Recent content by LesF

UK rail works have rocketted in cost because HS2 is gobbling up so much resource, and, being financed by the bottomless pocket of the taxpayer, is not being built economically.

OK, I was told that work on new tracks progressed while trains ran on the existing adjacent tracks with only a plastic curtain fence between them. NB I left the rail industry in 1963 so what do I know?

Thanks for that. Reassuring.

My mistake. It was Net Rail who claimed in the noughties that the Rugby flyover was "life-expired". I can't find the source but Bald Rick appears to agree. I should qualify what I mean by Rugby remodelling being a success story. I.I r.c. (it was about 20 years ago) Rugby was late and over budget...

Rugby remodelling was a success story. But HS2 claimed the flyover at the west end of Rugby was "life expired", a two-word term that engineers like. It's still in daily use so cannot be life expired. How can we trust anything they say?

12LDA28C - no I don't. The West Coast Route Modernisation in the noughties was largely about catching up on maintenance on existing tracks. Where new tracks were added in the Trent valley, the work went smoothly without disrupting the existing tracks. I was in favour of a HS line following M1...

The_Emperor - Cheaper to build two single track bored tunnels than one tunnel with twin tracks. That's because the height of the bored tunnel is the same as the width, so there's more excavation than necessary for a twin-track tunnel. No point in building more tunnel than necessary as it's so...

Why does anyone use Trainline?

Would make more sense for the existing Aberystwyth to International service to be extended to Marylebone, as Arriva proposed when the WS&MR was running, but they were refused. WS&M had no chance with Virgin's monopoly rules preventing them from stopping at Virgin stations. Those rules have gone.

Rebuilding of Burton station should provide 2 tracks straight through to increase the speed of trains not stopping there. The listed cast iron structure can be retained while the not-very-nice 1960's? sand-lime brick building can be replaced by a new building slightly further south. Then you'd...

All commenters have good knowledge of the T's and C's. The average traveller does not. If the TOC is foolish enough to pursue this case after it's pointed out to them that there was no loss of revenue and therefore no fraud, and that they have used the wrong clause, their unreasonable behaviour...

Can you qualify those claims? Who would make a journey by HS2 who wouldn't have travelled by the existing fast services? HS2's own projections rely heavily on the transfer of existing passengers to HS2 and on leisure travellers who will not want to pay premium fares. The passenger numbers...

NoRoute quotes the link to Statista, apparently an American outfit. Statista's passenger numbers cannot be correct for 2020. They claim numbers virtually equal to 2019, while it's well known the numbers during the lockdown were as low as 4% of pre-pandemic. The DfT figures in the link posted by...

I agree. I've suggested there should be 10 fare levels for each journey. Level 1 would be 10% of the max. fare, level 2 20% and so on up to level 10 = 100%. Timetables would be marked with the fare level for each entry. Peak hour trains would have the highest fare and little used services have...

Fascinating figures in the DfT report. But what are the percentages of? Passenger numbers, passenger miles, train miles or what?