Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
I was pointing out that public transport has evident benefits to society while you having a free Ferrari does not.
Hence that your argument was shite.
Virgin pendolino trains - awful things
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I was pointing out that public transport has evident benefits to society while you having a free Ferrari does not.
Hence that your argument was shite.
8ball
AV REFUGEES WELCOME
It's you argument that's shite. The discussion was about far dodging and you responded with:
How does that even make any sense given the discussion at hand?
Miss-Shelf
I'll meet you further on up the road
tbf what most people do in toilets is pretty unsavoury
weltweit
Well-Known Member
I haven't read the thread but I just wanted to pop this nugget in about these trains. They were involved in an accident at which Branson attended, and it was said that the way the carriages had held together and not crumpled or broken up was a tribute to their design and build and that they were arguably safer than many other carriages in use at the moment.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
If you can't tell the difference between fare dodging and decent, affordable public transport services, that's not my problem.
Where and when was this accident? Can you provide any links? Was Branson in attendance at the time of the accident, or did he merely attend the enquiry. Your post is unclear about this. I hope Branson was not shaken up too much whichever was the case. It is no credit to him about the strength of the coaches though, he did not partake in their design as far as I know. Is 'arguably safer' quantifiable - we should be told.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
I tried to remember the details of the accident but I could not, perhaps careful googling might resurect them but anyhow it was a derailment at some speed and ensuing crash, the coaches remained intact even though some commentators expected them to crush or break apart. Branson was there in the aftermath, don't know why I mentioned that, it was not germaine to the accident or damage.
davesgcr
Reading books
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayrigg_derailment
Faulty set of points derailed a Euston to Glasgow Virgin train. The train held up amazingly well despite somersaulting down an embankment with (regrettably) one passenger killed. It was subsequently scrapped though.
To be fair , the inherent crash worthiness of UK rolling stock is very good. My own dealings with a head on crash at Watford Junction in 1996 between 2 commuter trains showed this in relation to the severity of the wreck - one passenger lost her life tragically - I feared a double count on seeing a tangle of wreckage on top of the embankment. A sobering life experience ....
Faulty set of points derailed a Euston to Glasgow Virgin train. The train held up amazingly well despite somersaulting down an embankment with (regrettably) one passenger killed. It was subsequently scrapped though.
To be fair , the inherent crash worthiness of UK rolling stock is very good. My own dealings with a head on crash at Watford Junction in 1996 between 2 commuter trains showed this in relation to the severity of the wreck - one passenger lost her life tragically - I feared a double count on seeing a tangle of wreckage on top of the embankment. A sobering life experience ....
Branson was mainly there for PR reasons, distracting the media by talking about how the driver had stayed at the controls after the train derailed (which IIRC had one of the tabloids talking about how he'd steered the train after it came off the rails!), and he too drew attention to how strong the train was. Tbf, although the Pendolino did indeed stand up to the accident very well, it probably didn't do a whole lot better than some older stock would. The 1970s carriages used in HST sets have done notably well in a few major derailments, as have the slightly newer MkIV coaches used by East Coast. Conversely, the tendency to come apart in a crash is one of the reasons why the old slam-door MkI stock was withdrawn when it was. In turn, back in the early 1950s when such carriages were new, the official report into the Harrow and Wealdstone disaster remarked on how much stronger they were than the pre-war carriages involved. Such is progress...
I actually quite like travelling on the Pendolinos ... as long as it's not for very long and I don't have much luggage. They're nicely appointed inside, the seats are comfortable and they're fast, but they really don't have enough luggage space and the bogs do smell rather unpleasant.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
I recall that immediately on hearing about the accident Branson dropped what he was doing and went straight to the scene. It was a time when it seemed other prominant figures (industry leaders, bankers and politicians) did not appear to stand up for their responsibilities. Branson's actions in the face of a fatality on his train service were I thought exactly the right thing to have done.
(eta: I am aware that makes me sound like a Branson fanboy, but I do think he showed leadership at that time of significant crisis)
District them from what? That crash wasn't Virgin's fault, it was a track problem. The thing is if he hadn't gone you'd be having a go at him for "not caring".
Bashing the railway industry in general and speculating too much about the cause of the accident before it was known for certain. Besides, his line about the driver being a hero put a faintly positive spin on a pretty bleak episode.
Only the naive would do that...
oryx
Sitting on the bok of the day
I wouldn't expect a reply at all, never mind any time soon, if my experience of Virgin's 'customer service' is anything to go by.
I appreciate they are different areas of the business but when I complained to the gym about a locker with my stuff being broken into (by staff) and when I complained to their comms section about a threat of court action for a bill I didn't owe - silence.
You say "25 year old 125s" but the interiors aren't 25 years old, they're modern so really "progress" has nothing to do with it.
Oh and 125s are a lot older than 25 years.
All you're going to get back is a "Thanks for your complaint, but we're not going to do anything about it" response. Honestly I don't know what you expect them to do? They're not going to replace their whole fleet just because a few people don't like them.
BTW there's a whole thread over at RailUK about Pendolinos, with talk of refurbishment: http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=83149
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
I keep reading the thread title as pedo lines 
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Plus you get to use the first class lounges, keep away from the great unwashed
ed is the great unwashed!
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Let's look at where these trains go...Brum, Liverpool, Manc & Glasgow. If you're mad enough to want to go to these places you get what you deserve.
Decents trains to Devon and Cornwall, nice ones to Wales and Yorkshire is served by two companies, both of whom offer excellant trains.
Nuff said.
Decents trains to Devon and Cornwall, nice ones to Wales and Yorkshire is served by two companies, both of whom offer excellant trains.
Nuff said.
Pingu
Credo
aye. I am on one every other week and they are certainly comfortable. and yes the bogs smell weird and not nice
George & Bill
semiotically superfluous
Most people I know would be happy for there to be much more subsidy of railways. And with this in mind, I will happily moan about the lack of sufficient long-term investment, thanks.
So you do not accept any sort of hierarchy of need, then? You would determine someone's access to, say, a water supply as rigidly by their ability to pay as you would their access to a Ferrari?
I think you're either a rather nasty person, or a moron (which isn't to say you're not both).
Um, that's not what I said. You're quite the moron aren't you?
Oh? I'm a "nasty person" because I say fare dodging is wrong. FFS. Would you go into a shop and and walk out with a TV under your arm without paying? Some of you people on this forum just beggar belief.
George & Bill
semiotically superfluous
Umm, no, it's what I said. You seemed to be insinuating that people wanted more investment in rail, plus lower fares, without increased subsidy from general taxation. AFAIK nobody on this thread had actually said they objected to more subsidy, and I was pointing out that I for one certainly don't.
In case you've forgotten already, you made a much broader statement than that - that "Bottom line is, if you use a service you should pay for it". I asked if any service would be exempt from this 'bottom line', but you didn't answer. People who make no distinction between nicking luxury goods (a Ferrari), nicking services that are a fairly basic part of participating in society (train travel), and by extension nicking stuff that they need to stay standing (water) are usually those whose intellectual development stopped before puberty. I'm neither condoning nor condemning any of those acts - I'm just saying that any right-thinking person can see they are not all one and the same, and that those who don't see this are either simply not that smart, or take private property as an absolute rather than one right that has to be balanced with others, which is something I find very troubling.
In fact, I remember a fascinating set of interviews on a programme Robert Winston did about 15 years ago, in which he talked to kids approaching and during adolescence on the question of whether it would be justified to steal some medication if you couldn't afford to pay for it and it was the only way to cure your terminally ill mother (or something like that). The younger kids simply said 'stealing is wrong', but as he went up the age scale, the answers became more nuanced, with the older kids still recognising that in itself it's wrong to take something that's not yours, but also suggesting that perhaps it is more wrong to alow somebody to die for want of treatment.
TitanSound
Mr Beardy Drummer
I don't mind them. Being my height, every form of transport is always a slight pain in the legs.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
Fun fact: They could tilt further, but in tests they found that it was very disconcerting to be turning a corner without feeling any sideways force at all. So they don't quite lean enough to completely cancel out the centrifugal force, and you still get pressed into the armrest a little bit.
_angel_
.
It's possible to feel sick in any situation surely.Nope, I can be reading and not looking, or looking out of the window and after about 40mins I get REALLY travel sickone of bees' friends was involved in the design of them and kept telling me it wasn't possible to feel so sick on them
