maybe it's no longer true...
No, it's not. Distributed power with a diesel at one end for
IEP▸ is dead. As I said, because they finally realised it simply wouldn't work in a full-length train and changed the design - again.
Just to be absolutely clear for anyone who has missed it, the current IEP plan, no doubt subject to yet more change, is to buy five-car bi-modes with underfloor diesel engines, five-car electrics and eight-car electrics, which will all propel themselves. No diesel locos.
its not every eight mins is it tho.... and i said something 'like'
a. What else is like a Class 70 or 66? They were designed by GE and EMD for a very specific purpose - heavy freight. If you want something to drag around light passenger trains at speed and with rapid acceleration, you would start with a blank sheet of paper, not a class 70. And people are very quick to condemn bi-mode trains, from which you could potentially remove diesel engines as wires extend, but not quite so quick with suggestions as to what you would do with all these diesel locos they would have us build instead, should more wires go up - and would the wires actually ever be extended were we to shell out for such locos?
b. Typical station to station times on the Cotswold Line, from the September draft timetable: Oxford to Hanborough, 10 minutes; Hanborough to Charlbury, seven minutes; Charlbury to Kingham, nine minutes (Shipton stops are allowed a generous seven and six-minute split on this leg); Kingham to Moreton-in-Marsh, eight minutes; MiM to Honeybourne, 11 minutes, Honeybourne to Evesham, seven minutes; Evesham to Pershore, eight minutes, Pershore to Worcester shrub Hill, 13 minutes. Average interval nine minutes, oh dear me, i do apologise for being a whole minute out.
Are you really trying to suggest that working any type of diesel train on that type of schedule constitutes a recipe for not running at high power much of the time, never mind any gradients that apply? And there is obvious scope to reduce those times, some trains are already shown in the draft as a minute or two quicker on some legs, so in reality eight minutes is a perfectly reasonable figure to work with.
The trouble with our network is that most if not all lines should be electrified as they they are in Holland and Belgium who have a similar dense network of relatively short main lines all linking up.
We don't have a dense network of relatively short main lines - certainly not in Low (and rather small) Countries terms - not least the
GWML▸ , which is a long spindly thing, with assorted branches feeding into the trunk route. And the same can be said for
ECML▸ and
WCML▸ - where to this day lots of the feeder lines remain unwired.
HM Treasury is the Government department that actually matters in all this, not the
DfT» . The Treasury is not going to be allowing anyone to go around issuing bonds that could count against the Government's balance sheet, however you dress it up. And we're not France.
Rhydgaled. There are lots of difficulties with your plan, relying as it does on fantasy rolling stock building programmes and fleet reshuffles, ignoring why certain of the West Country trains run via Bristol, that
WAG» cannot spend money in England and that there may well be perfectly valid reasons to widen the Heads of the Valleys road - not least that there is no alternative rail route available to do the journeys it allows.
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