WCML local services

Watching a class 350 speed past Motherwell today made me think: Some Virgin trains stop at Motherwell, but Transpennine Express do not (weirdly their Edinburgh services do call at Haymarket). You would think the slower, more "local" TPX trains would stop at places Virgin's Pendolinos do not. Same for Carstairs. (Transpennine Express do call at Lockerbie.) If Beattock station gets rebuilt (as is the aim of the Beattock Station Action Group), whose trains will call there? If I were in charge of the network, I would put Transpennine Express in charge of stopping trains, calling at the intermediate stations on the route (Motherwell, Carstairs, Beattock and Lockerbie), and have the faster/longer-distance Virgin trains going non-stop to Carlisle.

UK train building boosted.

Not so long ago, the train building industry in the UK was in a parlous state. Alstom closed its plant at Washwood Heath in 2005, leaving Bombardier at Derby as the only builder of passenger trains in Britain. Bombardier itself almost halved its workforce 2011. But now the industry is back in growth. Bombardier is building trains for Gatwick Express and Crossrail, Hitachi is opening a new factory in Newton Aycliffe to produce IEP and class 385 trains, and now CAF has announced it is to open a new factory in the UK. The Spanish firm recently won an order from Northern to replace unpopular Pacer units with more comfortable, modern trains. With expansion and electrification of the railway network underway across the country, demand for new trains continues to grow. This is good news for the British manufacturing industry.

TS Queen Mary returns to the Clyde

The last surviving Clyde Turbine steamer has returned to the Scotland for restoration. TS Queen Mary has a fascinating history. Built in Dumbarton in 1933, she was renamed Queen Mary II in 1935, to avoid confusion with the Cunard liner Queen Mary (now preserved in the USA). She retired from service in 1977 and was eventually moved to the Thames, where she became a floating restaurant. Having fallen into disrepair, she has now been rescued from scrapping by the Friends of TS Queen Mary. With so many former steamers and ferries scrapped or at risk (including Southsea, Ryde, Lincoln Castle, Dover and Duke of Lancaster), to save one for preservation is a great achievement. Sadly her engines were removed when she was converted into a restaurant, so a return to seagoing service is practically impossible, but she will form a museum on the Clyde and her beautiful 1930s interiors will be restored.

Filling the Defender gap

With the Land Rover Defender and Iveco/Santana Massif now off the market, Ovik (who have experience in up-armouring Land Rovers for the MOD and PSNI) have developed a vehicle that looks rather like a butch Defender: the Crossway. The Crossway comes in a heavy 6x6 variant, which pushes it into Pinzgauer territory, so it could also be seen as a replacement for that vehicle (which has also ceased production).

Meanwhile Supacat have developed a reconnisance vehicle based on the Land Rover Discovery: http://supacat.com/products/lrv400/

With the Defender replacement rumoured to be based on the Discovery platform, does this give us a clue as to what a Defender replacement might look like?

***UPDATE***

The boss of oil giant Ineos, Jim Ratcliffe, has announced his intention to build a "spiritual successor" to the Defender. Details of the vehicle are non-existent at the minute: http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/land-rover/defender/96387/ineos-confirms-plans-to-create-uncompromising-off-roader

New Antarctic survey ship to be named RRS Sir David Attenborough.

If operation best Korea has taught us anything, it's that you should never ask the internet to make a decision for you. So it was no surprise that in an online poll to choose a name for the British Antarctic Survey's new ship, the name "Boaty McBoatface" came out on top. In the end, the powers that be have decided to name the ship after famous naturalist Sir David Attenborough, whose name came fourth in the poll, and who has done much work over the years to make the study of nature accessible to the general public. It is reported that the name Boaty McBoatface will go to one of the ship's ROVs. The ship's keel will be laid at Cammell Laird in October. This investment will be good for British science and good for British shipbuilding. It is fitting that an icon of popular science will give his name to the ship.

Closure of WCML highlights resilience issues

The closure of the West Coast Main Line over January (and now into February) 2016 highlights the need for alternative routes during closures and disruption. Trains have been diverted via the G&SW and East Coast main Lines for the duration, but many passenger services have had to be replaced by buses. The G&SW main line via Dumfries and Kilmarnock is a handy alternative route between Glasgow and Carlisle, but it suffers from a lack of capacity. There are several stretches of single track, and it is not electrified. A double tracked, electrified line would allow the use of Pendolinos, class 350s and electric-hauled freight on the route.
The campaign for Borders Rail has also highlighted the fact that a fully-rebuilt Waverley route to Carlisle would allow Carlisle-Edinburgh trains to be re-routed that way, instead of being replaced by buses. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-35412900
Again, the route as built so far is single track and not electrified. In the long term, such upgrades may become necessary.

Falcon 9 is go!

History was made on 21 December 2015 as Falcon 9 became the first rocket to ever return from space and land vertically on a pad, Thunderbird 3-style. Well, almost. What actually landed was the first stage booster, while the second stage carried on into space to deploy a number of communication satellites. Up until now, multi-stage rockets have discarded their initial stages to burn up in the atmosphere or crash into the sea. Reusable spaceships have been a dream of engineers for decades. The Space shuttle was the most successful so far, but it still relied on disposable solid fuel boosters to get it into space. Space X's Falcon 9 may lead to fully reusable space rockets like the fictional Thunderbird 3, massively reducing the cost of getting into space.
http://www.spacex.com/
Rockets are the traditional means of getting into space, but the stresses of acceleration have limited rocket travel to a few trained astronauts. But what if you could get into space via something resembling a normal airliner? Reaction engines' Skylon spaceplane could be the answer. Still in development, this spaceplane could revolutionise the way we get into space.
http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/space_skylon.html
While the prototype is designed to take cargo, the principal could easily be used for a passenger carrying spacecraft.passenger carrying is the principal aim of Virgin Galactic.
http://www.virgingalactic.com/
Virgin's Spaceships utilise a carrier aircraft propelled by normal jet engines to take the rocket ship as far as the upper atmosphere, where it detaches and uses a rocket engine to access low earth orbit. The same principal will also be used for commercial satellite lunch.
For the latter half of the 20th century, the space race was between governments; the USA versus the USSR. Now the race is between corporations, and the demand for GPS, communication and weather satellites means whoever can get to space for the lowest price will get the most business.