Royal Mail Iconography
I took these two pictures on Friday and Saturday respectively.
The brickwork has been saved and incorporated into the wall in the new Royal Mail sorting office in Islington and the Penford pillar box is behind the Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush.
Are These Trains The Key To Improved Rail Services in The UK?
I must admit I’ve been critical of the Hitachi Super Express Train to be built in the North East of England.
As an engineer, I don’t like the idea of an electro-diesel version, that lugs diesel engines around, so it can be self-propelled on non-electrified lines.
I also feel, that the last government wanted the project for overtly political reasons and hence the decision to build the trains in the North East.
But now the orders are being made for both the Class 800 and Class 801 trains, I’m warming to the project.
This is partly because, I have travelled into Kent several times by the Class 395 trains, which are to a similar design by Hitachi, as proposed for the Class 800 and Class 801. Although, they are probably less grand, as they are essentially commuter trains. But even these humbler trains have a top speed of 225 kph, which is the same as the Inter City 225 units on the East Coast Main Line.
If all of the improvements to the East Coast Main Line detailed here are implemented, then the line could be a 225 kph four-track line all the way from London to Newcastle.
The major problems then to adding capacity and obtaining that speed most of the way, are the slower 160 kph trains, that run from London to Cambridge and Peterborough and share the lines to the north of York and Doncaster. But if these units like the current Class 365 and Class 185 were replaced with another electrical multiple unit from the same 800/801 family capable of working at 225 kph, this problem would be alleviated.
If we look at the West Coast Main Line, the Class 390 Pendelions could travel on a lot of the line at 225 kph with improved signalling, but again they are held up by other slower services. in fact, there is talk of ordering more mini-Pendelinos to serve places like Holyhead, Chester, Blackpool and Shrewsbury.
Once the Great Western Main Line is fully electrified to Bristol and South Wales, it should be a 225 kph railway, virtually run by the 800/801 family of trains, with a few Inter City 125s, still working down to Devon and Cornwall. So I suspect we’ll see the Oxford, Cheltenham and Worcester services run by faster trains to reduce capacity constraints.
But all this does show again, how by running more 225 kph trains under better signalling systems, with probably more selective quadruple tracking can greatly increase the capacity on our railways.
It could be argued than one of the successes of the Inter City 125s, is that because there are so many they can be moved between operators and reconfigured easily for changing circumstances. If ever there was a chameleon train, it is these.
i suspect that if we had a large number of 800/801 trains or in fact any other type, then this would make them cheaper to purchase and support and probably more reliable. We have too many one route only classes of trains.
So what other lines could benefit from 225 kph trains, such as the 800/801 family?
Obviously, the East Midland Main Line is a candidate, especially as there have been plans to make a lot of the line capable of speeds of 200 kph. It would be an easier and earlier way to substantially speed up journey times to Sheffield. Dual voltage versions of the 800/801 family aren’t proposed, but the closely related Class 395 can run on overhead wires or third rail. So could we see a high-speed service from Sheffield to Brighton, through the Thameslink tunnels, stopping in Central London and Gatwick Airport?
The Great Eastern Main Line on the other hand is probably not a candidate, as it is only a 160 kph line, as like most East Anglian infrastructure, it was built on the cheap. But the line is crying out for new trains and I have heard that electrical multiple units would save time to Ipswich and Norwich.
The Trans Pennine Lines are a disgrace and at least are scheduled for electrification. As the trains using these lines often travel over the East and West Coast Main lines, faster trains are needed for some routes like Liverpool to Newcastle and Glasgow to Manchester.
I would also electrify the Chiltern Line to Birmingham and replace the third rail systems south of London to perhaps, Brighton, Portsmouth, Southampton and Bournemouth. For freight purposes this is being done partly already.
So I think we’ll see lots of the 800/801 family of high speed trains.
Do We Need A Rolling HS2?
The report today by the think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, which says that HS2 will cost a lot more than is currently budgetted for. It’s all reported here on the BBC.
They make a lot of good points in the report.
Extra infrastructure such as trams and trains, will be needed to link other areas to the route.
Extra tunnels and other infrastructure will be needed to buy off the opposition.
The BBC summarises it like this.
The report said HS2 “and the add-on transport schemes will be heavily loss-making in commercial terms – hence the requirement for massive taxpayer support”.
As someone, who is very familiar with project management, I’ve always felt that the logic of HS2 and the way it is being implemented could and will be improved.
If we look at the current rail network, it has problems that will eventually be solved or helped by HS2.
Euston station is not fit for purpose and should be redeveloped and/or relieved. I favour a second terminus of the West Coast Main Line at Old Oak Common, as I mused here.
There are very severe capacity problems on the northern part of the West Coast Min Line between Wigan and Glasgow. This is not part of the current HS2, so perhaps it should be done to make sure the Scots get their connections to the South improved.
The East Coast Main Line to Leeds and Newcastle, has a notorious bottleneck at the Digswell Viaduct and according to this report on the BBC web site, it could be removed for under half a billion.
One problem that HS2 doesn’t solve is the bad connections across the north of England from Liverpool to Leeds and Hull. This BBC report includes an estimate of a billion plus.
So should we just define the route for HS2 and then break it into a series of manageable projects, that are implemented over the years.
We might design large stretches for say 300 kph, but most of the upgraded network would have limits of around 200 to 250 kph. Effectively large sections of the East and West Coast Main Lines can now handle 225 kph and just need resignalling.
The new Class 800 and Class 801 trains will be built to a design speed of 225 kph.
In some ways these trains may be the key to the whole of the expansion of high-speed services. I suspect, we’ll see them on London to Sheffield and Norwich for a start.
Weapons Of The Spirit
The BBC is showing a piece about the wartime history of the village of Le-Chambon-sur-Lignon, in saving thousands of Jews from the Nazis. The story is here on Wikipedia.
The title of this post comes from the documentary about the story, made by Pierre Sauvage, who was born and sheltered in Le Chambon.
The Fracking Story Is Now Dead
We won’t get much on fracking for a few days, weeks and even months, as the papers have decided to dig up that old chesnut of a story designed to sell newspapers; who actually killed princess Diana. Even that royalist rag, the Independent has the story.
Still as her death didn’t happen in Sussex, the police of that county must be very relieved.
Cash-For Crash By The Busload
This story must be the ultimate cash-for-crash story. Here’s the intro.
A bogus bus crash was staged in Sheffield so 26 passengers could make fake whiplash claims – all set up by organised conmen trying to defraud insurance firms, a court heard.
As I don’t have a car or car insurance, I’m glad that I don’t have to pay for these crooked claims.
Why You Should Have A Personal E-Mail Address
I use a personal .com e-mail address based on my name and have done for many years. I always recommend that people have an e-mail address based on something like a .com, .co.uk or something related to where you live.
it was brought home to me this morning, about what a pain not doing this can be.
A friend has just changed their Internet supplier from BT to Sky. They used to use a BT e-mail address and now they’ve had to change to a Sky one! Consequently all of their friends have had to be informed and will have to update the entries in their address books. I don’t use a smart phone for e-mails, so with me all I have to update is Microsoft Outlook.
Incidentally, I’ve just looked up my friend’s probably preferred e-mail address and it is available at six pounds for two years.
That sounds like a small price to pay for something that will last forever and won’t ask your friends to change again.
The Enormous Amount Of Energy Used By Computer Servers
In all the hot air talked about fracking, wind power and nuclear power, very rarely does the argument stray into energy usage. The only thing people seem to worry about is the cost of their household energy bills and filling up their car.
But accpording to this academic report from Stanford University in 2010, over ten percent of all US electricity was used to power computer and IT equipment. Here’s the relevant part.
In 2010, over 10% of electricity in the U.S. was due to computer and IT equipment usage. At the current rate we’re going, analysts and experts figure that 10% of the world’s power bill will be spent on running computers. To give a more concrete example of how much energy this is, Dixon shows that one 50,000 square feet data center uses about 5 megawatts, but continuously. This energy output would satisfy the needs of 5000 homes. In another staggering example, assorted US data centers use a collective 7000 megawatt data centers from seven different plants; this is more power than is used by the State of Mississippi. Even more surprising is that this astronomical power consumption is just by the plants themselves – cooling systems use as much energy as the plants.
Also in this article in the FT. it says that in 2010, Goggle used about 258 Megawatts continuously.
Since this refers to 2010, I wonder how much of the UK’s energy usage goes in that area now.
According to this article, in 2012 average demand for electricity was 35.8 Gigawatt. Just imagine having to pay that bill!
So let’s assume that only five percent of that energy is used for computer servers, so that is 1790 megawatt. Bear in mind that the UK’s largest power station, Drax, has a capability of generating 3960 megawatts or seven percent of the UK’s electricity. So nearly half of its output and the enormous amount of CO2, Drax emits could be used to power computer equipment.
I need better figures here, but it would seem that a substantial part of UK electricity is used in computing.
But help is at hand in this area. To make computers use less power, you can do many things; like write better software and install more efficient cooling systems.
The biggest fight though is in the area of making chips that consume less electricity and there’s a war going on there, between the dominant Intel and the upstart from Cambridge called ARM. Whether Intel can hold off ARM is a subject for debate, but in a year or so, the average server will consume a lot less power than it does now. Unfortunately, the search, social networking, data storing and other IT companies will be a lot bigger, so all we will be doing with better technology is eating into the growth in energy usage.
I think though, this will mean that many large server farms will relocate to countries, where energy costs are lowest.
Can We Delay Fracking?
Or any other new means of energy creation for that matter?
There has just been a very heated debate about fracking on BBC Radio 5 Live and the amount of hot air produced could power the whole of Sussex without doubt.
Most of the arguments on both sides were fact-free and full of emotion, with accusations of lying and wrong facts from both sides.
The most significant energy news of the day is this story from the Guardian. It says that domestic energy use has dropped by a quarter since 2005.
More work in this field could actually delay the crunch, when we need to build lots of new power stations, be they powered by whatever.
That delay is the time to use to research every method of obtaining energy fully.
The trouble is this would probably give engineers and scientists enough time, to find a solution that ended all the arguments, so a lot of protesters and believers in uneconomic technologies would be kicked soundly into the long grass.
If I’d had a pound for every scientifically incorrect argument about energy I’d heard, I’d be a very rich man.
Handling My Peas
Some of the recipes I use need about half a cup of frozen peas for one person. So as my freezer is downstairs in the garage, I thought it better to store the peas already divided.
Handling My Peas
Whether it will work out, I don’t know, but the plastic cups stood nicely in a drawer in my freezer.
The Anonymous Widower 