AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Comment and analysis here . This reinforces the argument if there was going to be a high speed line at all, it should have started from Scotland and the North of England.

Kattvik - chestnut horses , a photo by Elmar Eye on Flickr. The fuss about horseburgers is a classic bit of journalistic twaddle. Unless you are a vegetarian or hold to the rules of a religion, what is the objection? Horse is perfectly good meat, leaner than beef. In fact, there is something to be said for promoting it for what it is - a superior product. The only reservation concerns the use of knackered racehorses which are, apparently, dosed up with drugs which it would not be a good thing to consume. But the same issue applies to all farm animals and animal produce. That is a good reason to cut down on meat and choose free range or KRAV-marked products. But the horseburger row looks like a stirring up a controversy to sell newspapers. Nothing of sense seems to have been said on the subject.

Great Central Railway Loughborough Leicestershire 26th January 2013 , originally uploaded by loose_grip_99 . Few people alive will remember this striking colour scheme which was introduced when the railways were nationalised in 1948 but had disappeared by 1954. It distils the mood of post-war optimism - the belief in a better future after the austerity years. The engineers of the time were both forward-looking and backwards-looking. The colour scheme was a revival of the Caledonian Railways livery previously last seen in 1923, and it actually popped up again in 1960 when the Glasgow suburban railways were electrified. The trouble with the blue, and the red and cream colour scheme for the carriages, was that it needed attention which was not forthcoming in the post-war years of labour shortage. So the blue was replaced by a dark green and the carriages went into maroon, a dignified though muted scheme which was enhanced by a heraldic badge. It all seems very distant now, when colour sch...

How fast should railways innovate? The Advanced Passenger Train came about when British Rail imported a team of engineers from the aerospace industry. As an experimental project it was a success. But the aim was to introduce these trains into fleet operation. Fortunately a group of old school BR engineers had their own ideas of pushing mature technology just a little and were not prevented from pursuing them. The result was the HST and still no-one has actually got an effective replacement into service. And the HST itself had its share of teething troubles which went on for years. But if we relied on only ever building what was safe from any risk then we'd be running a railway which didn't look much different from that in the 60's. Or would we? Steady evolution or evolution by leaps and bounds? The first 80 years of railways were dominated by steam power, which continued to play an important role until the 1950s. There was a steady development and a steady increa...

  I have criticised the decision to introduce 26 metre vehicles before, but there could be more problems than just the need to increase clearances. The basic loading gauge on Network Rail remains the C1, which applies to vehicles 20 metres long with bogie centres 14.17 metres apart, and a width of 2.82 metres. These are the mark 1 dimensions, and they are perpetuated in the latest stock built for lines south of London. The C3 loading gauge was introduced in the mid-1970s and allowed the use of vehicles 23 metres long with a bogie spacing of 16 metres between centres. The width was reduced to 2.74 metres, which made them- the mark 3 stock - no narrower than mark 1 stock which had projecting hinges and door handles. Because the bogie centres are 3.5 metres from the ends, it was necessary to taper the vehicles at the ends, which comprised the vestibule areas.  Initially, the routes on which mark 3 stock were limited but over the years clearances have been improved to allow them t...

David Cameron said on Sunday that the growing threat of Islamist militants in the Sahel region of Africa required “a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months”. He compared the situation with that in Afghanistan, saying: “What we face is an extremist, Islamist, violent al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group, just as we had to deal with in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” Foolishness or ignorance? Is it really a good idea to embark on an open-ended - permanent, to all intents and purposes - war of attrition against militant Islam from Africa to Afghanistan? Militancy is implicit in the original texts of Islam - the Koran and Hadith, and it has a been a thread running through history since the time of Mahomet. It can not be stamped out by military means and it is more likely that military intervention will encourage militancy. Why is this not understood? A further complication is the presence of large Islamic minorities in many European countries, with the potenti...

The bi-mode debate rumbles on. For decades the economics of diesel versus electric was argued The overall thermal efficiency of diesel was around 30% (depending whom you asked) whereas electric was around 20%. Electric trains and locomotives were less expensive in first cost than their diesel counterparts. Electric trains and locomotives were less expensive in running cost than their diesel counterparts. Electrification was not worth while unless traffic density was at a level sufficient to justify the installation of the fixed equipment. Electrification caused less pollution at the point of use. Electrification gave flexibility as to energy sources. This probably lists all the most important factors. Applying figures to them is uncertain, but however it is done, the end result is a "triage". There are routes which must be electrified, routes which are definitely not worth electrifying, and routes where it makes little difference either way. The other consideration is th...

For some reason this piece, Rejoice in the Lord alway, by George Rathbone, gives me the creeps. On the face of things it is a nice bright jolly tuneful composition in a major key, with no discords. It was probably written between the two world wars, in the British light music idiom. But it spooks me. Why should it have this effect? It could be that it is just too bright and jolly to be true, in the spirit of the muscular Christianity which came to the fore in British public schools in the second half of the nineteenth century and was a continuing theme until the 1960s, when, thank goodness, it faded away. Or is it just that the music is boring and vacuous? Or is it the associations it carries? It is exactly the kind of music that we were made to sing at school just after the war. To a listener whose childhood was in the 1940s, it taps directly into a stream of unpleasant memories: the smell of school dinners with overcooked cabbage and wet coats in cloakrooms, dingy classrooms, sit...

I met a man yesterday aged about 70 at the Tridentine Mass. Of Jewish origin, he had been brought up in Italy as a Catholic but lost his faith with the introduction of the Vatican 2 reforms. Then he went back to Judaism and lived in Israel for many years, becoming involved with the Chabad Lubavitch sect. In recent times he lost his faith in that too and became atheist. Now he is interested in attending the EF mass again. It speaks to him. The ultimate problem with the liturgy is as explained in the "Spirit of the Liturgy" by Cardinal Ratzinger: the signifier becomes the thing signified. Get it wrong and it is stripped of its meaning. Ratzinger's book should be a study text for all priest-candidates.

The inflation-busting fares increase has led to a wave of indignation. Privatisation the railways has of course left several trainloads of hangers-on to support, but there are two factors that do not get a mention. One is the rising cost of rolling stock. The real cost of a railway carriage is about 8 times what it was in the late 1950s, up from around £6000 now to over a million now, whilst the cost of a locomotive is up from around £30,000 then to nearly £3 million today. Allow a generous factor of 50 for inflation and it is still a huge increase. The new Hitachi trains will cost £2.6 million per carriage and there is also going to be a bill for infrastructure changes as someone thought it would be a good idea to make the carriages 3 metres longer, so they do not quite fit the present system. The problem is compounded by the fact that most of the fleet is relatively new, all of the stock built before 1975 having been scrapped since privatisation. The public, and ill-in...

Vidimus stellam eius in Oriente et venimus cum muneribus adorare Dominum. We saw His star in the East, and have come with gifts to adore the Lord.

Whatever the Catholic church hierarchy does will be wrong. The Archbishop of Westminster has put and end to the LBGT Masses in Soho and transferred the ministry to the Jesuits at Farm Street, nearby. I have never attended an LGBT Mass and do not know what happens at one. I have set out my views on the Mass on many occasions on this blog. The Mass belongs to everyone. If there is any question of it being taken over by a section of the community, then the ideal way to prevent such appropriation would be to use the Extraordinary Form, which has to be performed precisely in accordance with the instructions. Unfortunately, those who favour the Extraordinary Form Mass have themselves become regarded as a sectional group so that is not an option. Whilst this situation continues, the best that can be done is to celebrate the Mass in "vanilla flavour". But the move to Farm Streets sounds as if the Archbishop is taking the gay Christian community seriously, and the brickbats he has...