If the government built a time machine, they'd cut funding part way through, and have a cut budget one that can only go back 2 minutes in time.
Might get funding if it was limited to jumping forwards in time by steps of only 2 minutes. The government/daft would overlook the problem that it takes more than 2 minutes to set the controls up so infact going forwards would end up meaning you are slipping backwards in time. And if you wanted to go backwards it would be less trouble to just stand there doing nothing
. A practical example of this phenomenon is increased station dwell times due to opening/closing dooors defeating improved acceleration - as SWT found out
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BACK TO 60s :-
Worries me that a fleet of 20 improved (non-standard ?) 60s is too small for flexibility. On a positive note I guess that refurbishing/improvong 20 of the 60s might lead to more being done later. This will also be reducing the business case for more 70s which I seem to remember some other operators were looking at. For example DBS gets rid of 37s to DRS and I assume these, working in multiple, are a match for a 70 but with better adhesion (same power spread over more axles) ?. I know it must be Freightliner that need large locos the most (after DBS) and its maddening that DBS appear to prefer scraping 60s rather than let the competition get hold of them. Perhaps it is the existence of the FL 70s that has forced DBS to meet the competition by re-activating 60s ?
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I always wondered why so many 66s were built for EWS anyway. Its always been a common mis-conception that they are anywhere near as powerful as a 59 (or 60). When do the 66s come off lease by the way ?. That will have some bearing on the future of 60s. I am assuming its true that DBS view 60s as better than 66s but DBS dont use 60s as they still have to lease the 66s so might as well wear the 66s out.
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