Watched this very interesting documentary on YouTube and thought some on here might find it interesting. Found it very interesting that many of the problems of 1990 still exist (perhaps in slightly different forms) to this day. Progress indeed...
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'Trouble on the line' BR Documentary
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ChrisCooper
Established Member
Remember all those when they were on originally. Great to see it again.
Royston Vasey
Established Member
Indeed, IIRC as part of Channel 4's Going Loco season, I think my dad recorded every show and I watched it so many times it wore out!
ChrisCooper
Established Member
Same here. Not sure if I still have the tapes anywhere, and if so what condition they would be in.
Just had a laugh at Chris Green talking about what they really want to do is expand Thamelink with new flyovers and viaducts, and more importantly the big East - West Crossrail! Oh well, it's taken a while but finally getting there.
That's then followed shortly after by talking about the problems at Borough Market Junction and the need for an additional pair of tracks. Even more amusing is that this has been a problem going back to the 19th Century, and finally only being delt with in the 21st Century.
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Another laugh when someone says that the best thing about privatisation would be if the railways could get the Department of Transport of their back. Good luck with that!
umontu
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Even then though you could see the managers cared about making the company work though, which imho is how a public service should be provided.
WatcherZero
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Indeed if you watch part 4 everyones asking for privatisation and lamenting the under investment, short termism of thinking and government interference of a state owned company.
HYPODERMIC
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Well, if you think spending lots of money is the sign of a triumph, no wonder you're happy with privatisation.
British Rail had its problems, and some people perhaps do think too highly of it, but you can't tell me that privatisation has been any better - if you were to push subsidies back down to BR levels I bet you'd find the system falling apart again.
WatcherZero
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Indeed public subsidy has increased (partly from increased passenger numbers), though you cant argue that billions of private investment has not gone in and effiencies have not been made (for example previous issue of RAIL highlighted that we have a third more services and 40% more passengers now with the same total number of rolling stock units as we did before privatisation) Rolling stock is being worked far harder for a greater period of the day.
WillPS
Established Member
LOL!! AS IF the private sector are to be thanked and not the vastly inflated railway budget (a large chunk of which will fall nicely in to the pockets of shareholders and bankers).
shinkansen1966
Member
Agreed. Yes, since 1995 and under rail privatisation, we have seen improvements:
- HST replaced by newer Virgin Voyager rolling stock
- West Coast Mainline upgrade complete
- Electric loco hauled rolling stock replaced by Virgin Pendolinos
- New rolling stock elsehwhere: Turbos, Meridians, Siemens, Hitachi
Yes, plenty of improvements. But, financially, exactly how much has the private sector contributed to these improvement ? And where they have contributed, exactly what risk have they taken with their own money ?
Ivo
Established Member
Forgive my ignorance, but what is/was Speedlink? I have never heard of it before now.
Indeed, and we mustn't forget that we had route upgrades and new rolling stock before privatisation as well.
Infact, I believe one of the main points about the introduction of the 2nd generation DMU's was to replace the existing fleet with fewer, more intensely used carriages, so the efficiency improvements were being developed before privatisation as well.
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I believe that Speedlink used to offer wagon load freight services. Individual or small groups of wagons would be collected from private industrial sidings at factories and marshalled into larger main-line trains, for forwarding to their destinations.
Apparently this was withdrawn between the mid 80s and 90s, due to the operation being considered too expensive.
Most, if not all rail freight is now train-load - full bulk trainloads of goods being transported between two points.
Very few factories or industrial complexes appear to have rail connections these days. Local to where I grew up, looking around some of the old industrial areas of Grimsby is quite interesting, as there still appears to be an in-tact industrial railway network there, albeit derelict.
There are some interesting pictures of some of the Grimsby workings on David Enefer's excellent Lincolnshire Railpics site http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.enefer/gy/tioxide.htm.
It is quite interesting viewing some of the locations mentioned in the above link through Google Maps / Street View.
In the first pic on that site, the housing estate to the left is Haven Gardens, where I used to live until '94. The ilmenite trains stopped in around '92 I reckon... being unbraked stock it was always interesting to hear the bangbangbangbangbang of the wagons as the train either started or stopped.
When the gypsum trains started up from the new gypsum plant at Tioxide in the early 90's there were a few problems with our cars being covered in the stuff in the summer.
Heres a streetview of a bit of old railway history on Adam Smith St.
When the gypsum trains started up from the new gypsum plant at Tioxide in the early 90's there were a few problems with our cars being covered in the stuff in the summer.
Heres a streetview of a bit of old railway history on Adam Smith St.
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