Random Transport Chatter

[Redirect Left]

Well for that price, i'll just go without.
Somewhere along the chain of raw materials to end product to buyer, someone is ripping someone off massively.

[Ameecher]

Yes it's called added value. You aren't prepared to take the time to make your own so you pay for someone else to do it, it's how much of the western world works.

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Unfortunately most of the western world is happy with capitalism, instead of working to better everyone else and doing things for simply the cost of material. I seem to be one of the few people left in the world who is more than happy to do things for free for other people, if I have the time, and ability to do so.

[Geo Ghost]

Sorry, but that's absolutely tosh.

The reason things like that are expensive is because it's people's business making models in what is a niche market. They aren't going to sell them at a price so they can just break even and 'make people happy'. They are going to want to profit somehow from it so they can.. you know.. actually pay their own bills and such in life?
Whilst doing things to help others without wanting anything back is indeed nice, but you can't have everything like that. Otherwise, how are people meant to make a living and actually survive?

[Ameecher]

...

[Dave]

Sorry, but that's absolutely tosh.

The reason things like that are expensive is because it's people's business making models in what is a niche market. They aren't going to sell them at a price so they can just break even and 'make people happy'. They are going to want to profit somehow from it so they can.. you know.. actually pay their own bills and such in life?
Whilst doing things to help others without wanting anything back is indeed nice, but you can't have everything like that. Otherwise, how are people meant to make a living and actually survive?

Didn't I pay for you (or one of you) to crash a train into buffers recently?

[Geo Ghost]

Didn't I pay for you (or one of you) to crash a train into buffers recently?

Not me! I'm the one always having trains breakdown or go wrong every couple of weeks

True story. I lost almost 3/4 of my motors the other week and literally crawled back to the depot! Fun times.

[supermop]

I'll just chime in to say that 3d printing a N or HO sized model she'll at any resolution that would be acceptable is by no means cheap. Check out shapeways - not just the models for sale, but upload something of similar size and volume yourself just to see what the "at cost" price is to print these. Even if hobbyists were willing to create detailed models and provide them for free, building a model train out of them isn't necessarily going to be cheap. What it is however, is cheaper than the hundreds of thousands of dollars you'd need to make a mold for one sprue of injected molded styrene parts.

[Geo Ghost]

RAIB have released a news story about their investigation into the Waterloo collision. Included is an interesting bit of text....

"The collision occurred because a set of points were misaligned and directed the passenger train away from its intended route. The misalignment was a consequence of a temporary modification to the points control system which also caused the train driver and signaller to receive indications that the points were correctly aligned."

Totally called it.

Especially if it was signalled normally out of Waterloo with no degraded working

Interestingly, this incident appears to be rather similar to the Cardiff East Junction Irregularity last year.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/seri ... t-junction

[YNM]

This ?

It's quite something that you have three generations of bridges !

[Redirect Left]

This ?

It's quite something that you have three generations of bridges !

There's probably more generations of bridges over the Thames, maybe even in Newcastle?

[JamieLei]

Also what would be handy is if a rail company actually just refused to put up prices and stood up to the Government and went "Yeah, this isn't right. We're fleecing our customers and we get very little out of it", because the Government clearly have no plans on stopping the constant rail increases above usual wage and benefit increases year on year.

Late reply; back from Asia and got lots of forum catching up to do!

Basically, RPI+0% is currently the maximum that train companies can put up prices, but in practice they have no other choice. This is because at the bid stage, they commit through premium payments to giving the government a certain amount of cash each year (basically all but a small cut of the profit). Of course, they could bid less than putting fares up by RPI, but this would just mean that the competitor that did bid RPI would win by default since their premium payment would be bigger.

At the end of the day, it's the government's decision. In any year, government can change what that formula is (in recent years, it's been changed a lot; it was technically meant to be RPI+3% through much of the coalition years, but it never was anything more than RPI+1%; then when it was RPI+1% it was always RPI+0%). If government wanted to nullify a 5% RPI for instance, it could be set to RPI-5% for that year.

The reason why it has to be pegged with RPI is that much of the costs of operating trains are fixed to RPI, so revenues need to rise to match that to remain stable. Freezing fares in absolute terms opens up an extremely difficult and precarious financial situation for any business, as TfL are suffering from and having to make swinging cuts and deferring investment left, right and centre.

[YNM]

There's probably more generations of bridges over the Thames, maybe even in Newcastle?

... none of which are 1.5 mi across !

[Redirect Left]

They might seem that way to some.
like... ants?

[Pilot]

These are gonna get dirty very quickly I think

20170919_103024.jpg

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at the speeds they travel, the front will quickly end up a fly graveyard.

[Geo Ghost]

Doesn't take much in the summer. I've cleaned my window before, and 20 minutes later, only rolling along about 60-70mph, it was pretty splatted again.

Flies man... seriously annoying. Not as much as pigeons though!

[Ameecher]

Doesn't take much in the summer. I've cleaned my window before, and 20 minutes later, only rolling along about 60-70mph, it was pretty splatted again.

Flies man... seriously annoying. Not as much as pigeons though!

If you will drive a flat fronted train...

Livery isn't that much different to before on most of the coaches, slightly lighter but the loss of the black surround to the windows does highlight how small they really are.

[Redirect Left]

Incident at Docklands involving door entrapment issues.

Most irritating thing about that isn't the fact an item became trapped, the part that was trapped was too small to be detected by the door sensors (although this might indicate they're the original sensors from when the units were built, modern ones can detect extremely oddly shaped and tiny objects that shouldn't be there), it is infact that the CCTV aboard was faulty, so the onboard supervisor couldn't see the CCTV feed from that door. I hope in the future, DLR maintenance will make it more of a priority to fix what may seem like minor things.

[Geo Ghost]

modern ones can detect extremely oddly shaped and tiny objects that shouldn't be there)

They can? Not in my experience There's never a guarantee they can always detect objects.
This is why interlock never should be used as an indication the doors are clear.

Although the PSA is at fault for a break in procedure, the fact the CCTV had a fault that was unknown and/or hard to identify further reinforces my dislike for DOO systems on mainline traffic and that the vast majority are not safe for purpose - especially when they fail or become faulty.