Stagecoach Manchester and Wigan

[Quackdave]

RE: Stagecoach Manchester and Wigan

(07/03/2019 16:24)Southernsofty Wrote:  Well since you asked, Secretary of State for Transport would be my dream job! wouldn't be very popular though, spending many millions on rail electrification.

It may not make you popular with your colleagues in the Treasury, but I suspect it would make you very popular elsewhere, as I think most people were less than impressed with Grayling's ridiculous statement that electrification is "no longer required" thanks to "new technology" - apparently referring to the novel idea that you can run trains over non-electrified sections of railway using diesel power. Yes, Chris, I think we've known that for a while - British Rail ran numerous services this way, including the successful through service from Waterloo to Weymouth which ran for 21 years using electrics as far as Bournemouth, thereafter attaching a diesel. Two points about this: firstly, that although the arrangement had worked well, it didn't stop them electrifying the full route in 1988; and secondly, that despite having had bi-mode technology since 1962, they didn't seek to use it for this, or indeed for very much else, because the extra complexity and dead weight mean that it is rarely the most sensible solution, something that I think remains true today. Really, the only fundamentally new thing that the current generation of bi-mode trains can do is to change over from diesel to electric traction at line speed - and given that the wires will generally end at big places like Cardiff, where all trains stop anyway, that doesn't really add much.

(Apologies for O/T!)