Drones Football and Trains

I watched the England opening game against Croatia on Wednesday night. England eventually won the match and rose to the top of Group L. There are two more group matches left for England. I found it amusing that Scotland are high up in their group and so is the USA. Imagine Scotland a small country with roughly 10 million people playing USA, a country with more than 400 million people. It's like a David and Goliath story. 

Drone warfare is becoming more popular in the world because they are very cheap and easy to deploy, if they are shot down, the weapon is usually more expensive so it's productive on different levels. An army would shoot down a £70 drone with a £100,000 missile and it would still feel like a loss because of the contrast in price. A swarm of drones with explosives can do a lot of damage. 

Unfortunatly an express train heading to Luton airport crashed during the weekend, the driver of the train passed away. We don't know what happened exactly, all they know is the train crashed into another train that was not moving. I'll continue to observe the findings as they come. 

Elizabeth Line Trip

Yesterday I rode on an Elizabeth line train for the first time. The line opened in 2022 but I never got around to trying it. That's partly because I don't live in London and partly because I didn't need to go to the destinations it stops at. 

It's nice to see a metro train in London that uses overhead AC power lines; most of the London mass transit lines were running before the Yugoslavian-American inventor called Nicola Tesla invented AC power transmission so they stuck with direct current. (Yugoslavia fragmented into several smaller countries in the '90s, Kosovo Serbia and places like that). In those days it was probably easy to be a news broacaster because there was always something happening. These days they have to talk about tap water privatisation for 2 hours or things like that. They can lul a professor to sleep sometimes. 

The train is very cool, it is open plan and spacious with lots of low hanging handles for those that can't find a seat. I was surprised the station platforms didn't have much benches, I thought it would be a good idea to put seating benches up against every stretch of wall in the station so people can sit down while they wait for a train. I also found it difficult to see the map of the line inside the train but that's no big deal. It was a bit too crowded for me, I never imagined it would be so popular. It certainly helps relieve crowding on the other lines. 

I learnt that the tfl charging cap goes up if you go from Heathrow airport on an Elizabeth line train because they have to use some of a private railway's tracks. 

Noisy London Underground

I consider the London Metro train system known as the Underground to be noisy compared to other metro rail systems. I think the reason is because it uses direct current to power the trains. 

A typical London underground train runs on two rails for the wheels and collects electricity from two live rails. The live rails use direct electrical current so there has to be many metal plates that gather the charge from the rails, they're dragged along the rails and make scraping sound. 

The trains can't share the same loop so the live rails interrupt, when the power plates leave the live rails they make a pop sound because the current briefly goes through the air; you hear "pop pop, pop pop". The popping sound is the negative and positive plates leaving one live rail and touching another. It goes "pop pop, pop pop. Pop pop, pop pop" over and over again. 

With AC  power, all the trains can share the same loop because the train's transformer divides the power and takes a smaller current for the train cleanly. Plus, it only needs one or two plates to gather the power so you only get a small scraping sound. 

The London underground existed before AC current was invented, it's not their fault. The trains are still very efficient  though. I guess it's low on their priorities to change the power system for the underground trains. They have pushed the old technology to limits as far as it can go and I think they did a good job. 

Being British

Very often, an ordinary man like myself would feel like they're ripped off or someone is trying to rip them off. 

An example would be getting a train ticket. I know that south Ruislip train station is inside the TFL zone (transport for London) even commuter trains have to let oyster paying passengers on the train but they still sell their higher priced tickets in the zone on their apps. 

A FTL trip to Marylebone station from south Ruislip costs £3.50. They won't tell you that. They'll let you buy a ticket through their app at a higher price. 

The same journey and same train is £8.10. 

Another example is the BBC TV licence. I have to pay £13 per month but I only watch about 2 hours of TV per week. I only watch the news on the BBC iPlayer. I feel like I need to use the app more to get value for money. Perhaps I should watch some movies  on there.  They do have movies and stuff like that. 

British Train Inconsistencies

I noticed the pricing on rail tickets in the UK are inconsistent. I'll give you an example..

The distance between Barking and Southend, and the distance between High Wycombe and Marylebone is roughly 50 km for both journeys but the rail providers charge different prices for off peak trips. 

A C2C train from Barking station to Southend central is £8.50, that is about 15p per kilometre. A trip from High Wycombe to Marylebone is more expensive. 

A journey of a similar distance, 50km is more expensive on the Chilterns railway, it costs about 26p per kilometre. It is so uncompetitive that it is cheaper to take an Uber if you have 4 passengers. 

If you have 4 passengers, the journey will cost £11.48 per person because the whole car ride is £45.93

My question is why? Why is it cheaper to travel 50 km in the C2C train network then the children railways? Is it because the Chiltern railways still use diesel trains? Is it because there are two train lines that go to Southend so they face more competition? I don't know the answer, I only know that every rail network has different prices for equivalent distances. 

Toy Train

I imagined what would happen if I owned a city railway. The first thing people would think is "is this a toy train?" Because the trains are very small and they have a face on the front of them. The face on the front of the train would be lighting shaped like a face to show kindness to the passengers and light up the space in front of the train for safety. 

The trains would be so small that there is only one row of seats on one side of the train, there is also doors only on one side of the train, opposite the seats. The reason is because there would be more trains and they would run parallel on separate tracks, as soon as one train leaves a station, another train is directly behind it. The trains would weigh less so they wouldn't put much stress on the tracks and sleeper blocks. The wheel bearings on the train would also have less weight pressing on them. The passengers on the train would have a lot of space and a bike rack next to their seats. Each train would only go to one station from the platform, there would be a train stopping for every station over time and they would skip stations until they get to the one station they are heading for. 

When there are very few commuters, perhaps at 22:00, there would be less trains running and they would use less power because the electric motor would have less mass to overcome. But when it is busy, the work load is spread out evenly across the whole line so it would be quicker and more efficient than normal metro systems. 

Perhaps this thought only makes sense to me. 

New Railway

It is the last part of May 2022, about a week away from the Queen's Platinum Jubilee and a new railway has opened. They call it crossrail and the Elizabeth line. It is a bit like Thames Link but it goes East to West instead of North to South. They are different from most the trains in London, they use overhead power lines to power the train so I imagine it would be very quiet inside. The trains look very modern and sleek, they accelerate very quickly and the station platforms look very big and modern. The railway goes from Reading to Shenfield and passes through central London with a branch that goes to Heathrow airport. It connects towns near London and also connects more stations in London together. 

When I see news about railway projects in the UK the first thought that comes into my head is why they don't use the existing train lines to gather renewable energy. They could build a box frame around the train tracks, the top of the frame would have solar panels and the sides of the frame would be a mesh like grill similar to the front surface of  sound speakers. The sides of the frame would have wheels in it with fan blades that harnesses wind energy. When the wind blows, it pushes against the wall of the train frame and makes the wheels with fan blades spin, the rim of the wheels would have magnets in them that passes across copper coils, this would cause electro-magnetic induction. I imagine the draft from the moving trian would also cause the wind wheels to spin.  The main revenue of the trian lines would be to harvest renewable energy and the secondary revenue would be to transport goods and people. This thought always comes into my mind when I see news of railway projects in the UK.