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GSW must be a good candidate for a battery/25kV service passenger service, with a good run of OHLE at both ends of the route giving plenty of time to recharge. You might need to shorten the gap between Kilmarnock and Gretna with some OHL. There's a National Grid substation at Dumfries and...

The Faroe Islands' undersea 2-lane road tunnels are costing them around £10million per km. So yes, you can go a long way on £100 billion. Though of course that doesn't include a heap of additional expenditure on safety, power supply, signalling, rolling stock, access lines, ongoing maintenance...

Another reason for going for 25kV, rather than dc is the hope that you can just feed it from the existing mainline supply, saving the expense of new supply points. And if the mainline juice is inadequate to do that, then the new 25kV supply points on the branches will provide necessary back-up...

It must have been an impressive amount of work getting this up and running. I'd agree that the gradient graph is a bit confusing: changing it to percentages (so the number increases as the gradient steepens) would make the graph much more meaningful.

Could you open a petting zoo for rolling stock? Punters would pay to fondle their favourites, and maybe feed them a can or two of diesel (and coolant for the HSTs).

The high point of my day as a commuter in 1978 was waiting at Didcot for the non-stop morning HST into Paddington: another up HST preceded it at the full 125mph .... apparently coming straight at you, then curving though the platform.

I 'd never heard of an "extradosed bridge" so had to look it up in Wikipedia... it's a box-girder bridge with additional support from cable-stays fanning out from low towers. Wiki says they are best-suited to spans of 100m to 250m which sounds a bit short: the Forth Road Bridge (suspension) main...

One benefit of a new west-north chord at Gretna is that you could then close the GSW section by section for upgrading (speed improvements, gauge enhancement, electrification); saving a lot of money and working time (possibly enough to pay for the chord). During the closures, you'd run a...

There's no benefit to either people or the country as a whole to try and boost the population of very rural areas.... rural populations use more resources and subsidies: electricity, NHS, water, sewage, education, roads, bus subsidies... they all cost more. If the young want to leave remote...

Extending to Hawick isn't a stupid idea (though I'd guess there may be better ways of spending the shedload of cash needed). At least a fair number of people live there and the prosperity of the town would be enhanced by improved transport opportunities. But beyond Hawick.... well, there's many...

Something of that sort may be needed if Nicola get's her way, for customs and immigration checks on the hard border. You'll need longer platforms, though, and more of them!

I've had time to get my virtual crayons out. So here's an image of Greta Junction with the layout of the Oxley Chord superimposed, showing it's a roughly equivalent situation (though Oxley is double and the Gretna north-west curve need only be single track). As far as I can tell, the Oxley Chord...

The 85mins I quoted was Annan to Glasgow. I gave the time from Dumfries as 105min, so I think we're actually agreeing with each other. I'd admit my times are probably slightly optimistic, since it's assuming nimble rolling stock and no pathing problems. A low-speed curve at Gretna J makes...

As far as I know, there's never been a west-to-north curve at Gretna Green. Gretna Junction has always been a simple divergence of the WCML to Glasgow and the Glasgow SW route to Dumfries (and, eventually, Glasgow). A curve would enable a service from Dumfries (pop. 34k) and Annan (pop 9k) up...

Spreading the weight over more wheels won't help low speed performance..... you increase the metal-on-metal contact area, but the pressure on the contact area goes down in proportion, so slipping remains the same.

Yup, that's the new undersea 3-legged tunnel running north from Torshavn, the capital. Wikipedia has a page listing the tunnels of the Faroes. They're currently starting on the long tunneling drive southwards to connect the southern islands of the archipelago. The weather is pretty stormy so...

The NHS site is now taking bookings for 65 - 69 yr olds to get Covid immunisation appointments. Not been an official announcement, that I've seen. Perhaps worried website will crash! https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination/

Rather an odd question! If you want bed-time reading, especially if you need a cure for insomnia, the official Rail Accident Reports are available at: https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports

I guess that the risks of raising/lowering pantographs are smaller when at a station than in motion: less risk of the changeover location being wrong, dynamic forces less a problem, less risk of bringing knitting down when stationary, and in case of failure then at least it's a failure in a...

The ground under Gilesgate is a swiss cheese from centuries of coal-mining: multiple seams have been extracted, and the plans of these workings poor or non-existent. A tunnel would be horrendously difficult. And even if you tunnelled, how would you reach the ECML, high on the opposite...