What does the term "no brainer" mean in the context of ideas for reopenings etc?

GRALISTAIR said:

No brainer is not identical to crayons/crayonista but in many ways there are similarities.

It is easy to crayon in a line on a map - oh sounds like a no-brainer!

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Another common issue is an individual assuming that their solution to an Obvious Problem must therefore be a no-brainer.

zwk500 said:

Another common issue is an individual assuming that their solution to an Obvious Problem must therefore be a no-brainer.

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Absolutely!

zwk500 said:

Another common issue is an individual assuming that their solution to an Obvious Problem must therefore be a no-brainer.

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Or assuming that an Obvious Problem is, in fact, a problem at all.

The exile said:

I would suggest that nothing (as it stands) is a true “no brainer” - as t would already have been done if it were. A brand new town / large development slap-bang on an under capacity line with slack in the timetabling and at the “Goldilocks spot” in terms of distance from likely destinations is the closest we’re likely to get.

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Well, you also have to take into account that building anything in the UK takes too long and costs too much. If the railway could get things done quicker and for less money, a lot more projects would become viable...

Slightly tangential, but is it actually a ‘no brainer’ that we continue to throw money at maintaining the status quo? One Obvious Problem is that ‘there is no more money’ ….

CdBrux said:

"No brainer" in the context of forums such as this generally means "I would like / want it to happen" [so have made no thought to how viable it actually would be]

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Agreed

It's the equivalent of the Pub bore/ terminally online commentator who peppers their conversation with phrases like "stands to reason... Common sense...simples... How hard can it be" (often applied to issues like constitutional politics)

On here it's probably the poor cousin of the (lesser spotted) "shovel ready" - I just read "no brainer" as shorthand for "I've decided what I want, but I struggled to find sufficient justification for it, so I'm going to throw some phrases around in the hope that this convinces people with little understanding of the complexities

Often a "no brainer" turns out to be something that raises further questions

For example I've seen it used to describe electrification of the Thames Valley branches, which at the moment use a common DMU fleet alongside other local duties out of Reading depot (and can be strengthened accordingly). Would you have a bespoke class of EMUs for the small number of units required to run the shuttles off the GWML/ would it see separate fleets to suit the platform size at Bourne End plus potential street running to connect the two Windsor/ Eton stations/ would it be heavy or light rail? Do you keep provision for through Paddington services "just in case"? These are all questions that need addressing

Same goes with electrifiy to places like Oxford/ Bristol/ Sheffield - do you do it today or do you wait for platforms to be reshaped or at least the existing signalling?

Building spurs to stations at Oswestry/ Grangemouth etc sounds simple but how do you serve these? With a shuttle/ diverting existing services/ introducing brand new ones?

Far easier to throw about phrases like "no brainer" than to deal with the practicalities though

At least it's a more credible phrase than the desperate sounding "diversionary resilience" though!

tbtc said:

Building spurs to stations at Oswestry/ Grangemouth etc sounds simple but how do you serve these? With a shuttle/ diverting existing services/ introducing brand new ones?

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Grangemouth is surely the no-brainiest of no-brainers, as the railway is already there and is already electrified! There is even a suitable service to serve the place, the Glasgow Queen St/Falkirk Grahamston trains which use the start of the branch at Grangemouth Junction to reverse. All (haha) that is needed is a station in Grangemouth.

Birmingham to Manchester is the most no-brainer candidate for electrification. The UK's 2nd and 3rd largest cities, with a string of large towns/cities between them. Unpleasantly crowded diesel trains. Constant discussion about the need to increase capacity. Oh, and someone seems to have fitted long metal things above the tracks that could perhaps be repurposed to transmit power?

PartyOperator said:

Birmingham to Manchester is the most no-brainer candidate for electrification. The UK's 2nd and 3rd largest cities, with a string of large towns/cities between them. Unpleasantly crowded diesel trains. Constant discussion about the need to increase capacity. Oh, and someone seems to have fitted long metal things above the tracks that could perhaps be repurposed to transmit power?

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This doesn't fall into the category of a "no-brainer" though - power supply upgrades would be needed in the West Midlands, and it involves potential re-mapping of Manchester to Birmingham services either so they can solely use an electric fleet and no longer run south of Birmingham, or a new bi-mode fleet to allow the existing routes to run as now but with longer trains. Longer trains then opens up cans of worms about capacity at maintenance depots and platform capacity at New Street and so on!

PartyOperator said:

Birmingham to Manchester is the most no-brainer candidate for electrification. The UK's 2nd and 3rd largest cities, with a string of large towns/cities between them. Unpleasantly crowded diesel trains. Constant discussion about the need to increase capacity. Oh, and someone seems to have fitted long metal things above the tracks that could perhaps be repurposed to transmit power?

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Neatly demonstrating the hypothesis.

43074 said:

This doesn't fall into the category of a "no-brainer" though - power supply upgrades would be needed in the West Midlands, and it involves potential re-mapping of Manchester to Birmingham services either so they can solely use an electric fleet and no longer run south of Birmingham, or a new bi-mode fleet to allow the existing routes to run as now but with longer trains. Longer trains then opens up cans of worms about capacity at maintenance depots and platform capacity at New Street and so on!

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I wouldn't say a "no brainer" means "there is absolutely nothing preventing it from happening". But eliminating diesel running under wires seems a fairly obvious objective to work towards as an ultimate goal.

eldomtom2 said:

I wouldn't say a "no brainer" means "there is absolutely nothing preventing it from happening". But eliminating diesel running under wires seems a fairly obvious objective to work towards as an ultimate goal.

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Eliminating Diesel from under the wires isn't a no-brainer because there are lots of possible ways to approach the problem, all of which have different trade-offs and none of which is clearly ahead of the others.
Let's start with electrifying routes where DMUs currently operate under the wires, and convert those to EMU. Great, but now we've got different DMU services running under the wires we've just put up! Are we going to electrify 100% of the network, of course not! So are procuring Bi-Modes that still use diesel, just not under the wires, or BEMUs - but for both we need to consider required ranges between fuelling/charging, etc... Then there's the question of where to start, who's funding it, etc...

Compare this to, say, wiring the Poplars at Acton Bank. The problem was fairly straightforward - Elizabeth Line trains would lose access to OOC depot from the West. They therefore needed an alternative route to a depot. The potential solutions:
- Rely entirely on Reading/Maidenhead - not enough capacity for additional trains, and no room or time to expand them. Also limited justification to expand them for a limited time.
- Fit class 345s with traction batteries - expensive, retrofitting would require additional units out of service, long lead time to fit. Although would then be useful going forward any time the power goes off.
- Dead Haul - for the volume of moves required, would cost a vast amount to hire sufficient locos and drivers and not enough capacity to make the attaching and detaching movements at either end.
- Electrification - it's a short section between 2 electrified lines that then allows the 345s to run under their own power to get from one end of the Core to the other. The electric link would be usable by a wide range of potential traffic in the future, and could be delivered quicker than any fleet retrofit with minimal disruption to service traffic.
When to do it was obvious - it needed to be delivered before the OOC Blockade. The project causing the disruption were paying for it.

That's about the most straightforward project I can think of bar repairing Infrastructure signed OOU.

The next nearest to a no-brainer IMO is Didcot-Oxford Electrification, as there's already the stock, services and power supply ready for it. But it needs to wait until the trackwork is finished.

No brainer is often used by people who are only seeing the narrowest of viewpoints of their chose scheme and take no consideration into wider aspects/problems. For example people suggesting Skip-Colne tend to ignore the lack of paths into Leeds, where the services would originate to and from through the new section of line, requirement for new signalling/doubling of infrastructure/electrification of existing track. Its only 12 miles or something like that of new track (and earthworks) which are looked at in costing, but ignore the cost of other improvements required. There is also often a deliberate ignoring of population statistics and commuting habits.

In my opinion a true no brainer (outside London) is normally a fairly small scheme, that has real, tangible benefits to the current status quo of the railway such as improving reliability. I dont think any reopening can ever be a no brainer.

zwk500 said:

Eliminating Diesel from under the wires isn't a no-brainer because there are lots of possible ways to approach the problem, all of which have different trade-offs and none of which is clearly ahead of the others.
Let's start with electrifying routes where DMUs currently operate under the wires, and convert those to EMU. Great, but now we've got different DMU services running under the wires we've just put up! Are we going to electrify 100% of the network, of course not! So are procuring Bi-Modes that still use diesel, just not under the wires, or BEMUs - but for both we need to consider required ranges between fuelling/charging, etc... Then there's the question of where to start, who's funding it, etc...

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But my point wasn't that the precise method of reducing diesel running under wires was a no brainer, it was that the end goal is desirable and the various methods of achieving that goal should be investigated to see what is best. We shouldn't use "there are multiple different ways of achieving this goal" as a reason not to actively plan and work towards achieving it.