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More likely with an abbreviation, which is the more common language at depots. If you just told the shed driver at FP to take ‘402 onto the fuel road and he sees both 31402 and 47402, which one does he take?! Sometimes you get mistakes, even when you have told him the right number - just a brain...

Bubble 55013 was not on TOPS at the same time as Deltic 13. Passenger stock (apart from NPCCS) were not on TOPS (or rather POIS) until the early to mid 1980’s. Maintenance records (job cards, fuel sheets) were then manual and the chances of making a mistake were slim because in the case of the...

If GWR are allocated the 175 fleet, it will be for 800/HST replacement first and then to release 158’s for Portsmouth-Cardiff, so 175 units would also be operating such services as the Barnstaple and Okehampton. You really need to go mainly load 5 on the Portsmouth-Cardiff and you haven’t got...

No, it’s not the level of costs, it’s the ability to dump costs. That’s the key determinant here. If they could have dumped more rolling stock, they would have. The effect on the passenger is secondary when you have to dispense with assets. You just get on and do it and then deal with the...

Indeed so! The problem I have is reconciling the annual accounts of the big three to the ORR figures. Whilst they include other players, I don’t see that quoted year on year increase in profits in the total of the big three. I agree with the dividends though. I think I may have to ask my...

GBR will happen but not until after a GE. The only real difference between the two parties is the outsourcing of train operations for the DfT TOCs. The “King Henry VIII” powers for Government that are proposed will mean the DfT will still remain in charge and that GBR will be subject to...

No, actually train leasing has prevented a repeat of autumn 1980 when we were pulling vehicles off trains for storage/scrap. Nowadays the DfT can only really attack those vehicles which are coming off lease. If we had owned our own stock, like we did in 1980, there would have been far greater...

What you do is take the kinematic envelope measurements of the train and match it with the latest version of the infrastructure model. It is a computerised process that gives you an all clear or exceedances, down to the last mm. Then you deal with the exceedances, one by one. GWR are quite used...

No, you modify the infrastructure if they are any minor issues. if they are major then the DfT will probably not authorise any NR/GWR spend.

Only because the idiots tried to use Finsbury Park as a road/rail and intercity rail/tube interchange point. If they had done what BR did once in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s and run the equivalent of extra 6 car 313’s on a Moorgate to Finsbury Park, ECS to Ferme Park and across the flyover to...

I thought that was obvious. Everything is changeable - it depends on the political mood and how the Government wants to finance its business. But Government funding railway rolling stock isn’t necessarily the cheapest way of paying for it, both in initial cost and the lifetime maintenance...

That’s exactly why the ROSCOs came into being. Furthermore, because government TOCs are just cash flow entities, you need to avoid large changes in day to day costs and maintaining traction and rolling stock is potentially a very “lumpy” cost line. As someone who had traction and rolling stock...

There was the guy in and out of KX on the 312’s who got on the PA and always wanted to legalise cannabis. I don’t think he was ever caught.

I’m beginning to think the ORR figures in table 7275 are a bit weird. If you look through the annual accounts of the big 3 for the year ending 31/12/22, I don’t see the reduction in costs that the ORR have. I wonder exactly how they have summed up those cost figures. The dividends for the 3...

There is no such thing in the TAA. Schedule 2 allows all TOCs to use any reasonable diversionary route, subject to route clearance for the stock involved. When Hull Trains first started you had then to specify an alternative terminus, which was then Liverpool Street. But the use of the West...

That’s an expensive set of assets to be on the Governments books and you have to take on the maintenance cost liability as well. Pretty pointless leasing it to the TOCs either because, thanks to TOC costs being paid for by the DfT, there is no DfT profit to be had. When you have no alternative...

I used to work for the man who helped draw up the class designation scheme. The then CM&EE (BRB) wanted a system wide classification of locos so as not to cause confusion (such as with the ER who had been doing its own thing) and, with an eye to the future, renumbering the locos into a common...

There is no such thing now as a franchise. They ceased in 2020. All the DfT TOCs are now on management contracts with all the key decisions for that TOC made by the DfT. The management contracts tend to get “renewed” to the incumbent operator as competitive tendering for rail contracts has now...

That is the problem - the Company will be following the DfT rules to the letter. The DfT make the key decisions and if they won’t sign off or let the Company conclude a RDW agreement, there is not much they can do about it. This applies to other key decisions that, in normal circumstances, a...

It isn’t a franchise. It’s a management contract on behalf of the DfT and the lack of a RDW agreement is not helping matters at all.