Junctionmad

I've answered this myself and the issue is a divergence between UK and Ireland practice . In Ireland facing shunt signals remain On, while,main running signals are off. In the UK intermediate facing ground signals must be cleared ie off, if mail signals are to be cleared. Interesting, the UK position is more logical. As a driver never process through a red light of any type. The Irish one is cheaper to implement !!

Here's a question, I had always assumed that facing ground disks , ie those facing the running direction. , were ignored if the main running signal(s) elsewhere on the route were cleared. I have been told this is not the case and that any ground discs facing the train, would also have to be cleared before the main running signals should or could be cleared. In single line working this would mean disks were pulled off for the passage of a train through the station ?..

I can't see much reason to connect Shannon to anything. In fact I cant see the point of an airport there at all. A second Dublin airport near Naas or newbridge makes more sense. Shannon ultimately is the WRC of airports. Kept alive by political considerations rather then real effective policy ones Rail links in the greater Dublin area make sense given the numbers involved. Outside of Dublin little rail investment really makes any sense in reality. The issue of lack of rail connections isn't exclusive to Ireland. Nice is a classic example , which is only now getting its LUAS style tram connection. Where bizarrely the heavy rail line is less them 1km away

Roads in general cannot be compared to railways , people " live" by the side of a road. They don't live on a railway. Roads are not just a transport medium , they are an access medium. Railways, certainly today are not. Motorways are in effect already partially privatised via ppp operate and build contracts.

Great idea but I suspect insufficient passengers. Even when services existed , numbers were tiny. I suspect the maintenance costs of using old stock on a regular scheduled service would break the rpsi.

I don't see the cobblers argument. Unless there is a reasonable justification for commuter rail outside Dublin , it just becomes the ridiculous WRC arguments that just be " Dubs " got some railways we should get some too Galway is a tiny city. Fix a few roads and some decent planning and it's sortable. If one was to apply logical arguments sure you'd remove all interurban rail outside dart and LUAS etc.

I don't think you can make a blanket statement. There are many elements of BR privatisation that have worked well. Incentive in a private company is rewarded and tends not to be in a state one. BR removed itself from many freight activities , yet privatised managers went right back out bad recaptured many of these freight flows. I think a ppp style system could extract better operations from the existing asset base.

Dublin is the only city with sufficient density to justify such investments. The rest of the country is basically empty by European standards

I don't beleive it's that difficult to build a good running diesel chassis. Much less difficult then some steam locos I've built in the past. Good all wheel all axle plunger pickups , a decent Mashimo centre drive on cardan shafts etc, with the appropriate gearing , way simpler then steam as I said

Looked at the UP video. Can't see any real issues. It's a slow speed area, very different from high speed European operations

So , it can'tay it's pension obligations , it seems

The financial evidence suggests that railways are an economic mess , whether in private or public hands. With that in mind, their continued existence owes more to political viewpoints then rational thinking. If one finds the level of subsidy acceptable, arguably it matters not therefor which way you do it.

One must be careful about time-lines here. Certainly in the uk , the existence of fully fitted freights was rare until block workings in the 70s began. My understanding was that Ireland was similar, Most fully fitted freights were typically parcels , newspapers and or horse traffic and typically ran with a full passagner brake rather then a goods brake van . I cannot speak for the situation in Ireland to the same extent. Until the 1967 agreement with the NUR. in the uk brake vans had to be provided on fully fitted trains, this was completely the case for steam hauled as there was nowhere else for the guard to travel in. With cie my own experience in the mid seventies on the dolomite trains was the guard travelled with the driver in the cab even though the train was fully fitted. So your contention , certainly in the uk, was that manning rules were prevelant over operational efficiency, this however has been the case since the drawn of railways ! , the whole one person operation issue in the uk is a clear indication of the issues.

Pics or it didn't happen

The politics of the nmra coupled with lenz patient issues has stopped the introduction of railcom and especially railcom plus , the standards were drawn up and essentially withdrawn by the nmra. Railcom has remained a feature of European originating decoders and been ignored by digitrax in particular. It's available from lenz, Zimo, lok sound etc . Lenz also make a low cost railcom add on board to add the facility to non railcom enabled decoders However it does not support large data transfers like sound files etc. this is a minority activity anyway and best done ex-loco The ability to transfer at large data rates using imperfect track-work and pickups would require very sophisticated protocols and considerable processing power. It does remove the need for programming tracks and all programming can be done on the main, with complete verification ,Cv programming is considerably faster without the need to use the dcc current surge method of verification , which is the main reason Cv programming is slow. ( as to say if all can be in a sec , I can't confirm ) Railcom allows auto detection of address and hence auto Cv programming from a central database , plus provides train feed back, speed, current , temp etc and can be used for block occupancy detection and hence automation The key is for nmra to move dcc forward , not to dump the whole process and embrace utterly non standard, questionably useful , alternative means of communication which provide ittle concrete advantage

The available space in small tank locomotives in 00 predicates against the success of even Li batteries. Hence it's unlikely batteries are a viable solution. Li technology, while benefitting from improved Wh density , suffers from many issues , including thermal instability, Li metal dentrile growth , separator punctures, under and overcharging sensitivity and ageing issues. I cannot see the technology being suitable for 00 steam outline etc.

The gov has full access to capital markets and with a declining budget deficit could easily fund dart underground and remain within the stability pact. Like everything it's a question of priority politics. Are there many votes in DU , I doubt it.

Until 1967, when agreement between BRB and NUR ,meant that fully fitted trains needed no guards van and the guard rode in The rear cab of the loco, all freight trains fitted on not has a guards van. after 1967. Even though aslef threatened action, brake vans on fully fitted trains were gradually eliminated. Single manning agreements on BR in the 80s eliminated the guard and the secondman in most cases. Prior to the 60s , complete fully fitted freight was comparatively rare, mostly fast parcels etc. partially fitted was more common with loose coupled unfitted a common sight. As to your original question, certainly from memory in Waterford I only saw brake vans ( and I used to travel in them ) on beet trains. Never on liners or dolomite trains. I would suspect cie by then had long negotiated the guards situation away.

If you have to have reliable track fed power. Then you might as well feed the data down it as well. Radio in that context offers no real advantage. I have years of designing with lipo , it's not all it's cracked up to be. etc All the deficiencies of dcc can be fixed it's the nmra and us dcc manufacturers that have spoiled the pot. The issues with dcc are not a function of dcc per se , rather the way things got implemented. If you implement two way dcc, radio brings very little to the party.

There are elements of BR privatisation that clearly worked. Freight for example. There are examples that didn't work, certain passenger services for example. In general I think it could be tried in Ireland in that the track remains in cie and the services are franchised out. The pitiful remaining freight services are essentially that model anyway In my view allowing IR to achieve operational savings by deconstructing rail infrastructure needs to be halted , separating running services from operating companies could help in that

Hmm. In the uk. Fully fitted goods ran without brake vans well before unions got involved. I don't think rail companies ran brake vans where they didn't need them.

Dcc with integrated railcom plus , solves almost all the issues inc CV programming The issue isn't reinventing dcc just moving the spec along Battery operation in gauges under 0 doesn't really work

What you can do under war time legislation differs enormously from peacetime and health and safety Rules. Were it a requirement, today's engineers with modern computerised machinery could do far more in less time then any ancient ww2 stuff. US corps of engineers installed a telephone and comms system capable of serving a country the size of Belgium during g operation desert storm in 5 days. !!

Actually the correct operation of semaphores is much more complex then Colour light IMHO. Track circuit block working has simplified the operation of MAS as has reduced complexity trackwork.

Old Barney , what company competed for rail services with cie. ??????