{"id":8475,"date":"2019-05-31T10:03:58","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T09:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8475"},"modified":"2019-05-31T10:03:58","modified_gmt":"2019-05-31T09:03:58","slug":"one-thing-learnt-week-railway-electrification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8475","title":{"rendered":"One thing we have learnt this week – railway electrification"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"early<\/a>There was an article<\/a> this week in the Guardian on the re-purposing of “Pacer” Trains.\u00a0 A government minister has suggested converting them into village community halls amongst\u00a0 other uses.\u00a0 For any readers who are not familiar with these trains I’ll briefly describe them.\u00a0 In the last gasp of British Rail some bright spark (or sparks) came up with a way of building trains on the cheap.\u00a0 Money was short and the design basically involved attaching a bus body topsides to a train chassis undersides.\u00a0 The result might have been alright in the 80’s or early 90’s but is now as the above article makes plain very out of date.\u00a0 I’ve only been on one in recent times last year when I was visiting a friend near Leeds.\u00a0 It was OK for a short journey once (the same return journey was not a Pacer train) but I wouldn’t like to use it everyday.<\/p>\n

The whole point of the article is a legitimate grump about train services in the North of England which are very poor.\u00a0 This is all tied up in railway electrification.\u00a0 Some railway electrification has been carried out in the region but its been fairly piecemeal and as the article states getting from one side of the North of England can take a considerable amount of time.\u00a0 Failing Graying the Secretary of state for transport is said to have scrapped some of the East- West electrification meaning you won’t be able to use electric trains on the entire East-West route.\u00a0 This is denied by network rail.<\/p>\n

Whether High Speed three is really required or whether a concerted electrification of the route East West plus other improvements is enough is a moot point.\u00a0 But something needs to be done and these old trains which don’t meet a lot of rules and laws such as disability access need to be scrapped.\u00a0 By all means turn them into a village hall but do so fast.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n

PS Next time I’ll have a look at the history of railway electrification.\u00a0 Its early history is quite revealing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was an article this week in the Guardian on the re-purposing of “Pacer” Trains.\u00a0 A government minister has suggested converting them into village community halls amongst\u00a0 other uses.\u00a0 For any readers who are not familiar with these trains I’ll … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,15,4,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week","category-practical-low-carbon-living","category-renewables","category-transport"],"yoast_head":"\nOne thing we have learnt this week - railway electrification - The oil lamp - shining God's light on peak oil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8475\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8475\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8475\",\"name\":\"One thing we have learnt this week - 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