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Ha. The first two get my support, and the second two are what I was going to suggest :) I could add: actually do the plan to eliminate unbraked freight stock. It might be interesting to try on Brunel the argument that he really ought to put his atmospheric plans on hold for five years until...

That's not what I said at all. I said it has a usefulness in its own right in providing services to places along its route, and its ability to be used as a diversionary route is an additional advantage on top of that. If as few as 2 or 3 trains per hour incurs an excessive maintenance burden...

Oh aye, quite remarkably cunning... like, carry on as normal. (Unless you count "stop diagramming water-soluble stock over it", but I think that should be done regardless of whatever else happens.) Okehampton/Tavistock is a potential avoiding route. It gets you out of a hole under abnormal...

In reverse order: 3 is no good. Tremendous amount of brand new construction required and the article thinks it might take 10 to 15 years, so multiply by three, even if they do still have all the original GWR surveys etc (if I understand the article correctly). 2 is no good either because by...

The whole thing about having two adjacent power cars in the middle rather than separated ones on the ends was because they wanted to avoid having two pantographs both raised. To have a power car at each end would have required running a 25kV bus from one end to the other through the passenger...

I'll try and remember where I came across it.

It was Sulzer's own fault. The tool they supplied to BR for replacing big end shells (of which there was only one in the country) was incorrectly made, with a locating pin something like 0.5mm out of position. This meant that when the bearing cap was fitted, its locating pin failed to engage...

The Midland did have up towards Derby in earlier years; after all they didn't go to London, but they did have Derby as a natural focal point of their constituent lines. They changed it after opening one of their two principal southward extensions, I think Bedford to St Pancras, but I can't say...

That's part of the point really. That problem could be significantly reduced if the tool in question, rather than being deliberately given an inappropriate and misleading name chosen for its use in science fiction to denote something far more sophisticated, was instead named to reflect its true...

The correct name for the technology concerned is Artificial Stupidity and it would help a LOT if people would remember that.

I'm having difficulty parsing this but I would say that the infestation of crappy shops is one of the most significant causes of stations getting worse, and major stations especially. All the bright lights, huge illuminated signs in garish colours, big booths stuck in the middle of the concourse...

Similar though less coincidental roof correspondence between St Pancras and Manchester Central.

They moved the horns to make room to fit the ETH jumpers. It was basically a matter of capacity. North British were expecting/hoping for an order for 33 more D600s, but were given the order for 33 D800s in place of that. Those final five were an addition to the original order, about a year...

There were endless schemes for a railway to a new packet port at Porth Dinllaen. It was one of those things that refused to go away. Most of them started at Worcester even before any other railway had got there. Brunel probably originated the railway idea, or at least made the most noise about...

The Hymeks (and the Warships) were at an early disadvantage for freight working because the Modernisation Plan's promise to get rid of unfitted freight working didn't actually happen; their light weight resulted in a shortage of braking ability which wouldn't have mattered if the wagons had had...

I think the consultancy outfits are a symptom rather than a cause; rather the cause is more down to governments not wanting to commit to spending any money actually doing anything, but also not wanting to look like they're not doing anything, so instead they pay a lesser amount of money to some...

That wasn't the loading gauge; the Warship was designed to have that same interchangeability, but NBL got themselves into a mess putting their batch together and asked for various modifications to the drawings to be allowed, which was granted in order to avoid wasting any more time. So the...

Two or three axles isn't down to the transmission. The output flanges of the transmission (either type) are on a projection of the housing that sticks down underneath, into the central well of the Warship bogie; then cardan shafts on either side take the drive from the transmission to the final...

There's a sort of widening of the tunnel on the north side with a gaggle of LOCs in it, which is where the intersection used to be; you can see some indication that the curve used to emerge there once you know to look for it there.

No disagreement from me. The main train shed wasted on terminating HS1 in the wrong place, all cluttered up and blocked with stupid barriers because this xenophobic dump of a country wouldn't join Schengen. Meanwhile the train you actually want to catch departs from beneath a horrid collection...