Recent content by millemille

Exactly. The required track geometry has been lost because of settlement of the soil under the ballast. There wasn't enough existing ballast under the track to allow the tamper to lift the track back into position and be able to pack the voids from the lift. So new ballast is dumped on top of...

That's not really how tamping works. Tamping is a consequence of adjusting the track geometry. The tamper picks up the rail with lifting clamps and lifts and slews the track into the correct position. The tines are then inserted into the ballast while the tamper is still lifting the track and...

Indeed. With shunter/drivers who will swear back is white and that they definitely checked the blades were thrown and latched in place despite the forward facing CCTV from the train clearly showing they weren't even looking at the points when they threw the handle and you could see the blades...

We had our own re-railing gang with a variety of jacks and traversing tables and air bags and generator sets and all the blocks of wood etc. But a lot of the time you could, because they were invariably low speed and only one or two axles "in the dirt", with judicious use lumps of wood simply...

This. Depots and yards typically use track that has been removed from mainline use, unless being built from scratch, because it is life expired for high speed running but is fine, in theory, for low speed use when moving trains around depots or yards. I was an on-call Fleet Technical Officer...

Possibly a misunderstanding here. The £250k per day I alluded to is the potential INCREASE in SE's op ex if new trains were to be leased, it's not the total op ex. Whatever subsidy SE are currently receiving to make up for the deficit in income vs. op ex would potentially increase by c. £91M pa.

The DfT needs to look closely at the viability and cost of other options. "Do nothing" may save the cost of the increased lease charges of new trains, but what's the feasibility and cost - both direct and consequential - of trying to limp the incumbent trains along, as an example? The problem...

The Government is not required to make any Capital Expenditure in the procurement of new trains, that is the responsibility of the Rolling Stock Owning COmpany who will finance the procurement and recover their investment, plus profit, through leasing the trains to the operator (which is in...

The light doesn't show that sand is being dispensed ie. a demand for sand for sand is being met, only that there is a demand for sand. Sanding systems in the UK are typically open loop, it will only be apparent to the driver that demand is not being met when the train fails to stop in low...

I was present for the duration of the recovery of 365526 at Potters Bar and vividly remember a massive Baldwins road crane turning up on site, something like this... ...and a collective "expletive deleted, that's a big crane" being uttered. And the driver laughing and saying "no chaps, this...

So that you can relate laboratory endurance testing to real world operation. Say, hypothetically, a million passes of this equipment causes an additional, on top of whatever the wear rate from the passing of wheels is, 1mm of top of rail wear. Is a million passes, if the equipment is fitted and...

Because, without going into detail, it's got nothing to do with measurement or recording. I don't want to say any more as it is commercially sensitive.

Thank you for all the replies so far, much appreciated. If the OP wasn't clear enough, the piece of equipment I'm looking at is mounted on service trains and is in contact with the running rail when deployed. It isn't a wheel and its potential impact upon rail wear rate is not connected to...

Hopefully some of the very knowledgeable folks on here can offer an answer, or informed opinion, on where the busiest piece of track - that's specific rails, not a route - in the UK is and how many trains would pass over it on a typical day? Trying to do some very early concept development of a...

Back in the days of franchises, when as a consultant I was of part of the bid team for several franchises, the DfT position was that an operators performance could exert a maximum of a +/- 3% impact upon the franchise model's forecast passenger numbers. Within that +/-3% band it was "tough...