Recent content by HSTEd

I'd much rather put up with masks than create a system that the state can use forevermore to impose tailored lockdowns on any person or groups of person at will.

So essentially, Toton is replaced with East Midlands Parkway and the line bypassing Sheffield is axed?

Well it doesn't help that we don't appear to design systems for longevity, so we have to constantly reengineer everything every five minutes. With the availability of Linux and similar tools we have the capability to design "eternal software" and in many cases "eternal equipment", but we don't.

Because we've failed to achieve anything like the required decarbonisation for the last two decades and every year that goes by the line our emissions to follow has to get steeper and steeper.

Ultimately its been delayed because Sunak and the Treasury gutted the whole thing and Boris doesn't want the news getting out until after COP and its many photo opportunities is over.

Also worth noting that historical successful computerised systems were built over years with the Formal B Method or similar rigorous development tools. Not the methods that many contractors resort to to cut costs these days....

Pendolinos to Euston today operate much longer journeys that what the HS2 stock will do. HS2 rolling stock will almost inevitably end up resembling the interior of A Class 185 more than a Class 390.

Given the complexity of the station it may be considered desirable to have granularity in overhead wiring energisation in the station complex. So they can knock out platforms without taking them all out for example.

I would humbly suggest that in the long run it would probably be better to pay for the railway to buy fully controlled rectifier substations than mess around with batteries all over the place. Battery availability is likely to be a constraint on decarbonisation for the next couple of decades...

Well ultimately I'd argue the opposite. If anything we need to impose restrictions everywhere but in schools. Ultimately the primary danger of schools having a major wave is that they will drive cases into the surrounding population, even if the cases wouldn't have occurred naturally. (A...

One of the advantages of railways operating to a timetable is that, within reason, supplies can be tailored to requirements. People often rag on the BR electrification schemes for being done with extension leads or what not - but they delivered electrification on time and on budget, on budgets...

Well the Royal Dockyards were still building new vessels right up to the launch of HMS Andromeda in 1967. Or the Royal Ordnance or the Royal Arsenals etc etc etc

You could have all door boarding at a relative handful of stops and make a big difference, and those stops could potentially have infrastructure to support this installed in the long term. I hate to keep coming back to the Oxford Road corridor, but its the one I know best and its vicinity...

That won't stop the negative publicity with photogenic person number six who can't get the bus they need to do x y and z. The political capital cost is substantial and can't be ignored. Even with bus passes the ticket process still reduces the speed of loading, albeit less than with the cash...

London didn't just decide that cash fares were not welcome one day. They went through an entire multi year process involving a huge fleet of cash machines in the transition. If you try to skip that and say that no cash is permitted immediately this will not go down well. And the contactless...