The genie in the railway lamp

I think you hide Horatio in a barrel of brandy.

Whether it is an urban legend or not, Horatio’s last journey was in a barrel of brandy, from which the phrase ‘tapping the admiral’ is supposed to come.

Well I did ask the genie to restore the S&D so maybe we might find them.

I am just worried that the line through Wells might result in us meeting the Baby-Eating Bishop of Bath and Wells.

 

I thought it was continental railway modellers who were most concerned about the HOratio

 

Isn’t an HOratio Nelson a 1:87 4 COR?

 

Undo Beeching's vandalism.

 

Bye bye all heritage raways then...

 

... apart from the Talyllyn, the Ffestiniog, the Corris, the W&L, the SVR, the Middleton, the Tanfield, the Worth Valley, and probably a good few more I haven't thought of.

 

Ahem!

Tom

 

As soon as I hit the post button I realised! Engage brain before typing...

On a side note, I didn't appreciate SVR and KWVR weren't Breaching casualties, was aware of the rest though, despite my brief brain fade.

 

If you were starting completely from scratch, what track gauge would you use?

 

IMHO 'Standard' Gauge seems to be something of a 'sweet spot' between excessively expensive (Brunels Broad Gauge) and rather restrictive - 3ft6/Meter gauge

 

Why did the gauge commissioners require 5’3” for Ireland - seems an odd decision relative to just sticking with 4’8.5”?

Tom

 

With one rub of the lamp the 'Potts Preservation Society' is brought into being together with all the necessary resources to reinstate the railway in its entirety between Shrewsbury and Llanymynech. Pity about the collateral damage to the roads around Shrewsbury but such is life.

 

If you're speaking of today, I'm not even sure I'd be looking at using traditional rail technology at all. Back then, of course, the competition was from horse power, largely unsurfaced lanes and canals, whereas today, competition is from road transport and over medium and long distances, from aircraft.

The French LGV network (with service speeds in excess of 300kph) pretty rapidly killed off their short domestic air routes and MagLev can shift nearly twice that fast. Now we have a new 'flavour of the month' in HyperLoop/MagVac which, if their promoters are to be believed, brings the prospect of much faster services.

If there were an economically feasible means of preventing so many jet engines exhausting into the troposphere, we'd all benefit. Remember how quickly the skies cleared during the flight ban after the 9/11 atrocity, or when air traffic was curtailed by the Icelanic volcano Eyjafjallajökull? (Which I did cut and paste!)

Historically, there seems no doubt IKB's broad gauge was technically superior from just about every angle. Stephenson said as much himself, but what increased construction costs would have meant for the develoment of more marginal routes is another matter entirely.

Although only of academic interest now, I've always agreed with the view that many of the shortcomings of our rail network which culminated in the wholesale slaughter of the Marples/Beeching era can be traced back to the ad-hoc way things developed in the absence of any strategic master plan .... none of which matters a jot now, as we are where we are.

 

Thing is though what Brunel was really correct about was not the track gauge but the structure gauge, and I strongly suspect that's what costs most of the money anyway. The broad gauge did save a lot of lives in the early days of frequent derailments, but its scarcely relevant nowadays. What is amusing, looking back, is the extensive use of fake news by the narrow gauge proponents...

 

I believe that before that they had suggested 6ft gauge for Ireland, although nothing was actually laid to that gauge.

Dave

 

I remember reading elsewhere on this forum that one of the limitations of the French 4 cylinder compounds was the space between the frames for the LP cylinder cranks, and that the size of the main bearings was restricted as a result. Maybe they would have been better with a broader track gauge.

 

Not quite yet

https://www.railwaygazette.com/news...ciency-drive-to-compete-with-air-and-bus.html

The real railway solution had been to drive each axle.
8 tons max axle load and grades 3 or 4 % no problem.
Lots of less earthwork

 

5'3". Very sensible decision at the time it was made. before the famine permanently damaged the Irish economy. I believe the Ulster Railway was originally laid as 6ft.

 

If Beeching's 'vandalism' (sic) hadn't happened, but the rest of history had panned out like it has, I wonder what the railway network would look like now?

Not much different, I'll wager.


Out of idle interest, using an old BR timetable, I recently worked out how long it would have taken me to travel from my house to the centre of Edinburgh and back, all the way by train (and on foot from my house to what was the nearest station). It worked out that it would be impossble to do there and back in a day.

Driving, it takes me 1.5 hours each way, which I would choose every time and is still considerably quicker than if I drove to what is now my nearest station and got the train from there. I suspect most people would do the same, which is the real reason why so many lines closed. But it's much easier to simply put the blame at the door of the unfortunate Dr B and not appreciate that society was changing and all those closures would have happened anyway.

 

I don't think they would. The short branch lines, yes. Even worse were some of the later closures such as the Woodhead line and March-Spalding. If we didn't need all the lines now we are sure as heck going to want them increasingly in the future as internal combustion transport becomes unacceptable.

I don't accept there was anything unfortunate about Beeching - he was carrying out the instructions of his master Marples who was a corrupt road builder. Who eventually exiled himself from Britian lest he faced charges.