No, they shouldn't be going by rail at all - or at least not for any appreciable distance. Shipping is much more efficient at moving heavy, non time-sensitive loads. Ship direct to the east coast ports, /then/ use rail (MGR) to take the coal the short distance to the power stations. Trying to fit coal trains in on a main line is pure insanity.
There wasa Bury which was swallowed by quicksand on a beach - that's in TCoBS. I don't think there was anything which fell down a hole (that sounds more like the Lindall subsidence on the Furness, which ate a small Sharpie). TCoBS does, however, have the story of the engine which was stolen one night from Miles Platting..
It's much higher than that IIRC from my maths course back when Isaac Newton were a lad, the damage caused is related to the cube of the axle weight, so a 44 tonne lorry does (22^3)/(n/2) times as much damage as a 2 tonne car, where n is the number of lorry axles. So assuming a 6 axle HGV, then the damage is 3550[1] times that of a car
[1] All right, 3549.333333 times :-)
Motororists get no advantage from it?
So motorists don't eat? They don't buy clothes? They don't buy furniture, household goods and consumer goods?
How do you think all of these things get into the shops? Are they spirited in overnight, using airships?
Perhaps that is how it happens in New Zealand. Not here.
I think you meant to say "one of the tragic legacies of the era of one Arthur Scargill" ...
No-one did more to kill the mining industry than Scargill.
(let the class war start ...)
"Andrew Robert Breen" wrote
There was a Drummond M7 tank which fell down a hole when the Waterloo & City hoist began to sink suddenly.
Peter
Has anybody had any more thoughts on the original subject of this thread?
I mistakenly thought it was about sending pictures to a new Fotopic site.
That's why I offered my twopennyworth of advice yesterday. but I'm now being buried in posts about coal via the S&C.
Yes... I know it's called 'thread drift', but what about Fotopic?
No, Greg was right the first time.
ROB
If shipping to the easty coast ports, followed by a short journey by rail, was more efficient, then that is what would be happening now.
As it is, it is cheaper (and therefore more efficient) to ship the coal to Ayrshire and transport it by train.
As I have said before, the cheapness is at least partly because of an artificial subsidy to rail freight. But removing or reducing that subsidy would hinder rail in terms of its ability to compete with road transport for freight flows other than coal. Would you want that?
There must be a problem with getting the ships alongside in the east coast ports - perhaps they just aren't deep enough to take the current size of coal carrier, or the coal handling infrastructure isn't there.
I believe some coal is being imported through Blyth, but only a small proportion of the overall requirement, could this be because the older ports were provided with equipment for loading rather than emptying ships?
Paul
Only because track access charges are extremely (and, in view of what the heavy trains are doing to the formation, unjustifiably) low for the S&C. See Uncle Roger passim..
No, I'd like to see freight moved in the most energy-efficient and lowest carbon-impact manner possible. For some forms of freight that's rail, but that isn't the case for bulk coal.
I stand corrected, I should have said Christopher. I still stand by the point, though!
ROB
So Class War has been declared again, has it?
Oh what a bore.
;-)
I thought Immingham had facilities for unloading coal, but I am not sure.
Immingham would be the sensible port to use for feeding the big S. Yorks power stations, especially as it already has a heavy-haul-compatible railway from the port to the power stations. It can't handle ships of quite the size that Hunterston can, but even with that the economics of ship-to-Scotland, rail-to-England and ship-to-Immingham are finely balanced. If the freights were paying ECML (let alone WCML!) track access charges then the ship would win by a long way. It's only because Railtrack (as it was then) badly misjudged track access charges for freight over the (wholly unsuitable) S&C that makes it work (again, Informed Sources has the gory details).
I'm a New Zealander - any comment blaming anyone for your internal problems would be valueless as I'm unlikely to be aware of all the political factors involved.
Regards, Greg.P. NZ.
The base for the roadway needs to be dug deeper in proportion to the axle weight and said base is pyramid shaped with a flat top. That means the cross sectional area is squared for the increase in axle weight. One can't increase the pyramid longtitudinally becaues of course the rest of the road is already there. Therefore the extra squaring to cube is taken up in distortion of the base - AKA damage. There's a definite limit to strengthening the top surface (the tarmac) which the observant might notice showing up as surface damage on approaches to roundabouts etc.
Motorists pay for roadways constructed much more robustly than their vehicles require. In other words they subsidize the road transport industry.
Hopefully not while they are motorists! Motorists pay a subsidy to the road transport industry.
I think the discussion began comparing rail vs road transport costs - I'm suggesting that you can't make a realistic comparison (as things stand) because motorists subsidise road transport.
We assume that taxation is fairly collected whereas motorists subsidy is collected inequitably.
The situation is probably even worse here as due to the much lower population density we have more roads per head of population.
William. Not to be confused with William Adams of the NLR, GER and LSWR.
Actually the Fratton - East Southsea service. Information in Don Bradley's LSWR Locomotives - the Drummond classes. ISBN 0 906867 42 8
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