What should GWR do about severe conditions on Dawlish?

[Irascible]

A look at a map showing the contours of that area will show how tricky that would be, unless rack-assisted. Any link along that sort of alignment would have to be tunnelled. The section past Dawlish isn't all that slow, 75mph, with faster sections either side so it's not going to save very much time either. The really slow sections are all west/south of Newton Abbot

I'll have to have another look at the 2015(ish) report, seem to remember a fair bit of tunneling in the DAL options anyway. It'd obviously be better if it was not constrained by pesky stations, but losing the local trains entirely isn't really an option.

Have made the latter point myself too -cutting corners off there would make an appreciable difference, but it gets lost as not as exciting as going around Dartmoor.

Apologies if I missed an answer but were all the engines working on the failed trains, and if they weren't would having them all working made an appreciable difference to the likelihood of the failures occurring? ie is half the response just to get Hitachi to send out properly functional trains?

*All* any actual GWR response is to get properly functional trains! ( as opposer to doing nothing ). I'm not sure there's even an option to drag them with something functional. GWR could try and renegotiate the IEP contract I guess given the growing list of failures, but that wouldn't solve the actual problem.

Yes, it looks very blue for the 2019 General Election result:

Starts looking different the more local you get - DCC is con, fx, but none of the regional Devon councils are con! why ppl vote differently is beyond me.

 

[stuu]

I'll have to have another look at the 2015(ish) report, seem to remember a fair bit of tunneling in the DAL options anyway. It'd obviously be better if it was not constrained by pesky stations, but losing the local trains entirely isn't really an option.

Have made the latter point myself too -cutting corners off there would make an appreciable difference, but it gets lost as not as exciting as going around Dartmoor.

The alternative would be underground stations, which many of our European neighbours would happily do, but there's even less chance of that.

Yes agreed, people on here and elsewhere seem far keener to spend hundreds of millions on a better view of some sheep, rather than fixing the line where the people are