Recent content by Nicholas Lewis

It maybe that the isolation had to be extensive with all the overhead feeders in this area to allow London Fire Brigade to fight the fire so they couldn't try using an alternative feed from the Reading direction.

Thats supplied from the local DNO. Maybe an issue of crew relief being able to get to the stations

Go back even 40yrs and the site would open at 20mph after renewal by the 90's it was increased to 40mph when they introduced the whacking machines to get the base stone well consolidated before laying sleepers as well as getting very close to design level so you dont need to lift the track much...

You cant keep loading ballast onto embankments as its placing extra load on the formation and also with narrow width of Victorian embankments maintain a ballast shoulder becomes troublesome. At Lewes you can see the result of increasing track ballast height with some rather crude ballast...

Its far from satisfactory but presumably GWR have picked on this service group as its an easy win to gain back two? diagrams and presumably traffic drops off outside of the summer months.

NR Western Twitter have this very short video which shows very little but hopefully on the radar of their media team who will keep tabs on progress. https://x.com/networkrailwest/status/2095501272187052440

Indeed a speed that low would decimate the timetable. Whats needed is access and resources to treat the affected areas and generally the UK does have plenty of decent tamping machinery that can deliver several 1000yds on an overnight possession if the site is suitable prepped. To a degree much...

Tonbridge Redhill shut all morning until 1300 due to track defects. Went over it yesterday and Godstone-Edenbridge on the Down was 50mph and that was pretty lively and my guesstimate was driver new where the more severe sections were as was regulating speed. This section has a lot of embankments.

Is it easily remediated by just dropping ballast and tamping though or is there a risk as moisture finds its way into the embankments they will expand again? Umm the Arun Valley has always been lively down the South end for years so I guess drivers become used to a certain level of poor riding...

They have a tight turnaround at Uckfield and then they only run just ahead of the E.Grinsteads from Hurst Green so it causing a lot of late running even with the revisions. So i guess spinning one at Crowborough allows some recovery. There are two tampers scheduled in tonight and one for the...

I was wading through old editions of The Engineer and they reported the following in March 1956 edition

Theres been an epidemic on Sussex though which of course is highly understandable given the Lewes incident but other than West of England its not as bad on Kent or Wessex. Yes but that hasnt just happened so going to be interesting to see what RAIB uncover over whether drivers weren't reporting...

Well NR are reporting its all good to reopen tomorrow https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/network-rail-and-southern-railway-complete-major-recovery-and-repair-programme-as-haywards-heath-to-lewes-line-set-to-reopen-on-1-september

The Wickford train was 2 x 720s which pack in a lot of power and with a lightly loaded train nothing was untoward to the driver. My supposition here being is the rear bogie is unmotored so its ligher than a motored bogie and at speed the leading wheelset would have been forced above each...

Did they? they've actually been rather coy about what their arrangements were and like the Ardwick ROC debacle so were Network rail. Wheres the safety issue? My understanding it was more to do with everything but everything for the XC operations runs through the control centre so they didnt...