Brighton Atlantic: 32424 Beachy Head

That doesn't explain trams. Steel wheels on steel rails have a far lower rolling resistance than rubber on asphalt so far more fuel efficient. A by-product is that it's easier to supply electricity rather than use an internal combustion engine.

Sorry for the thread drift.

 

But more frequently than Austerities and Ivatts ran on the IoW. If you must apply Hitch’s Law at all, please apply it to your own railway too.

 

Is that what you meant to say? Surely the main *dis*advantage of pure electric railways is the need to provide all the power distribution infrastructure.

 

Indeed, along with in essence a tender underframe, complete with wheelsets. I suspect a finger-in-the-air estimate would be that those parts saved at least £500k from the project cost relative to a design in which they would have had to have been built new.

Tom

 

Yes, it is what I meant to say. There is a lot of infrastructure with rail anyway, but the railways / tramways felt that the additional infrastructure required for electrification more than repaid the original capital and ongoing maintenance costs. You don't need to look far for the evidence of this.

 

I've hesitated to join in the discussion of trams because it is extreme thread drift. However --- I had long been bemused by how trams went in and out of favour. I presumed that their pros and cons relative to diesel buses and trolley buses much have been fairly finely balanced for it to tip first one way and then the other. A book that I read recently https://www.bookdepository.com/Rail...ys-Britain-Ireland-Oliver-Green/9781473822238 (I think following a link on here) is mainly a history but along the way it does shed a bit of light on why trams came, went away in most places, and have now come back in a few places. It was partly down to perceptions of whether they reduced or increased congestion in city streets. In the particular case of London there was also the initial choice of technology with power in a conduit below the street, which caused some problems in operation and would have been extremely expensive to renew.

 

Were there not two boilers found, if so what happened to the other one!

 

There were two - the Bluebell acquired one of them. The other I believe was subsequently scrapped.

Tom

 

Thank You.

 

Oh yes, quite agree that carting your own high pollution mini power station around with you is best avoided whenever possible.

 

... at Steam and Sail IIRC.
Ray.

 

Ok, obviously I am a rail enthusiast, or I wouldn't be on here at all.
My point is that if one were attempting to run a public transport service from East Grinstead to Sheffield Park, on intermittent days, carrying, say, 20,000 passengers per year, then a bus, with its low staffing requirement and a road tax of £500 per year would be a much more economical approach than owning, maintaining and insuring your own infrastructure. Driver wages, road tax, vehicle insurance, public liability insurance, minor maintenance and servicing costs with off the shelf parts....That's it. The county runs the signalling and maintains the p-way, bridges, and everything else.
The mechanical advantages of steel wheel and rail don't come into it.
As you've mentioned trams- (I rather like them too), there's no answer to questions like "what happens if there is something occurs, collision, breakdown, etc. that blocks your tram line at 7.45am?" a tyred bus can be possibly squeeze round, or be routed around a significant obstruction. A rail vehicle can't. Think of the vast investment required to open up a new route, and the loss incurred if the hoped-for traffic does not materialise-compare that with leasing 3 or 4 additional vehicles to trial a new route, and surrendering them if it turns out the ridership does not support the service.
My view is that if road buses can cope with the traffic, then the traffic is inadequate to support a rail service.

 

They are a sensible size and type for the use and not newbuilds.

 

The railway will need a suitably beefy connection to the grid supply, and this might also need an upgrade, particularly in remote ateas, which will add to the costs.

 

Quite right - the Bluebell should be building/restoring locomotives of a sensible size and type - I'd suggest something of power classification 4p, given their traffic patterns. Such as, for example, an LBSCR H2 Atlantic...

 

Cor that sounds good.

 

I assume that the choices, why's and wherefores of H2 Atlantic build on The Bluebell were made in the 1990s or have I missed something? I would also have thought given the extensive progress made so far that to change direction now would be more expensive than to finish what folk have put their money into?

 

The social media of the day was alive with opinions. The amount of ticker-tape expended on the livery debate alone was astounding...

 

There is an hourly bus service from Aylesbury to Milton Keynes, which in the light of the above makes me wonder if the yet-to-be-built East - West Link between the two towns is really a viable proposition.

 

IIRC there is an existing rail route, via Calvert/Steeple Claydon so a passenger rail service would be additional traffic on a line that could easily cope. Is that route currently up to passenger standards, it was freight only when I grew up in Buckinghamshire (70s,80's).
Even so, a branch line service running 28miles through rather sparsely populated north Bucks (where most people own cars), competing against the no150 bus and its hourly 75minute service will be tough.