Recent content by InTheEastMids

Government's gone extremely quiet on this - I personally think this will not happen in the UK because - we lack true long-haul road freight of the kind you see on Mainland Europe & North America - it's starting to look like the majority of HGV mileage in UK can be covered by battery electric...

I guess it'd be argued the HSTs weren't life expired 20 years ago. Perhaps MML HSTs should have been replaced by IEP Project trains at the same time as elsewhere? But that would presumably also have been locked into the same contract that I believe some Informed Sources believe to be a pretty...

To address the original question, it's arguably the other way around. I don't know how Network Rail works out electricity costs to its customers, but Network Rail, as a customer, will have a bill for traction electricity cost that includes Climate Change Levy, and various schemes such as the...

Then: Class 81-85 locomotive (IC train) ~2.4 MW Class 304 EMU: 620 kW Now: Class 390 (11-car): 6 MW Class 350: 2 MW So basically each train uses > 2x the power for traction, plus higher frequency timetables

Yes, but they do mean that EMR IC services are not stuffed with passengers that join/leave at Luton, Bedford and Wellingborough for instance, which was definitely the case until 2020. You'd have a Nottingham HST that was standing room only from St Pancras, yet have a bay of 4 to yourself after...

I think what's interesting about this that NWR and National Highways did a joint multi-modal study about Solent-Midlands freight back in 2021. The conclusions are - in my humble opinion - the worst kind of non-commital waffle about working together with stakeholders etc. Agree with this, DP...

The Leicester London Road Bridge has come up previously on this thread before, e.g. way back in 2019, see #3271 below: To which, one of the very knowledgeable commentators on this forum said this in #3272 As I'm not in the rail industry, let alone close to the project, I have no clue whether...

Agree with this speculation, and it presumably hinges on the contract between EMR and Hitachi... Especially if Hitachi are looking at real-world 80x data and thinking they can't meet contractual performance/availability guarantees with 33 trains. In which case, perhaps the customer outcome is...

Yes, I don't think anybody is saying they are unsolvable issues - I certainly wasn't - but they are issues that need to be considered beyond just measuring how many kWh are in the traction battery. Obviously it makes sense to start with a lightweight, slower train on a short branch line spur...

There are practical limits to charging speeds that can be imposed by grid capacity and/or the charger and/or the vehicle, any can be the rate-determining step. Combine that with the dwell time at the station and you get limits on how much energy you can get, with weight/speed of service...

The most recent story, about recall of 1,800 electric buses due to fire risk was relating to their HVAC systems provided by Hispacold, not the traction system/battery, despite what some hysterical tabloid coverage tried to imply...

National Highways are shortly expected to submit a DCO application to upgrade the A46 around the west of Newark and A1 junction. Preferred Route announcement (linked below) does suggest that the scheme has been designed to accommodate any future Network Rail scheme to remove the flat crossing...

New and unproven solution from UK SME fitted with automotive diesel engines, with short car length intended for branch line work? Might not work that well in practice and completely ruin the service you say? I thought we already had an approved test track for that type of thing, between Bedford...

I agree with this point. The "slow" Sheffield would have 5 more stops than the fast (Kettering, Harborough, Loughborough, East Mids, Long Eaton) so be 20-25 min slower than a fast one, and be fairly hopeless for Sheffield/Chesterfield/Derby to London), particularly in a scenario where EMR may...

Going North on EMR intercity (let's say the XX02 Sheffield or XX05 Nottingham), it's pretty common to come to a grinding halt just South of Wellingborough, because your train has caught the preceding XX45 Corby service as it stands in Wellingborough P1. In theory the Corby is about 4-5 mins...