Captain Pegg

If you’re referring to Wootton Bassett what was notable about that incident was that the driver’s inappropriate response to failing to clear the Automatic Warning System (AWS) horn relating to a speed restriction lead to them both missing an adverse signal indication and failing to trigger the Train Protection & Warning System (TPWS) that should have prevented the train from passing a red signal. What it shows is that all safeguards have their limitations and that driver behaviour is the primary factor in maintaining safety. I don’t doubt that the driver was highly competent in the mechanics of operating the train’s controls, but they were totally lacking in other key skills required to do the job.

OK. Very different rules and requirements on tramways hence it didn’t occur to me that’s what you were referring to. Sorry. Similar situations have occurred on railways historically and as a result are in general protected by warning systems. Mistakes that lead to uncommanded brake applications will soon lead to a driver being removed from driving duties. They are an indicator that the driver concerned isn’t actually capable of driving a train to the required standard which I thought is what we were discussing.

I think you mean Clapham not Croydon and in any case the functioning of the automatic warning system was not a factor. The use of the engineered safeguards to protect the train is not part of driving a train properly which is the task being discussed. It’s quite the opposite. But apparently it’s a wind up so I’ll leave you and your mate to glory in your own ignorance.

The emergency brake will be activated. That’s done by venting the air pipe to atmosphere meaning the driver has no immediate means of releasing the brakes. It’s very much not the same thing as applying the service brakes.

Trains don’t have automatic brakes. Stopping a body with huge momentum and very little friction between the wheels and what they are rolling on is arguably the most difficult aspect and one that’s very much more difficult than stopping a car. Learning and retaining route knowledge is a key factor as is the behavioural response to adverse signal indications. A sizeable proportion of people actually don’t have the necessary cognitive and behavioural skills required for the job. You don’t properly understand what you’re saying.

The bit about the carriages being shorter does not appear to be true. It is in any case a little irrelevant because overall train length is key. And therein lies an issue which may have rendered the message you relayed a little lost in translation. Interoperability requirements for new build high speed railways require the operation of 200m or 400m long trains whereas existing trains serving the conventional route are up to 265m long. Configuring the conventional network north of HS2 for 400m trains (which would be 2x200m trains) is particularly problematic hence the possibilty that trains north of Birmingham may end up being exclusively 200m long trains. That’s a particular problem for Manchester - by far and away the largest market north of Birmingham - as the new station alongside Piccadilly would have been configured with 400m long platforms and there is likely a demand for such trains. The inability to operate them would reduce line capacity between Birmingham and Manchester to less than it is today. The alternative is a hugely expensive set of works to accommodate them which in itself would probably reduce station capacity along the route, particularly at Manchester. What the Government don’t tell you - possibly because they don’t understand it - is that for every £1bn they save on HS2 they will need an awful lot of it to reconfigure the conventional network for the operation of the new trains and providing on board equipment on trains that they wouldn’t otherwise have needed since many would have been captive to HS2.

Well if they did mean International the same applies but the current normal journey time is less than 1 hr 30 mins. And the airport/NEC will have a dedicated HS2 station. The options in future will be fast trains on HS2 and distinctly slower trains on the old route. Presumably the prices will reflect the level of speed and comfort.

That’s hardly representative since a journey from Euston to New Street (which I’m sure is what it should say rather than Birmingham International) isn’t particularly relevant to HS2. A far better representation of conventional versus high speed would be a centre to centre journey such as Nelson’s Column to the Floozie in the Jacuzzi. You can go from Euston to New St in 72 minutes non-stop on the current infrastructure with the current trains but there isn’t capacity to do that three times an hour plus serve the intermediate stations and all the other destinations the WCML serves.

The thread was never about the Grand Union at all. What we will be left with as a legacy is that the Trent & Mersey canal between Shade House and Wood End locks forms the boundary between the bit that was built and that which never will be; at least for now. On one side of the canal is the embankment that forms the first section of the Manchester phase but was constructed with Phase 1 and which presumably will never get any track laid on it, and nothing on the opposite side of the canal. ETA - and because the link to the GU was tenuous at best the thread probably should not be in the General Boating sub-forum.

It’s not about you.

You probably could drive a train after training. Not a hope otherwise. And don’t be blasé about suicide. It renders some properly hard characters unable to carry on with the job that provides their livelihood.

The principal reason for that is entry into the driving ranks takes substantial training and is expensive. In itself that tells you something about the complexities of the job. Train operators have historically had different attitudes to training drivers - for many there was a financial disincentive - and that created an internal market. Today the DfT are effectively in direct control and aren’t interested in training any new staff to critical jobs which means the railway is absolutely dependent upon overtime working with long and unsocial hours simply to operate the basic timetable. That’s a large part of the train crews’ grief. It’s them that suffer the reaction to cancelled and late trains from the public while possibly working additional shifts out of a sense of duty rather than choice.

This one doesn’t contain actual footage of the land slip.

But you can’t stop because you’ve already bought the boat. Your baseplate is 5mm thick as determined by an appropriate method. (Just noted Alan’s point about the pitting which could be critical). The bit about it being unreliable is unfortunate as it’s almost certainly untrue but you’ve asked a surveyor to pass a professional opinion on something that’s of naturally higher risk than the norm. It’s much easier for us on a forum to make comment because we look it from the balance of probabilities and they appear to be on your side. The surveyor needs a higher degree of certainty and isn’t getting it. I think it simply hinges on whether you can get sufficient insurance to give you peace of mind based on the survey you have. If you can get that insurance, just carry on and you don’t need to do anything. It might though be wise to create an inspection hatch but be prepared for what you see to perhaps be a little alarming. The top surface of baseplates can rust significantly and as someone has already pointed out the thickness of the rust will be 10 times that of the steel from which it was produced.

Undoubtedly the lack of a direct line into a central London terminus is detrimental to the overall value of the project but your actual statements along the lines of “nobody is going to use it” and your seeming inability to recognise that your choice isn’t representative of society as a whole is just wrong. Go to Stratford and look at the numbers of people vacating incoming long distance trains to access Crossrail or the tube network. The same applies to Paddington, which arguably isn’t in central London anyway.

You have to bear in mind that you’re asking the surveyor to make an inspection of your boat which results in them carrying a professional liability in relation to what they report. It’s your responsibility to make your boat available for a suitable and sufficient inspection and if the top of the baseplate can’t be inspected then you haven’t done that. The natural response of the surveyor then is to caveat their findings. Any surveyor would likely do that. It’s sensible, suggesting drilling a hole instead is lunacy. What is incorrect is to suggest that the presence of scale (rust?) would corrupt a properly conducted ultrasound scan. Do you know the recorded thicknesses and the nominal plate depths of the baseplate?

That’s all true. However tilting trains are essentially history and the current small fleet of tilting diesel trains is being replaced by non-tilting bi-mode trains. To a degree the loss of speed on curves is compensated by better acceleration and braking capabilities so it’s an issue that would have arisen anyway. The advantage of Handsacre is that it’s just south of Colwich junction where the conventional routes to Crewe and beyond and Manchester split. Possibly worse than the short section of double rather than quadruple track - which is immediately north of Colwich junction through Shugborugh tunnel - is that the speed restrictions at Colwich junction are 90mph towards Crewe and 45mph towards Manchester. Handsacre was logical as a connection between high speed and conventional networks for perturbation management but it’s not a great place for the permanent connection.

Your arguments are undermined by your lack of understanding of the project. HS2 will run from Old Oak Common to Handsacre in Staffordshire with a spur to Birmingham that allows access to and from the north as well as London. Direct services from London to Liverpool, Manchester, Lancashire, Glasgow and north Wales will all use the line as far as Handsacre where they will join the existing West Cost main line to complete their journeys. These trains will pass through and potentially serve the new station at Birmingham Airport but do not need to go via the new Birmingham city centre station which will have its own dedicated services. Some of those trains could also continue northwards to provide connections between the Midlands, North West and Scotland.

That suggests the surveyor doesn’t really understand how the device they are using works. Ultrasound works by pulsing sound waves into the test piece and measuring the time it takes for them to return having reflected off any boundary that it encounters, be that the opposite edge of the piece concerned or a crack within its volume. The wave will not significantly penetrate beyond any change in the basic material density and therefore will not pick up any form of different material beyond the test piece. The ultrasound wave will predominantly reflect off the boundary between sound steel and the ‘scale’ beyond it. A small amount will be lost and some may even return to the test device as a shadow having bounced off a further interface. If the measured thickness gives a sensible outcome that is not too far removed from the nominal plate thickness I’d be very inclined to believe it. Note also that original quoted plate thickness (if you know it) is a nominal value. The actual manufactured thickness of steel plates can vary significantly from that nominal thickness. And only worry about whole numbers of millimetres. Quoting thicknesses to the nearest tenth of a millimetre is kidding yourself.

Just the original station building which is top centre of that image. I think that may have been the case for the past 150 years though. The case for building the railway north to south simply didn’t stack up as well as south to north. Not least because trains to all major northern cities benefited from the southern section; and most still do even with the curtailed scope. Once HS2 opens there won’t be a 1 hour 20 minute train service from New St to Euston via the old route. That relies on a tilting train and they are the railway’s equivalent of Concorde. While I’m very much of the opinion that the only realistic options should have been Central London - Birmingham - Manchester (- Leeds) or nothing at all I think your overall view of the project is way wide of the mark. There is plenty of evidence in the UK and Europe of how high speed rail and interconnected urban networks operate and are used. There’s a reason all major European economies - and some not so major ones - have been building high speed rail infrastructure for half a century and continue to do so. The concept is sound, the problem is the execution both in time and scope - it’s at least 30 years too late and too short.

What does “auditory testing” actually mean? It could surely only come up with measurements if it were ultrasound. That shouldn’t be corrupted by scale and only the test device can ‘hear’ the sound. @MtB beat me to it but this statement made very little sense to me.

The new HS2 station will not be on Curzon Street. It will occupy the site of the former Curzon St station and incorporate the listed former station building on the periphery of the site. It will however be considerably bigger than the original station with its main entrance adjacent to that of Moor St station on Moor Street Queensway. There are - or at least were - collateral schemes to expand Moor St station to accommodate trains from the NE-SW corridor using new chord lines linking to the Camp Hill railway thus providing increased connections to HS2 and alleviate over crowding at New St which doesn’t entirely get resolved by HS2. It’s also a short walk from Moor St (and therefore also from the new HS2 station) to New St and a regular connection used by thousands of people every day. Including quite often me.

The legal obligation as enshrined in the 1967 Transport Act (for which the actual dimensions concerned were published in the Fraenkel report) is 72’ 0” x 12’ 6” between Berkhamsted and Camp Hill. This particularly requirement is directly replicated in CRT’s current published information and it seemed to me that was likely to be the point of reference that sparked this debate. In other cases the current published dimensions vary from the legal requirements to reflect the differing factors pertinent to modern usage of the waterways versus the 1960s. There are instances where the 1967 legal requirements include dimensions larger than the locks on the waterway concerned.

CRT have perfectly competent geotechnical engineers to do all that stuff and the ability to engage specialists in specific areas where needed. The notices they publish for boaters are to paint a picture in terms that are understandable to that audience. It’s you that’s clutching stuff out of thin air (or a textbook) that isn’t the cause of the Easenhall failure.

It’s worth remembering that the published maximum craft dimensions have their origins in the size of boats recorded using the waterway at a specific point in time and not in the actual size of the infrastructure.