HOTOL lives! Well, the engineers who designed it do, and their engine technology does. Pre-cooler testing is ongoing and if successful will release $350m funding for design and prototyping of the Skylon spaceplane. They're not kidding about - ESA and private finance backing...

Building new railways with a different track gauge would be idiotic in the extreme, unless you specifically wanted to restrict operational flexibility and increase the cost of the rolling stock. IKB may have been on to something with broad gauge, but that's irrelevant now.

Great, just as I move from Denmark Hill to Tulse Hill, the former gains extra Thameslink services and the latter loses them all >_< (actually, given the phasing of TLP, when will the Sutton loop services actually start terminating at Blackfriars?)

Incompatible electrification

South London currently has a lot of track that has to do double duty as urban metro and long distance rail. A proposal that I've seen several people argue for is to not create new underground metro lines. Instead, get the long distance trains underground in the suburbs and run them non-stop to...

Ah, that's interesting to know, thanks :)

londonreconnections had a good piece on this: http://www.londonreconnections.com/2011/a-question-of-carriages-increasing-services-on-the-south-west-main-line/ The current RUS has three options for increasing capacity 1. Double decker trains - pretty much a non-starter for lots of reasons...

Speed-oh-meter, anyone? English pronunciation is variable - deal with it :)

It's not any less useful, but then those maps aren't exactly a high benchmark! A shame that it wasn't. The whole point of extending Oyster onto the NR network was to encourage people to use it for trips that they wouldn't have considered before. In that context, the map should tell me "where...

The old Oyster map had the NR routes coloured by terminus, rather than TOC, which is much more useful IMO. You could tell at a glance which terminus you could get to from any station, and vice versa. The new map makes it look like you can, for example, get a direct train to Victoria from Abbey...

No official word, but logic says there's no point in running trains until the shopping center opens on 13th September. As for extending past Lewisham, that's no trivial matter. The station is sandwiched between the mainline viaducts and the A20. Is the intention to get up onto the viaduct and...

Where do I sign up? My pitchfork is sharp and I have revolution in my eyes :D

"Jealous" no. "Resntful" maybe. I'd rather average out the total capacity of the train over all carriages, so that everyone can get a bit more legroom. But that would deny the TOCs their lucrative 1st class fares, so is unlikely to happen under the current system.

Also, because the US network is so heavily biased towards freight, symmetrical services are not so important. It's pointless sending the same number of trains to and from a busy port, when the majority of its traffic is imports distributed around the country. When a ship comes in, the traffic is...