Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
John Hi. To answer the last question first. My last post was as Surveyor General, with the British Rail Propery Board, and my principal function was to work with the mainstream railway on selecting, designing, obtaining planning permission,for railfreight terminals and dealing with the complexities of rail connection to the site, as well as road access.So I qualified as a Chartered Surveyo rin 1970, and in 1981 qualified as a Chartered Member of the Institute of Logistics and Transport. Before ill health intervened, I had applied for the job of Regional Freight Manager, on the old Eastern Region at York. All this sounds rather pompous, but not intended. Somehow I could never understand, those who were seeking promotion by always applying for new job all over the Country. However each to his own.Enjoying my work was far more important to me. Indeed I probably inherited this from my late father. He had a childhood ambition to be the man who maintained the WCML over Shap. He achieved this, and got the Settle Carlisle as well.As a teenager I went out on site with him a lot, on one memorable Sunday I ended up driving the steam engine,as they slowly structure gauged from bridge to bridge.Before drinking on duty was taken seriously,we had stopped for luch, and the fireman came back pissed out of his brains. The driver asked if I could drive, and he would fire, as at 16 I was an obvious weakling! I know that OeBB (the e raplacing the umlaut,hiding in the bowels of this PC) class 1042/1142 are Bo-Bo's. The loco's concerned were 1010 or 1110's built between 1955 and 1958, but still sound. I may be wrong but a lot of the modern systems, needed for operation today were fitted to some. As you probably know in the States, railways/railroads are not run for benefit of  the passenger or freight customer.In the UK at least, it is far more important to keep all the paper work in order. I'm a mild mannered guy, but I went purple with rage when a new company was formed to run just one Intermodal return trip a day. The firm folded, but not before the Dept.of Transport, the Stategic Rail Authority, ( now disbanded)the Rail Regulater, and the Health & Safety Executive had extracted in total £500,000 for the grant of an operating licence. This post seems short on detail, and I will try to be more expansive next time.Going back to the Austrian Loco's, there was a good article in "Todays Railways" on the present and future of OeBB motive power. At the moment it is lost. There is a good web site on Interoperability. I will find it, and let you have it. Finally, there is very strong pressure on the EU. As you are no dobt aware,the Germans have a substantial representaion in the Reichtag.The building of DB's High Speed Lines, took far longer to build than the French.To be fair they did intend the lines to be used by night freight. A last little gem - When they built/upgraded the Berlin - Hannover line, it cost them millions of Euro's to build a tunnel, deep cuttings, "false embankments" because of the nerby, albeit rare bird,the Great Bustard.To this day the ICE's have to drop speed from 250kph to 200kph when passing through the Bustard zone! I will break copyright and let you have a copy of both articles.Indeed it may help the editor David Haydock and his team forsome of you to subscribe to Todays Railways, as I intend to subscribe to "Trains". All the Best, Andy
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag