Unpopular opinions

[VTPreston_Tez]

Scottish services to Bristol and Bournemouth via the WCML should never have been withdrawn.

 

[IanBanks-Jones]

Most heritage railways are boring, tatty and pointless. Railway preservationists would be better employed buying (and demolishing) the buildings on the GCR between Leicester North and Rugby central.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Most heritage railways are boring, tatty and pointless. Railway preservationists would be better employed buying (and demolishing) the buildings on the GCR between Leicester North and Rugby central.

Yeah i think that one will be unpopular...

 

[Schnellzug]

Most heritage railways are boring, tatty and pointless. Railway preservationists would be better employed buying (and demolishing) the buildings on the GCR between Leicester North and Rugby central.

pointless because, of course, the considerable sums they bring in to the local economy do not matter..

 

[IanBanks-Jones]

Most heritage railways are like old fashioned zoos. What they try to do is admirable, but it is so sad seeing our railway past rusting away in sidings, knowing that most of it will never see use again. My local, (the Northampton and lamport) is the prime example. I guess it would take at least £30m and a lot of sweet talking with NR to get it from castle station to harborough, and build an undercover depot. We have to be realistic and accept that it will never happen without a large lottery win or a massive blob of luck

 

[Temple Meads]

Here's some things you'll rarely here on here:

Steam on the mainline is brilliant.
Steam is good full stop.
Zoe is always right.
Voyagers are nice to ride in.
Some trespass is justified.
TOWIE and I'm a celebrity are good TV programmes.

I'll find some more later

 

[IanBanks-Jones]

Don't think I'm anti heritage railway. Having my head out a window of a mk1 behind a peak makes me feel like a 6 year old again, but 20 mph behind an 08 in a flaking mk2 open between nowhere and barely anywhere is hardly how it once was, or how it should be.

Whilst on heritage railways, bear in mind that someone will probably preserve a pacer one day, and my children's children will probably love voyagers in 25 years time. They might even want to preserve one. That's bound to be unpopular, surely!

 

[GNERman]

Voyager's, with their current capacity, are PERFECT for XC work...

 

[YorkshireBear]

Most heritage railways are like old fashioned zoos. What they try to do is admirable, but it is so sad seeing our railway past rusting away in sidings, knowing that most of it will never see use again. My local, (the Northampton and lamport) is the prime example. I guess it would take at least £30m and a lot of sweet talking with NR to get it from castle station to harborough, and build an undercover depot. We have to be realistic and accept that it will never happen without a large lottery win or a massive blob of luck

I think you might be judging all heritage lines by the work of the Northampton and Lamport.
Most heritage lines do no have things rusting away everywhere, and have a good solid buissness and finicial management. I think any attraction that attracts over 100,000 people a year (as many heritage lines do) is not pointless.
Examples being the NYMR KWVR SVR South Devon, West somerset, Paington and Dartmouth, Lakeside, great central and bluebell. The list could go on but my memory has given up at that.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

There are also some stations that have ticket offices managed by local travel agencies or a small business proprietor. Examples I can think of are Gobowen and Chester-le-Street.

Also Newtown (Powys), Ledbury, Saxmundham (formerly), Eaglescliffe (same people as Chester-le-Street) and Ludlow. I'm sure there's more.

 

[RobShipway]

I think you might be judging all heritage lines by the work of the Northampton and Lamport.
Most heritage lines do no have things rusting away everywhere, and have a good solid buissness and finicial management. I think any attraction that attracts over 100,000 people a year (as many heritage lines do) is not pointless.
Examples being the NYMR KWVR SVR South Devon, West somerset, Paington and Dartmouth, Lakeside, great central and bluebell. The list could go on but my memory has given up at that.

I would also like to point out that there are some locomotives which got saved by some of the heritage lines which I believe are now part of the National Railway Collection, so if it was not for the heritage lines some locos would have been scrapped without any further trace.

Those that can remember, please think back to the last days of the Class 55 deltics. The NRM if my memory was correct was not originallt planning on taking a class 55 as part of the National Collection, until the heritage lines got interested.

 

[12CSVT]

All units want burning! Bring back mk3's.......

And repatriate all the class 87s from Bulgaria. Then start using them on the Birmingham - Glasgow / Edinburgh services.

 

[YorkshireBear]

And repatriate all the class 87s from Bulgaria. Then start using them on the Birmingham - Glasgow / Edinburgh services.

Then everyone will wonder why, after the big upgrade, services are slower and less unreliable than ever before.. plus you could probably manage 1 extra rake of MK3s if your lucky.

 

[Robinson]

Scottish services to Bristol and Bournemouth via the WCML should never have been withdrawn.

Doubt that's particularly unpopular. Just as long as it wasn't given to Arriva XC or TransPennine Express to run the service...

 

[Schnellzug]

I wonder sometimes (on an isolated and unrelated note to any of the foregoing), whether it is always actually worth spending sums of money that are never in anything less than Billions on Improvement schemes of vast and gigantic proportions, that take years and cause enormous inconvenience to tens of thousands, and the end product is almost invariably less reliable (in terms of infrastructure) or less comfortable (in terms of Rolling stock) than what there was before.

 

[Sapphire Blue]

Comments on this message board should have the posters age attached.

Regards,

Geoff (age 51)

 

[johnnychips]

Posters on this site are more polite than many other discussion forums.

John (51 as well)

 

[YorkshireBear]

Posters on this site are more polite than many other discussion forums.

John (51 as well)

Very popular opinion dont you worry!!!

James (19)

This thread has thrown up sme interesting discussions...

 

[fgwrich]

Bordering on the Railway preservation thing going on at the moment, and remember this is the agreeable & disagreeable Unpopular opinions thread...

Personnaly, i feel that most railway preservationists need to reduce the attitude that everything must be BR Green or BR Blue - Just think about how many liveries a loco like a Class 31, 33, 37 & 47 Have carried throught the years, and in various different forms...Don't get me wrong, i love seeing more and more preserved diesels each day - Tom Clifts 26 for example, the quality of the restoration looks second to none, but it's back in BR Blue...Ok, fair enough, but out of 13 preserved, 7 Are BR Blue, 4 are BR Green, and 1 is BR Railfreight Coal Sector livery. (The final one according to Wikipedia, is just awaiting painting#...It's also why my heart sank slightly when 33035 recently returned back into traffic in BR Blue #previously carried NSE#, when 47500 returned back to traffic in West Coast Railway Maroon / Dark Brown, and when the South Devon Railways Class 122 was repainted out of Reggie Rail, and back to BR Green #However, i'll let them off slightly as they even went to the extent of re-instating the original route code indicators#

Im not asking for much, but can we please have some variation? Glos Waricks has 47376 in Ex Freightliner triple grey, there's a fair number of 31s in different liveries, Ian Riley’s excellent looking 37518 in INTERCITY Swallow and now 2? Network SouthEast liveried class 50s - Come on, where’s the Network South East, The Regional Railways, The Inter-City’s, ScotRails, Rail Express Systems, BR Sectors?

However, and i hope this is on the more agreeable opinion side, but how about starting up a campaign to fund the purchase and saving of several later BR Era Wagons? Ok, whilst it hardly sounds like the most exiting idea you might have heard all day but what do you see at every preserved railway site in the country? Era & regional specific steam era wagons. Now with several Class 56s in preservation, a 58 or two, and no doubt in the future class 60s too, what have they got to haul? Somehow the sight of a Bone on a rake of maroon Mk1s just doesn’t have the same appeal as the sight of a hardworking, hardly washed 56/58/60 on a rake of Merry Go Round MGR HAA/HBA/HCA HEA hoppers - If we can preserve the freight image of the 1930s/1950s, Why can’t we do the same for the late 1970s, 80s & 1990s? Even if it were just 5/6/7 MGR Hoppers would be good enough!

Class 26 Liveries:

Nine main livery variants were carried by the class whilst in BR service:
British Railways green, with grey roofs, white cab window surrounds and a thin white stripe midway up the bodysides. All locomotives were delivered in this livery;
Within a few years all locomotives received small yellow warning panels on the lower cabfronts;
From the late 1960s some locomotives received full yellow ends as an interim measure pending repainting into Rail Blue;
From 1967, repainted locomotives received all-over 'Rail Blue' with full yellow ends;
This was soon modified to include yellow cabside window surrounds. All locomotives had received this livery by the mid-'70s;
Railfreight grey with yellow cabs, black cab window surrounds and red solebars. Nineteen locomotives repainted in 1985-87 received this livery #26001-8/10/25/6/31/2/4/5/7/8/40/1#;
Railfreight three-tone grey with black cab window surrounds, yellow lower cabsides and yellow/black 'Coal Subsector' markings. This livery was applied to eight locomotives repainted in 1988-89 #26001-8#;
'Civil Link' #or 'Dutch'# grey with yellow upper bodysides and lower cabfronts, and black cab window surrounds was applied to sixteen locomotives #26001-8/11/25/6/35/6/8/40/3# in 1990-92;
To mark the impending withdrawal of the class, the first two locomotives #26007 and 26001# were repainted into 1960s style BR green with small yellow warning panels in 1992, at which point 26001 became the first and only Class 26 to be named #Eastfield, to commemorate the closure of that depot.

 

[Ivo]

Here's a rather predictable one (which has an extra spice if I say it )

323s are [insert expletive here]



Yours (grudgingly),

Scott (23)

 

[SprinterMan]

Posters on this site are more polite than many other discussion forums.

John (51 as well)

I've noticed this too. Well done eveyone



Old style non-retention toilets are far better than the current vacuum flush jobs, which I have a phobia of :P

Adam (18)

 

[RyanB]

All trains should have a standardised livery with vinyls being used as identifiers.

All trains should have headcode boxes and should be forced to display them at all times.

 

[Robinson]

I'll add another of mine: What were SWT thinking when they decided 158s were the future (when getting rid of all their 170s)?

 

[Schnellzug]

All trains should have headcode boxes and should be forced to display them at all times.

Now that is something I've often thought as well. Everywhere else in the world, just about, uses train numbers for identification; Virgin, if course, tried to introduce them, but I don't know of anyone who ever referred to them, because they never seemed to be used by anyone except Virgin. Why not just use the headcode as an identification, and display it on trains? If people can understand to look for EZY4323 or FR1516 at airports, or even the number 43 bus, so why not say that you've got a reservation on 1S43 or whatever? It might make things a little bit easier so you know you've got the right Train.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
-

I'll add another of mine: What were SWT thinking when they decided 158s were the future (when getting rid of all their 170s)?

Simple; standardisation with the 159s, rather than having a small fleet that used all different spare parts and so on.

 

[WCMLaddict]

From my experience, Pendolinos are great commuter trains
I like Abellio and would love them to take WCML franchise.

WCMLaddict (aged 31)

 

[12CSVT]

Most heritage railways are boring, tatty and pointless. Railway preservationists would be better employed buying (and demolishing) the buildings on the GCR between Leicester North and Rugby central.

I would personally rather spend a day at a gala event on a preserved railway than on a main line railtour. Unlike a railtour, a day at a preserved railway doesn't need to be booked weeks in advance, doesn't cost silly money, you can come and go at times convenient to you, there are usually good photographic opportunities throughout the day, you can get on and off trains as and when you wish, and you have the freedom of going to the local pub or chippy if you want an hour's break from the railway.

And of the preserved railways I have visited (which include nearly every standard gauge railway in this country, I found very few to be anywhere near 'boring'.

EDIT : nearly forgot to mention - unlike railtours, gala events at preserved railways don't often get caped a few days before.

 

[60163]

LM 323s are generally excellent, with good acceleration and reliability (bubble-floors notwithstanding)

Pendos and Voyagers aren't really terrible and photograph quite well: it's just that they trample over my Crewe childhood memories of 90s, 86s, 87s, DVTs, 47s etc.


THERE NEEDS TO BE a charity open weekend at Crewe DMD + EMD.

 

[SprinterMan]

Pendos and Voyagers aren't really terrible and photograph quite well: it's just that they trample over my Crewe childhood memories of 90s, 86s, 87s, DVTs, 47s etc.

Subconsciously at least, this is probably true of most people. I know for a fact that when voyagers were introduced I hated them because they were replacing 47s and HSTs, both of which were among my favourite sorts of train. People have an irrational hatred of something that replaces something they loved. I have a massive irrational hatred of corporate National Express, as it replaced 2 of my favourite TOCs of all time, 'one' and GNER. I carry that hatred to this day. I am also fans of East Coast, despite their moronic new timetable, and Greater Anglia, despite the withdrawal of the 317/7s, purely because they were responsible for the slaying of NXEC and NXEA respectively. :P

Adam

 

[317666]

Alstom-built trains are underrated, particularly the 175s. Bombardier-built trains are overrated, particularly the 170s.

Max (16)

 

[fgwrich]

Alstom-built trains are underrated, particularly the 175s. Bombardier-built trains are overrated, particularly the 170s.

Max (16)

Agreed - (20)