CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
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It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
Clear thanks.
I presume all the LNER trains are bi-mode not just the ones operating North of Edinburgh?
I guess its just logistically simpler to have LNER full time electric and TPE have to suck it up unless they can find these efficiency gains. From a high level don't suppose it matters who is burning diesel if its needs to burned to run the train.
I think the majority of the LNER Azuma fleet is electric only. I see LNER has just announced today that they are buying 10 tri-mode trains (electric, battery and diesel) from CAF. Seems an odd choice, as it will make driving and maintenance operations much more difficult.
For as long as we don't have full electrification, and for as long as the railway stops working here and there, necessitating diversions, battery power will probably be seen as the easiest alternative traction to open up short-medium distance routes for bi-mode trains. I think TPE is experimenting already.
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But not all train stations are equal. If you’re a size matters person, you want your station to be a terminus – the end of the line. Specifically, you want it to have been a terminus for a good chunk of history. Research finds that the longer a town’s station has been an “all change” kind of place – even if decades back – the larger its population and economy today. It examines railways spreading west from Brazil’s São Paulo from the mid-19th century. They often developed in fits and starts, with a line built to one town but not going on to the next for some time. Such stop-start nonsense would never happen in Britain…
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/12/sao-paulo-old-oak-common-hs2-train-terminus
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Alstom: Train manufacturer puts 1,300 jobs at risk in Derby
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There's rather more detail about the situation in the preceding Sunday Times article: https://archive.is/9nMuU
The couple are Liz Howe, a former police detective, from Stockport, Greater Manchester, and Ian Appleby ... Howe made headlines in 2020 when she was reported missing after “turning to God”. She was eventually found safe and well in the Highlands after a UK-wide police hunt.A relative, speaking at the time of her disappearance, when Howe was 43, said Howe had cut herself off from friends and family and was preaching in daily videos. “She was trying to warn people,” the family member told the Daily Record. “She said God was coming to take us away and if we didn’t repent our sins we were getting left behind ...”
Bruce said he had liked the couple at first. “We thought they were lovely and then they turned strange,” he said. “Oh, God, yes, they are religious.”
The showdown between the couple and Network Rail escalated in March. Workers in lorries arrived at the long private track to the unstaffed station, a “request stop” where passengers flag down trains.
Engineers wanted to install a “press and stop” kiosk so passengers could let train drivers know to stop without waving at them.
Howe and Appleby were not happy. “They chained themselves to a gate and recited the laws of Moses,” Bruce said.
Clearly the founder members of ONE Altnabreac...
Perhaps our Lord has put off the Rapture because the prospect of spending eternity with those two roasters is trying even His patience.
"The move follows a failed attempt by former Caledonian Sleeper operator Serco to introduce similar seating as part of its new fleet of trains introduced in 2019, which was shelved on safety grounds."
anyone know more?
Suggestion on Twitter ’H&S’
But that’s Twit…
The Indian railways have the best affordable sleeper seat-bed system. Basically a bench that you can sit 3 on, with 2 other fold down beds mounted above it. Can be either 3 seated or 3 sleeping, all in the same amount of space. Not much privacy, but you just sleep in your clothes, and there’s a women-only coach
similar in Zimbabwe. 1st class has two bunks; 2nd class has 3; 3rd class is just seats.
someone comes in to turn down the bunks and make up the beds.
Carriages and bunks very nicely made/decorated.
these pics are similar to what I travelled on in the 1990s, except that once we got an old steam locomotive because the diesel was out of commission:
@SRD - sleeping pods were planned for the new Caledonian Sleeper rolling stock. My understanding is they were binned for two reasons.
1. Sleeping passengers cannot have their head facing the direction of travel, as in a collision their head would be pushed into a bulkhead/back of another seat and they might break their neck. Not normally a problem as seats can all face one way, but some Caledonian Sleeper services reverse during their trip - so pods would need to be able to rotate and passengers would all have to be woken in the middle of the night to do so. No-one wants this.
2. They aren't any more space efficient than the standard bunk beds, so there is no economic benefit to the operator or passenger.
Typical British approach to things - just look at the Austrian Nightjet mini-cabins for what we could have got.
See: https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/nightjet-new-generation.htm
Do any continental overnight services still have couchettes? I remember travelling down to Bourg St Maurice that way sometime in the 1980s, on the old Snow Train from Calais (including a "disco coach" for the confirmed party animals, complete with unpleasantly sticky floor the next morning...nice).
Is a couchette the type of carriage in which James Bond has his fight with Tee Hee, the villain with the metal arm in Live and Let Die?
ejstubbs, I believe so: we looked at various options for sleeper trains in Europe last year but ended up deciding that we could afford a cabin for just the two of us.
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Mallaig is now a busy and bustling port that boasts award-winning fine dining restaurants, upmarket hotels and other attractions.
Much of the town's rise in fortunes is said to be due to the Jacobite steam train, immortalised in the Harry Potter movies weaving and puffing its way majestically around the Glenfinnan viaduct.
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However, the world-famous service is under threat. A requirement to fit Central Door Locking (CDL) to historic railway coaches could spell the end of the line for the Jacobite.
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Video: the historic arrival of the first passenger service at new East Linton Station
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https://twitter.com/scotrail/status/1734921816395682213?s=42&t=By9Sw-nu7Kc3T-YsKtYW0g
@chdot: A requirement to fit Central Door Locking (CDL) to historic railway coaches could spell the end of the line for the Jacobite.
As was stated in the article, West Coast Rail and other heritage rail operators have known about this requirement for something like 20 years. Some other operators have deployed a technical solution (i.e. central door locking) but this is not straightforward on the Mark 1 coaches which WCRC runs on The Jacobite (the coaches are steam heated & vacuum braked, so there is currently no source of power throughout the train from which a centralised locking system could be operated).
WCRC have therefore been operating under a series of exemptions granted by the ORR which were dependent on WCRC having in place other mitigations - specifically, stewards manning the vestibules to operate the manual door locks, open and close the doors, and stop passengers from operating the locks or doors, or hanging out of the windows. A visit by the ORR earlier this year found that these procedures were not being followed, so they shut the service down until WCRC could convince them that they had taken action to ensure that the trains were fully manned and the staff were enforcing the rules about the use of the doors and windows.
The Jacobite's operator says it has robust safety procedures in place to protect passengers with one steward per carriage in place to operate doors and monitor droplight windows and an additional guard....
"The system we have in place works and it is safe," says Mr Shuttleworth, who lives in Derbyshire.
Weasel words: the ORR found that the system was not "in place" and didn't "work" when they paid the service a visit. WCRC had to demonstrate that they were taking their safety system seriously and following it properly before they were allowed to start running The Jacobite again in August.
A number of other heritage operators run trains with coaches which lack CDL, under the same or similar exemptions as applied to The Jacobite. AFAIK none of them have been prohibited from running as a result of being found by the ORR not to be following their documented safety systems.
WCRC have significant form: a major Signal Passed At Danger (SPAD) incident in 2015 where a steam hauled railtour ran through a junction, for which WCRC was hit with a £260,000 fine. There have been numerous other incidents since. That might be one reason why the ORR have been keeping tabs on their safety system compliance.
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By 2040, Dutch railways will operate 700,000 bike parking spaces at 410 stations nationwide.
Every single one is free of charge—at least for the first 24 hours—because they realize their purpose isn’t to create a new source of revenue… it’s to create a new source of passengers.
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That's an average of 1700 bike parking spaces at each station.
Waverley, which I think has more than any other Scottish train station, has approximately 100.
Obviously just adding 1000 bike racks to Waverley wouldn't do much good, but it's a clear illustration of how catching up we have to do.
According to OSM, Waverley has spaces for 132 bikes, although in practice, the double deck parking has some long term residents, and the toaster racks by platform 3 are hard to use to actual max capacity.
I had thought that, surely, Glasgow Central would have the most spaces for bikes, but I may be remembering a distant time in the past. OSM reckons only 40 spaces, and most of those are the double deck units.
Not to mention that unless your station in the Netherlands is pretty rural, small, or old and due for refurbishment, those spaces will be secure(need your OV card to access, or now you can even have your bike "chipped" so you can just walk through and the process is all automatic) and in many cases actively monitored either by manned CCTV or by actual staff - who often even double as bike repairmen and have a little shop with spares.
It's not even just about adding more spaces, the whole Dutch transit/active travel interface is thought about, funded, and managed at a level I don't think anywhere in the UK has done about anything except MOAR ROADZ for what, 50+ years?
“now you can even have your bike "chipped" “
Is that just for use at stations or other benefits?
Presume not gps too?
@chdot As I understand it it's just a way to link your bike to your OV card so you don't have to bother fishing it out of your wallet or whatever, you just walk/ride straight through the barrier. Presumably just an RFID tag or something like.
“Presumably just an RFID tag or something like.“
So simple & cheap.
And effective.
8.7% increase in ScotRail fares announced for 1 January 2024. Wonder why they chose to announce that today?
https://www.transport.gov.scot/news/rail-fares-increase-level-confirmed-2/
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