Recent content by Kali

You're still proposing to abandon Torbay to the weather, though. What's the cost of upgrading Exeter-Okehampton and Plymouth-Bere Alston/Tavy to handle diversion traffic, ignoring the cost of the centre section for now? surely "feed all Cornwall traffic through a basic branch line" is not a real...

While I'd rather enjoy the Dartmoor gap being bridged, surely the only solution is the one that - * Doesn't leave Torbay to the capriciousness of the weather. * Doesn't leave the entire SW to the capriciousness of the weather either. Flooding on and near the Somerset levels cut off both...

I used to commute London-Luxembourg daily for a bit ( obviously not by train ), other than going deaf in one ear from propellor noise it wasn't *that* bad. Harringay->Canary Wharf on the other hand made me quit. I know a couple of folks who've tried commuting from Exeter, when you add the London...

If you want slow... I was on a 158 from somewhere in Cornwall ( I think ) to Exeter which failed one engine at the start of Rattery - in a really hot summer. Struggled on for a bit, then the aircon got switched off... oy. Nearest BR class I can find with the approx starting TE of a HST powercar...

A powercar has a maximum of about 18k lb-ft TE. I can't actually find another main line class that has less than double that, as a reference. Max continuous is at 60ish mph which is enormously more than almost everything else, and unfortunately not much use for preservation. Class 14 has 30k...

And it either stopped there or got piloted - certainly never used to be allowed over the banks to Plymouth with a dead powercar. HST powercars have absolutely terrible starting tractive effort, I presume thanks to the design decision to avoid field diverts. I can't however see most preserved...

A vehicle with a driving cab and a diesel generator, eh? So what is needed is something like a Class 20, only with an engine that doesn't mind being shut down so much. What would be better is something you can see over from the electric cab & you can multiple work with, that way there's little...

There is a DC step in AC-AC systems - AC motors work because you can control the frequency of the supply, and that's done from a DC source. Suitable batteries would be be heavier than a small diesel generator set, I'd imagine... Is anyone building electro-diesels these days?

Both of those are already reality, only without any physical presence needed. The corollary of that is that passenger transport may become less and less necessary ( which is a pity as I quite like travelling, and the corollary to *that* is costs going up ). Jet packs would be a fairly effective...

I think at that point you're looking at ground-effect "ships" - or if we really have to power everything electrically, nuclear powered liners.

How much of it is chunnel certification redundancy & could be ditched if you just wanted a domestic hauler?

Most of that was closed in the 60s! I would assume there was never the idea to just end it at Birmingham, because other than it providing a short-term economic/social/political boost there's no real benefit to building new rather than expanding what we have. If you're going to build it you...

I'm thinking you'd probably generally want magnetic guidance, so you'd end up with some sort of U shaped track and end up with something rather similar to a maglev only without the energy use and infrastructure used to actually lift the train. However you could aerodynamically guide it at speed...

Ground-effect tube trains might be a little counter-productive - it's the train's speed relative to the air that determines the available lift. Still, to keep it stable you just want some sort of U shape, and you could probably use conventional rails at lower speeds. Anyone know what it costs...

There's no standards in Maglev either, unlike existing conventional rail. Maglev for goods is fairly pointless; I would see the best use being a point-to-point long distance link where you just load an entire conventional train onboard, but there's little reason not to fly instead. If there's...