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Takeoff and climb to altitude is the most energy intensive part of a flight. Long periods of cruising at altitude less so. Short haul flights - which are the ones most affected by potential rail competition - are relatively more affected by fuel price increases than long haul flights as the...

Various wars and disputes around the world having the potential to raise the price of oil to around $100 per barrel. That will hurt airlines a lot.

I lived through them… … ‘I’m All Right Jack’ came out in 1959! (I know it’s nothing to do with railways, but the attitudes were the same).

So ultimately it is about pay. Welcome to the 1950s and the interminable squabbles between the unions about parity.

Ah, the wonders of central planning. Back in the days of the Soviet Union, so the story goes, the agricultural equipment factories were instructed to build 8[1] million tonnes of tractors annually in the Gosplan documents. So the easiest way to do this and meet the targets was to build very...

This discussion concerning insufficient track capacity out of Paddington to Airport Junction or Slough has been going on for at least 10 years in this forum. See, for example, the post from @Starmill found here on 19 December 2016:

The London and North Western Railway styled itself as ‘The Premier Line’, partly out of arrogance and partly because one of its constituents was the London and Birmingham Railway which was arguably the first long distance railway in the world.

A point of order...the Western does not run 'slow' trains! The lines are referred to as 'Reliefs' as they relieve the load on the Mains. Got that off my chest...

Really? That may be true if the person took the test and then never drove again for 40 years. Anyone who drives regularly since their test will be aware of changes as they occur. They don’t all happen at once.

You may remove human error from the immediate operation, but it is still potentially present in the design, manufacture, installation and maintenance of all the components making up the system. Human error can never be completely eliminated.

Not so much a train ‘service’, but a train called ’The Inter City’. It was, as I recall, the 8.20am departure from Snow Hill to Paddington and the corresponding return train later in the day.

As there are some 42 million cars registered for use on the roads in the UK and the total population is around 69 million then the ownership or use of a car is a remarkably poor marker of status and social class.

So what does your remark refer to, if not range? That one 940bhp diesel and a tank of fuel would get a train easily from Paddington to Bristol, and probably back, even if at only 60mph.

Hmm… How far could a 1000bhp English Electric Type 1 haul a 400 ton train on a tankful of fuel?

I would have thought that it is the duty of Welsh ministers to make Wales an attractive place to set up and expand businesses so filling the WAG's coffers. This would encourage more people to travel to Wales to work and also increase the railways' revenue. Who 'controls', i.e., pays for, the...

Eastern Counties Railways?

I understood that one of the reasons that Great British Railways was being set up was to distance the DfT from the nitty gritty of railways supervision, so why is such a consultancy contract needed at all? Unless it is to support the DfT in all its other endeavours — maritime, aviation and, of...

Because the OP in post #1 stated: so I based my comments around this premise. That the IET is a 'dud' (in some eyes!) is largely due to the procurement model adopted by the DfT and the manufacturer going along with thinking that 'the customer is always right'. But I suppose that...

And after you’ve placed your multi-year order for how long will the companies who weren’t successful keep their doors open? When the time comes, a decade later, to get the next set of competitive quotes to whom do you turn?

If there is only one manufacturer, how do you know if you’ve achieved a ‘significant discount’?