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Moderator note: Split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/surely-the-case-is-now-much-stronger-for-bere-alston-tavistock-okehampton.255787/ Even the Tavistock-Okehampton section is likely to get you to Padstow, which I'm sure would generate an order of magnitude more traffic for the railway!

So as people may be aware, the EU sponsored a competition to select a future coupler for EU railfreight, to replace chain and buffer type couplings. After a competition the resulting coupler selected is a Scharfenberg, with the reference being a design developed by Voith. One oddity is the...

So - firstly I want to say that I don't want to relitigate the DOO debate, so please lets not have another one of those arguments. But rather I am interested in the technical question of the best way to provide revenue protection without reliance on universal on board ticket checks or universal...

So there has been some recent noise in the English language press and in academia about the future of the 1500V electrification system in the Netherlands. The reports were that the long-proposed conversion to 25kV 50Hz has been abandoned in favour of a shorter term conversion to 3kV, providing...

Somewhat related question not worth a new thread. I just saw a Mark 4 rake southbound at Grantham at speed painted in what appeared to be Intercity Swallow. Was I hallucinating?

I have recently become very interested in the architecture of the new Barcelona Metro lines 9/10 - especially their "two stacked platforms in a single bore" system. And the very striking architecture of the stations, especially Llefia and La Salut. I was wondering, however, just how many...

The obvious technical solution here is linear eddy current brakes for emergency use. But that would probably only be practical on new stock and could get very expensive infrastructure wise. But it would stop high speed sliding SPAD incidents like this from happening. Certainly cheaper than...

The journey time given for MKC-Oxford over East West Rail is 45 minutes, when its only about 55km by rail. That's about 45mph average speed, which seems a bit slow given the supposed nominal 100mph line speed and relative paucity of intermediate stops. Is this just low performance diesel...

So something a little different. Currently the UK spends about £84bn each year on private motor cars etc, including purchase, maintenance, fuel etc. If we have £84bn/year to operate a public transport system for the entire country, what could be bought with that money? Passenger transport...

Does anyone know the specific rationale for the escalation from 4.35m tunnels on the Jubilee Line Extension to 5.2m on the Northern Line extension? My understanding was that the JLE tunnels did include a continuous evacuation walkway, which makes the extra size seem a little odd. Have...

Does anyone know, why the Island line was third rail in the first place? Given that is/was entirely self contained and the only stock on it would be ex-LU tube stock, why wasn't it laid for fourth rail? Even if the fourth rail was simply bonded to the running rails it would have avoided the...

Crayonistas of the world unite! Well we've had a lot of recent discussion about reopenings vs new lines, so I thought I'd do a thread on something I've been toying with for a while, mainly for my supervisor in relation to transport decarbonisation. I know I am considered to be a bit of a...

Perhaps it would be better to obliterate all pre Beeching maps of the railways, and destroy all remaining surface featurse of alignments, so it was if they had never existed. That way we wouldn't end up with people constantly trying to reopen them, even though today you wouldn't build a railway...

Well, although it was expensive, I'm not sure we can dispute that the London Overground project has suceeded in dramatically increasing patronage on the railways in London that were previously somewhat backwaters. Are there any other lines that could heavily benefit from such investment? (I...

Moderator note: Split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/hs2-loading-gauge.214161/ They could significantly improve domestic services if they abandoned the illusion that Stratford International will ever see international services and convert the international platforms for full time...

Slightly peculiar topic here, but some work I am doing leads me to consider the Keadby bridge (near Althorpe station) - Officially King George V bridge. Old Bascule raising bridge that was disabled some time in the 50s and converted into a fixed span. Does anyone have any idea how much...

If gas boilers really do get replaced en masse with heat pumps, a lot of people are going to get annoyed if they have 60A service supplies to their houses, as many do!

Mod Note: Posts #1 - #35 originally in this thread. ECP braking is not going to increase operating costs, so any freight flow viable now is viable afterwards. So the cost would be buying up the bankrupt FOCs stock at the auction, fitting it and then the housekeeping of setting up a replacemen...

Mod Note: Posts #1 - #55 originally in this thread. Well one can imagine, with the computing power at our disposal, we could build a model of the entire railway network and then automate timetable generation based on optimisation for various outputs that would be put into the system. Would...

Does anyone know if there is an open-to-the-public way to get a record of just how large the "mainline-registered" rail fleet is? I suppose I could get passenger stock by cycling through the TOCs, but I have no idea how to estimate freight locomotives and "active" freight wagons. (ie. wagons...