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Highlights from my visit to the 2023 North Norfolk Railway "Autumn Showcase" event. Very well attended with lots of steam and diesel action. Featured are GER Y14 0-6-0 and S&D 7F 2-8-0 steam locos, class 08 (x2), 31 and 37 diesel locos, a hybrid class 101/104 DMU, a train of Victorian carriages...

Bogied rail vehicles are basically beams supported on springs near the ends, which will have a natural (quite low) resonant frequency, 'excited' by energy from the motion of the vehicle (e.g. track level variations, curves, rail joints, switches etc.). To control the oscillations the kinetic...

It's basically just a typical large 'Victorian' seaside town, parts of which have seen much better days, with the usual stuff along the seafront (of varying degrees of tackiness). If it's warm, the sun is shining, there lots of visitors around and everything is open - it's OK. It's actually...

...as are railway costs. Commodities like freight transport services from different suppliers generally price track because of market competition (and that competition is why freight transport generally has thin profit margins).

The Amfleet passenger cars are home-grown (all Budd, including the bogie design AFAIK, which is different to the Metroliners) and since 1978 must have run millions of miles at 125mph hauled by (European-derived) AEM-7, HHP-8 and ACS-64 electric locos.

They do (and have done for decades), but the line from there towards London doesn't have any long steep gradients (max is about 1% I think), so they are within the capabilities of a single cl. 59 loco and the maximum coupler strength. With steeper gradients, you'd either have to reduce the load...

Yes, exactly. It's the reason international shipping containers were invented and are 'intermodal' i.e. can be easily carried on different transport modes and swapped between them quickly.

I've read it too, and agree. It reads like a crayonista wish-list, with so much on it that I wonder if it was intended to make the project cost so high that no-one would ever give it the go ahead...

But if that stone traffic went south via Matlock wouldn't it end up on the same MML (joining it just a bit further south)? If it joins it at Dore (as now) at least it can travel via the Erewash Valley route and hence avoid Derby. Joining the ex-Midland Railway network at Dore also gives more...

Scarborough, Looe, Southport, Felixstowe, Sheringham, St. Ives are some of my favourites that have terminal stations (but some of those have very basic stations). As a good combination of station plus town, I'd put Scarborough at the top of the list.

Yes, single track electrified (AFAIK 25kV 60Hz). From what I've read, they are going to build the vast majority of the route within the median strip of I-15 (which they are leasing long-term), but in places that apparently isn't wide enough to take two tracks. It'll be interesting to see what...

I've not seen it done either with a normal scheduled passenger train, but AFAIK the loops are cleared for passenger use - enthusiast railtours get routed via them occasionally as 'rare mileage'. To make Ely work when things aren't going to plan often seems to involve a degree of cunning by the...

In which case, shouldn't the Nigerian government be spending money on paving the roads? It might not be as politically appealing but I suspect the economic benefit would be pretty high and could be started tomorrow...

I know, and... ...I agree - especially as the station is due to move to a new location soon.

...although at least that's an AHB crossing so the 'closed' times are fairly short. Great Shelford (just south of Cambridge), Westerfield (on the Felixstowe branch) and Manea are all full barrier crossings with no other means of crossing the line or between the platforms.

Unless it's changed very recently, the unstaffed Thurston station (just east of Bury St. Edmunds) on the busy Ely/Cambridge to Stowmarket mainline has only a foot/barrow crossing (no footbridge/subway) between the two platforms, with miniature red/green lights for users (like some occupation...

I assume because its the narrowest part of a fan of sidings, where they join together (often into a headshunt). Like the upper part of the human body or a bottle. I suspect because they were originally small versions of full-size signals e.g. miniature semaphore arms (like a toy doll is a...

As an example, 'British Thomson-Houston' (BTH) was effectively a subsidiary of US General Electric (formed in 1892 by the merger of the US 'Thomson-Houston Electric Company' with the US 'Edison General Electric Company'). In 1928 BTH was merged with Metropolitan-Vickers (Metrovick) to form AEI...

A few hours at Ely (Cambridgeshire) railway station in April 2024, covering freight, track inspection and a few of the passenger trains, all condensed into about 10 minutes. Freight hauled by class 60 and 66 diesel locomotives and the inspection train by a pair of (60-plus year old) class 37.

Railway electrification developed on both sides of the Atlantic at about the same time, starting at the end of the 19th century, with the major electrical companies in US and Europe sometimes having alliances (or subsidiary companies on the other side). Both the Europe and the US were using both...