Be Excellent To Each Other

Just sawthis o the bbc with Ian Hislop..

made me very sad...

let'splay railroad tycoon!

let's go by our heritage tram!

I enjoyed it muchly.

I wuv Ian Hislop.

Met him at a "Media and the Law" talk he did at Senate House back when I was a stude. He is wuvwy.

The beeching Axe?

The plan which reducted the railways by 50% in 1961-63
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_axe

Can we have a BeeXing Axe instead of the Ban Hammer?

If we do, Zardoz will be axed quicker than Eldorado.

is that the one where they went "we don't need railroads, because our road network is soooo good it will never fill up!"?

"It's too expensive to run, not enough people use it, and we hate poor people"

It was more a case of 'people will happily take a bus/drive their car to their nearest mainline station, and then take a train to the mainline station nearest their destination, and then take a bus or whatever from there, again.'

Except, that is of course bollocks, as once you're in the car... you're not really keen to get out of it again.

However, even the lines that were spared (but barely) have been completely and utterly fucked over because often they pulled up one of the two tracks and left them with a single line with passing loops. Which DRAMATICALLY reduces both the capacity and ability to cope with problems.

middlesbrough and the north east in general seems to be badly served with rail. Ironic since railways were born between stockton and darlington

The line down to my parents - Salisbury to Exeter - has this. Only a few double passing points, so there is a pretty low limit to how many trains they can run, and as you say, you're utterly screwed if there is an accident or delays, as the whole thing just snowballs.

Unless you lived on a busy commuter line or were in a marginal constituency at the time (the Central Wales line only exists because the local politicians were pressured to save it) you were likely screwed.

If you look at the track diagrams and such for a lot of lines, you see a lot of 'ghost' platforms - stations where one or all of the platforms have been closed due to these cutbacks. A few places (like Merthyr Vale) have seen these old platforms restored to use and their tracks relaid, while in other places grand old stations (Aberdare) sit derelict and overgrown while a cheaper new platform with just a lousy bus shelter have been built slightly further down the line to replace them.

And in some places, you have stations that are half abandoned (Shrewsbury, where several perfectly good platforms are out of use while the station itself struggles to cope with the amount of traffic it gets).

while obviously not old enough to have used it, I was always sad that my local (at the time) line was closed (http://www.thestrawberryline.co.uk), and I used to imagine what it would be like to see the lovely steam trains go past. That said, the old route was a great place to play as a kid, with the hidden derelict platforms to explore. I always hoped they might make rebuild it as a tourist steam line, but that was never going to happen.

Hoho, I read that Strawberry thing as 'safe pants for all'.

Pant safety is no laughing matter MetalAngel. 50 people are hospitalised each year through careless use of pants.

Crikey, that many? That's a bit pants.