Rail Replacement

One More Rail Post

Here in Great Western Land, probably the most famous civil engineer of all time Mr Isambard Kingdon Brunel designed and built the Great Western Railway which links the Westcountry to London.

The main line being London <-> Bristol.

The visionary Engineer

Brunel was one of the greatest men of the day, like his friend George Stevenson his fame came to the fore as a result of the work he did with railways. So advanced was he in civil engineering techniques that features on the line scream ingenuity.

A bridge over the River Thames with a span so large everyone thought it would collapse, it’s still in use.

7′ Gauge lines for increased speed and stability but the cost of building a wide line proved prohibitive and so ‘standard gauge’ was adopted. Yet now we have tilting trains to compensate.

The list goes on and yet all is not what it seemed.

The Not-So-Visionary Engineer

You would have thought that this engineering genius would have foreseen the discovery and invention of electric traction motors. Everything in Brunel’s is era was steam-powered, lots of coal, steam and grease powered the world and electricity only came to the fore during the construction of London Underground.

This is why then the beautiful and elegant bridges built on the railway into the Georgian City of Bath, they were built just high enough to allow trains through, tunnels like the world famous Box Tunnel hewn out of rock just high enough to get those steam trains through.

This is also why there is no room for electric power cables to be hung over the railway for the new electric trains – the cause of so much strife for the unions in the previous post.

The result of all of this is that there is no railway into Bath from the east end of town.

Replacement Bus Service

However dire you may consider the railways to be, it takes only one journey on a replacement bus service to suddenly appreciate that the railways are not as bad as all that. The trains are fast and efficient, a 15 min train journey takes almost an hour on a bus and is considerably more comfortable, even standing in the vestibule is easier because trains don’t lurch as much as busses.

Where of course this all falls down is co-ordination between busses and trains which whilst this must be a logistical nightmare should be organised by those who are paid to do so.

This of course means that if a train is delayed due to lets say ‘trespassers on the line’ that the bus used to replace the linked train service should also be delayed. . .Read into that what you will. . .