Please Do Not Wait In The Green Lanes
These pictures show an experiment in Kings Cross St. Pancras tube station, on the Southbound Victoria Line platform, which aims to make boarding and unloading of trains faster.
The idea is you don’t wait on the green lines, which are reserved for those getting on and off the trains.
The pictures were taken at ten in the morning, so I’ll go back one day in the Peak, to see how it works at a busy time.
But I do think it could be a good idea and a bit like platform edge doors, without the expense of the doors.
Note how the train stops precisely as indicated by the green lines. But then the stopping position of the train is determined automatically and has been since the Victoria Lie opened in 1967.
My Japanese Wallet
These pictures show my Japanese wallet.
Note.
- The pocket on the outside to hold one credit card. Unfortunately, you can’t do contactless in the pocket.
- The inside purse to hold a few coins, my door key and a few Warfarin tablets.
- Plenty of space for cards.
- The usual folder for notes.
- The zip that closes it shut.
I haven’t shown the miniature Samurai sword, that pokes out if someone, who doesn’t look like me tries to open the wallet.
Kissing The Innovators Goodbye!
I was part of a team that started a high-tech business n the UK in 1977 at the age of thirty.
James Callaghan was Prime Minister and tax rates were higher than they are today.
In 1984, the business was sold for $128,000,000.
So what advice would I give to my thirty-year-old son, daughter, grandchild, niece or nephew, thinking of starting a high-tech business today?
He or she would in one way be very different to me, in that by the age of thirty.
- I’d probably only been abroad twice and wasn’t very savvy about how to survive in a foreign country.
- Now the average thirty-year-old has probably done around a hundred foreign trips.
Due to a broader spectrum of nationalities in the UK today, a group thinking of starting a business would be less white middle-class than we were.
So whereas, we had to start the business in the UK, unless perhaps we wanted to relocate to the US, which I wouldn’t have done, even if I’d known how much money we would realise, so many factors, like the Internet, cheap air travel, better language skills, the easier availability of money, good support services and welcoming governments mean you can start a high-tech business virtually anywhere.
These factors also mean Brexit isn’t a disaster for the high-tech start-up.
If you are a UK-focused start-up perhaps dealing with something that is very UK specific, Brexit will only effect you if the economy goes bust.
If you are selling a world-wide product, the Internet means Brexit is irrelevant or will be in a couple of years.
But who wins the General Election is.
A May victory will probably mean things will carry on as before with a probability upwards of sixty-per-cent, as history teaches us, that in times of unexpected crisis that the UK just keeps calm and carries on.
Consider.
- Corbyn and his cronies are so Consevative in their thinking.
- Of all our industries, the NHS is probably our most Conservative.
- A lot of innovation is disruptive, which destroys existing methods, restrictive practices and industries, but improves employment and quality of life.
- Good ideas, make their inventors lots of money and they usually desire to keep it.
As an example, what would happen if a revolutionary product came along, that saved the NHS billions of pounds a year, but cut staff by 100,000?
It would never be introduced and if it was, the inventors would be driven out of the country by Corbyn’s proposed high taxation.
So after the disastrous Brexit, a Corbyn victory would probably be equally disastrous for innovation and innovators in the UK.
Forget Trump: The Private Sector Is Still Going Green
This is title of a piece by Irwin Stelzer in this week’s Sunday Times.
Read the article if you can. It talks about how large companies like Exxon and Shell and individuals like Bill Gates are putting prices on carbon and backing reliable clean energy.
The last paragraph sums it up nicely.
Presidents come and go. The private sector will be engaging in long-run research and long-lived investments, perhaps more efficiently than the government has been doing. The profit motive might just turn out to be more productive than the vote-getting or ideological motives of politicians.
I think he could be right!
Think of all those successful projects, that were were done without any Government support or blessing and think of all those government projects that sunk without trace taking millions of pounds with them.
And also think about all that legal money slushing around the world looking for a home in an innovation that will be a wothwhile investment.
Could There Be A Class 321 Flex Train?
I took these pictures of a Class 321 train at Ipswich station.
Like the Class 319 train currently being updated to a bi-mode Class 319 Flex train, I wonder if the same bi-mode upgrade could be applied to a Class 321 train.
Look at this picture of a Class 319 train.
A Class 319 At Lime Street
Both trains do seem to have generous space underneath.
Consider.
- Both trains are 100 mph four-car trains based on Mark 3 coaches.
- Ten Class 321 trains are being given the Renatus treatment by Eversholt Leasing for Greater Anglia with air-conditioning and new interiors.
- The Class 321s were built after the Class 319s.
- The Class 321s are 25 KVAC overhead operation only.
- There are 117 Class 321 trains.
- As the two trains were launched within a year of each other, they can’t be that different under the skin.
It should also be remembers that train companies have a lot of experience about running both type of train.
Porterbrook Versus Eversholt
Could we be seeing a strong commercial battle, where the two leasing companies; Porterbrook and Eversholt, fight it out to sell the best four-car bi-mode train to the train operating companies?
This could only be of benefit to train companies and passengers.
The Electrical System Of a Possible Class 321 Flex
The only problem, I can envisage is that as I wrote in The Electrical System Of A Class 319 Flex, the DC electrical bus of the Class 319 train makes the design of the Class 319 Flex train easy. If the Class 321 Train doesn’t have a similar layout, then it might be more difficult to create a Class 321 Flex!
On the other hand Vossloh Keipe have received a contract to upgrade the traction systems of thirty Class 321 trains to give them.
- AC traction motors and the associated control systems.
- Regenerative braking.
This work is fully described onb this page of the Vossloh Keipe web site.
Probably, with a suitable alternator from ABB and some quality electrical engineering, I would think that a Class 321 Flex could be created.
Conclusions
Each train will have their own big advantages.
- The Class 319 Flex train will work third rail routes.
- The Class 321 Flex train will have regenerative braking on electrified routes.
But in the end, if two bi-mode fleets can be created, there will probably be a lot of conviviality in hostelries in Derby and York, where the probably long-retired engineers, who designed the Mark 3 coach and its various derivative multiple units, will be laughing loudly into their beer.
The Cost Of Tram Batteries
This article in Rail Technology Magazine is entitled Midland Metro tram shipped to Spain for battery fit-out ahead of OLE-free operation.
One Midland Metro tram has been sent back to the factory in Zaragoza to be fitted with two roof-mounted lithium-ion cells and after testing it will be returned to the West Midlands in the Autumn, where more testing will be performed, prior to starting running on the catenary-free streets of Birmingham and Wolverhampton.
After a successful completion of testing on the first tram, the other twenty trams will be converted.
This is said in the article about costs.
The total cost to the WMCA of fitting out the fleet will be £15.5m, but the authority says that it will save £9.24m on infrastructure costs on the first four extensions to the Metro network alone, with further infrastructure savings planned as future extensions take place.
So the savings can go a long way to help pay for the trams to run on the four extensions.
The cost of the modifications to each tram is £738,000, but if the infrastructure savings are factored in, the modifications cost just £298,000 per tram.
I also wonder if the layout of the Midland Metro, with a fairly long wired central section and a catenary-free section at either end is ideal for battery operation, as the trams will have a long section to fully charge the batteries.
But it looks like trams will reach Victoria Square and Wolverhampton station in 2019, Edgbaston in 2021 and the Eastside extension to Curzon Street will be completed in 2023.
Perhaps, the most interesting section in the article is this paragraph.
The WMCA is also evaluating a proposed Wednesbury to Brierley Hill extension to identify the viability of catenary-free sections.
Could this mean that the South Staffordshire Line, which will be used for the extension will be without catenary? As the tram does small detours into Dudley and at the Merry Hill Shopping Centre, then these sections could be wired to charge the batteries, leaving the South Staffordshire Line without any wires. I estimate that the distance the tram would travel would be about seven miles each way.
As Network Rail want to run both trams and freight trains on the South Staffordshire Line, this might allow both to share an unelectrified line, if they have the right wheel and track profiles.
There certainly seems to be some very innovative ideas around, when it comes to using trains and trams in City Centres.
The Globalisation Of Health Care
This article on the BBC is entitled World’s smallest MRI helps tiny babies.
It shows how healthcare is becoming an increasingly global collaboration.
The idea for the machine was developed in the University of Sheffield and the machine was built by the American company; GE Healthcare.
Medical research is like this, with often more than two companies and countries playing their parts in producing a successful breakthrough, often many years after the original idea.
I just wonder how Trump’s America First and tax policies will affect developments like this.
Will his new tax rules, mean that if an American company is involved in a development like this, that the device will have to be manufactured in the United States, when perhaps to manufacture it in the country, that owns the IPR might be better?
I can see researchers not wanting to get involved with American companies, when other countries can offer deals with no nasty strings attached.
There’s only going to be two winners with some of Trumps tax ideas; lawyers and accountants.
Government Focuses On New Stations And Trains
This is the title of an article in Rail Magazine.
This is the opening paragraph.
Passenger numbers rising fast, new stations, improved facilities and new trains are the result of policies followed by the current Government and not what Labour wants to follow, claims Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling.
As an example about what is needed Gayling talks about the Cleethorpres to Sheffield Line.
It is an interesting insight to some of Mr. Grayling’s thinking.
But I agree we need more stations and trains.
I also feel that wit the right innovation and design, we may be able to provide services in places that previously have been thought not to be viable..
The Anonymous Widower 