The new news 24 thread

[grogee]

25 minutes ago, vulgalour said:

The rear doors, they are painted.

Used a toffee wheel for the first time ever.  Takes a bit of getting the hang of and then makes seriously light work of the ancient vinyl graphics (that I'll be painting back on with satin black).  The repairs to the rear doors could have been done better if I had a proper space to do them in and whatnot instead of having to dodge bad weather. Rather than belittle my efforts, I look at how bad the front doors look to show me how much of an improvement I've made on the rears.

Aye.  That'll do won't it?

What's a toffee wheel? 

Great work. Annoyingly I think the replacement NSR door I picked up for mine was that shade with that stripe - sorry, it's now White Diamond. 

Did you say you were changing your dash? I noticed yet another heater control layout on a Ledbury car recently, with three rotary controls in the centre of the dash. Like a 'normal' car. That makes (I think) three heating and ventilation systems developed for the Maestro, the first being vacuum operated. Clowns. 

[grogee]

5 hours ago, wuvvum said:

why does no long distance journey by public transport in this country ever go smoothly?

 

[Ghosty]

Dad got the locking wheel nut off the Lexus so it's now rolling. 

Check the for sale section for the full story - £21 roffle for a winter beater anyone? 

[vulgalour]

6 minutes ago, grogee said:

What's a toffee wheel? 

Great work. Annoyingly I think the replacement NSR door I picked up for mine was that shade with that stripe - sorry, it's now White Diamond. 

Did you say you were changing your dash? I noticed yet another heater control layout on a Ledbury car recently, with three rotary controls in the centre of the dash. Like a 'normal' car. That makes (I think) three heating and ventilation systems developed for the Maestro, the first being vacuum operated. Clowns. 

I do have the spare rear doors up for grabs for free over in the for sale section if you know anyone in need of some.  I am replacing the dash soon, it's sat in the loft waiting to be fitted, I think I'm going to do the front doors first so all the really messy jobs are out the way so I don't run the risk of damaging my nice dashboard.  The dashboard in the car is knackered and the main shell will be heading binwards once I've salvaged all the good bits off it, just in case anyone needs them.  The amount of dash revisions on the Maestro was a bit silly, I've got the one where you can't see the heater or fan controls and they're difficult to find by feel.  Useless, tbqh.

[stuboy]

11 minutes ago, grogee said:

What's a toffee wheel? 

i got one never used it

[vulgalour]

I answered that question in my head and forgot to type it so thanks @stuboy

[wuvvum]

This is what I've bought, if anyone's interested. 

Probably of more interest from an AS perspective is this Dutch-registered beauty I passed on the A1 

[brownnova]

Oooh an Ampera! Remember talking about these at Shitefest. Well bought, and I’ll watch with interest! 

[Popsicle]

4 hours ago, stuboy said:

i got one never used it

I've never heard of these either. The hours I could have saved over the years removing sign writing from vans, its a really boring task.

[New POD]

9 hours ago, grogee said:

 

Privatisation of British Rail, by them, in the 90s.  Failure to bring Britsh Rail back into public control by labour when they got into power and failure by the conservatives to come up with a vision that didn't involve billions of investment and overspend  and decades of waiting for it to happen. 

Actually. No political parties in this country have the ability or vision to build a public transport system suitable for a world *leading economy, in the 21st century. 

Other countries must piss themselves at our shitness. 

[Volksy]

2 hours ago, New POD said:

Other countries must piss themselves at our shitness. 

Am I correct in thinking that the majority of our public transport is owned by companies in other countries. 

Arriva - Deutsche Bahn for example. 

 

[New POD]

2 hours ago, Volksy said:

Am I correct in thinking that the majority of our public transport is owned by companies in other countries. 

Arriva - Deutsche Bahn for example. 

 

In which case can we learn from them ? 

[SiC]

1 hour ago, New POD said:

In which case can we learn from them ? 

Going by what my German colleagues say, the German rail system is not very efficient or on time either. Another myth that we import. 

 

A quick Google bring up a whole host of problems:

Nearly one-quarter of high-speed trains did not reach their destination on time in 2021. Long delays and canceled trains have become routine across Germany.5 Jan 2022

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/germany-rail-operator-deutsche-bahn-admits-major-drop-in-punctuality/a-60338352

 

This sounds familiar?

Deutsch Bahn - Strike by the EVG trade union from 14 May 2023

DB long-distance services will be suspended from 14.05.2023 10 p.m. to 16.05.2023 midnight due to a strike by the EVG trade union. 

Local transport will be massively affected nationwide.

https://help.raileurope.co.uk/article/41251-germany-delays-disruptions

 

 

Not even a new problem as this article in 2018 suggests

‘We are becoming a joke’: Germans turn on Deutsche Bahn

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/20/trains-on-time-germans-deutsche-bahn-railway

 

A relatively recent article here. 

https://archive.li/T79ef

 

Anecdotally from my own experience commuting by train in the UK, they're on the whole pretty reliable. Most of the issues stem from idiots (kids) mucking around on the train line. Or the new Hitachi trains having issues that Hitachi refuse to fix and then they are stuck running slow or short of carriages. 

[stuboy]

All the parts have been delivered for the galaxy back box... sadly the weather said not today.  So I stuffed them on back seat for another day..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Noel Tidybeard]

21 hours ago, grogee said:

Did you say you were changing your dash? I noticed yet another heater control layout on a Ledbury car recently, with three rotary controls in the centre of the dash. Like a 'normal' car. That makes (I think) three heating and ventilation systems developed for the Maestro, the first being vacuum operated. Clowns. 

late maestros got the '89 montego dash & console

[grogee]

Fixed this non-motoring contrivance last night, didn't even have any screws left over. 

If any of you have a tumble dryer that works but is intolerably noisy, it might be the drum support wheels. The rubber 'tyres' on mine had started to crumble so the drum was getting a rough ride and was loud AF. 

Cheap fix but they're buried quite deep in the matrix so a good 90 mins to change. Learned a lot along the way, though. 

@beko1987, it's a Beko. 

[grogee]

7 hours ago, SiC said:

Going by what my German colleagues say, the German rail system is not very efficient or on time either. Another myth that we import. 

 

A quick Google bring up a whole host of problems:

Nearly one-quarter of high-speed trains did not reach their destination on time in 2021. Long delays and canceled trains have become routine across Germany.5 Jan 2022

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/germany-rail-operator-deutsche-bahn-admits-major-drop-in-punctuality/a-60338352

 

This sounds familiar?

Deutsch Bahn - Strike by the EVG trade union from 14 May 2023

DB long-distance services will be suspended from 14.05.2023 10 p.m. to 16.05.2023 midnight due to a strike by the EVG trade union. 

Local transport will be massively affected nationwide.

https://help.raileurope.co.uk/article/41251-germany-delays-disruptions

 

 

Not even a new problem as this article in 2018 suggests

‘We are becoming a joke’: Germans turn on Deutsche Bahn

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/20/trains-on-time-germans-deutsche-bahn-railway

 

A relatively recent article here. 

https://archive.li/T79ef

 

Anecdotally from my own experience commuting by train in the UK, they're on the whole pretty reliable. Most of the issues stem from idiots (kids) mucking around on the train line. Or the new Hitachi trains having issues that Hitachi refuse to fix and then they are stuck running slow or short of carriages. 

I dunno. I'm not sure the German system is even close to the UK in terms of unreliability, at least in my experience. Sure I haven't got any stats to back this up, but are the Germans/Swiss/Polish/Chinese using fucking Pacers? 

Like the utilities, the railways have been starved of investment and milked for profit. Ticket prices are obscene and almost always more than the cost of fuel for the equivalent car journey. Privatisation is the worst thing to happen to UK rail. 

[SiC]

28 minutes ago, grogee said:

I dunno. I'm not sure the German system is even close to the UK in terms of unreliability, at least in my experience. Sure I haven't got any stats to back this up, but are the Germans/Swiss/Polish/Chinese using fucking Pacers? 

I only know what I've been told by others but my German colleagues say they're absolutely awful out there and far worse than here. Especially the trains between major areas. They also have a lot of old rough rolling stock, especially for the regional services. Not as bad as pacers but they're all but extinct in most areas now anyway.

I've certainly never seen one in use on our GWR line. But that's a main line to London and so possibly couldn't take a pacer anyway. That said we do have the smaller commuter trains (no idea on type). We also have the HST but they're trying to phase then out according to the train guards I've spoken to as they're getting on a bit and very fuel hungry. 

Looking at the stats it's difficult to judge as UK and Germany measure things differently.

In the UK 85.8% of trains on average were within a maximum of 3 mins late. 98.4% within 15 mins.

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/performance/passenger-rail-performance/

Germany defines a train late as 6minutes. Hence a higher 92.5% were on time. However shockingly the long distance only managed 69.6% within 6 minutes.

https://zbir.deutschebahn.com/2022/en/interim-group-management-report-unaudited/product-quality-and-digitalization/punctuality/

36 minutes ago, grogee said:

Like the utilities, the railways have been starved of investment and milked for profit. Ticket prices are obscene and almost always more than the cost of fuel for the equivalent car journey. Privatisation is the worst thing to happen to UK rail. Privatisation is the worst thing to happen to UK rail. 

German train network is apparently suffering the same problem with under investment. So much so, there has been a spate of incidents where the rails/sleepers have failed. Now there is a big project to check them all which makes delays even worse from the maintenance programs.

I'm not saying the British rail system is perfect (it's far from it) but other countries have their own problems and some are similar to ours too. The car lobbying groups have had far too much power for too long. 

[SiC]

Intrigued I had a Google around to see what is still rolling about on German railways. They have these locomotives designed and started manufacture in the 50s still in service on the network:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB_Class_E_10

https://europeantraction.com/2017/04/24/db-class-110-survivors-and-where-to-find-them/

 

[Yoss]

On 8/1/2023 at 3:28 PM, wuvvum said:

Last connection has been cancelled.  Fortunately only a 33 minute wait for the next one, but why does no long distance journey by public transport in this country ever go smoothly?  Also Azuma seats are f***ing horrible. 

The horrible seats which have been universally condemned are entirely the fault of the government, though I'm not sure which one. Contracts for the IEPs were signed under Labour but built under the coalition so it could have been any of them.

For some reason the government decided no private train operating company could fund the replacement of fleets the size of the HSTs and 91s on the Great Western and East Coast. Even though Virgin did exactly that, replacing the entire West Coast Main Line fleet. But anyway the new trains were specced by the government, or more likely civil servants, which is why they look like the inside of a fridge with ironing board seats. They basically went for the cheapest thing possible. The train companies that have to use them had no say in the matter.

On 8/2/2023 at 9:27 AM, Volksy said:

Am I correct in thinking that the majority of our public transport is owned by companies in other countries. 

Arriva - Deutsche Bahn for example. 

 

Yes.

22 hours ago, New POD said:

In which case can we learn from them ? 

No.

They didn't come over here, taking our trains, to improve anything, they came over to milk the system. It's changed a bit since COVID but the previous franchise system was geared that only massive companies could really afford it. All the smaller companies that appeared at the start of franchising were slowly edged out until the only people who could really afford to bid were state owned foreign companies. Even First Group had to put in a joint bid with FS - Italian state railways for the bid that foisted Virgin off the West Coast and out of the railway business.

Anyway, I'll stop there before we all get shuffled off to the politics section.

[artdjones]

15 hours ago, grogee said:

I dunno. I'm not sure the German system is even close to the UK in terms of unreliability, at least in my experience. Sure I haven't got any stats to back this up, but are the Germans/Swiss/Polish/Chinese using fucking Pacers? 

Like the utilities, the railways have been starved of investment and milked for profit. Ticket prices are obscene and almost always more than the cost of fuel for the equivalent car journey. Privatisation is the worst thing to happen to UK rail. 

The problem is, train infrastructure and rolling stock is very expensive now, so much so that it's almost impossible to run a lot of services without vast subsidies. 

The railways are held to much higher standards than any other form of land transport. If 3 people get killed in a train crash there are questions in Parliament, and if it turns out to be signal, driver error or track related, the opposition, whoever they are will call for billions in extra investment. But rail accidents that kill multiple people are pretty rare. There were whole years without passenger fatalities back in the 1930s, and there haven't been any large scale rail disasters in the UK for quite a time. Yet triple fatality road accidents happen almost weekly. 

There's no point making the railways so safe and expensive, and environment friendly that Government can't afford to subsidize them and passengers can't afford the tickets.

I don't want to be killed in a train crash, but I don't want to be killed in a road crash either, which is orders of magnitude more likely. But I still use my car.

[tom13]

Getting there now with how I want it.

[artdjones]

And if you think Germany is some sort of paragon of transport investment I suggest you Google Brandenburg Airport.

[goosey]

I can only think i climate involves taking a Propeller to the side of the Head 

[Ghosty]

Sensible daily achieved. Type S GT, the car I should have bought a year ago. 

[chaseracer]

Ta-ra then...

[richardmorris]

@Mrs6C

 

 

[Six-cylinder]

On 8/1/2023 at 11:31 PM, wuvvum said:

This is what I've bought, if anyone's interested. 

Probably of more interest from an AS perspective is this Dutch-registered beauty I passed on the A1 

I drove a  Ampera when they were new, seemed strange at the time. 

 

[richardmorris]

21 minutes ago, Six-cylinder said:

I drove a  Ampera when they were new, seemed strange at the time. 

 

I don’t think I’ve seen one in the metal.

[Mrs6C]

22 minutes ago, richardmorris said:

I don’t think I’ve seen one in the metal.

Bizarrely, they share some A/C parts with my Cadillac Eldorado Touring Coupe...