Recent content by EvoIV

Until the first unit slides on ice or oil straight through the buffers. There's a reason professional driving is done the way it is. Yes an amount of it is arse covering and box ticking but a fair bit of it is about giving yourself an "out" if the situation stops developing as you expect...

There's a video that seems to have been widely shared on social media showing the moment of collapse. It appears to be a rearward CCTV view from a piece of moving plant equipment. The track and ballast has already been lifted. The machine stops as the collapse starts but it's not clear if...

There must be loads, there's one at Eastleigh, one at Bordesley just randomly off the top of my head.

There's one on the Down Cherwell Valley line approaching Aynho Junction. I'd assume to do with maintaining braking distance when there are line speed increases.

Once when I've sat at a booked timing point, having very unusually been allowed to continue to run about 150 miles quite early, and phoned the signaller up to ask that he doesn't give me the road early as a problem had developed that I intended to work through while standing out of the way...

I don't even know where to begin with that. But in short, no, you don't get heat with the loco shut down. The loco batteries are notoriously feeble and will run flat just with lights on. Cab heating requires electrckery, and lots of it. Never seen a microwave in this country, would be nice...

For context to the above, intermediate signal boxes should display yellow handsignals during single line working, unless they are closed - module P1 3.5

Yeah I wasn't meaning to imply you'd fall into the trap, just make the point that experience had told me to try to forget how the signalling works while actually driving. With regards to my example above, the warning board applies to positions 5 and 6 (though I don't sign the route from...

On another related but differen't example, there's a route where I need to take the slowest diverging route. Because of this, the route is approach controlled. More often than not the route is clear through but you're still coming up to a red before it clears. After the double yellow is an...

This sums it up perfectly for me. As a driver I'm interested in how the signalling works around me but I try, so far as possible, to compartmentalize this so that I just focus on driving to the signals. I might listen to the subtle hints that certain sequences give you as to what may be...

If a 66 with some guage-checked-on-departure boxes has somehow damaged the overhead conductor bar then I suspect you've got a far bigger problem. Far more likely that the damage is related to the introduction of passenger units on 25kV since yesterday.

I believe some red team locos still have them, whereas all blue and green team locos seem to have had the function of the AFT cock automated such that manual input is no longer required, bar the usual isolation of the E70. With regard to the naming, my memory is that they were previously...

In my limited experience, older is definitely faster as they had less, or no, emissions control equipment and bigger engines. It all hinges on the gearbox though. I can confirm that a Streetlite in whatever guise my former employer ordered is scarily twitchy and sounds like it's almost on the...

Here's a copy of a diagram a former colleague sent me when he was working in Bournemouth. Quite a long day.

Leaf it out yew saps! Some treemendous puns though. Calls for Doctor Beeching? Should have called for Doctoring Beech. Nurse! He's out of bed again... Edit: Line reopened about half eleven with some remnants left on platform for later clearing.