Premier - Potter's pallet palaver

[BrushType4]

...and the recycled EV's that will be scrapped earlier than a combustion engine vehicle as no one will be able to afford to repair them

That’s old news, EV now have equal life expectancy to ICE. Obviously the early models weren’t as good but that’s true of anything new. The second hand values are increasing as well.

 

[Osgood]

The history of freight by rail is a fascinating one - even more so between nationalisation and the years following B-B-B-Beeching.
Indeed some lines that have been reopened in recent years owe their survival to years of uneconomic operation as freight-only.
When you could get away with a degree of marginal costing it was easier to price freight traffic such that it stood a chance of competing against road - after all, without that marginal freight traffic all costs had then to be covered by the remaining services.
And that gave an opportunity to grow the freight business so that everything could become more economic.
As freight business started to dry up it became increasingly costly to move the freight that remained.

With road transport there is nearly always an element of backloading involved in order to make the main journey more viable.
It is relatively easy to get hold of a truck and start hauling with minimal overheads and thus undercut the established competition.
Competition was regulated to some extent after WW2 into nationalisation and then de-nationalisation by scarcity of new vehicles and then making it not easy to obtain an Operators Licence - without which a secondhand truck had little value (indeed worn-out trucks were often bought just for their Operators Licence allocation which was then put on a newer vehicle and the donor truck scrapped).

In recent years the fixed costs of having a truck on the road have grown to the extent that drivers wages have become a lesser element, and it is not uncommon to park a truck up for months at a time to eliminate some of the fixed costs rather than keep it ready for the occasional wages and diesel plus a bit job that often could be had.

With the railways, once privatisation came along I guess any prospect of marginal pricing of new business went out of the window.
I imagine when pricing a freight job now for rail v road, trucks win most times due to their inherent flexibility - any marginal benefit of direct cost of movement (fuel, driver) costs per tonne hauled) are swallowed up by huge capital costs of wagons etc.
Phil's example of specialist wagons parked up are a good illustration.

Rail will only work if there is a sustained policy of change that will have to be subsidised to a certain extent.
For this reason if none other, I doubt it will ever happen.
That will mean less choice of modern image stock for future modellers of the present day railway.

 

[DougT]

They would be good to see. Looked at the Crescent Sidings as an alternative or additional rail access point but the ladder issue prevented that from moving forward along with some other issues.

Found them! This derailment occurred on the 14th August 2003 involving IZA twin-set wagons working what I think was the southbound newsprint service from Immingham to Barking; I don’t think this is the derailment of the Wisbech service but annoyingly I didn’t write down the service involved on the back of the photos and my notes from that time are long gone.

I recall that the investigation finding was that whilst the track was in standard and the wagons within standard they were at opposite ends of their respective tolerances but a lack of weight in some empty vans allied to the dynamic movement of the wagons through the S&C caused wheel lift. What I do know is that this was the derailment that caused the IZA wagons to be banned from using Spittal Ladder which is still in force today.

The overall scene;


Damage;





Investigation - the bloke from AEA Derby taking measurements to help determine cause.



Rerailing and recovery - no cranes, just hydraulic rams, wooden blocks and slide bars. As it was the last few wagons of the train that was derailed it was easy just to drag them back up to Eastfield once back on the rails. These Perrier liveried wagons were an ever present in Eastfield until finally removed for cutting sometime around 2019 or 2020.




And all of this whilst trying the keep the ECML running as best as possible. Lifting operations stopped whilst trains passed on the Up Slow, my job to coordinate with the PSB, whilst still running freely but with an ESR on the Down Slow. Blue netlon fencing to demark the possession from the running line.

 

[Osgood]

Interesting to see the kind of support vehicles now in use.
I managed to work out most of the acronyms - although I think you've missed an L off the end of IZA wagons.....

 

[BrushType4]

Found them! This derailment occurred on the 14th August 2003 involving IZA twin-set wagons working what I think was the southbound newsprint service from Immingham to Barking; I don’t think this isn’t the derailment of the Wisbech service but annoyingly I didn’t write down the service involved on the back of the photos and my notes from that time are long gone.

I recall that the investigation finding was that whilst the track was in standard and the wagons within standard they were at opposite ends of their respective tolerances but a lack of weight in some empty vans allied to the dynamic movement of the wagons through the S&C caused wheel lift. What I do know is that this was the derailment that caused the IZA wagons to be banned from using Spittal Ladder which is still in force today.

The overall scene;
View attachment 223664

Damage;
View attachment 223665
View attachment 223666

View attachment 223667

Investigation - the bloke from AEA Derby taking measurements to help determine cause.

View attachment 223674

Rerailing and recovery - no cranes, just hydraulic rams, wooden blocks and slide bars. As it was the last few wagons of the train that was derailed it was easy just to drag them back up to Eastfield once back on the rails. These Perrier liveried wagons were an ever present in Eastfield until finally removed for cutting sometime around 2019 or 2020.
View attachment 223668
View attachment 223669
View attachment 223670

And all of this whilst trying the keep the ECML running as best as possible. Lifting operations stopped whilst trains passed on the Up Slow, my job to coordinate with the PSB, whilst still running freely but with an ESR on the Down Slow. Blue netlon fencing to demark the possession from the running line.
View attachment 223671

Blimey, doesn’t time fly…