They will only need an exam once a month probably less considering how little miles they will be hauling over. Yes it would be wasteful but far far far less wasteful than towing an underfloor engine on a bi-mode under the wires all the time. Bi-mode trains are wasting energy constantly
I'm sorry, are you serious?
Oxford to Worcester is 57 miles, Oxford to Hereford is 86 miles. The Cotswold Line is planned to go to a regular pattern hourly off-peak service with IEP (London-Oxford-Worcester) and half-hourly in the peaks in the direction of the main flows morning and evening. A number of services will extend to/from Malvern and Hereford.
Just look at the timetable now. There are a lot of trains to cover there already, before you add more trains and extend current Moreton-in-Marsh turnbacks further west. Similar factors will apply on Swindon-Cheltenham. And unless someone is going to come up with the readies to build a new depot at, say, Worcester, you are going to have to get rolling stock from Bristol for the morning trains from Hereford and get the stock off the return workings in the evening to Bristol, so that's a few more miles on the clock.
The only fuelling point on either route is LM's at Worcester, assuming you could get access to it.
These routes require frequent start-stop cycling with stations a few miles apart. The locos will be working hard throughout the day from first thing until late at night. I think they might just need to get to a depot more than once a month - and whatever the frequency of such visits, it still amounts to miles of running light engine under electric wires on diesel power, earning not a penny in revenue - or isn't that wasteful in your one-eyed world?
What happens when one breaks, miles from a traction maintenance depot? Build lots of little depots and fuelling points for them? That looks like a waste of money to me...
Why does the diesel loco servicing have to be at the electrified end of the line?
They could be maintained/ fueled at Laira (where some of them will end up every night anyway) at a mileage cost of zero.
There is a lot of blinkered vision on this thread looking at one thing or another only and not at the bigger picture/ whole thing overall.
What's Laira got to do with it? There's no suggestion at this stage that IEP is going anywhere near Devon. The places on the GW network where bi-mode is planned to operate and ensure the future of through services from London are the Cotswold Line, Swindon to Gloucester and Cheltenham, Swansea-Carmarthen and Bristol-Weston super Mare. The biggest number of locos would be needed on the Cotswold Line. Oxford is 60 miles from an GW depot equipped for big diesels (I can't imagine anyone is planning to provide suitable facilities for locos at the new depot in Reading). Swindon is about 40 miles from Bristol. So plenty of mileage costs. And Hereford and Worcester are even further from a tmd. That's the big picture I'm looking at.
RAGNARØKR;1342373 said:
You can see it on Google earth. Then take a look at the track layout around Bristol. Curves on main lines are not the issue when it comes to gauging. It is minimum radius curves that cause gauging problems.
It will emerge in the fullness of time.
Whatever benefits electrification has, thermal efficiency is not one of them, but since thermal efficiency is not the be-all-and-end-all of railways electrification is worth doing once traffic densities rise above a certain level.
What does "banging on" mean, apart from the fact that the fact that I refer to it obviously makes you bad tempered?"Bargain basement job" = efficient use of resources, and the system served perfectly well for two decades. Incidentally, class 33 diesels sometimes worked all the way to Waterloo with a pair of 4TC-units. Everything was operationally compatible with everything else, including the TC trailer sets, the REP high power units, all the suburban and long distance EP units, baggage cars, the class 33 diesels, and the class 73 electro-diesels. Later on, this compatibility made it possible to upgrade the Gatwick express with mark 2 rakes, a class 73 at one end and a former HAP vehicle at the other.
The Southern fleet introduced from the 1950s onwards was a exemplar of sound engineering design philosophy with the underlying concept based on the principles of simplicity, flexibility and compatibility. That is what happens when the major input to the design is from practical railwaymen and engineers. The IEP, on the other hand, is just what is to be expected when the civil service philosophy is applied.
I don't need to see it on Google Earth, thanks, since it's a few miles up the road and I've ridden round it on trains countless times. It is a seriously sharp curve for a main line but Network Rail have somehow managed to align the tracks so that two IEPs can pass without hitting each other. Amazing...
Speaking of Network Rail, you seem to have forgotten to explain how that document you linked to helps in explaining your "major infrastructure upgrade".
How is this list going to emerge in the fullness of time when you must have seen it - or some other hard evidence - already, in order to justify your most categorical announcement on this forum that there will be "a major infrastructure upgrade" so that IEP can operate in the UK?
We've had all the stuff about radius of curves a thousand times now. Where's the evidence to justify your claimed "major infrastructure upgrade"? When is Network Rail going to start tearing up the tracks around, for example, Bristol? There isn't much time left for them to do it, is there?
What does banging on mean? That you just keep saying "look at Waterloo-Weymouth" over and over, as though this justifies adopting this method of operation again 40-odd years later, when, as I said, it was a lash-up job because BR was short of money - that's all. If the money had been there, it would never have happened in the first place. And thanks for
Incidentally, class 33 diesels sometimes worked all the way to Waterloo with a pair of 4TC-units
I am long enough in the tooth to remember and to have ridden in 4TCs west of Bournemouth. And why did 4TCs get to Waterloo? Because BR also didn't have enough money to electrify the line from Worting junction to Salisbury... not because they thought it was a great way to run the railway - even in those glory days of Mk1s that collapsed like a pack of cards if they crashed.
RAGNARØKR said:
and split the train as well if the traffic beyond Oxford was light.
I can't wait to see this one - so as well as main-line locos shunting around the station constantly, we're going to have shunting engines shuttling empty coaches around, are we? And this at a station where the number of trains operating each day is forecast to double by the end of the decade. It just gets better and better...
Robbies said:
If anything you would be wanting a class 67 pulling the IEP trains as they have a top speed 125mph and I believe that they would be able to keep to the current HST timings
While designed to do so, Class 67s are not allowed to run at 125mph, as they would smash the track to bits in no time. Their acceleration characteristics are quite different to an HST, as they were built for long-distance mail and parcels runs with precious few stops. Not a snowball in hell's chance they could keep to HST timings on a route like the Cotswold Line.