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Sussex Way ;)
A mural celebrating the nuclear flask train carrying spent rods through the heart of London every week. Much safer than by road I guess! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_flask
Train test crash 1984 - nuclear flask test - YouTube
1:30, I cant decide if he is a real person or a rubber puppet..
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Springfield always makes me think of the nuclear power plant in the Simpsons so
Oh dear, you seem to have touched on one of my geek subjects. Apologies in advance. tl;dr? Nuclear trains, tag one!
The nuclear trains used to run past my old flat in Newington Green so I started looking into them. The trains that currently pass through are mostly from Sizewell A to Sellafield, as Sizewell A is currently being decommissioned, and Sizewell B has its own storage pool so they don't need to transport the waste. There used to be trains from Bradwell too but they've defuelled it now. Sizewell A defuelling is due to finish in September 2014, so after that there won't be any scheduled nuclear trains on the North London Line.
The trains are operated by Direct Rail Services, which is a 'wholly owned subsidiary' of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and therefore the only publicly owned freight operator in the UK. You might think this is fair enough, but DRS were operating rail tours until the recession bit and have expanded their client base significantly to include Tesco (among others). If any investigative journalists are reading, I've always thought there's a pretty good story there about how public money is being used to snap up private contracts. I've got no idea what the other freight companies think of it, not much probably...
DRS has always bought old locomotives and extensively refurbished them. The nuclear trains are pulled by class 37's, 20's or a combination of both. The 37's are about 50 years old and the 20's more like 55, so they're basically the oldest locomotives you'll see about and about now. (TRAINSPOTTER KLAXON)
The trains from Sizewell pass through Newington Green at about 7.10 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, unless they've changed the schedule. Class 37's sound like tractors, class 20's sound like helicopters (really) and they're big and blue and go quite slowly so you can't miss them.
Rep for anyone who bike tags one!
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Interesting that, Fox. I also used to live next the tracks, one of the houses in the tag picture in fact, and I often tried to work out which train it was - there were too many trees to actually see the trains though. I also understand they stopped them for a while during the Olympics 'for security'
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You can get times of most freight services at http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/. This appears to be a candidate for a nuclear train this morning: http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/H00511/2013/05/20/advanced
The nuclear waste train appears to run in the evening - http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/H20131/2013/05/20/advanced
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....... If any investigative journalists are reading, I've always thought there's a pretty good story there about how public money is being used to snap up private contracts........
Having spent some time working at Sellafield I can confirm that the police force used to patrol the site is provided by a privately contracted firm.
Not only that, but they are always armed, and I don't mean with a Smith & Wesson revolver.
Oh no. These guys n' gals are toting Heckler & Koch machine guns.
This much I know as they supplied us with an example of such a weapon for one of our display cabinets. It had been de-commissioned.
It took us all of 5 minutes to work out that a few minutes work with a Dremel would remove the single blob of weld that had been applied to the mechanism, and it would be re-commissioned......So really what you have here is civillians, armed with automatic weapons, wandering round in western Cumbria.
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Don't let this happen guys
Don't worry, I worked in the rail industry for over six years and therefore hate trainspotters :)
It's the nuclear stuff I'm interested in. You can't touch it, you can't see it, but it can kill you just like that. All of the power stations are in bleak places. I like bleak places. Plus as Jurek's (fascinating) post points out it's a murky world if ever there was one, although it's also much maligned (it's perceived as dangerous but is actually very safe).
I'm going to run some rides to nuclear power stations this summer, starting with Bradwell then getting progressively longer!
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If you're going to Bradwell,it is well worth going beyond it to St Peters on the Wall.
http://http://www.bradwellchapel.org/Return trip using the private road across Dengie marshes is always a hoot. No car niceness for a few miles. Plus big skies
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Yep we did that, see the thread:
https://www.lfgss.com/thread69695.htmlThat's my bike outside the church on the recce :)
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Heh, no problem. It's a good tip. I first decided to ride there because it just seemed like a part of the country nobody ever went, the church definitely feels like that, it's a lovely spot.
You going to visit Derek Jarman's garden? Sounds like a great item for that itinerary.
Yup. Although when I did the recce I forgot to look at it :(
Then I tried to re-recce in Feburary but only got as far as Rye before I gave up because it was freezing and kept snowing.
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Sussex Way ;)
A mural celebrating the nuclear flask train carrying spent rods through the heart of London every week. Much safer than by road I guess! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_flask