#Railnatter

We’re diving back into the history of British DMUs in this week’s #RailNatter – and this time esteemed guest Dr Kevin Tennent and I will be setting our sights on the dreaded Pacer! Given these trains ran their final Welsh services last week, it felt like a good time to pick through the common myths surrounding them: first and foremost that their poor quality was a justified compromise to allow the...

This week’s episode of #RailNatter is diving into the government’s “Bus Back Better” report… That’s right, we’ve hopped over to the dark side! Is the paper any good? Do I actually agree with most or even all of it? There’s also A LOT of news to catch up on… Join LIVE on Weds at 7pm to go through it all! Download the report here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publica… Enjoyed this? Please do consid...

Given that government is still prevaricating on the critical need to electrify Britain’s railways, this week’s #RailNatter ​ is once again going to explore the question: why bother? A couple of weeks ago, RIA (the Rail Industry Association) published another report laying out the incontrovertible evidence supporting conventional electrification. With the aid of the facts and figures held within, w...

On the 12th August 2020, a High Speed Train derailed near Stonehaven, killing three people including the driver and conductor. With the RAIB having just published their interim report on the incident, this episode of #RailNatter ​ is going to pick through and pull out the key findings thus far, exploring what we know and what we still don’t know. Join the discussion LIVE on Wednesday at 7pm (UK ti...

We’re doing an impersonation of WTYP this week… Because #RailNatter ​ is going to unpick the tale of the Tesco tunnel collapse in Gerrards Cross! Why did the tunnel collapse? Why was that structural form chosen? Why was the tunnel needed at all? What even is Tescos? Join us LIVE to find out answers to all this and more! Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #RailNatter ​ at https://patreon.c...

It’s another Welsh episode! The Welsh railway network is a mess – in fact, there isn’t really a “Welsh” network at all, it is just a series of branches of the English one… In this week’s #RailNatter ​, we are discussing why that might be, how we might reverse that state of affairs, and – ultimately – what a useful and realistic Welsh railway network might actually look like! Join LIVE to have your...

We are joined by not one but TWO guests in this week’s #RailNatter ​… Alistair Baldwin and Kelly Shuttleworth were the joint authors of the Institute for Government’s excellent paper “How governments use evidence to make transport policy” that was released in February, and I am very pleased to say that they will be joining us for a classic #RailNatter ​ page-turn of that very report! Join us LIVE...

In a change to the previously advertised schedule, I’m filling in with a pre-record in this week’s #RailNatter ​ (we’ll have our first dual-guest episode next week)… We’re covering the origins of “standard” track gauge! We’ll bust open the myths about horse’s bottoms and Romans (see also: the Space Shuttle episode) and look at the far more interesting reality of early railway infrastructure develo...

This week’s #RailNatter ​ is a return to the railway colouring-in book! In the previous Crayonista episode, we listed seven top tips for creating vaguely useful or realistic railway alignments. This time I’ll be jumping into Google Earth and looking in more detail at the process of actually creating sensible alignments using these top tips… Where are we linking up? Well, I will be attempting to ad...

We’re flicking through another PDF on screen today, and this time it is the rather exciting Rail for All report created for the Scottish Greens. No other UK party has created a document like this in modern history – and the country is all the worse off for it. But does it hold up to scrutiny? Join LIVE to find out. Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #RailNatter ​ at https://patreon.com/ga...

We’ve done it – #RailNatter ​ is a year old! To celebrate, we’re getting all of the Patreon supporters on to talk about their favourite moments and episodes, and more importantly to hand out the GOLDEN PANDROL CLIP to the award winning episodes… Join the chaos LIVE at the usual time! Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #RailNatter ​ at https://patreon.com/garethdennis ​ or throw loose chan...

Much as the situation appears to be improving year on year, the railways still aren’t safe enough, as we were tragically reminded of earlier this year with the death of Tyler Byrne at Surbiton station. But how has railway staff safety changed over the years? Is there anything we can learn from accidents from decades and even centuries gone by? There are few better people to ask than Dr Mike Esbest...

This week’s #RailNatter ​ is harking back to the days of AOL and email chains (oh, and more recently, THAT daft Twitter thread about track gauge, horses bottoms and rocket boosters)… Yes, friend of the show John Morgan Christoph is joining us to bring his space and geology skills to bear and guide us through the more interesting spacey side-stories associated with this silly set of myths! Why did...

It’s another solo #RailNatter ​, and this week we are also doing another page turn… This time we are picking through the West Yorkshire mass transit proposals. Are they any good? Is there anything that needs to change? What is the likelihood they will actually happen? Is there anything we can learn from them? All this and more, LIVE and with you lot asking the questions! Enjoyed this? Please do co...

We’re back for another #RailNatter ​, and this one is somewhat topical… A month after everyone got a really good look at the inside of the US Capitol buildings, we are joined by the brilliant Ann Gavaghan (@anngav on Twitter) to talk about the tunnels underneath this complex of buildings. Join us LIVE as the secrets are revealed to ask all your questions! Enjoyed this? Please do consider supportin...

#TheArchitectureTheRailwaysBuilt ​ has returned to our tellies, which means that Britain’s most effervescent ferroequinologist is coming back on #RailNatter ​! One of the loveliest and most pleasingly knowledgeable railway folks out there, replete with his array of books, miniatures and scarves, joins us again to talk about his new series, with more behind the scenes goodies and hints as to what l...

#RailNatter ​ started with the first of the coronavirus lockdowns… With the virus having been around in the UK for around a year, and with passenger levels still at less than 20% of pre-COVID levels, what does the future look like for Britain’s railways? For Episode 46, we’ll look at a lot of the myths, forgotten realities and plans elsewhere in the world to get an idea of whether the doom and glo...

For Episode 45 of #RailNatter , we’re grabbing a copy of the National Infrastructure Commission’s “Rail Needs Assessment for the Midlands and the North”. This was supposed to be the stepping off point for a revolution in railway transport for the regions outside of London and the south, and yet it appears to have signified the start of a major abandonment of by the current government. But why? Joi...

We’re back for our first LIVE #RailNatter of 2021… For episode 44 we are heading to South Wales, where James Bennett will update us on the progress of the South Wales Metro, and indeed explain a bit more about what it is. Will I have to hammer the #NotAMetro buzzer? What type of traction is being used where? How much of the system will be electrified? Join us LIVE for the answers to these and any...

That’s it! 2020 is finally over! It can only get better, right?! To celebrate, this episode of #RailNatter is a corker: we’ve got Justin Roczniak a.k.a. @donoteat01 off of Franklin and @Well There’s Your Problem Podcast bursting some preconceptions that us exceptionalist Brits might have about US railroads… Oh, and quite a lot of other stuff, too (this one ran long, as you might have imagined it m...

Well, everyone is hopefully stuffed full of carb-rich food at this point, and given that (for British viewers at least) it is probably four degrees and drizzling outside, I thought it would be best for us to think about snowier times… Who better to join us to talk about snow than certified/certifiable snow nerd and in-denial Bahnnerd Alex Priestley? We’ll cover what snow is, how it impacts on the...

Yuletide Greetings, all! It’s the first of the #RailNatter holiday specials, and Bonnie Price has joined us to talk about what on earth the railways get up to when the trains are all tucked up in their depots! We cover what a blockade is, what sort of thing we do when they are in place, and why we both think the future of the railways would be brighter if we were more comfortable with spreading th...

Four post-war railway disasters changed the modern permanent way (a.k.a. track system) more than any others: Hither Green, Tattenhall, Ulleskelf and Hatfield. All of these fatal tragedies exposed cracks in our understanding of the way the permanent way worked, resulting in the industry learning, developing, and becoming safer. This week’s #RailNatter will explore the legacy of each in turn. Join L...

I harp on about slab track quite a bit, not least in relation to its improvement in the whole-life costs and impacts of intensively-used railway infrastructure… But what exactly is it, and how does it work? Well, Ivana Avramović is from PORR, which is the world’s leading manufacturer of slab track, and she’ll be joining us for tonight’s #RailNatter to explain all! Tune in LIVE to ask your question...

This week’s #RailNatter is for everyone who thinks that cycling and railways are a perfect match… Lindsay Broadwell and I will be talking all things e-bike! We’ll touch on bike provision on trains, trolley buses and nuclear, too… See you LIVE for much chat!