Dump Your Deezel

[andy5]

Looks like emissions from diesel locomotives over the long term will wither on the vine if the UK's ambitious strategy for 2040 is implemented (just a hint of sarcasm )

Goodbye Diesel-The UK Government has announced that diesel-only trains will be phased out by 2040.

Will we have Battery Electric Trains to get over the "Overhead Wiring-up" of the entire network, or indeed will some Hydrogen power trains find a niche for themselves in the mix?

I think that headline should read: "Government has announced that diesel-only trains will be phased out by 2040 except for those that are not phased out"

I think you might both be slightly misreading this. More cynicism is needed to reach one possible explanation. They can fulfil this, but it might not be what some think it sounds like.

The electrification to Wales and the west was delayed and then has been cancelled or reduced, and what is being done now (to only about Didcot, I believe) is over a year late.

New trains ordered for these routes have dual power, diesel and electric. Not hybrid, but separate. So in effect these trains could already fit the description of not being diesel only trains.

No further electrification at all would be needed to fulfil a promise that diesel only trains will be phased out, if it would only mean that these dual power trains will be introduced instead.

It is of course ludicrous and inefficient to have trains that are carrying the weight amd expense of two power systems and only using one, but none of the politicians PR about what they are up to will ever be phrased to admit that.

[CitroJim]

The electrification to Wales and the west was delayed and then has been cancelled or reduced, and what is being done now (to only about Didcot, I believe) is over a year late.

I noticed it looked as if the electrification was complete to Swindon last time I went under Acorn Bridge on the A420...

The wires were in place...

[Gibbo2286]

Well they're upgrading the signal system at Bristol Temple Meads to increase capacity on the West Coast line, maybe the electrification will be not too behind.

https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/20 ... ignal-box/

[andy5]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... 800-trains

Seems to be Didcot at the moment, more by the end of the year. I think I was out of date, due to a previous announcement about indefinite deferrals, and the previous saga which led to changing to dual power

[NewcastleFalcon]

I like the headline for that article

Great Western mainline: what does a £10bn rail upgrade buy you?

Hold the front page,

..... the start of 2019, when the full fleet of 57 trains has entered service and the line is electrified to Cardiff,
journeys will be up to 17 minutes faster from Bristol to London,

All these business people arriving at their important meetings 17 minutes sooner...just think of the economic benefits of the additional productive networking and small talk that could be crammed into that

Regards Neil

[myglaren]

I'm sure someone cobbled together some statistics to justify the expense - someone who would benefit from it of course.

As Mr Churchill is credited as saying; "There are lies, damned lies and statistics"!

[Gibbo2286]

I recall at the end of the Soviet era there was a story that to maintain a rail service between two distant Russian cities the authorities had said statistically it required the train to carry 1,000 tonnes of steel on each journey, it was only when Communism collapsed that they discovered 1,000 tonnes of steel had been loaded onto a train and never unloaded, shipped from end to end of the line for three decades.

Excuse me if I have the tonnage wrong my memory ain't what it used to be.

[NewcastleFalcon]

"Britain's Diesel Scandal" is going to be given the treatment by Dispatches tonight

Channel 4 8.00pm tonight.

If its as good as the "Salisbury incident" they covered last week it will be rubbish!

I'll have to watch it on plus 1 due to University Challenge and Only Connect commitments!

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

No-one saw it then?

Gist....Lorries using adblue removal devices and remaps. Saves expensively fixing adblue systems when they go kaput!
In the meantime they pour out NOx. Policing of the devices pretty useless, plenty of stops zero prosectutions, and the "software" bypass method pretty much undetectable with mot testing equipment as it stands.

Regards Neil

[Gibbo2286]

I have the same taste in tv as you Neil, Only connect and University Challenge so I watched the linked programme on catch up this afternoon.

Another typical Dispatches hatchet job, they're still using the '26k + deaths attributed' figure that has been widely disputed as a fiction, I'm told that the only place that figure came from was a college guy in the States who extrapolated it from a dodgy set of numbers from way back in the 80s

They of course have to have the pet "My child has asthma" talking head and the old taxi driver who has sinusitis, no history of their lifestyles.

The fiddling truckers and their companies, I agree, should be prosecuted and fined heavily not just ticked off and told "Don't do it again." Tacho fiddlers don't get off that lightly.

[Pug_XUD_KeenAmateur]

aren't we all forgetting how appalling run, expensive to use and badly maintained our railways are.

A quick shufti at National Rail's journey planner advises me that a morning journey 90miles into my London terminal will set me back £109.50 for a journey that I can do with a tenner's worth of diesel.

...and I suppose I'll not only be lucky if I get a seat, but it probably won't be on time either

...and woe betide us if the weather is anything less than perfect.

Railways. Aren't they wonderful.

[MikeT]

No-one saw it then?

The Telegraph "revealed" this "news" back in February. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/0 ... es-diesel/

Also published in February last year! I find this https://www.transportenvironment.org/ne ... 2%80%99-us

Meanwhile, since at least 2013, the US have been clamping down hard on such defeat devices.

News ain't what it used to be.

[Mandrake]

aren't we all forgetting how appalling run, expensive to use and badly maintained our railways are.

A quick shufti at National Rail's journey planner advises me that a morning journey 90miles into my London terminal will set me back £109.50 for a journey that I can do with a tenner's worth of diesel.

At tenner ? Pfft. £2.70 of electricity for my Ion to go 90 miles. Makes rail look even worse.

[wurlycorner]

aren't we all forgetting how appalling run, expensive to use and badly maintained our railways are.

A quick shufti at National Rail's journey planner advises me that a morning journey 90miles into my London terminal will set me back £109.50 for a journey that I can do with a tenner's worth of diesel.

...and I suppose I'll not only be lucky if I get a seat, but it probably won't be on time either

...and woe betide us if the weather is anything less than perfect.

Railways. Aren't they wonderful.

Opinions are wonderful things and I won't get drawn into a slagging match.
Two of your starting comments can easily be drawn as personal opinions that people will debate and sit on either side (as do I at different times, as a travelling punter ) and can explain reasons why that might the case and the alternatives if a different outcome were intended.
But as someone who works in the industry, I cannot let a statement that they are "badly maintained" stand - unless of course, you are also in the industry and can corroborate hard evidence?

[van ordinaire]

Like frequent disruption due to points, signal & train failures, the fact that GWR has so many compensation claims it takes months to process them, missing seat cushions, out-of-order toilets, hazard tape on windows to warn passengers not to use that door, computer failures which mean seat reservations aren't printed, cash only on-board buffets because their credit card readers haven't worked for months . . . ?