|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 27, 2012 20:22:20 GMT
metrailway - given the relatively close difference in journey times from Birmingham to either Marylebone or Euston, the case for having upgraded WC at a cost of £12bn looks pretty weak. I would expect Chiltern to respond to HS2 with reduced, simplified fares and an even tighter journey time, and I would expect Chiltern to scoop the pool.
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 26, 2012 14:24:15 GMT
rsdworker - the Bakerloo has had proposals to extend it to Peckham/Camberwell and even further afield from time to time - the argument is that there is spare capacity south of about Oxford Circus, as starting from the Elephant is not presently very attractive (and the station is even convenient for the Elephant, in fact). But nothing is ever done and there's always something more urgent/politically sexy. Bozza did mention the southern extension as desirable a year or two ago but i doubt if he has the cash handy. Still, it's the best chance for some years, Ken having been so anti-LU.
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 26, 2012 9:08:32 GMT
Indeed! The problem with XR has always been the imbalance between the number of vehicles approaching Liverpool Street in the am peak - around 1000 these days, and the number approaching Paddington - again these days, <500. In the first version of XR, dear old BR proposed to run half the western end of XR to Maidenhead and the other half over the Met (as described) via a new curve at Neasden and this would have solved the problem. The result would have been very like a typical Parisian RER. Dis vis aliter, as they say. [The better solution - but it was too late for that - was to link Liverpool Street and Waterloo where the flows are more balanced, but that would not have relieved crowding on the Central which is what triggered the project in the first place; the problems of portalling after Waterloo are pretty difficult, too.]
GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 24, 2012 7:23:35 GMT
@northerncityman - actually, I agree with you, there's no obvious point in a singleTLK/XR franchise. (If I had been clever enough, I would have printed the word"may" in my last post in italics....) The interchange at Farringdon is important but not that important; operationally, there is no necessary connexion between the two.
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 23, 2012 21:27:57 GMT
chrisvandenkieboom - a joint TLK/XR franchise may be logical but it would be enormous - nearly 20% of the UK network - and therefore unattractive as a single risk to bidders (and beyond the resources of most of them). So far, the types of rolling stock used have not been a determing factor in shaping franchises. There are going to be some interesting anomalies in the case of GW, with Greenford being the only unelectrified branch in the Thames Valley and the curious case of the Marlow branch, where the Bourne End reversal is too short to accommodate any existing emu
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 23, 2012 16:47:52 GMT
It will be a separate toc - the GW ITT does not mention any subcontracting to CrossRail and indeed, it's difficult to see how GW would have any depot capacity. I guess that the successful GW bidder might then go on to tender for CrossRail but equally, the stock types and crew terms of employment are likely to be radically different to anything elsewhere, so there would be no real incentive to "common up".
GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 22, 2012 12:02:30 GMT
Is that a revoke? If so, you'll have to play a TLS* next -Wem
*Three Letter Station
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 22, 2012 7:02:13 GMT
I've not tried the Excalibur simulation but the Cities in Motion simulations are not without problems - they require a lot of RAM and are inherently unstable on most normal PCs - tend to crash after major route expansions (so need to be constantly saved); the available vehicles are usually quite low capacity in relation to traffic levels (and the maps will not cope with high frequency services, mainly because of excessively slow loading times - maybe a function of system memory requirements?). You need to check carefully which games run on which version of Windows: CiM runs on Windows 7 but won't run on anything older and, despite Microsoft's claims of backwards compatibility, probably won't run on Windows 8. For the same reason, don't expect games that run on XP/Vista to run on 7.
GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 20, 2012 18:42:17 GMT
Could be tricky as the timetable footnote says that it runs during the trout fishing season only; that leaves no alternative but to play Imperial Wharf.
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 18, 2012 16:26:32 GMT
metrailway - alas, the next round of EU initiatives in the rail field will open up the passenger domestic markets, too. It's a moot point as to whether it is actually necessary to separate track and operations into separate companies; most member states interpret 91/440 as requiring simply separate accounts and independent regulation. Ireland believe that they can get away with neither (just an open access arbitration committee). The Germans and French have operated with their infrastructure companies sharing a common group parent with their operating subsidiaries ever since 91/440 became law, but last year the EU decided to initiate a legal challenge to all 25 member states with railways on the grounds of non-compliance. We shall see how that works out.
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 17, 2012 11:30:05 GMT
Maybe both aslefshrugged and etr220 are both right - the railways would have been nationalised whatever their condition, as being one of the "commanding heights" of the economy along with steel, shipbuilding, electricity, and so on. But it is certainly the case that the asset base had run down terribly (unlike LT, the mainline companies had hardly begun to renew their fleets ever since 1923 - typically, only about 1/3 of the LNE and LMS traction was less than 35 years old by 1947, and the rolling stock was even worse), not that there was any money, public or private, in 1948 for any significant new investment. LT seem to have found most of the available cash - at very few periods was any significant portion of their fleet over about 35-40 years old - the Met seems always to have been some sort of exception.
gh
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 16, 2012 12:10:07 GMT
@northerncityman - that clipped accent - the "Bob Danvers-Walker" version - seemed to vanish almost overnight, c1962? Not clear why it was so sudden - did all those Beeb types die off or where they killed...?
G
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 15, 2012 16:43:28 GMT
trt - So far as fares are concerned, regulatory theory suggests that if there is a genuine monopoly, as with commuter fares, then prices are set on a cost +"reasonable" profit basis. Subsidy is there in such cases so as to avoid investment in even more expensive ways of achieving the same end or to buy environmental or social benefits. Where there are genuine alternatives, prices are supposed to reflect market conditions unless there are good social and economic reasons for subsidising fares. in fact, most London routes cover most of their running costs and make a big contribution to their capital costs. If NSE had persisted, it would have been making a profit by now - its last business plan showed it out of subsidy by 1997... metrailway - don't know which commuter routes you travel on off-peak; here on SWT, many trains are full to standing throughout the day, and by about 16.30, inbound trains north of Guildford have no spare capacity at all. Last night was a case in point, as I travelled to Town on the 15.47, which had people packed in the vestibules. Country branchlines are different, of course, tho' even that old dog, Liskeard-Looe is usually overcrowded these days. slugabed - couldn't agree more - and you noticed, of course, that where there are real commercial railways like Hull Trains, their fares structure is simple. It's only DfT's obsession with yield management and this curious belief that the airlines have got pricing right that makes TOCs do it.
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 15, 2012 11:19:26 GMT
I suspect that the Tube PPP got so much traction under New Labour was that right at the outset in 1997 Brown was dictating domestic policy as Blair was so obsessed with strutting on the international stage, and Brown bought the Treasury line completely; indeed, it seemed so often that there had been no real change at all there despite the 1997 election; if anything the Treasury became even more dominant.
GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 14, 2012 21:35:56 GMT
Complete privatisation of the Tube was only narrowly avoided mainly because (a) there would have been really serious safety problems at interchanges between operators, and (b) LU lacked a commercially robust equivalent of BR ORCATS to allocate revenue to sections of line. LU also took our (BR) advice on how to escape, the gist of which was to shoot the government fox by as much outsourcing as possible, thus stripping out any contractual red meat before the Treasury could get their hands on it.
GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 14, 2012 15:16:18 GMT
metrailway - mind you, BR tried to be too clever and defeat the Major preference by arguing that because freight would cross the boundaries of the revived big four, a geographically-based approach wouldn't work. This was music to HMT's ear (and poor history). So far as the Treasury was concerned, the objective was to raise cash, not create viable businesses, and to privatise debt - hence the rigged prices for the really big ticket items such as the ROSCOs, which were, and are, really a form of private gilt, for investment purposes. GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 14, 2012 14:36:41 GMT
Actually, and surprisingly, Mrs T, although a great enemy of BR and LT, always rejected rail privatisation whenever issue came up in Cabinet. She was wont to say that there were two state industries that she would not allow to be privatised - the railways and the Post Office - because she thought that that would be politically disastrous. It was only John Major, who so desperately wanted to be different, who allowed it, indeed encouraged it, to be done.
GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 14, 2012 12:38:17 GMT
@xercesfobe - and the joke on us as taxpayers is that the railways and Tube were privatised because the Treasury believed that although, for technical reasons which I won't bore people with, the private sector had all sorts of extra costs not found in the public sector, the private sector's "sheer efficiency and entrepreneurial spirit" would compensate for all that so enabling them to cut costs even more... But then again, the Treasury are the folk who have brought you the British economy since 1945...
GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 14, 2012 11:18:56 GMT
If anything, the problem has got steadily worse because, although the headline fares have increased by the stated percentage, the TOCs then proceed to offer heavily discounted fares, so the actual yield per passenger km remains pretty flat - a self-inflicted and unnecessary wound, therefore. The easiest case to see this is west Coast, where the franchise is pretty similar in geographical scope to the old BR IC unit; the actual cash yielded by the franchise is much the same allowing for inflation, yet there has been unremitting headline fares increases since Virgin tookmover with outrageous headline fares accompanied by heavy discounts with absurd restrictions. Net result - zero increase in real terms revenue. What's the point? [ It isn't as if all this yield management has actually enabled Virgin to run the service more cheaply - in fact, the train km have nearly doubled just to produce the same yield as before: a rotten way to run their business].
GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 10, 2012 11:52:49 GMT
castlebar - Those would be the species buteo gracilis arundelensis, then, not buteo vulgaris officinalis, but are they good to eat? GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 10, 2012 10:11:39 GMT
The bird is definitely a kite - the trailing wing tips are diagnostic, but as castlebar says, the tail isn't forked enough for a red kite - so maybe a black kite where the tail is much less forked. (Buzzards in flight tend to have fan tails so that's an unlikely option). given kites' (only red, tho') predeliction for the Chilterns, I'd look for a station well north of Harrow.
GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 10, 2012 9:49:38 GMT
Paranoid buses? There's a nicer Swiss postbus variant where the bus shows a cup of coffee as a destination during the layovers
GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 8, 2012 16:14:33 GMT
It's near Dalston Stoke (a trolleybus joke...)
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 8, 2012 9:43:57 GMT
That last shot really opened up the table, so I reckon he'll go for the green over the corner pocket and play: No. 4 Passing Place.
G
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 8, 2012 9:04:00 GMT
It can only be a matter of time before "customers" become "guests", as in "A collision occurred between two guest trains"... [BTW, this use of "guest" would have nothing to do with the train delay attribution codes used by Irish Rail, which include "awaiting host", which I assume has some religious meaning such as Father O'Reilly was late again...]
GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 3, 2012 17:37:47 GMT
Tierce - therefore I play Wood Lane and Uxbridge Road simultaneously.
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 3, 2012 13:02:53 GMT
a60 - of course, no one could object to the short "I'll be home in 20" conversation; it's the one's that go for hours that I object to - once had to endure a trip to Chester from Euston, where the guy spoke loudly and pretentiously throughout - in the dining car! - by Rugby, all the other diners had decided to sit togther at the far end of the coach. We had some quite interesting chats amongst ourselves... { A pre-Pendolino story}.
GH
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 3, 2012 11:38:11 GMT
@routemaster - but some of us would think it good if the train noise drowned out mobile phone conversations - might discourage the inconsiderate b******s.
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 3, 2012 11:29:19 GMT
That's a pity!
|
|
|
Post by grahamhewett on Aug 3, 2012 10:14:31 GMT
According to para 6.1.5(a)/45 of the Bourne Memorandum, the next move ought to be Down Street.
|
|