[Deathbyteacup]

Originally Posted by 48111

Look, I know I am old fashioned and I "witter" on about when I worked on the railway, and I used to be quite happy "plodding" along the slow line.

But them trains going so fast, I hear fast trains every day of the week going through Bletchley, they are going very fast and some of the Locos sound like aeroplanes. But apart from the modern way of life, where everybody is in a rush and want things done "yesterday", why speed ? Why on earth does the modern railway want to go faster ?
If ever one of those Virgin cornettos or what ever they are called was going as fast as I hear them and something happened people on the train would not stand a chance of surviving it would be a disaster of the same thing as a aeroplane crash.

The need for speed has always been at the heart of the railway. There will always be services that don't require extreme speed, but at it's core, the entire idea behind a railway from day 1 was to get from A to B quicker than before. That's why they were invented, that's why they continue to get faster.

There have always been skeptics of speed, when the steam locomotive was first invented, a peer commented, 30MPH, heads will be torn from bodies, people disembowled, the human body was not designed to travel as such velocities! It is unnatural Sir, unnatural!

And yet here we are. Also, a Pendolino has already had a major accident at speed, and due to modern safety technologies, the only fatility was one 80 year old woman, infact for the accident it was, the ammount of people who not only survived, but got out with zero to minor injuries, was remarkable.

It's far safer to travel in a Pendolino at 140+MPH than in a Mk1 or Mk2 at 50, or a Mk3 / Mk4 at 100+, and that's no lie.

Surely service is better than speed, nice clean comfortable trains, that leave "A" on time and arrive at "B" on time, that is it is it not ?

I'd say sadly not. People need to get in, out and between the urban centres as quickly as humanly possible. If it's comfortable, that's great, but it needs to be quick. If it was like a palace but took longer to get there, then nobody would travel.

All people today want is to get to work quicker or travel between offices in different cities, and as long as they have a socket for their laptop and a cup of coffee, they're happy.

It's the pressures of modern society.

It is all very well travelling at very high speed up there in the sky, but to put machinery on metal rails and send it along at very high speed well that is playing with fate. God forbid that there should ever be another high speed train crash, we hope and pray not, but it cannot be gauranteed, nothing is certain when it comes to transporting flesh and blood encased in machinery travelling at high speed. The human body was not designed to withstand impacts of any sort at those speeds.

To be honest, I would suggest flying is tempting fate much more than traveling fast along the ground. I've already gone over the Pendolino and modern crash-worthiness but aircaft defy gravity - regardless of any safety feature, a plane crash is always going to be fatal. Statistically, railways are still a far safer way to travel than by aircraft, if you take into account the number of incidents in relation to journeys made.

Good everyday dependable service is all that should be required.
The train departs on time and is comfortable and clean and arrives at its destination on time with happy and relaxed passengers and indeed traincrew.

You dont need to go fast, you still get there just the same.

48111

Unfortunately, I don't think that is enough for todays society. But as I say, I'm not entirely sure it ever was. It is on commuter branchlines I suppose, but for intercity travel, the crux has always been, how fast can we go?

Mallard holds the steam speed record for a reason, and at the height of the Steam days, it was all about who could get you from London to Scotland the quickest. A lot of that was marketing but it was all about the appeal that railways were the quickest way to get from A to B, and as I say, that is the very reason they exist. It's their Raison D'etre, their reason for existing at all.