Loading Gauge

I've always thought that the carriages in France end up much closer to the platform edge than they do in the UK; I've no idea what 'Mind the Gap' is in French, but I've never heard any such announcement even when they are also given in English. This photo from Wikipedia shows what I'm talking about. Such small clearances mean that if you want to introduce new locomotives or carriages to the network you need to ensure they fit within the specified loading gauge. This is the same for modellers as it is for the real railway; you may remember that the carriage I received as a birthday present only just clears the tunnel on Jerusalem. While changing a model can be frustrating and relatively expensive, clearly a similar problem on the real railway would be exponentially worse.

Amazingly not accurately checking the loading gauge is exactly what led to a number of news reports today. Here are some quotes from the Reuters article:

France's national rail company SNCF said on Tuesday it had ordered 2,000 trains for an expanded regional network that are too wide for many station platforms, entailing costly repairs.
...
The RFF only gave the dimensions of platforms built less than 30 years ago, but most of France's 1,200 platforms were built more than 50 years ago. Repair work has already cost 80 million euros.

A Bumpy Ride

When I first saw this (and related) photo I assumed they had been photo-shopped. It turns out that they are actually very real.

Apparently (and I'm assuming that Network Rail can be relied upon to accurately report the status of the track they manage) there was some concern on the 9th of February when a driver reported a "rough ride" when passing Hatfield Colliery near Doncaster, but conditions deteriorated rapidly until Network Rail admitted that "it was no longer possible to run services through the area".

It looks like it's going to be a while before normal service is resumed with Netowrk Rail reporting eight weeks of work need to be done, after the colliery have stabilised their land.

The West Coast Fiasco

Even, if like me, you have little interest in modern diesel or electric locomotives (I'm a committed steam era person) you can't possibly have failed to hear about the fiasco surrounding the awarding of the franchise to run the West Coast main line -- unless of course you don't live in the UK. Lets just say it's been a disaster from start to finish that has left the government owing millions of pounds to a number of large railway companies and we still don't know who will end up running the line in the long run. If you want all the details then the BBC have a pretty comprehensive write up of the whole debacle.

Although there is currently no end in sight to the bidding process, there is now a new company interested in bidding for the franchise; Bigjigs Toys Ltd. It's nice to see that there are still a few people in government with a sense of humour.