UK: "Ghost Trains!"

Old Dec 8th, 2016, 09:59 AM
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UK: "Ghost Trains!"

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/wo...ains.html?_r=0

Wanna ride a train and have it to yourself? Hop on Britain's Ghost Trains - again an only in Britain category! a byproduct of privitization.
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Old Dec 8th, 2016, 10:48 AM
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Wow. Bucket list item for Tomfuller for sure if he hasn't ridden them.

Kind of boggles the mind. I understand the cost saving thing but you'd think they'd advertise them heavily to at least decrease their losses instead of making it more challenging to ride them. But I suppose the crew is fairly skeleton as well. Convenient way to train new employees I suppose...
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Old Dec 8th, 2016, 01:06 PM
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Not only are there ghost trains, there are also ghost railway stations. Shippea Hill, near Ely in Cambridgeshire, had only 12 passengers in the whole of last year:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...way-passengers
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Old Dec 8th, 2016, 02:04 PM
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Pal, I thought at first that you were referring to the old Arnold Ridley play "The Ghost train" which despite its age [it was written in 1923, the year my dad was born] is still getting great reviews:

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/20...ew-productions

There is also a classic radio version which always makes me smile when I hear the announcement for "the last train to Truro" as if it were the end of the earth. [as if].

Arnold Ridley went on to play Private Godfrey in Dad's Army as well as to have had 3 plays on in the West End at the same time, which at the time was a record.
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Old Dec 8th, 2016, 09:15 PM
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Typical American ignorance. And typical Fodorite American pseudo-liberalism.

Ghost trains were invented back during Britain's catastrophic experiment with giving the government a monopoly of running its passenger railways. In those mad days, public officials competed for how many useful railway lines they could destroy, preferably so completely they'd cost billions to reinstate.

The obsession civil servants had with eliminating railways was so all-encompassing. Parliament had to draw up laws controlling the process and making feckless officials railway go through hoops to stop services or close lines.

Privatisation has practically eliminated the insanity of ghost trains. Companies directly accountable to their customers have almost no interest in closing lines, and are generally reinstating services the State wanted to close.

It's extraordinary that our resident Marxist dreamer (from Detroit: that world centre of outstanding public transport) has chosen to attack Britain's trains just three days before our new system opens the first new railway line from a major city to London in over 100 years.

The alternative Oxford-London has involved rebuilding the line from Oxford to Princes Risborough that officials closed, and built over in 1963, during the nightmare of state-sponsored destruction.

It's the first stage in rebuilding (at a cost of at least £3 billion) the line from Oxford to Cambridge that a Socialist government went out of its way to close in 1967.
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Old Dec 8th, 2016, 10:29 PM
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It's extraordinary that our resident Marxist dreamer (from Detroit: that world centre of outstanding public transport) has chosen to attack Britain's trains just three days before our new system opens the first new railway line from a major city to London in over 100 years.>>

Flanner - I don't think that Pal was attacking our trains [though with the present Southern Trains debacle one could hardly blame him] and the BBC, which last time I looked was not exactly a Marxist organ, itself looked at this subject last year:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2015...t-ghost-trains
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Old Dec 9th, 2016, 12:02 AM
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"It's extraordinary that our resident Marxist dreamer"

He should feel right at home on this forum then.
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Old Dec 9th, 2016, 01:51 AM
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BBC had a nice article on it yesterday, the sound at Shippea Hill (12 visitors a year) and the sound at Waterloo (12 visitors every 4 seconds)
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Old Dec 9th, 2016, 10:55 AM
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What is more Marxist than running trains with nearly no passengers on them?

But with state-owned one owner operation these kind of shams would never happen.

No Detroit is about the worst once-major city in the modern world to have nearly no mass transit- but that is completely a red herring to what we are talking about here.

And I only posted because I thought it were funny more than any other thing.
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Old Dec 9th, 2016, 10:58 AM
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But with so many trains bursting at capacity it is ironic that they run trains with nearly no passengers to stations that only a handful use.

First new railway between cities in 100 years - a spur line at best - where are the all-new high-speed rail line that just about every western Europe country has built - again no one should be flying London to Edinburgh-and with more high-speed trains probably would not need that new runway at Heathrow.
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Old Dec 9th, 2016, 11:04 AM
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But with so many trains bursting at capacity it is ironic that they run trains with nearly no passengers to stations that only a handful use.>>

as they only run one or two trains a day on them, Pal, it would hardly make a difference to the chaos on the rest of the system.

you may well ask where the high speed lines are, but as the controversy over the route of the most recent one to be agreed shows, whilst most people want to be able to travel on high speed lines, they don't want them through their back garden:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...-speed-9260923
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Old Dec 9th, 2016, 11:05 AM
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I think the topic, misguided American though I may be, is a fun one and, better yet, gives me ideas. The mis-take of your critic above is a ridiculous one and, I suspect, not how he sees himself, though I doubt I'm not the only one who does.
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Old Dec 9th, 2016, 11:47 AM
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you may well ask where the high speed lines are, but as the controversy over the route of the most recent one to be agreed shows, whilst most people want to be able to travel on high speed lines, they don't want them through their back garden

Neither did folks in France, Spain or Italy or Benelux- there were big protests such as in Provence and Vouvray in the Loire- but like motorways or runways no one wants in the back yard - the public interest has to trump provincialism or folks as a whole suffer like Brits on their antique rail system.

The rebuilding of the West Coast line a few years back was about as costly as new high-speed rail lines on the Continent and what did they get? Marginally higher speeds but no where near high speed.

Britain does have one high-speed line - to the Chunnel -folks in Kent have gardens too but somehow that was pushed thru.
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Old Dec 9th, 2016, 12:11 PM
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Britain does have one high-speed line - to the Chunnel -folks in Kent have gardens too but somehow that was pushed thru.>>

but for several years it was only allowed to crawl through the Kent countryside, only reaching high speed when it got to France.

>

But that's not how it works here. Arguably it should, but it doesn't. So you're right, we have to put up with an inadequate infrastructure.
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Old Dec 9th, 2016, 12:45 PM
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How did they ever get the Motorways built -those are much louder constantly than a high-speed rail line?

We have eminent domain- where gov't for the common good can confiscate and pay a fair market value for land such as for freeways or airport extensions.

California has had the same problem with their high-speed rail line - constant law suits against the intended course from all kinds of parties.

But I know folks are naturally NIMBY types everywhere but at times the common good has to win out.

Cheers - Merry Christmas or whatever!
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Old Dec 9th, 2016, 12:46 PM
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Thank you Pal, interesting and sent on to my nephew in law who is in train hell right now with the polar express twice a day.
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