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I'd agree. The Newcastle & Carlisle is likely to have a lot of problems with clearances as it's 1830s engineering, and only carries 3tph so not economic to wire. Electrifying to Ashington would be a lot of money for just 2tph (and increasing frequency is difficult in view of the use of the...

I've driven a hired car around the Faroes. Some of the older tunnels are scary: single lane, no lighting, rough rock walls, and just alcoves every so often to tuck into when there's traffic heading in your direction. Probably not so scary if you're an islander in your own car and not having to...

Staggered platforms are used on the Tyne & Wear metro, e.g. at Kingston Park and Fawdon , opened in the early 1980s. But platforms are be on the same side of some level crossings (Callerton Pkway and Bankfoot).

When I was waiting at West Jesmond yesterday afternoon, a 555 stopped at the platform in between regular services. Bleepers sounded but doors didn't open, then it pulled away. Looked as though there were were quite a few staff on board.

According to Wikipedia: Langholm population: 1740 Newcastleton: 768 i.e. if 10% of the population of Langholm decided to go to Carlisle, just one 3-car service would be ample. And even that's not going to happen day after day throughout the year.

One of the shorter platforms (but still adequate for 5 cars) was removed in the latest changes at Kings Cross. That would have been a strange move if OAO were so short of platforms as to need to double up regularly.

I fell roller-skating and my broken arm was treated at the New Addenbrookes in winter 1962/3...so the A&E Dept was open them, but my memory is that there was still a lot of building work going on. The Cambridge South area was used for my school's cross country run course: wet claggy land with a...

There are modern types of treated timber, e.g. Accoya, that have very good dimensional stability and will resist rot for decades even in a damp environment. Accoya website

How about naming plaftorrms after animals? That way even toddlers could find them. All platforms on an island could be animals from the same continent. And platforms used by express services could be fast animals/bird like hawks and cheetahs. Whereas local branchline bays could sloths or cows...

A recent visit to ExCel using the DLR set me wondering about what is planned and what ought to be planned in the way of service changes to public transport in Docklands when the Elizabeth Line opens. Clearly the outer end of the Beckton branch will see an increase in usage as there'll now be...

I'd think my local line, the Tyne Valley would be a candidate, assuming that a in-service range of 60 miles is economically viable. Low maximum speed (and not likely to be increased in the future due to curvature and level crossings), two or three DMUs per hour currently plus little freight, and...

GSW must be a good candidate for a battery/25kV service passenger service, with a good run of OHLE at both ends of the route giving plenty of time to recharge. You might need to shorten the gap between Kilmarnock and Gretna with some OHL. There's a National Grid substation at Dumfries and...

The Faroe Islands' undersea 2-lane road tunnels are costing them around £10million per km. So yes, you can go a long way on £100 billion. Though of course that doesn't include a heap of additional expenditure on safety, power supply, signalling, rolling stock, access lines, ongoing maintenance...

Another reason for going for 25kV, rather than dc is the hope that you can just feed it from the existing mainline supply, saving the expense of new supply points. And if the mainline juice is inadequate to do that, then the new 25kV supply points on the branches will provide necessary back-up...

It must have been an impressive amount of work getting this up and running. I'd agree that the gradient graph is a bit confusing: changing it to percentages (so the number increases as the gradient steepens) would make the graph much more meaningful.

Could you open a petting zoo for rolling stock? Punters would pay to fondle their favourites, and maybe feed them a can or two of diesel (and coolant for the HSTs).

The high point of my day as a commuter in 1978 was waiting at Didcot for the non-stop morning HST into Paddington: another up HST preceded it at the full 125mph .... apparently coming straight at you, then curving though the platform.

I 'd never heard of an "extradosed bridge" so had to look it up in Wikipedia... it's a box-girder bridge with additional support from cable-stays fanning out from low towers. Wiki says they are best-suited to spans of 100m to 250m which sounds a bit short: the Forth Road Bridge (suspension) main...

One benefit of a new west-north chord at Gretna is that you could then close the GSW section by section for upgrading (speed improvements, gauge enhancement, electrification); saving a lot of money and working time (possibly enough to pay for the chord). During the closures, you'd run a...