Search results

I was talking more about faff in the air. You don't just rock up to an airfield or landing site and barge doing your own thing. Particularly if the sky is full of thousands of these things.

The regulations are the same. Whether a huge expansion in helicopter like aircraft either transpires or prompts regulatory changes remains to be seen. Helicopters are allowed to fly wherever they like, other than very specific areas like in the vicinity of prisons etc. I would suggest that a...

Quite a lot actually It's exactly the same in regulatory terms. Those regulations might change, of course.

Yes but there's a lot of faff and procedure involved with landing and take off. That landing and charge cycle will end up being closer to an hour. I used to fly a 150mph cruise light aircraft, and the breakeven time wise between flying and driving was a much greater distance than you'd expect...

I think there's far more than 1. The very minor steam railway I volunteered at 25 years ago had at least 3.

So? Millions of people used to be employed mining coal, bashing bits of metal, weaving cloth. Those jobs are all gone, but guess what, people have better more fulfilling jobs in their place. Meh. Why? I don't get this constant desire to try to tell other societies how they should organise and...

Weren't a lot of junction stations built precisely because there was a junction there, rather than an existing settlement? Eg Trent Junction, Redesmouth and probably the most archetypal example Riccarton Junction (which went from barren moor to a station, coal gas plant, several houses, a shop...

Nonsense! We can't afford for them not to produce high quality a d reasonably priced EVs so that we don't have to keep breathing exhaust fumes. China makes everything else, why not cars? Exactly.

Airports are one of the journeys that trains an have a real advantage. Off peak return to Stansted direct from my local station is £55. Parko for even a single day there is usually about £80, absolutely outrageous. So the train for a fraction of the price that deposits you directly under the...

Like I said, poppycock. A Tesla Model 3 weighs less than and ICE BMW 3 series. And weight isn't what causes tyre wear, it's sliding contact. So a heavier car may well cause less wear, for the same profile tyre. I suspect the absence of torque steer and jerky transmissions also contributes to...

Indeed. Colleague and I ended up there for dinner after a thing at the NEC. We were both pleasantly surprised. "This isn't what I imagined Solihull would look like".

Of course, the EV is much nicer to drive and much cheaper to run, so of course it is more valuable. Indeed. When I can drive to Westfield Stratford and back for £3.50 of electricity and £10 parking, the £100+ return fare on the train for a similar journey time is difficult to justify.

I wrote to EMT a few years ago in praise of the guard and driver when they evacuated the train at Spalding one night because they thought it was on fire (it wasn't something wrong with one of the engineers and lots of black smoke pouring out the exhaust). Absolutely freezing night so they opened...

What about it? There's the carbon footprint of producing and transporting fuel, before you even burn it. EVs pay back the embedded carbon in the battery at around 15,000 miles. Poppycock. And in any case the tyres on my Tesla last way longer than any other car I've had. I've bought a grand...

Exactly. What's the point of doing it at all if people can't see it other than at very few locations?

Wasn't there a TGV is France a few years ago where a terror threat was thwarted? Something like 2 US Marines were on the train and just happened to hear the sound of assault rifles being cocked in the bog, so they jumped the guy as he emerged?

Possibly also sitting on the balance sheet at a value that would not be achievable if sold/scrapped. So leaving them avoids a write down.

Spalding is another place where this happens routinely.

I think it's probably more difficult to get a meaningful performance increase. You'll just bump into hard limits like the current capacity of a cable, connector, battery module etc. That said, I don't see why you need one when there are family cars capable of 0-60 in less than 3 seconds.

My mum worked out how to deal with them when I was about 10. "Have you ever thought about god?" "Yes, yes I have. And I've come to the conclusion it's a complete load of nonsense. But do feel free to come and and convince me otherwise!" delivered in her schoolteacher voice. They declined her...