Flying Scotsman

No, but then gauging issues do not normally get Political or make headlines in the weekend papers (other than an excuse by certain sections of the media to take the piss out of enthusiasts).

In a perverse kind of way this whole episode might actually have long term benefits to the charter sector as with the full NR top brass very much involved its not going to be easy for those in Milton Keynes to brush if off as a simple oversight. Had the loco not been 'Flying Scotsman' then the 'oversight' excuse would have been much more likely to have been accepted.

 

Sorry, but actually it's ALL a priority. It doesn't matter if it's the local stopper to Fife or a steam special. It's all trains, it all needs to be gauged and actually the process is clearly no different for a 153 sprinter to flying Scotsman.

Every train should be treated the same and worked on in a priority schedule of when it's running - the gauging office shouldn't care what it is.

I'm not going to rubbish the whole of network rail, but the planning and gauging is a mess, you can't defend them and you certainly can't say 'it's a steam train so it's at the bottom of the pile' either, because it just shouldn't work that way...

 

After the 16:40pm cock up on Friday 13th..........it might very well be his own head. And I don't believe anybody burnt the midnight oil to give the green light, IMO the top brass saw the seismic reaction and they said.........."Whoa..........let it run" because ....has anything actually been altered on either the locomotive or the infrastructure......or has somebody just put a signature on a piece of paper?

 

It will be by those narrow minded lefties who refuse to recognise reality!

 

Maybe it's just me but I can't help feeling if NR were trying to keep Scotsman a secret, they've not just shot themselves in the foot but machine-gunned both feet off over the course of this week. First when the "no timings" thing hit the national press, which then meant the run to Newcastle gained a bit more coverage as a result, then the issues in Scotland with it being off then on again. It's all turned the circus into much bigger news than it would likely otherwise have been.

 

Derek MacKay, Phil Vester and Marc Carne all deserve credit for this being successfully resolved.

Pressure from the top has driven this through. The power of Scotsman. Any other loco may not have commanded such attention.

The NR group in MK however deserve, IMHO, no such praise. They have known about this for weeks, month even, and I hope the official investigation takes them to task and brings to light the wider issues in the gauging topic.

On a lighter note, I am looking forward to the shots of her back on the Waverley line, somewhere she hasn't been for a while.

 

That isn't really how I or many would view the late 1970s and early 1980s, but I do know - from some of those who "were there" - that the implied, perhaps even stated, remit from the successive Governments of the day was "managed decline".

From the introduction of the HSTs onwards, there quite undeniably was marketing of "railways as a means of travel", perhaps principally for Inter City services. Indeed, the birth of Inter City brand some years earlier was also pretty effective for marketing purposes - so much so that the name remains in use in many other places of the world, even the likes of Germany (whose long distance services are "IC" or "ICE" depending on what type of stock operates them) where the national language isn't English.

I hate to restart such arguments, especially as the views on BR are likely to be informed by political prejudice rather than historic fact, but BR actually managed with a far lower state subsidy per passenger/freight mile than the present system - but I accept that it may be argued that the cost of this unit of measure may increase considerably as the absolute level of usage increases - although generally with railways, it is the cost of providing a working railway to operate any service that is large and incremental costs from extra traffic are much more marginal.

Steven

 

Although I was no fan of many of the lady's policies, I think it is unfair to blame her for the decline of the Railways, as the damage was done in the decade and a half before she came to power, and possibly longer than that.

In fact, the beginings of the resurgence of rail travel had a lot of their foundations laid just before she came to power and while she was PM and at very least, she didn't stop it!

Many senior BR staff were Tory supporters and would often argue more money was spent on capital works under Conservative than Labour Governments - the real problem the railways had was the dislike of them in the Whitehall machine, which tended to remain constant whatever colour of politics were in theoretical power...............

Steven

 

If this debacle helps uncover the systematic failure of MK to deliver timings and route clearance for day to day moves by TOCs and FOCs until the 11th hour then all to the good. That's probably part of the reason NR has such an abysmal customer satisfaction rating. Timings arriving on a Friday afternoon for a move on a Saturday (which has been bid well in advance) isn't really on. And when the resulting paths are "lowest common denominator" and simply use redundant coal train paths despite the train in question being capable of passenger linespeeds that's why you end up with STP moves running 5 hours early!

So it's not just charter operators who are being affected - nobody else can plan or resource effectively either!



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Yes well said. I'm no lover of Thatcher or her policies whilst in government but I'm increasingly irritated by the criticism she gets.

It's as if Labour didn't have 13 years in power in which to reverse everything they disliked. Ken Livingstone spends his whole time talking her down but conveniently forgetting he was an MP and London mayor during those 13 years and he did sod sell to improve things it seems if his moaning is anything to go by...

 

What's your obsession with her?
Everytime someone "slags her off" (including myself in the past) you come straight on here having a go.
All I can say is that "The truth hurts".

 

She hasn't been in government for thirty plus years.

In that time there's been one coalition, two outright conservative governments and three outright labour governments.

30 plus years in which six different governments could have reversed policy decisions, made things better, etc.

If you blame her for all of the problems of today you're deluded. There's a hell of a lot of politicians on all sides of the debate guilty for the problems of today.

Singling her out is a total cop out. I want fair and reasonable responsibility for the problems of today to be shared by all those who've been in power and made stupid decisions. Like destabilising the Middle East, ruining the housing market, deregulating the banks, privatising the railways (and then making it worse), and so on and so forth.

Many of Thatchers policies irritate me (her stance on apartheid - or lack of it - unforgivable) but the constant insistence that she's effectively the anti Christ is symptomatic of people who either haven't noticed the last thirty years happened or refuse to accept that there's collective responsibility on all sides for the mess we have now.

 

AAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand getting back to 60103......................... steam's had good exposure today via the 6 o clock news & so have SD & steam tours in general, but any normals currently googling them are going to be disappointed all trips behind FS are sold out - BUT that might just tempt them to book other tours, assuming they run as booked..........................

Wouldn't want to be turning up for work in NR's MK HQ tomorrow............ arses are going to be well & truly kicked & heads may possibly roll, hopefully for the good of the industry & steam!

 

I am confused why you should be irritated by criticism of Thatcher. She was without doubt the most polarising prime minister in my lifetime.

Livingstone is rather past his sell by date now but he was a fine GLC leader and later Mayor of London. Many of the policies for which he was vilified in the 80s are now accepted by the majority. I am unaware that he continues to moan about Thatcher but he certainly was one of the more effective opponents of her policies when she was prime minister.

 

Why would any heads roll ?

Its unionised government labour, at the end of the day it's likely the guy did his job.. computer says no, he says no. Then went home.

If heads roll because someone went over home on time.. guess what.. all out strike & big compensation payout.
if heads roll because a computer wasn't over ruled. guess what.. all out strike & big compensation payout.
if heads roll because someone says he didn't have enough time to do his job diligently... guess what.. all out strike & big compensation payout.

Its the system thats wrong.

in Europe, you know a whole 12 months ahead what the plan is, what loco, what route and it's in many cases published in the international timetable network.
Most tour operators for the last 2 years have rolled out their intentions a year upto a year in advance, so the excuse isn't there, neither is the technology a barrier.

Its just lazy, inefficient, inflexible... probably to justify someone a job.

 

Fair criticism - we all agree she was polarising, we all agree done significant things were wrong.

Some of the things written about her now are ludicrous. It's a bit like some of the strange theories on the Internet, like Gordon Brown wanted a banking collapse for blah blah blah...

It's funny but as a Londoner I found him exasperating. The housing crisis has its routes in the conservative selling off of social housing but as London mayor he was totally inadequate (as Boris has been too) to drive rents down and make sure affordable housing for those on low and middle incomes was possible.

There's now a massive glut of luxury rental accommodation, buy to lets and similar and an extraordinary situation where house prices are going up six, nearly seven times the rate of wages per year.

So you'll forgive me I hope but Ken - and Boris - have a lot to answer for too.

 

The problem with the railways didn't start with Maggie.
The problem is much older than that.

You can blame those europeans for dragging us into world war 1 and bankrupting the country, robbing us of an empire, thats never recovered since.