AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Gaps between platforms and trains are another problem caused when there is a mis-match between the infrastructure and the trains. When the system was built in the early days of Queen Victoria, passenger carriages were short four-wheeled vehicles, typically less than 10 metres long. Over the next century, the standard length of a British passenger vehicle had risen to 20 metres. With bogies close to the ends, and about 14 metres apart, there would be a large gap on sharply curved concave platforms. This was not usually a problem with slam-door trains as passengers would lower the window inside the door and use the top of the window frame for support when getting on and off. The trains were also fitted with external handrails. This was not an ideal arrangement but it worked. The first large scale use of sliding door trains on the national system adopted the 1/3:2/3 configuration, as in these class 313 trains seen here at Brighton. The size of the gap is obvious. From the mid-1980s,...

One would have thought that a priority for rolling stock designers would have been to make the best use of the limited UK loading gauge. Seemingly not. The illustration of the interior of the new locomotive-hauled Nova 3 coaches for Transpennine Express is taken from an article in International Railway Journal ; I hope this is acceptable under the fair use of copyright rules. Take a look at the skirting area. This shows the problem caused by the very sharp lower bodyside curvature apparent in exterior views of the stock. This example is almost the rule. The same thing affects much of the rolling stock built since 1990, including the BR-designed Networkers and the BREL Electrostars and Turbostars. The bodyside profile makes no sense within the parameters of the UK loading gauge. As is well known, the British loading gauge is little bigger than that permitted for narrow gauge railways such as those of Japan and South Africa. This is mostly due to the closeness of adjacent t...

The latest UK productivity figures for the first three months of 2018 are not good, prompting the usual recriminatory comments. However, there are basic questions which rarely seem to get asked. Transport costs. High reject rates.  Remedial work having to be done on finished products. Inefficient layout of factory premises. Inefficient delivery of components and sub-assemblies to workbenches. Works kept waiting for components to arrive. Products not designed for efficient production. Excessive down-time of plant and machinery.  Poor communications between management and shop-floor workers.  It is a subject that needs to be put under the microscope if remedies are to be found. Hand-wringing achieves nothing.

Three of us were received into the Orthodox Church today. One of us was baptised in the lake and then Chrismated - anointed with Holy Oil, on the forehead, eyelids, ears, nose, mouth, hands and feet. The others two, being Roman Catholics, were only Chrismated, having been baptised already. Many thanks to all involved, including those who acted as Godparents and Fr Mikael Fälthammar, who has given us the course of instruction and received us into the Church. It is one of the most important event that anyone could have in their life. The journey is of course not over. This is a staging post on the journey.

There is a flurry of articles about Marx today, it being the 200th anniversary of his birth on 5th May 1818. If only the Soviets/Red Guards/Khmer Rouge... had really understood, Marxism would have led to a paradise on earth.

Every so often someone comes up with an article in praise of Karl Marx and suggesting that we should take another look at what he wrote. If you have a subscription you can read the latest offering, in the FT of all places . What Engels observed in England in 1840s Manchester was not “ capitalism ” . It was the consequence of the large scale land enclosures which had taken place between 1760 and 1840, which had transformed a self-sufficient peasantry into a class of wage slaves with no land rights. The bit about wage slaves was correct; the process by which this happened on the ground was described in detailed by the Hammonds in “ The Village Labourer ” . The periodic economic crises which characterised the US economy, and indeed, the general development of the US, were analysed by Henry George in his book “ Progress and Poverty ” , published in 1879, which promptly became a bestseller, remained so for half a century and is still in print and available on-line. George cont...

This article paints a glowing picture of multi-cultural Malmö. I mentioned in comments that the recent immigration had had a disastrous effect on the Jewish community in the city. My comments have disappeared without trace. So much for freedom of discussion. Left-liberalism, Guardian-style, is taking society down a road as dark as any the right could contrive.