The Bristol Railway Archive

Don't know If anyone has been watching the series about eddie stobart trucks over the last few weeks ... ( I know,it's sad ) ... but tonight 'A trucker takes on the challenge of racing the eddie stobart train from rugby to glasgow'....Channel 5 8p.m.

I have been watching it you have to admire that that seem to be able to provide a service. I dont think they showed the rail service as good as it is by saying that driver change over could take up an hour. Also the truck was at least 2hrs late leaving the depot. Quite how he managed to pull all the time back at 56mph with a train travelling at 75mph. Ok the train wouldnt be doing 75mph all the time I think its another bit of tv editing to show rail in a poor light again. Although they did add that the train took 185 truck journeys off the road.

They did also say...that the train sometimes stopped to let passenger trains pass,as they had priority...so this would have slowed the trip down,chances of doing 75 m.p.h would have been rare !

Yes with all freight services they are very often looped for periods of time to allow passenger services to pass. There is 2 trains we send out of Avonmouth for Didcot that take six and half hours to do the round trip. Yet at night they can do it in around 4 to 5 hrs. Guess its a price freight has to pay with there not being enough freight only lines around now.

Stopblock, Dont suppose you can get me a copy of the beach line gradient profile can you I cant find it online or in any books that i have Tony p.

I'm not in work untill next week now not sure if I have anything with that information in it.

I was Train Manager of Stobart's Blue Pullman until they realized running a train was much more expensive than running a truck and ran out of budget, for all their hubris ...

What idiot decorates the inside of a luxury train with pictures of trucks and motor bikes - and then wonders why the customers don't come back? It lasted less than a year and we were all made redundant.

Stobart = prats!