Recent content by Nottingham59

A train at 10mph has enough kinetic energy to raise the entire train up 1 metre. At 5mph, that would be a quarter as much (25cm). But still plenty to lift one end of one carriage high enough to throw it off the rails. The sideways forces to throw one carriage end sideways will come from minor...

My understanding is that Alstom have proposed a system similar to that now installed at Drogheda for DART BEMUs. The charging infrastructure will be capable of charging a throughput of up to three 10-carriage length trains per hour. Charging time is less than 20 minutes Drogheda uses a 3.6MWh...

Can they not get a spare key to be kept in the staff room?

Maybe they're already here. The IEA says Electric truck sales doubled in 2025 to reach 9% of truck sales worldwide. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2026/trends-in-other-ev-modes

Sounds a bit like the WCML. Any line carrying 6tph freight throughout the day would pass the test for continuous electrification. But there are precious few of those in GB that meet that level of use. Even the Felixstowe branch only carries around 1tph freight, with an operational constraint...

This image suggests that through lines (two tracks, left centre) are wired with catenary, and the electrified sidings (five tracks right centre, with empty flats) have tram-wire overheads. https://www.flickr.com/photos/robmcrorie/29491097947

Unlikely, even in a future world where all EMUs had at least minimal traction battery back up. The capital has already been spent, and any "redundant" OHLE could still be useful for shifting battery recharge loads to times and to locations with spare grid capacity. I wouldn't expect the extra...

810 cars are 24m 80x cars are 26m 222 are 22.8m (23.8 at the ends)

Maybe Beeston is 6 coaches long, but I was on a doubled-up 222 late one night and some blokes who just caught the train at Leicester weren't allowed to get off from the rear portion and ended up in Nottingham.

Beeston. Not sure of platform lengths, but I do know that if you're in the rear portion of a doubled-up 222, then you can't get off and will get over-carried to Nottingham. At least in a 9-car set, you can walk forwards

I agree with the principle, but I reckon it should have been an equal number of 5 and 9-car sets A 9-car 80x with 26m carriages is shorter than 2x810 (234m vs. 240m) and carries more seats (647 vs 2 x 301), The MML timetable means that sets being used on morning peak flows into London get used...

That's a really good question. To avoid hijack this thread, I've answered it is Speculative Discussion here:

This is a new thread to answer the following question by @Class15 in the EWR Countdown discussion. Well, that's a good question. After thinking about it for a while, I'd say there are six reasons, but not necessarily in this order: At £3-5 million per stk, 25kV OHLE is grossly expensive and...

I reckon that all of that function can be done in software. The technology that allows a Waymo autonomous car to navigate city streets with no driver at the wheel could easily be adapted to reliably identify the relevant signal aspect from forward-facing CCTV and over-ride the driver if...

Well, spending well over £5 billion on GWEP increased the national debt by that amount. With 10y gilt rates over 5%, taxpayers are currently paying around £300 million a year just to service that debt. That annual cost is much more than the annual cost savings being realised by extending the...