No, the Channel Tunnel rail link was/is on time, pretty much on budget save for the worldwide rise in steel costs and meets all the orginal requirements.
Oi mateNick W said:A new railway can not be more than two of the three following things:
- On Time
- On Budget
- Meets all original requirements
Is this true?
TheSlash said:Oi mate
You don't work for the railway so quite frankly you wouldn't know where to start with whats wrong.
You wanna be a railwayman one day? You join the pway/infantry and you work a 12 hour Saturday night.
You and everyone else in your gang give 110%, blood and sweat, you're physical exhausted at the end of it, but when you goto bed at 9am Sunday, you set your alarm for 12pm {lunchtime} because you are back on days tomorrow, the Monday, because your idiot manager is too tight to give you a week of nights doing much needed maintenance like rail joint straightening or sleeper changing, because the more money he can save in his budget, the bigger his bonus. In the meantime the track is falling apart and every day you are out there using victorian tools and work methods trying to keep it together, because it's the cheapest option available to the company.
You guys might of seen the big relayers sites that last from close of play Friday night, to open of play Monday morning, with all the fancy cranes and road rail JCB's, that's not NR and thats not me.
If i change a rail, it's with 10 people on 5 sets of rail dogs {tongs} physically lifting the old one out and over the top of the new one in the 4 foot, then lifting the new from the 4 foot into the housings.
If we change sleepers, we don't get a machine to dig out all that ballast, we do it by hand with shovels. Then we lift the sleepers in and out with sleeper dogs, before filling all that ballast back in again, by hand.
In todays safety concious world, can you believe blokes still dodge trains travelling upto 125mph in parts of this country?
Never mind your bull**** about ontime and onbudget, you just think about what goes into the day to day up keep
Yes, obviously. You don't see them? How do you know who is doing that function? I am not sure what your point/question is, though.Nick W said:To Slash:
My post was simply a hypothesis, not the reason why.
But I feel the more important issues is NR's in-house maintainence. Surely there must be people employed as health & safety reps, which are probably sitting doing nothing because you don't see them?
Quite probably, and in bulk almost certainly, but what if there is one bit of rail somewhere remote that needs changing? Is it economical to move a machine to such a location?Nick W said:As for the Victorian methods, surely these while tried and tested and more accurate due to human skill, would cost more than using a machine as groups of humans cost more than a machine and operator?
Yes, there are. If you don't know that most basic principle, then why post at all.Nick W said:You mention dodging trains at 125mph. Do you mean that you could be replacing one rail while a train goes past down the adjacent track at 125mph? Surely there would be arangments to make the driver sound the horn or someone on lookout or some more sophisticated method?
We've been telling him that for the past year and he still won't listen so I'd give up now yorkieyorkie said:Nick, I don't think some of the rants (now deleted) against you are entirely fair, as I know you don't intend to wind people up, but your extreme lack of knowledge and desire to post on subjects you have done practically no research on, does annoy people.
You seem unwilling to read any railway magazines, and unwilling to do much research on a subject, and you have very little real-world experience, and then post something that is provocative toward certain people.
It would have been better if you had done some research and then asked a few questions in a manner that is rather more complimentary toward the rail industry (ie not suggesting it's useless )?