Name your own Pullman car!

Clearly the recession hasn't hit the parts of Derbyshire served by the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway!

This from yesterday's email update on progress at the Duffield - Wirksworth line, sent out by GM Martin Miller...

...I returned today to find that John had completed the third lining out of our Pullman set.

I am open to receive the first £10,000 donation to put any name required on one of the vehicles.

Surely worth £20k of anyone's money to see 'Cruella de Villiers' and the 'Captain of Netball' permanently paired for posterity?

Bombardier shrinks the world - Official

This from Dan Dare...

According to a Bombardier press release, celebrating an award for its Standsted Express class 379 fleet:

The Class 379 trains’ current performance is such that on average each train would circumnavigate the world more than twice before encountering a technical failure. The target availability of 90% has been met consistently

Now the circumference of the earth is 25,901 miles at the equator, so Professor Peabody calculates that the Class 379 feet should be recording a Miles per Technical Incident of 49,802.

The Moving Annual Average for the Class 379 in Period 1 2012-13 was, errrr... 13,363 miles - or almost exactly once round the planet Mars, scene of my second adventure when my archeologist uncle discovered how the Martian civilisation had been wiped out before it could develop railways.

Southern's Class 377 Electrostars would get 1.4 times round Earth before suffering a 3 minute delay.

For the record, the Equatorial Train Reliability Analogy winners are the SWT Class 458 and LM Class 350/2 fleets which would be starting their fourth circumnavigation before conking out. 

Which is roughly 20,000-25,000 miles short of a circuit of Uranus, not a planet I visited although I understand the track gauge is 13 grots in the Uranian system of measurement which is based on the avarage length of the male Uranian divided by...

Right, that's quite enough Eagle pastiche, Ed.

Meaningless job titles in need of ridicule

Congratulations to the following...

TfL's ticketing top man, who has acquired Meaningless Job Title No 587 in Railway Eye's on-going Series Meaningless Job Titles in Need of Ridicule.

He is now Director of Customer Experience.

Good to see that RSSB haven't taken this lying down.

Their Head of Safety Knowledge & Planning (Meaningless Job Title No 588) has now been appointed Acting Director Policy Research & Risk (Meaningless Job Title 589).

More please...