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Recent content by coppercapped

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    XC Voyager Refurbishment

    And how do you ensure that the uncoupled and parked unit does not block a platform at Reading and upset the other trains using the station?
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    What other possibilities are there to improve capacity around Reading?

    Many years ago it was sometimes called Blazingsmoke due to the Lord Nelsons and the Bulleid pacifics... (And the basin of the Basingstoke canal in the town centre was filled in and built over... Vandals!)
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    What other possibilities are there to improve capacity around Reading?

    I agree with your analysis, but I would add a couple of remarks: The arrangements of the roads coming into Reading from the Arborfield direction on the A327 give no easy and direct route to Reading Station or its car park. This route from the south east of the town serves Reading University...
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    Class 701 'Aventra' trains for South Western Railway

    A couple of points to this position: 1. The leasing payments are not covered entirely by government subsidies. Pre-Covid some three quarters of the passenger TOC’s total costs were covered by fare income. In the meantime this proportion has fallen to about half which means that essentially...
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    Class 701 'Aventra' trains for South Western Railway

    For the avoidance of doubt, I should like to point out that the capital (some £895 million) has been provided by the leasing company Rock Rail and its partners SL Capital and GLIL Infrastructure and not by the state. The loss of income affects the leasing company, not the Treasury.
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    What could be done to improve the Elizabeth Line’s performance?

    If a 27 minute gap is so stressful, then why not take the next train to Paddington and take a Heathrow Express from there? There's one every fifteen minutes so, at worst, one would get to Heathrow ten minutes earlier. If it's a question of missing a flight or paying for another ticket then I...
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    "I'm a Signalman, not a Signaller!"

    In principle you are correct, but there are a range of common uses and one can go down this rabbit hole a long way. I would just point out that the German word 'man' can be used as an indefinite pronoun which can refer to one person or also to people in general (in the sense of 'mankind') where...
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    "I'm a Signalman, not a Signaller!"

    A minor correction, in German a teacher is a Lehrer or Lehrerin, the being being taught is the Schuler or Schulerin. There is also the difference between the formal 'Sie' (= you) and the informal 'sie'... Also in German the word 'Mann' is used in the same way as 'one' would be used in English...
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    Train Leasing Profits Treble, £400,000,000 dividends

    OK, so the chief mechanical engineer's department did all this product support work for free? That they were only paid for their design work for new products? No, not necessarily true. If you've signed up to a contract like this I'm not surprised that you are disappointed. BR was very adept...
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    Train Leasing Profits Treble, £400,000,000 dividends

    Even if the government bought the trains - then the money still comes from the government, so what is your problem? Is it just that you don't like private finance...? Anyway only that proportion of the lease payments which comes from the government's subsidy to the TOC is in question. If, for...
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    Train Leasing Profits Treble, £400,000,000 dividends

    You have still not understood. If the government supplies you with the cash to buy the assets it can do so in one of two ways: it can give you the money as a grant (which does not need to be repaid) or it can advance you the money in the form of a loan in which case you will be making a...
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    Train Leasing Profits Treble, £400,000,000 dividends

    Which only goes to show that you haven't understood the previous arguments. Once again, the point about the private sector finance supplying the cash to purchase new trains is that this large lump sum is not subject to vagaries of government policy. Both quantities and timing of government...
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    Train Leasing Profits Treble, £400,000,000 dividends

    A little bit of factual background to the ROSCO debate… The original BR passenger rolling stock fleet was divided among the original three nascent ROSCOs which at the time were state-owned. There were competing ideas about the distribution of the stock; for example one ROSCO could have had all...
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    Would HS2 have saved money by bringing in a company like SNCF to build the line to their pre-existing designs?

    I would suggest that cost overruns are pre-programmed if a free-standing, government-funded company is set up to build infrastructure such as HS2 and if this company has no financial interest in the resulting operation. As a result there is no pressure whatsoever to investigate alternatives in...

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