Cancelled in Crawley? At least your train has free Wi-Fi now, right? Wi-Fi has been creeping its way on to UK trains over the last few years as the government seeks to deal with the issue of mobile dead-zones by getting the train companies to provide free connectivity. However, very low caps and aggressively throttling can make what is an often already unpleasant train journey all the more …
"You'd almost think that nobody had tackled the tunnel problem before. Oh, wait..."
Installing thousands of miles of leaky feeder cable plus supporting infrastructure would
A) Cost an absolute fortune which would be recovered from ticket costs
B) Would be Network Rails responsibility, not train operators.
Personally I think people should be grateful they can get wifi at all on a moving train and if they're unhappy with the free service then they can always take their chances with 4G. I'd prefer the train companies sort out their useless timetables and performance issues rather than waste time and money setting up infrastructure so some morons can talk bollocks on whatsapp or are so addicted that they can't wait an hour to get online.
> I'd prefer the train companies sort out their useless timetables and performance issues rather than waste time and money setting up infrastructure so some morons can talk bollocks on whatsapp
But they won't even do that will they.
And with that attitude, the UK is always destined to be an IT, technology and infrastructure backwater.
"And with that attitude, the UK is always destined to be an IT, technology and infrastructure backwater."
There's something known as priorities and Wifi access should be somewhere near the bottom when it comes to railways. Their primary purporse is to get people from A to B, not act as a substitute hotspot. I spend enough money on travel as it is without subsidising playtime for kidults.
"Then think about the differing needs of people who are at different points in their lives."
No one is at the point in their life where they can't be without internet access for an hour or too. Even teenagers can manage to go without for that length of time if pushed. If someone really can't then they need professional help.
Am I the only one to get the HHGTTG reference?
Spotted it at once - some heretic downvoted the quote though - we need Donald Sutherland to come do his Invasion of the Bodysnatchers bit and identify the dangerous pervert.
Joke icon - 'cause those without a sense of humour are breeding and bound to start the accusations on my language if attempts at humour are not easily labelled as such....
"There is only 1 pot of money. Use some to provide wifi and you have less to pay for the important things."
And there writes somebody whose understanding of economics is somewhat lacking. That's the logic that has left the British economy in relative decline since 2008 while Portugal is recovering and the Chinese are still doing very nicely, thank you.
Creating new services increases value and therefore creates more money, because nowadays money is theoretically tied to the total value of the relevant economy. It is not like having a fixed supply of gold coins.
That's the logic that has left the British economy in relative decline since 2008 while Portugal is recovering and the Chinese are still doing very nicely, thank you.
There writes somebody whose understanding of economics is sadly lacking...... Portugal even now has double the unemployment rate of the UK, and the Chinese economic miracle has seen aggregate borrowing rise by 320% for a 120% rise in GDP over the last decade and a vast malinvestment in fixed assets that has yet to be unwound. Chinese GDP per capita is one fifth of the UK, Portuguese GDP per capita is just over half of the UK's.
Now, run it by me again what's so marvellous about China and Portugal? At the moment neither can even claim better weather or better football teams, although I'll grant that it's rather unusual that the UK/England are claiming an advantage in respect of either sunshine or football.
To give you credit, yes you used the words "relative decline" - but so what? Economics is always cyclical, so there's always relative movement that signifies little.
>There's something known as priorities and Wifi access should be somewhere near the bottom when it comes to railways.
Maybe the UK shouldn't have sold them off to the lowest bidder then?
They work great elsewhere. And have free WiFi too. Fancy that!
Personally I use (free) global roaming on my mobile tariff when travelling. Or a local data SIM in the 2nd slot. But I doubt that works too well in the UK either? Like I said: backwater.
when you're regularly delayed and sitting on a train that should take an hour, but regularly takes 2 or more - when u should be sitting in meetings, decent wifi would help hugely. i thought train wifi was back-boned via WiiMax - when did we drop that? 4G chips on the roof feels REALLY amateur hour.
its 2018 ffs - other countries have long since solved this problem. yes the railways are an absolute mess - but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be adding modern services. Just look at the new rolling stock being introduced, some great additions, but then 30 charging sockets on a 800 capacity train, and only type of train got these chargers - most it was just overlooked.
the whole thing needs renationalising and a serious investment programme put in place where the passenger is the customer again, not the DfT - who are completely happy with the current fiasco.
the whole thing needs renationalising and a serious investment programme put in place where the passenger is the customer again,
Bwahahahahahaha! You romantic fool! Under nationalisation the end user was NEVER regarded as a customer. I remember when the GPO provided phone lines, and you often had to share a joint line between neighbours because running two twisted pairs from a street cabinet was too much like hard fucking work. I remember the shitty state of the railways under public ownership, and indeed the grim state of the water and energy industries (jointly heavy polluters and job creation schemes). And that was under government of all political persuasions.
If nationalisation were a remedy for anything, we wouldn't need the private sector at all. Of course you'd have an economy like Venezuela, a justice system like Russia, and you'd be writing out your plea on slate because the personal computer, table and mobile phone would still be science fiction. But...maybe that is what you want?
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considering the current private system is essentially nationalised but just to foreign governments i think its worth trying again. the private model has completely failed, and the money being extracted from the industry has caused the problems we have today.
I'd say try another model, but i dont know of one? do you?
Take it from someone who has actually tried to get involved and sort this mess out. Romantic fool, no - desperate to reform this broken system and just get to work on time, yes.
"a serious investment programme put in place where the passenger is the customer again"
You mean like, say, 10 billion...
Why not scrap HS2 and replace current trains and improve comfort, facilities, and number of carriages, so on various routes there are no longer 1 to 2 hour commutes standing all the way...
Their "useless timetables" are the responsibility of Network Rail, and hidden behind them is DfT.
Network Rail gets involved to manage the rail use by freight and passenger trains and if it was down to the operators, then on any shared tracks there'd simply be chaos with them all wanting certain "popular" arrival and departure times. Bit like the "slots" auction at airports, the "users" don't have control over their times, not to the degree one might have hoped, anyway.
... there was this massively conductive metal strip under the train that could carry data, even in a tunnel.
Assuming you're talking about the third rail, then my train line doesn't have one. Not knowing a lot about trains, I couldn't tell you about the current state of the rolling stock, other than it's diesel. The branch line where I live isn't electrified.
Assuming you're talking about the third rail
Doesn't have to be the third rail (which you will notice is non-continuous anyway) but I don't think it could be made to work well using the normal rails, to be honest, mainly because they are already used as part of the signalling system and vehicle wheels short them out.
M.
"signalling system is about to go into the cab, gonna need some secure/"speedy"connectivity to make that work"
Secure tends to have different requirements than speedy. Fortunately, GSM-R has already been invented, has been around for years, and as far as I know hasn't yet been hijacked for multi-Terabytes per hour of useless junkmarketing garbage (or junk "security research" coverage). GSM-R in the UK and elsewhere seems to be reasonably well documented and reasonably widely deployed, perhaps because of the use of industry standards and co-operation rather than private sector innovation driven by industry giants like Microsoft and Intel (and, er, Carillion):
https://www.rssb.co.uk/improving-industry-performance/gsm-r
After GSM-R comes stuff like ERTMS. Again, it supposedly already exists, and not just on paper: e.g. "on trial" on the Cambrian line for years, see e.g.
https://www.railengineer.uk/2015/08/28/ertms-a-reality-check/
If we put Elon Musk AND Boris Johnson in charge... no let's not go there, that's a bridge too far.
Passengers excited by the prospect should keep in mind that things move slowly in the railway world
Just remember that the Class 43 (HST 125s) were just a short-term stop gap but are still in use 40 years later. Of course, the best is the Class 483 trains on the Isle of Wight line: Originally built in 1938! And the new class 230s are actually refurbished tube trains originally built in 1980.
Suspect the Ffestiniog could have a claim here as its services form part of the rail network...
Do they? I know you can buy a through ticket, (we did that some years ago, travelling from Llandudno Junction to Pwllheli via Blaenau and back), so if that's the criteria then yes, you might be right.
Some of their engines currently in use Prince and Palmerston date from 1864.
M.
> Of course, the best is the Class 483 trains on the Isle of Wight line: Originally built in 1938!
I gather that after years of paying a lot of money to lease the old tube stock, that the Isle of Wight line eventually bought them for £1. And that they are now painted proper London Transport Red.
Many years ago before smart phones - we gave a demonstration to display web pages in a train carriage using a 2.4GHz line of sight ethernet relay along the platform.
It was fairly obvious that a lot of track side infrastructure would be needed to support it in practice. The only apparently feasible system at that time was the 433MHz network for small data packets like credit card checks.
Boys toys fun - we had a train supplied for us to use for the day.
Of which 1700KB are ads and their tracking/telemetry code. Probably some good ads and tracking blockers will make those 50MB last much more.
It's also difficult to blame train companies for Windows 10 tracking, telemetry and updates bulimia.
Yet, but foreigners on expensive roaming plans, who uses "free wifi" today?
I turn off WiFi on the train as it is next to useless. With my free time I dream up personal windows suction mounted antennas, tethered to your phone somehow that you can use to boost your signal. I have yet to figure out the details on how that would actually work. Maybe I need another train journey to continue the dream.
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