Recent content by MarkyT

It looks like there will be a range of solutions that owners and operators can choose for locos of all sizes. Some simply want a direct replacement for coal. Others may also want to clean up and streamline the operation more radically and eliminate fire risk with oil-firing or similar. The old...

They're big powerful engines for their gauge and haul some lengthy trains, albeit on the flat in the case of the RH&DR. Maybe oil or gas firing conversions would be better for these, like many of their bigger cousins. An automated burner system would make these single-person operated little...

There's a Swiss oil-fired conversion of a German BR.52 owned and operated by modern steam company DLM on the European mainland. As suggested for the NYMR, they use light domestic heating oil, which is very close in characteristics to diesel apparently and can be obtained cheaply at warmer times...

I don't particularly like it but it's a better solution than replacing them with those fake steam outline diesels once popular in theme parks. The locos are being retained largely intact, just being pushed around rather than powering the train, so people can still see them moving and they'll...

I've read elsewhere that all the battery traction kit including the motors will be housed in the tenders. The locos will be lightly modified to be pushed around by the power tenders. They may have boilers and pistons removed to reduce weight and resistance , although I'd have thought the...

They have at least managed to squeeze some folding armrests between each seat, which shows how much wider the Avril cars are than much other rolling stock. I really don't like the 3 abreast 'bench' seating on many UK suburban trains, but at least the properly formed individual seats and armrests...

Hythe Road would be no good for the Milton Keynes service as it was planned to be on the Mitre Bridge Loop, the connecting line from Mitre Bridge Junction on the West London Line to Willesden High-Level Junction on the North London Line. A WLL northbound train routed that way would find itself...

There's no room between the two double junctions at Acton Wells which are only about 100m apart, with no signals in the gap so if (short) platforms existed a route would have to be set right through both junctions to approach it, needlessly blocking other movements that might take place in...

On RTT, looking at a handful of mid-morning Down Main running times planned on Tuesday 23/04 from a standing start at Paddington, they all pass Heathrow Airport Junction between 8.5 and 9.5 minutes after departure, with the lower figure representing the best 80x times. The difference is around...

Agreed. The connectivity of Clapham Junction makes it a great stop if the timetable could be made to work. If a resurrected Waterloo-bound Airtrack route resurfaces as part of a Heathrow Southern project, Clapham Junction could form a useful interchange for anyone transferring between the airports.

Cutting out Coventry on XC is absurd. It would add around 40 minutes to the journey to anywhere south of Leamington Spa and cut the frequency to Leamington in half to only the local service once an hour. And the train would still crawl tantalisingly through Coventry station to negotiate the...

Totnes has high long-distance sales because the trendy town and its picturesque South Hams hinterland are home to many media and arts and other business people who travel frequently to London and other big cities, or they regularly come to stay in 2nd homes at weekends. Because the local service...

Euston is well sited, well known and understood by the public and together with KX and St P forms a cluster of major termini whose pedestrian interconnection could be further improved if desired in the future Stopping at both stations, splits the load between the two and provides the wider...

Mainly in the peaks, for layout reasons, on the South Western, something that might plausibly be fixed in the future in which case more could stop, and the need for such a super intense peak service uplift in the tight morning rush might be less of an issue with today's more hybrid working...

CAD, with its ability to move elements around on a circuit drawing more easily for such alterations, came a bit late for much use in the relay interlocking field. I found a few awfully convoluted circuit routings in some of the Welsh interlockings I worked on at Reading in the mid-1980s. The...