Recent content by districtline

Wanting something does not entitle you to have it. In the case of London Underground working timetables these are private and not for the public.

The public do not need access to this information. There is no need for them to know the exact trains as London Underground works on a turn up and go basis where there is a train every few minutes.

http://www.alycidon.com/ALYCIDON%20RAIL/INFORMED%20SOURCES%20ARCHIVE/INF%20SRCS%202003/Informed%20Sources%2001%202003.htm If you read that link you will see that Virgin wanted 7 car DMUs to replace the HSTs. The Voyager fleet was however specified by the DfT to be only 4/5 cars in length...

And this includes watching where the guard stands to close the doors.

So you'd expect to be able to listen to the ATC or see the flight plans when on an aircraft then as I said above? You'd expect to be able to watch the control room of a nuclear power plant?

That is why staff are trained and tested in safety critical duties. If you were on a plane, you wouldn't go up and knock on the cockpit door asking for the flight plans would you? You wouldn't demand to be able to listen to live ATC?

How staff operate the railway is of no concern to you as a passenger. This is like on London Underground where some enthusiasts obtaiend Working Timetables and start complaining that a train isn't on time.

Thanks to the DfT's control of rolling stock orders.

Money doesn't grow on trees and the government didn't have any available, at the time there was a recession on. Without the private sector there would have been no new stock.

Does no-one remember the fact that BR didn't order any stock for 1064 days in the 1990s? It was the private sector that finally ended this and introduced new stock.

Virgin got on and ran a train to Birmingham every 20 minutes as that's what the DfT told them to do. Virgin didn't write the VHF timetable. If you increase the fares then people will look at other modes. For a journey to London I doubt many would switch as the train is the only realistic...

This is not the case. Some have to pay a premium to the government and this is shown in the table as a negative subsidy. The Network Grant is paid to Network Rail and does cover part of the total cost of running the railway but it is not a TOC subsidy. --- old post above --- --- new post...

This is not the case, http://www.firstgroup.com/assets/pdfs/investors/presentations/FINAL_half_year_slides_2010.pdf clearly shows FGW and FCC going into a premium payment situation with the other First TOCs getting a subsidy. FGW most certainly did not expect to be in a subsidy situation at...

Some of the franchises do get a subsidy at the start but by the end of the franchise this turns into a significant premium. If the TOCs were not able to cover the cost of running the trains by this time they certainly wouldn't be able to pay the premium and would still need a subsidy but this...

This isn't the case some of the intercity franchises where they have to pay a premium rather than get a subsidy. In this case the full fare clearly does cover the cost of running the train and if they didn't offer cheap advance tickets then they wouldn't have this source of revenue and would...