Recent content by waverley47

The Settle and Carlisle has existing tourism potential, and connects into Leeds at one end. The use case is there. Chiltern connects affluent towns into London. The use case is there. Cornwall, and Axminster, and Filton, and the Cotswolds, and Hartlepool, and Newquay, and every other example...

The current view I think is that the data centre isn't going to happen, and inevitable it will end up with some housing built on the site. The station is just sat there waiting for a use case, and the current political climate seems to be turning against hyper scale data centres quite quickly

Honestly, it's a bit parochial, but the August 2019 power outages that triggered a meltdown of Thameslink. Simultaneous lightning strikes in the north see 200 miles apart, a 33 second frequency drop down to 49Hz, a catastrophic hardware and software issue, the trains trying to restart...

1 additional diagram is unfortunately the problem there, the 156 fleet is a bit stretched in Scotland at the moment. Once the new units come in, the great reshuffle should mean Aberdeen and the GSW get the 170s, and the 158s go to the WHL and Inverness.

Winchburgh 2028/2029, or a reopened Inverkip [nee IBM] 2029/2030. One of Bridge of Earn, Abernethy or Newburgh seem likely for about 2033, depending on how various things go. After that, Cove and Newtonhill as a pair, probably as part of the just transition money that we expect to start...

That would be the daily (one day up, next day down) alcan, transporting alumina powder from near Newcastle up to Fort William. Anything headed to Glen Douglas is MOD traffic, probably boxed in containers, and very unusual in that part of the world.

"their evidence shows them to have robust performing timetable plans." The current performance of Lumo to Stirling, and the fact that circa 15% of their trains don't complete the full journey at the moment, would to my eyes suggest otherwise.

There's a model site plan sitting on a shelf somewhere in the TS offices, the timetable and signal planning was done, but the services, and site investigation were never carried out because that costs money. Basically everything that can be done without having to actually fully commit to...

I've never actually been able to get a clear answer on where the gauging issues on the M&C are, so thank you for that. I've heard it variously attributed to platform coping, and the narrow bridge at Dalston, and the disused overbridge in Wigton, but the issue for a long time appeared to be...

The current timetable works with one sat in Queen Street for 50 minutes in an hour, and another sat on the branch at Grangemouth for 30 minutes in an hour. It's not the most intensive use of resources, hence why it only required one extra diagram to run the whole thing through to Edinburgh. To...

Officially, it's 95% eight cars, and then one diagram during the evening peak is a seven car set. In practice, you can get anything from four to eight cars depending on what's being used elsewhere and how many units are at Craigentinny for maintenance . The Cumbernauld service actually worked...

Also the two other routes (formerly three) from Waverley to Glasgow. In some hours at Waverley pre-Covid, there were trains from Waverley to Glasgow 13 times an hour, with journey times ranging from 45 to 100 minutes. It was deemed useful to have a big sign at Waverley pointing to the...

As were TfW's CAF units, as were the 745s which were ordered from Stadler ostensibly so that they would have enough units to operate a maintenance facility in Anglia, as were various generations of BREL projects, ect....

That is a overlap. These days, we never wire to the end of the platforms and stop, we run onwards the full braking distance, and then a bit further to a nice uncomplicated bit of plain track, and then on the end of that we add a neutral section (or at the bare minimum, a neutral earthed length...

There's two slow through platforms, and a six car bay platform, going in at Huddersfield for exactly that reason. Reversing on the main line at Springwood Jn would eat capacity needlessly. The general plan is for the Mancs - Hudds stopper to terminate in the new platform 3, and the Leeds -...