Controversial railway opinions (without a firm foundation in logic..)

[778]

Some controversial opinions that will make me unpopular on this forum.

1) Brunel was a brilliant engineer but he (and the other railway engineers of the 1800s) are responsible for the deaths of thousands of men who built the railways, by not providing them with safe working conditions.

2) All of the 1980s built multiple units should have been withdrawn from service by now. 150s and 319s are not suitable trains for the 2020s.

3) The APTs should have been continued with. They could have been just as successful as the HSTs and would have captured the imagination of the public, bringing many more passengers to the railway.

4) There are too many heritage railways in this country. They cannot all survive in the long term.

 

[trebor79]

We need to wean ourselves off our dependency on oil, and furthermore what will drive people to cars is them being electric when trains and buses aren't.

Have to admit I haven't used a long distance train once since getting an electric car. The gulf in cost of journey is now ridiculously wide, and there no feeling of guilt over emissions.

 

[owidoe]

Anyone with a “Sword” badge should be ignored. They’re not rail staff. They’re police interview rejects who badly want to have some power

What is a sword badge?

 

[trebor79]

Some controversial opinions that will make me unpopular on this forum.

1) Brunel was a brilliant engineer but he (and the other railway enginners of the 1800s) are responsible for the deaths of thousands of men who built the railways, by not providing them with safe working conditions.

2) All of the 1980s built multiple units should have been withdrawn from service by now. 150s and 319s are not suitable trains for the 2020s.

3) The APTs should have been continued with. They could have been just as successful as the HSTs and would have captured the imagination of the public, bringing many more passengers to the railway.

4) There are too many heritage railways in this country. They cannot all survive in the long term.

Agree with all of these bar point 1. I believe it was generally contractors that did the actual building, and in any case the conditions were if their time, you can't judge fairly through a modern moral lens.

I do think the next decade will see a number of heritage lines close, regrettably.

 

[Meerkat]

Nationalisation is a terrible idea.
Competition should be used to drive the prices on profitable lines down. Their passengers shouldn’t be milked to subsidise basket cases and help enthusiasts avoid their closure. If a line is socially essential it should be subsidised by all taxpayers, not by other passengers.
Guards should leave the doors alone and spend all their time checking tickets, helping passengers, selling them stuff on quiet lines, and tasering anyone who forces Others to listen to their music/games/TV/loud conversation, or puts their feet on the seats.
Compulsory reservations should be the default on Intercity services

 

[D6130]

Railway enthusiasts should be charged a supplementary fare to travel on loco-hauled trains.

 

[JamieL]

Brunel was a brilliant engineer...

Brunel was excellent at self promotion but I am not sure he was as brilliant as his historical reputation suggests. His railway station in Bristol was so brilliantly designed that it is no longer suitable for railway use and is used as car park. His intransigence over railway gauge led the GWR down a blind alley.

 

[yorksrob]

Brunel was excellent at self promotion but I am not sure he was as brilliant as his historical reputation suggests. His railway station in Bristol was so brilliantly designed that it is no longer suitable for railway use and is used as car park. His intransigence over railway gauge led the GWR down a blind alley.

To be fair, the main line to Paddington is still quite handy !

 

[PGAT]

Train companies should remove all technology like WiFi and charging points from trains and instead promote rail travel as a form of "digital detox".

Instead of spending the entire journey hunched over their mobile phones passengers should be encouraged to engage in more healthy activities such as enjoying the view out of the window, reading a book or maybe engaging in mindfulness exercises.

Sounds nice in theory, but in practice there are dozens of legitimate reasons why one would need internet access onboard

 

[trebor79]

Brunel was excellent at self promotion but I am not sure he was as brilliant as his historical reputation suggests. His railway station in Bristol was so brilliantly designed that it is no longer suitable for railway use and is used as car park.

What a ludicrous POV. The reason the original station isn't used is because the curved platform built between that and the B&E station grew into the through station we know today.
Brunel's terminus became too small for the length and number of trains. This happened with many other stations across the country.

It's testament that the building still stands, as do many of his other constructions.

 

[Trainguy34]

Nationalisation is a terrible idea.
Competition should be used to drive the prices on profitable lines down. Their passengers shouldn’t be milked to subsidise basket cases and help enthusiasts avoid their closure. If a line is socially essential it should be subsidised by all taxpayers, not by other passengers.

I could happily second that for the same reasons.

 

[JamieL]

What a ludicrous POV. The reason the original station isn't used is because the curved platform built between that and the B&E station grew into the through station we know today.
Brunel's terminus became too small for the length and number of trains. This happened with many other stations across the country.

It's testament that the building still stands, as do many of his other constructions.

Indeed, so you would have thought a 'brilliant' engineer would have foreseen that. The requirement for the new station was because he built office blocks at the end of the track.

I live in Bristol and everything is branded under his name here. Even stuff he didn't build. He gets way too much credit!

To be fair, the main line to Paddington is still quite handy !

Yes indeed. Just a shame he could extend the line into London proper

 

[HSTEd]

How about:

The bulk of the railway infrastructure is woefully unfit for purpose in the modern era, and fixing most of it would be so disruptive and expensive that it'd be cheaper to build a replacement from scratch.

 

[yorksrob]

[QUOTE="JamieL, post: 6369178, ]

Yes indeed. Just a shame he could extend the line into London proper
[/QUOTE]

Well, at least they didn't end up sharing Euston as planned !

 

[JamieL]

Well, at least they didn't end up sharing Euston as planned !

Would that have been so bad? Useful for me when travelling into town to get the sleeper north. I suppose Old Oak Common is a step in that direction anyway!

 

[D6130]

The majority of the rail network should be closed and converted into linear nature reserves specialising in Buddleia and Himalayan Balsam.

 

[eldomtom2]

I'm not worried about being "dependent" , once the demand from cars withers away, we'll probably be able to run what we need solely from the North Sea. Yes I know that will run out eventually, I said for 10 years , not forever.

But not electrifying doesn't mean using oil for another ten years. It means using it for another forty due to buying new diesel-only trains. Unless you suggest withdrawing them before they're life-expired, which of course requires electrification.

Most normies don't care deeply about environmentalism. If they did, most cars now would be electric, at least for the middle class and above, and the government wouldn't have to resort to banning new ICE cars in 2030.

Most people do care about environmentalism to some extent, and the more the cost of an electric car compared to a diesel one declines the worse polluting diesel trains are going to look.

 

[PGAT]

How about:

The bulk of the railway infrastructure is woefully unfit for purpose in the modern era, and fixing most of it would be so disruptive and expensive that it'd be cheaper to build a replacement from scratch.

You would have to buy up all the new land and actually find fitting routes to go. Alot of new stations nowadays are parkway stations, because there isn't the space to build a line in the town or city centre anymore

 

[yorksrob]

Would that have been so bad? Useful for me when travelling into town to get the sleeper north. I suppose Old Oak Common is a step in that direction anyway!

Handy perhaps, but then we wouldn't have the cathedral that is Paddington !

 

[renegademaster]

But not electrifying doesn't mean using oil for another ten years. It means using it for another forty due to buying new diesel-only trains. Unless you suggest withdrawing them before they're life-expired, which of course requires electrification.

Most people do care about environmentalism to some extent, and the more the cost of an electric car compared to a diesel one declines the worse polluting diesel trains are going to look.

They care when it comes to picking the socially desirable answer in yougov polls, however revealed preferences show themselves with new car purchases, even among the high end who can afford electric , and when airports are packed to the brim every summer.

 

[trebor79]

Indeed, so you would have thought a 'brilliant' engineer would have foreseen that. The requirement for the new station was because he built office blocks at the end of the track.

No, there was the GWR, and the B&E which had stations near each other but at right angles and significant vertical separation.
Nothing to do with the station offices being built across the end of it (same for the B&E station and many other termini). It wasn't designed as a through station.

 

[JamieL]

No, there was the GWR, and the B&E which had stations near each other but at right angles and significant vertical separation.
Nothing to do with the station offices being built across the end of it (same for the B&E station and many other termini). It wasn't designed as a through station.

That's my point - surely a 'brilliant' engineer would have thought that the railways might expand? A short but spot on view here IMHO:

Letter: Brunel was a genius, but a flawed one

Letters: Dan Mutadich of the Sainsbury Management Fellowship must have gained his view of IK Brunel more from the cliched image of popular journalism than from a knowledge of engineering history (Where are the next Brunels? asks report, April 9).

www.theguardian.com

 

[Topological]

They care when it comes to picking the socially desirable answer in yougov polls, however revealed preferences show themselves with new car purchases, even among the high end who can afford electric , and when airports are packed to the brim every summer.

Sadly very true. Sadly also applies in any other situation where people are asked questions and think the answer may be used to judge them.

The only problem with the revealed preferences argument is that you have to consider what the alternatives are. Use of inadequate trains on a route does not give information on the preference for train type.

On another topic that has come up, revealed preferences by some groups for short distance advances, and others for the alternative flexible ticket, do say that people are willing to trade flexibility for price when travelling by rail.

 

[yorksrob]

They care when it comes to picking the socially desirable answer in yougov polls, however revealed preferences show themselves with new car purchases, even among the high end who can afford electric , and when airports are packed to the brim every summer.

To be fair, we can hardly criticise them when we have overcrowded trains and a lack of affordable fares.

Max out the train lengths and introduce a Bahn card (or equivalent) then lets criticise the Freddie Laker brigade.

 

[eldomtom2]

They care when it comes to picking the socially desirable answer in yougov polls, however revealed preferences show themselves with new car purchases, even among the high end who can afford electric , and when airports are packed to the brim every summer.

"Revealed preference" is an extremely misleading term. What people do is not the same as what they would like to do. That people still buy IC cars does not prove that they will continue to accept the existence of diesel trains in the future.

 

[HSTEd]

You would have to buy up all the new land and actually find fitting routes to go. Alot of new stations nowadays are parkway stations, because there isn't the space to build a line in the town or city centre anymore

A lot of stations could be replaced with two platform underground stations based on the Barcelona Metro model (station consisting of a vertical access shaft and the platforms inside a large tunnel bore).

With newbuild infrastructure there would be no conflicting moves at junctions etc, all trains would be operating ATO and all trains would have identical performance characteristics, alongside the ability to climb up to 4% gradients.

 

[yorksrob]

"Revealed preference" is an extremely misleading term. What people do is not the same as what they would like to do. That people still buy IC cars does not prove that they will continue to accept the existence of diesel trains in the future.

If people are running IC cars and criticising diesel trains, they need to be told that they're nitwits/incorrect.

 

[Kilopylae]

Controversial on here:

1. The railway should return to its 2000s focus on trying to provide as many direct X to Y routes as possible. Rather than putting pressure on people to change their expectations and learn to love European-style or Tube-style multiple interchange journeys, we should accept, even celebrate as part of our distinctive railway culture, the popular aversion to changing trains.

Perhaps even more so:

2. Many perfectly nice people think fare evasion is not that deep, and there's nothing inherently selfish about this as an individual attitude, it's just a different culture. Historians might call it social crime: something the perpetrator and their community don't regard as criminal or blameworthy, but that is criminalised by the state. To be honest - fair play to people who can get away with it. If the railway was nationalised and reasonably priced, I might get more excited about it, but under current conditions I can't get too mad about people doing something that is so normalised. I have also seen a massive overreaction on here to graffiti on the railway - it's another thing that (as the thread title says, irrationally not logically!) I just don't think is anywhere near as deep as this forum makes it sound. It feels absurd to use the word "criminal" in either context like it's a moral condemnation.

 

[eldomtom2]

If people are running IC cars and criticising diesel trains, they need to be told that they're nitwits/incorrect.

Define "criticising diesel trains".

 

[yorksrob]

Define "criticising diesel trains".

Criticising them for diesel emissions in particular.