Royal Navy Type 26 Frigate

Hmmmm, I thought the oft-repeated saying was "steel is cheap and air is free"?
Not so, if you want quality you need to fork out the wonga.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Like hell is rail not mission critical to a railroad! If a rail breaks you have a train that derails!

Modern rails are two separate types of metal welded together during manufacture, a very tough and relatively hard upper rail while the web of the rail is softer and springier.
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Derailments are rarely a result of a rail that "breaks" as you so simplistically put it. I can only think of a single passenger train derailment in all of the North America where previously undetected wear of the rail itself was the cause.
 
Grey Havoc said:
A Daily Telegraph editorial on the mess:
www.telegraph.co.uk

Britain must not lose the ability to produce primary steel

This story illustrates the sheer madness of our modern industrial strategy
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk
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I can't imagine why anyone would think that a new open pit coal mine in Cumbria was a good idea when the only likely customer is a lone failing steel mill. The Chinese owners were quite correct in thinking that a higher value rolled steel capacity was a path to viability, although the level of investment was just too high. Moreover, it's very difficult politically to justify a major taxpayer funded investment that results in a net loss of jobs and the extinction of a particular industrial capacity.

The easiest answer for the current government is probably the simplest and cheapest. Do nothing, let the coke and iron ore stocks run out and then announce a worker retraining scheme in a a well controlled media event. You can demonstrate empathy at a fraction of the price. In all fairness, the workers in the dyatopian steel sector have had a good 5 decades to prepare themselves for the inevitable.
 
TinWing said:
Derailments are rarely a result of a rail that "breaks" as you so simplistically put it. I can only think of a single passenger train derailment in all of the North America where previously undetected wear of the rail itself was the cause.
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OTOH the Hatfield crash in the UK is possibly the defining moment of the UK's post-privatisation rail-network and forced a restructuring of the entire industry.
 
DWG said:
OTOH the Hatfield crash in the UK is possibly the defining moment of the UK's post-privatisation rail-network and forced a restructuring of the entire industry.
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The photograph of the shattered rail I posted above was the one from Hatfield.

And that wasn't undetected wear. The replacement rail was there on site. It just wasn't installed yet, because the industry was being run by people who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing.
 
Announced this evening. Parliament is being recalled tomorrow Saturday to pass legislation to save the Scunthorpe steel plant
 
Almost as if making stuff is important....

Globalisation as we know it is coming to an end. That much Peter Zeihan gets right.
 
TinWing said:
Derailments are rarely a result of a rail that "breaks" as you so simplistically put it. I can only think of a single passenger train derailment in all of the North America where previously undetected wear of the rail itself was the cause.
Click to expand...
Yes, the more usual cause of derailments is a failure of the sleepers or the method attaching rails to sleepers. If any railroads are still using non-welded rails the link plates are another failure point.

All of which are still part of the rails in the generic.
 
Yellow Palace said:
The photograph of the shattered rail I posted above was the one from Hatfield.

And that wasn't undetected wear. The replacement rail was there on site. It just wasn't installed yet, because the industry was being run by people who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing.
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Yep, and it demonstrates how just detection isn't the sum of the problem, it needs to be part of an integrated safety management system that finds, fixes and monitors both issues and itself. With a regulator with teeth to make it do it.

Which of course didn't stop Grant Shapps as Secretary of State for Transport claiming a couple of years ago that safety monitoring could be done with drones. I've yet to see an explanation of how a drone flying overhead is supposed to do eddy current crack detection....
 

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