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If it is planned to use containers, every loading point need not be rail connected. More intensive use of any container terminals not currently working to capacity could be on the cards.

Preston division totally rebuilt over 100 single track miles from Coppull to the Scottish border in 12 months working only at weekends. Ballast, sleepers, CWR, destressing and even sand blanketing the wet spots as discussed above.

This is best achieved by ensuring that road haulage pays the full environmental, and other, costs of its provision, rather than making clumsy individual orders to companies.

That was a political choice I would not have made. I would have used a fraction of that money to compensate the customers directly. Even that choice goes against what I have said, but confidence in the banking sector was essential.

Your comments open the context far wider than the post on which I commented. On that basis, no private enterprise should be permitted to fail and should be put on the same footing as public enterprises.

Very true, but when that happens the cost rarely falls back onto the taxpayer.

Once again I refer you to the NERA report, commissioned by the government around the year 2000. This categorically proved that road haulage does not pay its costs. Since then, fuel and excise taxation have stagnated whereas the cost of road provision has risen at least by the rate of...

I believe that, when the railways were nationalised, the DfT demanded an 8% return on investment in rail freight. A totally unrealistic demand at a time when road hauliers were making 2%. Hence the demise of rail freight. I have no desire to return to those days.

All quite valid in the setting of the USA with bogie vehicles. The UK had a preponderance of 2 axle vehicles, and 10ft wheelbase at that, which produced different problems.

I can't argue with you on that. It sounds like a technical description of what we, in the late 1960s, called twist which when applied alternately to opposite sides of a vehicle, would produce that result. When measured by a track recording trolley, a 1 in 300 twist would produce a dash of...

I'm amazed staggered joints have survived. The are absolute suicide in propagating twist in track geometry a major cause of derailments.

P & C was always on wooden timbers because it could easily be prefabricated in the yard by drilling the timbers to suit the design. On the other hand, concrete bearers need to be cast in advance with the rail mounting points pre- located which takes time and money. During my time on the...

Even breathers against P & C were eliminated as strengthened P & C designs became available to resist stresses. In another forum, my joke about Euston now being mounted on rollers to allow movement seems to have gone over their heads! :D

A quick Google seems to have produced the answer. Nothing to do with Liberty ships as 39ft rails were common internally within the USA at the time. Apparently it was all set up to allow the use of the standard 40ft flat or boxcar to move the rails about.

I can only speak for the Preston division of the WCML. We did also receive 60ft panels but we would then be relying on heavier tracklayers being available. Yes, 30ft panels were loaded 2 deep on a Salmon. I don't know if it is a record, but one year in the late 1960s/early 1970s, we relaid...

When I started in 1964 there were still a lot of 39ft rails about in sidings, loops etc and a few on minor lines. This was apparently the longest rail that could fit in the hold of a Liberty ship. We also used 30ft rails as service rails for the installation of concrete sleepers before...

Unless you were riding on cropped end rails, which you probably wouldn't even realise. Then you could register speeds some 10% higher.

The commercial building on a raft over the platforms would have been the perfect location for the new bus station all those years ago, with access via Butler St tunnel to the bottom of Corporation St and even potential access to the south via a bus route over the old East Lancs bridge. Sadly...

My comment, whilst 100% true, was offered in a light hearted manner. It does however beg the question, if rear end assistance is so readily accommodated, why are failed trains allowed to block lines while more complicated methods of recovery are followed.

The rules seem to have changed somewhat. Many years ago I was working the Matisa track recording trolley on the up line passing Tebay when an eerily quiet class 50 passed near line speed on the down line hauling 12 coaches. Imagine my surprise when attached to the rear were 2 more class 50s...