Richard Trevithick's Birthday

This is Google's logo for the 13th April 2011, the 240th anniversary of the birth of the engineer Richard Trevithick.  Good for them for marking the day and it's a wonderful drawing but poor old Richard must be turning in his grave at the lack of basic engineering depicted here.   It'll never work!

New LU Signalling Contract

Transport for London have announced that Bombardier Transportation are the preferred bidder for the contract for resignalling the Sub Surface lines of the Underground.  I suppose the Bombardier system will be a version of their "Cityflo 650" ATO product. This means that LU will have three different ATO systems, two of them on the same railway!  You couldn't make it up.

Electrify to Swansea

The recent UK government decision to electrify the Great Western route from London to South Wales has one major flaw.  It has been decided to electrify only as far as the Welsh capital, Cardiff.  The main line and 65% of the trains that use it goes on to Swansea.  The division of traction at Cardiff is a mistake.  The short-terms costs of taking the wires on to Swansea must outweigh the lifetime costs of mixing traction over the route.  Come on you guys, do the sums!