Nationalisation good or bad ? (ex cheerful 2015 thread)

Deleted OT

 

The first results hit the news last week and there's a lot more to come. You won't be sneering like this a year from now.

 

John, unfortunately there's a load of housing all over the trackbed at the Spalding end and a high security prison on it at the March end. Not going to happen, alas.

 

There's that, but it also depends upon how depressed with life you really want to be... I'm not sneering at all, as there seems to be some pretty serious stuff going on. But what this has to do with BR in the 1960s... Time for me to move on, methinks.

 

John, you mention Woodhead, but what about the lines either side of the route? Penistone to Mexborough, Warrington to Skelton Junction, Heaton Mersey to Godley Junction and the south Manchester loop from Trafford Park to Fairfield?
The new deep water container terminal at Liverpool docks will be opening shortly and there is very limited capacity to move containers by rail. The port of Felixstowe has been open many years, but it is only recently that rail improvement have been made so that trains do not have to travel down to north London before continuing their journeys westwards or northwards. For these trains alone March to Spalding would have been a benefit.

 

So we shouldn't have electrified the ECML? If you believe that then you really are away with the fairies.

 

Not on the precise alignment. A minor diversion gets around the prison and a more significant one around the housing.

 

Correct. Very marginal return on journey times, damaging to network resilience, a visual eyesore and a strain on a National Grid already struggling to deliver enough power for our needs. Without a major change, "brownouts" are inevitable within a few years.

 

You are quite right; I just didn't want to overfill my post. Those you mention would go some way to avoiding the Piccadilly bottleneck.

 

One could divert by the prison - although what the DoJ would make of having a railway line right by a major prison, I shudder to think - if an escape were possible, one could be on a boat from Grimsby before the missing prisoner alert was raised. Not sure about the Spalding end - I suspect major demolition as per Waverley would be required.

 

But without electrification we may have brown skies within a few years.

 

Did I say that diesel was the way forward? No. I advocate the use of gas turbine-electric locos burning liquid biofuels. Much cleaner, lower infrastructure costs, more network resilience, no OHLE blighting the landscape...

 

It may not be that the research is lacking, maybe he didn't like the conclusion that further research revealed.

An example that springs to mind is the Severn bridge. The implication in the book being that it should have been rebuilt and would have been by a prorail government, despite the fact that the traffic was carried successfully by alternate routes.

Documents go missing, it's a fact of life but he seems to see this as part of the conspiracy.

Marples is said to have seen rail closure as the obvious answer, with no facts to back that statement.

 

The line at Feltham runs right past the young offenders institution.

 

Gas turbines work most efficiently at constant power output (and that was even more the case in the 1950s, when the state of the art gas turbines were very thirsty at low power, and only came into their own at high power). Constant power output can be achieved in a power station, ship, airliner etc, but is much harder to achieve on a railway vehicle involved in stop-start traffic and periods of idling. With static plant (such as a power station) you can also be much more efficient at extracting surplus energy from the exhaust gases, further enhancing the efficiency. So far more fuel efficient to concentrate the generation at a few fixed points and get the power to the railway by wire, even allowing for the transmission losses. There are solid reasons why, despite attempts in several technologically advanced countries, gas turbines have never been used for rail transport beyond experimental uses.

Tom

 

Fair enough, I'm sure there were some contentious uses of line closurers for the author to prove his point. I haven't got my copy at hand at the moment, but combined with 'Holding the Line' convinced me that there was an ideological shift against railways during the nationalised era. However, I am always open to changing my opinions based on well researched and written arguments.

 

There was certainly a shift in views. The railways started out as being seen as essential for the country's well being post war. Although this didn't mean that the network was seen as optimal, closures had been happening before the war.

When the railways started losing money, coupled with the failure of the modernisation plan, which on closer examination, turned out to be rather lacking in detail, 'something had to be done' as the country had so many calls on its resources and a vastly overvalued currency to defend, Something had to give. But that doesn't amount to a conspiracy.

 

Turbines as a direct source of power are not ideal, I agree, despite certain landmark automotive applications thereof. However, as range extenders to an electric drivetrain, they make a lot of sense - lighter and simpler than diesel engines, certainly. Would be interesting to see a comparison off weight between a suitable turbine and all the transformers etc found on pure electric trains.

 

I would also say that even now, most gas turbines are at their most efficient at a significant fraction of maximum power. The dynamic nature of the compression in a gas turbine can be compensated for, but can't be got around completely. Aircraft obviously spend most of their time at fairly high power, and most newer warship classes tend to have diesels for cruise and gas turbines for dash.

The only example I can think of where gas turbine locomotives were used in significant numbers in revenue service is the three Union Pacific classes from around 1952-1969. US long haul freight obviously offers more opportunities for significant time at high power, but even then they were retired when the heavy fuel oil they used started to become more expensive. If they'd been economically competitive running on diesel I'm sure they'd have been kept longer (especially since their maintenance costs would have dropped considerably).

 

The other thing which is often done with turbines in marine and power station applications is for them to be water cooled, with the resulting steam driving a secondary turbine. Clearly, adding water capacity and perhaps a condenser would mean more space required and more weight.