Recent content by Iron Girder

I was a passenger on a bus, probably in the late 1970s/early 80s. A DMS, on route 189, as it happens. We were going past the Scilly Isles near Esher, taking the dedicated lane for that route, and a tipper truck came around the roundabout as if we weren't there, and piled into the side of the...

I worked in a school, and going into work one day, I was the car that the back end of the bus sideswiped, putting quite a dent in the shapely rear wing of my car. The driver appeared not to notice, despite a lot of people shouting and waving (for some reason, people seem to get quite aerated...

4-SUB. Everything about them was evocative to a 9 year old me, from the whirring of the compressor (my dad told me that it was winding up the elastic band), the brutalist bulk and shape of them, in grimy corporate blue, and, most of all, the resigned moan of the motors as they pulled away from...

That should be fine, depending on how wide the signalling disruption is. Map cropped from the Adlestrop one (the derailment was at/near Llangennech): Just as well it wasn't before the District line diverged, or the whole of the country would have been cut off from West Wales :)

Tragically, there still exists in society a very punitive and negative attitude towards suicide. It sounds as if Japan is still a very long way behind the curve.

Nothing will prevent all incidents, but that doesn't mean we should not be trying to do everything we can to minimise the risks, on the railways or elsewhere. Some areas of Canada are implementing a "zero suicides" strategy, aimed at getting interventions in early enough that it doesn't come...

I've long commented that they often seem to drive as if the laws of physics don't apply to them, let alone the law of the land.

Quite impressive foolishness, this... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-45260451 I know this crossing quite well - I use it reasonably often. The line has a 10mph speed limit, and there are "give way" markings on the road. Even so, I must admit, I do tend to cross it with a little...

If those are the ones I remember, they're pretty shocking viewing...I can remember seeing one of them as a fairly young person (the "races" one, I think) and being really quite disturbed by it for some time afterwards! I suspect, though, that for a certain kind of kid who might not be so keen...

Loading gauge? From memory, the Russian loading gauge is HUGE, and most European ones are significantly bigger than ours. And we don't need gauge-changing stock, unless there are plans to run it on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch as well...

Conservative governments are well known for going on at some length about "market forces". Well, this is market forces at work - presumably the rail unions (and their members) are sufficiently confident that NR is not in a position to suddenly go "OK, fine, then - there's loads of unemployed...

Ah, yes, that's true. If a little unfortunate, because it immediately blurs that distinction between secure and non-secure passwords. I guess, in an ideal world, there'd be a way of doing that which didn't require something called a password. Because once you start using "public" passwords...

In a (non-rail) company I worked in IT for some years ago, it was routine for staff, if you asked them for their account name, to give you the account name and the password. Although it wasn't a safety-critical environment, it was a confidential one, and there was genuine potential for important...

When you look at how much of the traffic on the A40/A477 is for the ferries from Pembroke Dock & Fishguard, I've often wondered why someone hadn't thought of organising a piggyback transfer station somewhere like Cardiff or Swansea and doing just that, for the ferry traffic - let alone any...

I used to live in the area (Tolworth), and the prevailing story as I remember it was that the ground works beyond Chessington South station were built by Royal Engineers training to build railways. It goes on quite a long way before fizzling out in dense woodland.