Recent content by AndrewE

From the origin of the train, or from any joining station? If so, that's terrible. Does this really apply to Avanti? I was aware of XCs dreadful "dynamic reservations" and their assertion that you can find the guard and get him to allocate and reserve an "unreserved" seat - but had heard that...

Are they all in London too, with no interest in travelling north - or any concern for freight capacity on the WCML? It seems to me that the opposition comes from the London bubble and people elsewhere who have no knowledge of or interest in transport realities! A classic example of why a...

At Liverpool Lime St use the lift to get directly from the surface station to the underground Loop line, it saves lots of walking although the lift itself seems very slow. Unlike the ones at James St which are remarkably quick... but which I rarely use as the Water St subway goes pretty well to...

one of my former colleagues hated Pendolinos (but personally I think they are fine) and considered Voyagers much better - citing much bigger/taller windows - and maybe hers didn't tilt either... Could you try to get a pair of window seats on a Pendolino so that she could be guaranteed a "facing...

For planning important journeys I use https://www.recenttraintimes.co.uk/ which gives you a feel for how reliable a service or route is. Of course on top of that you always need to add in the factors mentioned by @JonathonH. Monday mornings after engineering work are another consideration!

I would try Traveline. https://www.traveline.info/ It is brilliant at finding mixes of buses and trains, and also buses down parallel main roads to a destination in between when you wouldn't have any hope of finding them yourself. (I wouldn't anyway.) When I last went to Tring (within the...

it will still take "just four days to repair and reopen the line" - when a different strategy might not have seen the ballast washed away at all.

at least a tender full of batteries will provide adhesion whether they are charged or empty! And we mustn't forget the value of regenerative braking - although from a max of 25mph there won't be very much energy to recover.

I don't think anybody has yet posted a couple of important things: 1) a steam engine is inherently inefficient - thermodynamics mean it physically can't be better than a certain amount, even if you try to improve it by using waste steam for feedwater heating etc, whereas an internal combustion...

but low tide will be late morning, so it might only be on its way in...

To my mind this is still a Canute-like response. I know we are told that enhancement is not allowed outside of a specific scheme, but it seems mad to keep on spending money doing the same thing and not trying to design the problem out. If key short sections of the embankment had been replaced...

Bugger! I have missed the GWR one again! (Unless my PVR spotted it and has recorded it. I'll find out later...)

Yes, because the first few of those have had most of the UK's rail investment. What is cause and what is effect? GWR could have more bums on seats if it could reliably provide longer trains (if what we read here is to be believed), ICWC should be getting more (track) capacity if the politicians...

You could double or triple capacity on lots of routes by just running longer trains, as has been pointed out repeatedly. Junction capacity is irrelevant when XC are running 4-coach trains on lines which are intended for 12-coach expresses, or (LNR) 4 coach trains between Liverpool and Brum...

Weren't they craning in box culvert sections - that would dramatically reduce the weight of the embankment. (Or was that just someone's bright idea - if you accept that the golf course will become a tidal/salt marsh again?)