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Post by metrailway on Sept 20, 2012 0:13:56 GMT
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Post by bassmike on Sept 20, 2012 2:58:18 GMT
Yes-- a load of complete bumbling idiots.
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Phil
In memoriam
RIP 23-Oct-2018
Posts: 9,473
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Post by Phil on Sept 20, 2012 5:13:42 GMT
Yes - a quaint bit of history which the Gov't and the TOCs should watch and learn from........
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2012 6:30:52 GMT
Yeah I did, great programme. Good to see more rail related programmes being aired these days than a few years back.
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class411
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Post by class411 on Sept 20, 2012 7:44:07 GMT
Yes, and I learned quite lot form it.
For one thing it has, almost unbelievably, rehabilitated Thatcher, in my eyes, to a minute degree, because I had always thought that her personal dislike of the railways had lead to their being singled out for bad treatment under her government. They were still not handled competently but at least that did not appear to be as a result of her personal dislike for them.
Also I thought that the APT had been withdrawn entirely due to insurmountable technical problems rather than the fact that it made passengers feel sick. (Still not 100% convinced of this.)
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2012 8:27:02 GMT
I really enjoyed the program I always liked Peter Parker. I thought Ray Buckton was forceful but relatively polite compared some that have followed him! As for the APT IMO the Virgin Pendolino is far worse train very narrow , poor seating and window layout and lots more. The HST well designed and now all that well thought out seating cast aside by the likes of first to make then uni-direction sardine cans - progress?  XF |
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 20, 2012 9:14:14 GMT
class411 -a propos Mrs T's hatred of railways, don't believe everything you see on the Beeb. Those of us who had to work with her on the subject were reminded almost daily as to her real attitude. So deep was her dislike, that getting any form of system renewal was a labour of many months - Tonbridge-Hastings electrification nearly didn't happen at all, and her proposed (but never publicised) programme of turning railways into roads was fought over in Whitehall for over a year. There were plenty of other but more trivial cases, as you may imagine... GH
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Post by dennisc on Sept 20, 2012 10:32:28 GMT
Thank you for posting the link Metrailway, I would have missed it otherwise.
A very interesting documentary, although in my era, there were subjects I hadn’t heard before.
It amused me that Jimmy Saville’s hairstyle was considered unacceptable for advertising. I wonder what Boris Johnson made of that. ;D
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slugabed
Zu lang am schnuller.
Posts: 1,480
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Post by slugabed on Sept 20, 2012 11:23:33 GMT
class411 -a propos Mrs T's hatred of railways, don't believe everything you see on the Beeb. Those of us who had to work with her on the subject were reminded almost daily as to her real attitude. So deep was her dislike, that getting any form of system renewal was a labour of many months - Tonbridge-Hastings electrification nearly didn't happen at all, and her proposed (but never publicised) programme of turning railways into roads was fought over in Whitehall for over a year. There were plenty of other but more trivial cases, as you may imagine... GH As you were there,I don't disbelieve you and yet...and yet....the '80s seem like a distant golden age of investment and delivery when useful work got done as far as the (National) railways are concerned,compared to the two decades since. Today we wring our hands about adding a chord or doing a few miles of infill electrification....then,they wired up the ECML,among other projects. Is it simply privatisation which has caused this paralysis? |
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 20, 2012 13:21:39 GMT
slugabed - indeed! There are times and seasons, good and bad. One of the paradoxes (still with us today) is that historically, the railways have always had better capex settlements under the Tories compared with Labour - as we see with XR, HS2 and what promises to be a rolling programme of electrification. The Thatcher years became increasingly difficult (we nearly had a diesel East Coast instead of electrification and a road-based Channel Tunnel, for example, and renewing the Regional railways fleet was a political nightmare) until Bob Reid 1 was appointed, who not only promised a better system for less money but actually delivered it. This gained him a lot of Ministerial credibility; Parker was regarded by Ministers as a whinger. The trick was to avoid the big gesture in investment projects. The Board made steady progress - salami tactics - with rolling stock, re-openings and track maintenance which was - alas- one of the reasons why privatisation sort of worked - there was some fat to live off for a bit (especially in the matter of engineering assets). I do agree that once the gun had been fired for privatisation, the locusts descended and we had no investment for the best part of a decade and a half. Yes, it is privatisation that has caused all this but then I would say that, wouldn't I?
GH
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Post by metrailway on Sept 20, 2012 15:17:32 GMT
Tory (and Liberal) Governments have always had to make sure the railways did well (even though they might not care about the railways). Why? Because the users of railways have always predominately been people who vote Tory or Liberal. Although many people working in the railways were Labour supporters, generally Labour voters don't use the railways.
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class411
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Post by class411 on Sept 20, 2012 17:08:23 GMT
class411 -a propos Mrs T's hatred of railways, don't believe everything you see on the Beeb. Those of us who had to work with her on the subject were reminded almost daily as to her real attitude. So deep was her dislike, that getting any form of system renewal was a labour of many months - Tonbridge-Hastings electrification nearly didn't happen at all, and her proposed (but never publicised) programme of turning railways into roads was fought over in Whitehall for over a year. There were plenty of other but more trivial cases, as you may imagine... GH I think what I got from the programme was that she didn't do that much specifically against the railways. The railways, like so many other things, suffered from her almost psychotic dislike of public investment. BT once offered to replace all the copper cabling with fibre so that we would have had an ultra high speed internet years ago but as a quid pro quo they wanted a license to provide TV services over it - so that they could eventually pay for the investment. Thatcher would not let them because she still thought of them as a product of public ownership. (I cannot confirm that with any link but I have heard it from more than one source.) |
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slugabed
Zu lang am schnuller.
Posts: 1,480
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Post by slugabed on Sept 20, 2012 18:07:15 GMT
Grahamhewett....That book needs to be written,but I understand your reluctance to bear the burden of its writing...
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Post by Chris W on Sept 20, 2012 19:16:00 GMT
I, for one, thoughly enjoyed it.....
Completely took me back to my boyhood... Jimmy Saville adverts...
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 20, 2012 19:32:32 GMT
@chris W - not only enjoyable but pretty accurate. What perhaps didn't come out was the fact that the collapse of the APT project was a "Hatfield" moment for BR - except that BR recovered and learned some lessons. (What wasn't mentioned either was Ian Campbell's public admission that the kinetic envelopes of two passing APT's might "brush" - ie they might collide with the then usual spacing between adjacent tracks - that was the real reason for abandoning the project...)
GH
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Post by norbitonflyer on Sept 20, 2012 21:37:30 GMT
class411 -a propos Mrs T's hatred of railways, don't believe everything you see on the Beeb. Those of us who had to work with her on the subject were reminded almost daily as to her real attitude. So deep was her dislike, that getting any form of system renewal was a labour of many months - Tonbridge-Hastings electrification nearly didn't happen at all, and her proposed (but never publicised) programme of turning railways into roads was fought over in Whitehall for over a year. There were plenty of other but more trivial cases, as you may imagine... GH I think what I got from the programme was that she didn't do that much specifically against the railways. The railways, like so many other things, suffered from her almost psychotic dislike of public investment. BT once offered to replace all the copper cabling with fibre so that we would have had an ultra high speed internet years ago but as a quid pro quo they wanted a license to provide TV services over it - so that they could eventually pay for the investment. Thatcher would not let them ..................... I recall these events but they were far more recent. The Internet did not really take off until after Thatcher's time - I think it was during Patricia Hewitt's time at the DTI. |
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Post by norbitonflyer on Sept 20, 2012 22:08:16 GMT
her proposed (but never publicised) programme of turning railways into roads was fought over in Whitehall for over a year. There was a well-publicised plan to close Marylebone (services being diverted to Baker Street and Paddington to use spare capacity thgere (yes, there was spare capacity in those days!). This would allow the station and trackbed to be used for a new coach station and dedicated busway out to the M1, to reduce pressure on the grossly overstretched Victoria coach station, which even now is very poorly sited for access to the Midlands and North, but before the M40 extension and the M25 was far worse - on a bad run it could take more time to get from VCS to Staples Corner than it did to get from Staples Corner to Birmingham. At the time it was seen as win/win - BR could sell off redundant real estate and the coach business could avoid trundling across central London. The scheme was scotched by impractical service frequencies in the business model for the coach services, restricted clearances on the GC route making the busway unavailable to modern coaches, and the increase in ridership on the Metropolitan Line following Fares Fair, making transfer of Aylesbury services to Baker Street impossible |
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 25, 2012 6:56:43 GMT
Marylebone was only part of a much larger "plan", The specific Marylebone project collapsed after a Monty Python moment when the National Bus Company, who were being pressed by Mrs T's nark, Alf Sherman, to lobby for the conversion programme, actually attempted to demonstrate that two buses could safely pass in the St Johns Wood tunnel. NBC got two thei best drivers and planted two hurdles in a field the right distance apart but only for a total length of a single hurdle. They then asked the drivers to drive at each other between the two hurdles. They didn't hit each other, of course, but as those who witnessed this nonsense pointed out, it is one thing to do that at a single point in broad day light over a distance of 10 feet, but something else to do it in a twisting tunnel repeatedly over a long distance in poor light. NBC, as they say, made their excuses and left but the "plan" continued on for some months culminating in a bizarre meeting with the then Secretary of State (Howell) in which he attempted to persuade senior civil servants that conversion of the West London Line was a good idea....
GH
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