Just as a matter of interest, does anyone know exactly how many "hundreds of points" there are for the rail network in Great Britain?
It seems to me that "urgent checks" are likely to be carried out by people one might have grounds to suspect of manslaughter. Or can it be done by a more suitable body of inspectors?
dunno, when I first heard they were inspecting 700(?) sets of points I thought perhaps that was all the points of the same type, but when I saw John Armitt interviewed he seemed to say they just decided to sample 15% of points, if 700 is 15% that would suggest 4600 but that sounds low to me.
Supposedly it's a "westinghouse style 63 point machine".
After the last major crash caused by "points" the government bankrupted rail track and replaced it with network rail. (This was supposed to stop all the sloppy procedures, etc.) So who will they blame this time? This government isn't going to admit it doesn't know what its doing is it?
Ah well...
We are about to see the public sector at work.
- Months of enquiries with a report couched in very general terms
- No accountability of individuals
- Closing of ranks by RMT etc. to defend those at the coal face
- A K in due course for the CEO.
Of course the correct course of action would be to put it into private ownership with accountability and the government as a minority shareholder.
|!On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 20:51:44 -0000, "dennis@home" |! wrote: |! |!>
|!>> It seems to me that "urgent checks" are likely to be carried out by |!>> people one might have grounds to suspect of manslaughter. Or can it be |!>> done by a more suitable body of inspectors? |!>>
|!>
|!>After the last major crash caused by "points" the government bankrupted rail |!>track and replaced it with network rail. |!>(This was supposed to stop all the sloppy procedures, etc.) |!>So who will they blame this time? |!>This government isn't going to admit it doesn't know what its doing is it? |!>
|! |!Ah well... |! |!We are about to see the public sector at work.
We have all seen the private sector at work Herald of Free Enterprise
Nah; lift the rails and tarmac over the track bed, and make it the world's longest [1] dedicated cycle route Mon-Sat, open for motorcyclists on Sun and Bank Hols for a £50 road fee with no speed limits.
The stations could be turned into really attractive Tesco Metros and bistros, and the OHL plant integrated into the National Grid to get wind power from the West coast to London.
CCTV cameras would have to watch for power theft from C5 owners; I bet those things could get from London to Glasgow in about 45 minutes with
6kV up the chufty.Owain
[1] Probably
Incompetence is incompetence. The interesting part is what happens next
I remember reading somewhere (can't find it now) that one could achieve a greater throughput of people to and from central London on the Paddington route by ripping up the tracks and installing a motorway for people to use in their private cars.
This assumed parking facilities at Paddington to avoid the congestion issue and a toll charge.
The argument was that the spacing between trains was so much for safety reasons because suitable advanced safety systems had not been installed on trains and tracks so the volume of people transported per unit time was limited by this.
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