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£53.1 million fine for Network Rail

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All Line Rover

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17 Feb 2011
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48% of my season ticket, £2000, goes to Network Rail. Guess who'll be paying for this fine then?

The ORR couldn't find their own backside with both hands and a map. Though I'm taking the cynical route with this one- the Tories look "tough on waste" whilst actually increasing costs for passengers. The governmental equivalent of the bloke in Trafalgar Square who distracts you whilst his mate lifts your wallet and iPhone.

I guess it beats making the TOCs pay for WiFi doesn't it. Can't deprive the fat cats of their caviar.

I agree. Taxpayer money indirectly subsidising the TOCs, rather than requiring the TOCs to fund investments themselves.

'Tis a pity that the government isn't so keen on indirect fares regulation.
 
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HSTEd

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And plus, not all of it is possible to be replaced with F/optic. Mainly as, you can replace the links from box/interlocking to the location cases, but then you need good old copper to the signal heads as they need power. That's how I understand it anyway.

If your only concern is to provide power to the signal head (since there is work underway in Japan now to design a system where a fibre optic based LAN connects to every single piece of equipment, including signal heads individually) then there i sno particular reason to use copper cable.
Considering the relatively low draw of things like LED signal lamps and points motors and the availability of relatively cheap switched mode power supplies you can just go for steel-reinforced aluminium wire and higher voltages for everything. [Aluminium is $1,900/t, compared to $7,400/t for copper]

And as you say, normally the metal fairies just see cable, not if it's fibre, copper or just tubing (like blown fibre)

This is the case in the short term, but eventually once almost all the lineside copper is gone (apart from high voltage stuff for OHL/3rd rail) the people who currently steal the metal will probably stop ripping up the cables because they will learn that railway cable is not worth anything any more.

The same that a universal (and I mean universal) rollout of fibre-to-the-home connections to the entire country would lead to people stopping ripping up telephone cables as they would realise they are never copper any more.
 
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