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Per Rail Journal in 2013.... "Earlier this year, leasing company Porterbrook awarded Vossloh Kiepe a £40m contract to supply IGBT three-phase ac traction equipment for the fleet of 91 class 455 emus used by South West Trains on commuter services from London Waterloo."

Built in redundancy, the train operates as if it were two units coupled together so a failure on one won't immobilise both. That's the theory anyway, the practice seems a little different.

That suggestion sounds suspiciously like common sense. It'll never work!

Why? Siemens are as entitled to tender as anyone else. It's not their fault that the 707s seem to have become unsuitable despite being built exactly as the customer wanted them.

I believe the ZF equipped units show the biggest savings at low speeds when all that slip and churning of oil in a Voith transmission is replaced by several mechanical speeds and a locking torque converter. At cruising speeds I don't think there's much in it as the fluid couplings are relatively...

Strange beasts, Voith hydrodynamic gearboxes. Three speed versions have only two gears. First speed involves a loose torque converter driving low gear, second consists of draining the converter and filing a fluid coupling which drives the same gear but with less slip and third speed uses another...

That depends on your bank charges and how the exchange rate goes from day to day though. My usual preference is to bring some cash for anything that needs cash and use plastic otherwise. Cash can have a downside. I was in Stockholm last September and brought some cash from a previous trip...

Given that you said you had a bank debit card earlier, couldn't you have used that? I know there's a charge each time you use it but I did some sums once and concluded that taking into account the much worse exchange rate when you buy notes it was either cheaper to use plastic everywhere or...

Interestingly there was a post earlier by somebody who actually drives these for a living and has done so since last June and has only ever experienced one minor fault. I wonder do some people here have some sort of grudge against this particular class of train? You don't see every issue...

B & I ran a Cork/Swansea service until 1979 when they switched to Pembroke (shorter sea crossing). A different company took over the Swansea route from 1987 to 2006. There was then a gap until 2010 when the Julia ran the service in that year and 2011, at which point the owners pulled out due to...

That's interesting. The first digit in ZF gearbox names is the number of gears so a 5HP902 is indeed a five speed and it's one of the options MTU have with their engines. They sell what they call a Power Pack with engine, gearbox and other bits as a complete package as here...

There's your cure. Install dummy passengers!

That's exactly what it does though isn't it? Starts in first and then makes five changes to arrive at sixth. These gearboxes were commonly used in buses and they sound just the same there. Why anybody would want to disable top gear in a train capable of 100 mph I can't imagine.

I'm still doubtful about sixth gear not engaging. There are certainly five steps in the video. Granted one could be the torque converter locking up but this doesn't drop the revs much and isn't usually so noticeable. I've been on buses with the same gearbox and they sound just like the train...

That depends on where you are. London Overground ones won't get the chance to reach sixth but others can and do. There's one here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdFCQE61mSA which gets to sixth about a minute and a half in.

Gamla Stan just means Old Town, it's not a name as such and has I think being popularised by the tourist authorities. Anyway, yes it's very nice if you can avoid high season when it can be heaving.

Because they're usually coming from those other countries with a larger supply of working age people? The girl dishing out the coffee in your local Costa is from Poland or somewhere near, not Germany or Sweden (unless your Costas are very different to mine).

er....I think the joke was: Destroy the brake pipe. That definitely sounds like a one off event!

There's a 158 using a Voith Diwa gearbox which isn't next generation so much as different generation - it's usually used in buses but it's expected that it'll be more efficient in trips with frequent stops than the usual Voith hydrodynamic transmissions which depend on torque converters and...

I was actually referring to the very first post though which I mistakenly thought was a recent one, which was actually by Google. I wasn't casting aspersions on your French!