Wales train crash new evidence & what is going on at Northern Rail? | Ep 58

Well done Mr Harris, lifetime of railway work and dedication.

They need to join Northern up in North East with Yorkshire. It’s crazy you can’t get a Northern service from Sunderland or down from Tees Valley to York or Leeds.

I see the Mrk 1s heading down south this week passed me on Tuesday (Crianlarich) wonder if they will return modified next season?

Who is Steph

Congratulations Nigel. I saw the little nameplate behind you before your announcement. I hadn’t seen any social media posts. So I did wonder. Are you planning on pulling any Tesco trains. After all. Every little helps

It’s a shame the heritage sector isn’t allowed to gain rights to mine their own coal in Wales. I’m sure we could have a very minor right to pull the tiny amount we need out without pollution affecting the neighbours. And explain to them that the very small quantity we need is so small they wouldn’t notice it

Super congratulations on the naming! So awesome

Thank you again for another amazing show. your announcement on the passing of Chris Hillyard was very surprised. I am a huge fan of the world train and have quite often wondered what has happened to this very unique service. Does it still run? Is it possible you could share some light on this?? Thanks again for a great show. Keep up the great work guys you put many others including magazine press to shame! And congratulations to Chris Harris it is very humbling seeing such a well renowned Railway reporter/boffin be recognised for the dedication and achievements.

Congratulations Nigel on the loco naming, great news and very well deserved. 🎉

Sorry to inform you that there are still major problems at Northern with "issue with the train crew" scenario. With 9 cancellations from mid afternoon on the Leeds to Lincoln line alone today. Problems arise when the crews are changed at Sheffield. On the Sheffield to Scarborough route crews are often changed at Doncaster and Hull, so ticket inspections are done by 3 different conductors! Overall this is an appalling service and something has to be done for the sake of passengers who pay for the costly travel.

DLM AG of Winterthur developed a light oil firing system in the 1990s. Ordinary diesel fuel can be used. This gives 20% more power and eliminates wear caused by grit and acid fumes.

A surprise finding was that the steam locomotives use less fuel than the diesels doing the same work.

I wonder if FR/WHR might look (again) at modern oil firing as on NYMR.

With regard to the Wales train crash, why didn't the train derail if it overshot the loop? Surely the points were set against it rejoining the single track..

Great work guys 🎉. Keep up the amazing work. Steve (Ute guy).

Class 66... an amazing vocal beast... just like the fella whose nameplate now adorns one.

CONGRATULATIONS NIGEL!!! 🏆

Congratulations, Nigel Harris, on having a locomotive carrying your name. It would be good to be able to catch a glimpse of it but I am nowhere near a railway on the national network. On a totally different and possibly frivolous note, Richard referred to leverage as 'levverage' using the American pronunciation, This is because Americans refer to a lever as a 'levver'. We don't!!

Reference the trick quiz question: The train which runs from Flinders Street to Belgrave (via Ringwood) passes through Richmond,, Burnley, Camberwell, Canterbury, Chatham, Box Hill, Blackburn and Bayswater!

I would have done a running brake test prior to entering the loop. I used to get my speed down early with 158/159s in leaf fall and if the wheels picked up I would give it a splash of Step 3 to knock some speed out. Technically you shouldn't do in case it caused flats but I'd rather have flats and know that I was going to stop.
I did have a 158 one day that was showing no sign of the sanders working. I reported it to SWT Control and they took it out of service at the Romsey to be on the safe side. It was found out that the sand box had not been topped up.
Prior to the automatic sanders we had the 'One shot' emergency sand. I came close to using it one morning after carrying out a running brake test approaching Chard loop then faced with a yellow around the bend. Wheels picked up, stopped turning and the speedo went from 85mph to 0 as we were sliding along still at 85. I pressed the EM button, contacted the signalman at Chard and said, 'can you make sure the barriers are down because we're not stopping'. It did eventually bite though, WSP going crazy and I managed to stop short of the red protecting the crossing. Barriers still up though 😡

Train companies profits before safety, many railway disasters and deaths have happened during rail privatisation. Re the latest railway incident and death in Wales . Much better to not run a defective train than have a disaster. Even the minor issue of a trains sanding equipment has contributed to the mid wales railway incident. Probably the only negative comment. But Rail Privatisation has been one big disaster for Britain. BR had issues but not so many disasters, and deaths. In the scale of things being a national company. BR was successful in the early 1990s , and was a very sound business, making profits for the tax payer . Many many millions of tax payers money has had to go to railway companies since rail privatisation. Plus HS2 I am not going there . They should have only privatised the Rail Freight industry to help create more competition, to get freight off the roads . Having had over 22 years in the industry. Good old Scotland , that’s why I moved to Scotland. Good stories , keep up the good work Nigel and Richard . Many years on the railway I regard GBRF one of the best companies, they helped me many times managing engineering works .

The last slip coach working on BR was at Bicester North in 1960. One of the original WHR's forerunners intended to use electric traction from the outset and would have used a 3 phase system, which AFAIK would have been the only application of this system on a public railway in the British Isles.

Tom Rolt was also a founder of the Vintage Sports Car Club VSCC.
He was of course, a prolific writer and his biography of Brunel is considered the defiative work of the great engineer.
His biography of George AND Robert Stephenson (one work) is a great understanding of how it all began.
He worked at Kerr Stewart & Co , locomotive builders in Stoke-on-Trent in his early days, till their untimely demise.

Can I have the raib report. I think there's more to it.
If the sanders were tested and failed the driver shouldn't have taken the unit into service. The wsp does not work when the speedo reads 0mph when breaking. The sanders only work with the speed controller in notch 1 or higher. And you only get a 10 second shot of sand. If you need more take your finger off the button and press again. If you need any further information please let me know

On the budget Labour councils have increased car parking charges in some instances 400% 40p to £2 an hour in some cases And free parking Charges have been imposed. This will impact on working people who park to go to work E.G People who park to commute by train. I would call this a parking tax I noticed they waited till a week after the budget.

Great watch as always. Interesting facts about the Welsh accident once again leading to a different reason behind the crash than initially thought. Great to see the Nigel loco naming, really well deserved and a great accolade from the industry no matter what type of freight its hauling!

Bring back catch points if you can’t adequately maintain the stock e.g. working sand application

I wonder why the train kept moving when he applied full brake ?

Congratulations on the naming Nigel.
On the budget topic, I feel many people are missing the purpose of the employers national insurance increase. It's intended to do much of what is described here, making it more difficult for employers to create more roles, but I think quite a few commenters miss why - that being to incentivize investment in productivity improvements through automation - something the UK has woefully failed to deliver since the pandemic. I am very much taking a wait and see approach to review it's effectiveness.

Congratulations Nick

Re: Budget. Either one compares UKPlc in toto with a company, or one discusses those company intersts making up our economy. Switching between the two really cannot serve both arguments pro and con. Trouble with governments .... all of 'em .... is they don't just decide where the goalposts are, they define what the goalposts are! It's a tad unfair too (and I'm as guilty of this as anyone) to take selective or zero account of international forces outside the control of any one nation .... or to continue milking 'em LONG after any justification for doing so has crumbled to dust.

I WAS tempted to add '"just look at the bobawful mess an administration whose members DID have experience of running a company (e.g. Shapps ... under any of several names) made of their innings" .... said almighty messes made which (and it gives me no pleasure to say so) rather reflective of the mediocrity of too much UK business management. I suppose the really good managers are too busy managing goodly, which doesn't necessarily translate into management of a national economy (where anyway, all policy is translated into action by the Civil Service). Come to think of it, wasn't one such experienced titan of industry a chap called Richard Beeching? ... just saying!

Talyllyn nationalisation: Not certain about the 1947 Act, which (and please correct me if I'm wrong) added not a single yard on hitherto independent narrow gauge to the nationalised network, but the 1921 (grouping) Act specifically applied only to standard gauge. Such agreements as affected NG lines came under the heading of normal commerial activities. The Lynton & Barnstaple were in discussion with the LSW well before the Act passed, the Welshpool was an odd case where the Cambrian's interests were operational, not proprietorial, meaning the GW needed additional parliamentary authority to absorb the line and the Corris didn't come under GW ownership until a deal with Imperial Tramways (the previous owner) was struck. The Ffestiniog (which, following some old boy network shenanigans) came under government control in WWI), apparently specifically excluded from grouping, presumably on the grounds that GW and LMS companies had competing interests in slate traffic, possibly because HMG got stung for some distinctly non war related bills. The FR later unsuccessfully approaching both mainline compqnies for salvation. (I've often imagined double engines in plain black with 'LMS' on the left hand tank and a five digit number on the right). Incidentally, has anyone ever seen a mention of grouping involving the Campbeltown & Machrihanish?

Great video. Regarding the WHR worth remembering the beyer garratts were oil fired back in 1997 but were converted to coal firing some years ago.

I can't find any mention of how the two drivers fared in the Welsh head-on crash . . . . . . ?

I was on the footplate of a Heritage Railway during the miner's strike. We had Polish coal and it was horrendous. When lighting up, it made us feel horribly sick and gave one a dreadful headache. Daw Mill came on later which was beautiful. Personally, I blame the Welsh for shutting their last pit.

The ultimate honour is having a loco named after you. Congratulations!

NRM is now a travesty. Mostly models. 😡

The only solution is to go back to British Rail as a nationalised entity when we had railwaymen and not businessmen running things but, at 83, I'm not coming out of retirement.

Another knowledgeable and informative session. Loved the sludge train loco naming!

People should have to contractually agree to not whinge about existing industrial places such as railways when they move in next door

Employers nic increases will raise prices. M and S has already said it needs millions more to pay tbis and possibly min wage. Who will pay those millions? Yes you people. The same will happen with all conpanies.
This government is economically illitetate and just running on dogma.

Congrats on the loco naming Nigel and thanks for the Mug guys

Nigel is right about different types of coal for even in Australia in the state of New South Wales coal from north of Sydney from the Hunter Valley coal fields was known as "dynamite" with high heat and low ash content. Coal from mines west of Sydney was known as "black Jack" which was high in heat but had a high ash content. When China had it's little spat with Australia during Covid and banned the importation of Australian coal the lights in their cities went out for their coal fired power stations had been built to ONLY burn Australian coal and coal comes in two main type thermal and metallurgical and you can't burn the latter in loco fire boxes. But all coal will produce rolling clouds of thick acrid black smoke if fired incorrectly which maybe what's happening at the Welsh Highland. Just because you've been using Welsh Coal doesn't mean that using coal from somewhere else can be fired the same way. The technique is going be different.

congratulations on your name on Class 66312 GBrF yay🎉

Regarding your article about coal, anybody in the steam industry may well know this, but you might be pleased to know Russian coal seems to be scarce, but there has been imported coal into the UK from Kazakhstan, which hasn't proven to be the best, burns too hot and too quick.
More recent import into the UK being from Venezuela, going to be very interesting to see if this is much better for all our heritage steam engines 👌🙂

I was on the Isle of Man Railway, recently & they've got the same problem. They are using the same Coal Ovoids, which is normally a manufactured smokeless fuel, with its impurities removed but this was absolutely filthy - a very strong smell of sulphur & thick green & yellow smoke, the like of which, I've never experienced before.

My father burns similar coal ( phurnacite) & that's much better. I burn anthracite, which is very clean.

I suppose, the Anthracite being mined at Aberpergwm colliery, Glynneath, would not be appropriate - would it burn away the loco fireball?

Forres station is the ugliest station ever

Businesses don't create wealth - people create wealth for the businesses

Congratulations, Nigel - well deserved. Sorry I wasn't there. I don't get about on my own much these days.

Blocked sand pipes…just shows that whatever fancy kit you’ve got you still have to look after the basics.. (retired Kiwirail driver.)

Thanks for bringing up the issue of northern rail 😢 I now travel from Preston to Manchester and return for work and it’s a nightmare with cancelled trains regularly. The bit I don’t get is how they use short formation on this Manchester Airport Blackpool service. I see lots of times families with suitcases can’t get a seat or even get on the train 🙁 And well deserved naming of a class 66 Nigel 👍🏻 Fantastic pod cast as always Green Signals thanks 🙏

Congratulations Nigel on the loco naming 🙂

Great to see the Nigel Harris hope it’s green signals all the way and I’ll definitely keep an eye out on the depot at toton