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

[gg1]

Yes, yes - but what is it that's so good about using a car?

1 - For most journeys it's quicker than public transport, often substantially so.
2 - More often than not it's cheaper too
3 - Flexibility to change my travel plans at short notice comes at no extra cost
4 - I have a guaranteed seat adjusted so it's more comfortable than any train seat I've ever sat in.
5 - Temperature is set exactly to a level I want.
6 - I'm not sharing my car with 'the public' and all their annoying habits.

Doing the trip in a car carries the burden of having to drive it. Having to drive the thing is a real chore - it's work!

Yes it's work but it's work I quite like doing, the only time I find driving remotely stressful is driving into city centres in peak rush hour traffic, which happens to one of the circumstances I will choose a train.

 

[D6130]

Northern currently does this with their class 153’s which are not DDA compliant so I don’t see why they couldn’t have kept some of their pacers and done the same.

Really? Are you sure? As far as I am aware, Northern haven't used any 153s for over a year. Maybe you are thinking of TfW?

 

[BluePenguin]

What would be the benefits of this?

Freeing up capacity and paths on HS1 for more Javelins to Kent, and preventing existing ones from being delayed whenever they are held to allow a Eurostar to pass first

 

[The Ham]

1 - For most journeys it's quicker than public transport, often substantially so.
2 - More often than not it's cheaper too
3 - Flexibility to change my travel plans at short notice comes at no extra cost
4 - I have a guaranteed seat adjusted so it's more comfortable than any train seat I've ever sat in.
5 - Temperature is set exactly to a level I want.
6 - I'm not sharing my car with 'the public' and all their annoying habits.



Yes it's work but it's work I quite like doing, the only time I find driving remotely stressful is driving into city centres in peak rush hour traffic, which happens to one of the circumstances I will choose a train.

On point 2, often people are only counting the fuel costs and so don't consider the full cost of car ownership.

Now obviously if other journeys do justify the cost of owning a car then the extra fuel is going to be a significant amount of the extra costs for making such a trip.

However even then it's not all the costs.

With the average car costing over £3,500 per year:

Average Cost to Run a Car UK 2024

How much does it cost to own a car in the UK? We've analysed real spending data to find out how much people actually spend to run their cars each year.

www.nimblefins.co.uk

It's going to require over 7,000 miles a year in travel to get to a cost of 50p per mile.

Often, because of the high up front costs, people feel that it's not that expensive to do a short trip (and it's not uncommon for quite a few miles a year which are done which are less than a mile) by car. Most of those trips would be better done by another mode by most people.

Now certainly a family travelling is going to find it hard to get the costs to work out, however the vast majority of the time the vast majority of cars are carrying just one person.

Arguments which say "Rural" or "disabilities" (which at most would be 25% of all cars) when justifying continued car ownership miss the point - actually for those groups if car usage reduced by those who had more sustainable options then they would be better off due to less congestion.

It should also be noted that whilst about 15% of the population is rural by definition that includes anyone in a small town of up to 10,000 people. They can actually be fairly well served by public transport and can have a lot of services within walking distance - arguably there could be examples where it's easier to not own a car than in some of the larger settlements (for example lack of choice on schools means that walking to them is more likely to be viable than those who could go to one of 4).

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Placing your feet on the seat opposite should be an automatic £100 penalty if caught, no ifs, no buts. Also, they get ejected at the next station.

If train seats were made comfortable perhaps this wouldn't be so much of an issue (and there is nothing wrong with it if you place your coat or bag there and put your feet on top of that)

Bare feet out on trains absolutely makes my skin CRAWL though. The amount of people with bare feet on the opposite seat, directly on the moquette, in Australia was shocking.

 

[JJmoogle]

Some sort of device should be mandatory on all intercity trains to make them sound deafening like a classic valenta HST, the noise made them seem even faster.

London has an excessive number of terminals and since many have been rebuilt most are ugly dungeons, we can expand and keep Paddington KingsX/St P and Waterloo for long distance, the rest can all be replaced with the use of new thameslink style crossrails and extended tube lines (that might be too logical actually but I assume burning absurd amounts of cash to do it is illogical).

Streamlined Electric-Steam locomotives and accompanying classic looking coaching stock should be developed to run special services.

Trains should have rowdy carriages as a companion to the quiet carriage where people can smoke, drink and play bawdy music with impunity

 

[RT4038]

On point 2, often people are only counting the fuel costs and so don't consider the full cost of car ownership.

And often people trying to argue that public transport is cheaper than the car fail to take into account the difference in time between using a car and using public transport. Of course, if a persons time is discounted to nothing, but people don't think like that. (e.g. Round trip to visit elderly mother for two hours - 4 hours by car pretty much guaranteed, at any time I like, [accomplished in a morning], 8 hours by public transport if lucky, restricted to the timetables, [whole day gone] - stop for a bit of shopping on the way: 30 min. by car, at least another hour, maybe 2, by public transport).

Sorry, many people are not just considering raw financial cost, but they balance this with time and convenience, and public transport loses out except for some pretty specific examples.

Once you've got a car for those journeys (and there are more of them than immediately meets the eye), then the marginal cost of replacing all or most of public transport journeys plummets.

 

[nickswift99]

Some sort of device should be mandatory on all intercity trains to make them sound deafening like a classic valenta HST, the noise made them seem even faster.

London has an excessive number of terminals and since many have been rebuilt most are ugly dungeons, we can expand and keep Paddington KingsX/St P and Waterloo for long distance, the rest can all be replaced with the use of new thameslink style crossrails and extended tube lines (that might be too logical actually but I assume burning absurd amounts of cash to do it is illogical).

Streamlined Electric-Steam locomotives and accompanying classic looking coaching stock should be developed to run special services.

Trains should have rowdy carriages as a companion to the quiet carriage where people can smoke, drink and play bawdy music with impunity

Yes! Now electric cars have fake noises inside the cabin, all electric stock should be retrofitted. The driver should have the choice of several modes, including the "We're running late and I've got plans this evening" mode, which would make the train sound like it's performing a record breaking run. If there's an abiliity to electronically alter any aspect of the train suspension, then this should also be set to it's hardest setting to make the ride bumpier, all while the train is crawling at 10 mph...

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Some sort of device should be mandatory on all intercity trains to make them sound deafening like a classic valenta HST, the noise made them seem even faster.

I can just imagine that... though I imagine a DCC Sound Decoder for a 1:1 scale train would be quite expensive!

 

[Sonic1234]

1 - For most journeys it's quicker than public transport, often substantially so.
2 - More often than not it's cheaper too
3 - Flexibility to change my travel plans at short notice comes at no extra cost
4 - I have a guaranteed seat adjusted so it's more comfortable than any train seat I've ever sat in.
5 - Temperature is set exactly to a level I want.
6 - I'm not sharing my car with 'the public' and all their annoying habits.

7. It's a mobile storage unit so any kit you want to bring with you, things that are handy to have just in case, purchases you make etc. don't have to be carried around all day.

 

[SteveM70]

Bashing in the 80s would have been much less enjoyable if we'd had mobile phones, RTT, details of allocations etc etc. Half of the fun was the thrill of the chase, and not knowing what might come around the corner

 

[railfan99]

Bare feet out on trains absolutely makes my skin CRAWL though. The amount of people with bare feet on the opposite seat, directly on the moquette, in Australia was shocking.

But not in Victoria, where I live, perhaps due to cooler weather between (roughly) mid April and mid to sometimes late December.

May be a problem in NSW and Queensland, plus WA and SA. In years of travelling in Oz I've rarely seen it, and that includes summer travel in Sydney/NSW and less frequently Brisbane/Qld. Apologies for lurching OT.

 

[Western Lord]

7. It's a mobile storage unit so any kit you want to bring with you, things that are handy to have just in case, purchases you make etc. don't have to be carried around all day.

Exactly so. Which is why the idea of everyone getting rid of their cars in favour of driverless cars/pods that can be called up at a moment's notice would never work. My car is full of my junk that I don't want to lug around with me whenever I get out.

 

[gg1]

And often people trying to argue that public transport is cheaper than the car fail to take into account the difference in time between using a car and using public transport. Of course, if a persons time is discounted to nothing, but people don't think like that. (e.g. Round trip to visit elderly mother for two hours - 4 hours by car pretty much guaranteed, at any time I like, [accomplished in a morning], 8 hours by public transport if lucky, restricted to the timetables, [whole day gone] - stop for a bit of shopping on the way: 30 min. by car, at least another hour, maybe 2, by public transport).

Sorry, many people are not just considering raw financial cost, but they balance this with time and convenience, and public transport loses out except for some pretty specific examples.

Once you've got a car for those journeys (and there are more of them than immediately meets the eye), then the marginal cost of replacing all or most of public transport journeys plummets.

This exactly. My partner is disabled so we need a car anyway but even if that wasn't the case we'd still have one because it's so much faster and more convenient for the majority of journeys.

7. It's a mobile storage unit so any kit you want to bring with you, things that are handy to have just in case, purchases you make etc. don't have to be carried around all day.

I'd also add this:

8. There are some journeys which just aren't practical by any form of public transport (including taxis) such as tip runs or virtually any journey where you don't want to simply get from A to B but rather A to B via C, D and E.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

This exactly. My partner is disabled so we need a car anyway but even if that wasn't the case we'd still have one because it's so much faster and more convenient for the majority of journeys.



I'd also add this:

8. There are some journeys which just aren't practical by any form of public transport (including taxis) such as tip runs or virtually any journey where you don't want to simply get from A to B but rather A to B via C, D and E.

This is something that the more militant "transit advocates" forget. I for example go out of my way to make public transport work for certain trips, even when it costs more or is a little inconvenient, but I'm going to be getting my first car in fifteen years in the next few weeks because there are certain things that public transport simply can't do... or more accurately, trying to use public transport for those jobs would be unfair on other users.
I'll still use the trains where it's practical, such as for trips to Leeds or Meadowhall for shopping, or for going to football matches (on days there isn't engineering works or strikes)... but the calls for severe restrictions on private cars are mostly impractical and illiberal.

 

[Bletchleyite]

8. There are some journeys which just aren't practical by any form of public transport (including taxis) such as tip runs or virtually any journey where you don't want to simply get from A to B but rather A to B via C, D and E.

Councils provide very poorly for non-car-owners to dispose of stuff - the fees are swingeing. Should in my view be that if no vehicle is registered at a given household that bulky waste collection is free or charged only at a very nominal rate comparable to the fuel to go to the tip.

 

[NorthKent1989]

Some controversial opinions:

1: The Thameslink network needs a shake up, it’s too big, and it’s trying to do too many things at once, a oversized metro service or a interurban limited stop service, personally the latter is better for Thameslink, curtail the Sutton Loop and Catford lines to Blackfriars, bin off the Rainham service back to Southeastern, and restore the semi fast pattern again, and be the interurban express network it’s meant to be.

2: London Bridge isn’t the fancy interchange it’s made out to be, especially since the December 2022 timetable change, there should have been a Bridge or a intermediate mezzanine crossing or footbridge to siphon those seeking another train or those exiting the station or heading to the tube station.

3: The Elizabeth line can be unbearable, can hardly get any standing room at Woolwich most mornings, when it works it works well but the overcrowding issue is a pain,

4: However that said, I feel that the overcrowding of the Elizabeth line has a lot to do with people abandon the Woolwich and Bexleyheath lines like I’ve done as SE/DfT have gone out their way to make SE as unattractive as possible in “rationalising the network to one line one terminal” which in my view is pointless, especially as Charing Cross is the preferred destination.

5: The Gatwick and Heathrow expresses should be abolished, have Gatwick be a stop on a London-Clapham-Croydon-Gatwick-Brighton express service, in addition start pointing out London Bridge as the station which has the quickest service to the airport, and by getting rid of the Heathrow Express you’re freeing up paths on the GWML, you could have a fast Elizabeth line service to Heathrow to compensate, after Paddington it calls only at Ealing Broadway and Hayes & Harlington.

 

[Pdf]

curtail the Sutton Loop and Catford lines to Blackfriars

If this is done (already is for Catfird during off peak) the weird gaps in the core service need to be fixed so you're not stuck waiting 15+ minutes to get to Farringdon/St Pancs for the interchange you actually wanted.

 

[Krokodil]

7. It's a mobile storage unit so any kit you want to bring with you, things that are handy to have just in case, purchases you make etc. don't have to be carried around all day.

And there was me thinking that many people just didn't clean their cars. Turns out that they're saving those Mars Bar wrappers and crisp packets just in case they come in handy. Well I never.

 

[riceuten]

There are a certain breed of citizen who would dress in rags and eat gruel before taking public transport. They are also usually the kind of people who take to social media to endlessly complain about parking, road tax etc and insist that the patch of road outside their house (on the public highway) is "theirs". Jeremy Clarkson is their god.

This will even be where the train is miles quicker than the car. It's not "illiberal" to encourage use of alternatives to car driving through a variety of incentives. Luxembourg has free public transport on mainly brand new trains, trams, and buses that cover the vast majority of the country and STILL people moan there about bus lanes, and lack of parking (even when there is plentiful park and ride). As an ex of mine once said "Some people would drive their cars to bed if they could".

 

[LYuen]

For short to medium distance stopping services, there should be a ticket that can be sold onboard or paid upon exiting the station (basically PAYG)
Passenger getting on a train should be hassle-less and not worry about whether or not they have the correct fare - the station staff can sort out the correct fare at the destination.

A practical routine can be:
At the origin station, passenger get a boarding ticket, indicating where and when the journey starts. An initial deposit can be charged to issue one (e.g. £2)
At the destination, hand the boarding ticket to ticket office staff. The staff calculates the outstanding fare and passenger pays to finish the journey.
Alternatively, passenger can pay to train conductor to get the ticket paid to the destination, for example, when the destination is an unmanned station.

The process can be alongside the existing ticket system and the entire process can be implemented with automated gates, basically like the car park entry and exit gate system.

 

[riceuten]

For short to medium distance stopping services, there should be a ticket that can be sold onboard or paid upon exiting the station (basically PAYG)
Passenger getting on a train should be hassle-less and not worry about whether or not they have the correct fare - the station staff can sort out the correct fare at the destination.

The Key Smartcard does this for me, and is VERY handy (KeyGo, for which you can even add a railcard, involving the wonderfully low tech solution of sending a JPEG of it to Southern Customer Services).

A practical routine can be:
At the origin station, passenger get a boarding ticket, indicating where and when the journey starts. An initial deposit can be charged to issue one (e.g. £2)
At the destination, hand the boarding ticket to ticket office staff. The staff calculates the outstanding fare and passenger pays to finish the journey.
Alternatively, passenger can pay to train conductor to get the ticket paid to the destination, for example, when the destination is an unmanned station.

The process can be alongside the existing ticket system and the entire process can be implemented with automated gates, basically like the car park entry and exit gate system.

Smartcards exist for other operators as well, but no other PAYG cards I know of yet. This needs to come. And staff need to be trained that a South West Railway ticket on an East Midland railway smart card is NOT invalid because it's not an SWR card.

 

[nickswift99]

Austerity trains need to be built to address the current shortage of rolling stock with high density bench seats, no aircon (because it never works properly anyway) and centrally locked slammed doors - at least 3 each side of the carriage. To keep with environmental concerns, wood should be preferred over plastic. If necessary, technical expertise from Indian Railways should be used to design and build the stock, because they know how to run a railway in extreme temperatures/weathers.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm all for the idea of a national contactless/smartcard scheme and think the idea of extending TfL's out into the NSE area is the wrong way of doing it.

People talk about high fares, but I mostly travel walk-up and would be more than happy to tap in/out for a (half return priced) single half way up the country. Why not? You'd probably want to do a pre-authorisation of a reasonable amount, but fuel stations preauthorise £100 these days so that's not a showstopper. You wouldn't need to preauthorise a single from Wick to Penzance, because you've got other sanctions, e.g. to block a declined card from further use, and because hardly anybody is doing that journey, so even if every single person that did travelled for free the loss would be next to nothing.

 

[PacerTrain142]

That’s not extra capacity though, it’s swapping a unit for another, older unit

No but would be cheaper due to the cheaper running and leasing costs of the pacer. And on busy services where they are just using a 2 coach sprinter train, an extra pacer would really come in handy. No one would be forced to travel on it either.

Some sort of device should be mandatory on all intercity trains to make them sound deafening like a classic valenta HST, the noise made them seem even faster.




Trains should have rowdy carriages as a companion to the quiet carriage where people can smoke, drink and play bawdy music with impunity

Yes totally agree with this. Allows the noisy people to be noisy while allowing others who want a quiet journey to go into the quiet carriage. And that noise thing would be awesome, I would love it if boring quiet electric trains could be made to sound like a roaring pacer!

Yes! Now electric cars have fake noises inside the cabin, all electric stock should be retrofitted. The driver should have the choice of several modes, including the "We're running late and I've got plans this evening" mode, which would make the train sound like it's performing a record breaking run. If there's an abiliity to electronically alter any aspect of the train suspension, then this should also be set to it's hardest setting to make the ride bumpier, all while the train is crawling at 10 mph...

Yes I’d love this, most trains are not bouncy enough, i liked the bouncyness of a pacer on jointed track.

This exactly. My partner is disabled so we need a car anyway but even if that wasn't the case we'd still have one because it's so much faster and more convenient for the majority of journeys.



I'd also add this:

8. There are some journeys which just aren't practical by any form of public transport (including taxis) such as tip runs or virtually any journey where you don't want to simply get from A to B but rather A to B via C, D and E.

You can do that on public transport as well. For example sometimes we get the train to Blackpool south and then come home on the Blackpool north line becuase it’s more convenient that way. If you were travelling between say Manchester and London and got an “any route permitted“ ticket you could do that.

Councils provide very poorly for non-car-owners to dispose of stuff - the fees are swingeing. Should in my view be that if no vehicle is registered at a given household that bulky waste collection is free or charged only at a very nominal rate comparable to the fuel to go to the tip.

Totally agree. As a non-car household we cannot even visit the recycling centre anymore becuase since COVID it’s been for cars only! We’ve had to throw stuff away which could have been recycled.

 

[Thirteen]

I'm honestly bemused that someone wants the rickety old Pacers back on the network.

Austerity trains need to be built to address the current shortage of rolling stock with high density bench seats, no aircon (because it never works properly anyway) and centrally locked slammed doors - at least 3 each side of the carriage. To keep with environmental concerns, wood should be preferred over plastic. If necessary, technical expertise from Indian Railways should be used to design and build the stock, because they know how to run a railway in extreme temperatures/weathers.

That's not going to happen like ever!!

 

[eldomtom2]

A large proportion of railway enthusiasts - perhaps even a majority - are really train enthusiasts.

 

[Allwinter_Kit]

I know this will be unpopular but as a big pacer fan I say BRING BACK THE PACERS!

They were awesome diesel units (imo), their small size and cheap running costs made them ideal for quieter routes like Ormskirk to Preston or Darlington to Bishop Auckland.

Yes, I know they are not compliant with the new disability legislation, but the thing is, if they are hooked up to a disability compliant unit (for example a class 150) then they can provide extra capacity on busy routes and/or at busy times. No one can complain about riding on a pacer if they have the option of riding on the connected sprinter unit. Northern currently does this with their class 153’s which are not DDA compliant so I don’t see why they couldn’t have kept some of their pacers and done the same.

Also, I don’t see why they couldn’t have refurbised the pacers to meet the disability legislation. People say it’s because of the step on the doors and how it’s not disability friendly, well on every train you still have to step up from the platform to get on the train anyway and the pacers did have a ramp onboard for wheelchairs.

They even refrpurbised a class 144 pacer to meet disability legislation and it looked great, so I don’t see why they couldn’t have done it with the rest of the fleet. Seems daft to have gone to the trouble of refurbishing the unit only to get rid of it a couple of years later.

Also, with the cost of living so high right now, including rail fares, having a train that is cheap to lease and maintain means it’s cheaper to run and would enable cheaper rail fares for passengers.


Another contraversial idea of mine would be to make a new kind of pacer type train, maybe literally just a bus but with train wheels instead of bus wheels. Or just convert some railways into busways/light rail or even a private tarmack road for buses only. It would be much cheaper to operate so would enable cheaper fares and for slower routes probably not much of a difference in journey time, if anything maybe a bit quicker as a bus can accelerate faster than a train can, certainly in terms of initial acceleration between 0 and 20 mph.

No.

Pacers were awful, are awful, and the fact that heritage lines now run them outside of a kind of "look how terrible things were in the 90s/00s/10s" way is terrifying.

The idea of rocking up at a heritage railway on a Saturday and instead of the whoosh of steam being presented with the drudgery of my commute for years is madness (although I fully accept that many older hands would say the same about steam itself).

They are inaccessible, awful, loud, draughty and awful. The only reason you might consider them is to boost capacity that would be much better satisfied by ordering new damn trains and electrifying more of the network to use said new trains.

Still, I guess you fulfilled the brief about controversial opinions not based on logic!

 

[Bletchleyite]

The idea of rocking up at a heritage railway on a Saturday and instead of the whoosh of steam being presented with the drudgery of my commute for years is madness (although I fully accept that many older hands would say the same about steam itself).

I quite enjoyed a ride on one on the Wensleydale. Good all round views, and a bit 1990s-retro. The early 1990s were thirty years ago, remember - that's longer ago than the 1960s were in the 80s.

 

[Napier]

My controversial opinion is that Beeching is underhated. He is judged by what he got and not the far more extensive cuts he wanted (see The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes).

Wasn't Beeching on the board of ICI at the time and I do believe they made Tarmac!