#Railnatter

On the 12th August 2020, a High Speed Train derailed near Stonehaven, killing three people including the driver and conductor.

With the RAIB having just published their interim report on the incident, this episode of #RailNatter​ is going to pick through and pull out the key findings thus far, exploring what we know and what we still don’t know.

Join the discussion LIVE on Wednesday at 7pm (UK time).

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #RailNatter​ at https://patreon.com/garethdennis​ or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethdennis​. Join in the discussion at https://garethdennis.co.uk/discord​.

We’re doing an impersonation of WTYP this week… Because #RailNatter​ is going to unpick the tale of the Tesco tunnel collapse in Gerrards Cross!

Why did the tunnel collapse? Why was that structural form chosen? Why was the tunnel needed at all? What even is Tescos?

Join us LIVE to find out answers to all this and more!

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #RailNatter​ at https://patreon.com/garethdennis​ or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethdennis​. Join in the discussion at https://garethdennis.co.uk/discord​.

It’s another Welsh episode!

The Welsh railway network is a mess – in fact, there isn’t really a “Welsh” network at all, it is just a series of branches of the English one… In this week’s #RailNatter​, we are discussing why that might be, how we might reverse that state of affairs, and – ultimately – what a useful and realistic Welsh railway network might actually look like!

Join LIVE to have your say and to see what I think…

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #RailNatter​ at https://patreon.com/garethdennis​ or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethdennis​. Join in the discussion at https://garethdennis.co.uk/discord​.

We are joined by not one but TWO guests in this week’s #RailNatter​…

Alistair Baldwin and Kelly Shuttleworth were the joint authors of the Institute for Government’s excellent paper “How governments use evidence to make transport policy” that was released in February, and I am very pleased to say that they will be joining us for a classic #RailNatter​ page-turn of that very report!

Join us LIVE to ask your questions and share your thoughts!

Download the paper here: https://www.instituteforgovernment.or…​

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #RailNatter​ at https://patreon.com/garethdennis​ or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethdennis​. Join in the discussion at https://garethdennis.co.uk/discord​.

In a change to the previously advertised schedule, I’m filling in with a pre-record in this week’s #RailNatter​ (we’ll have our first dual-guest episode next week)… We’re covering the origins of “standard” track gauge!

We’ll bust open the myths about horse’s bottoms and Romans (see also: the Space Shuttle episode) and look at the far more interesting reality of early railway infrastructure development – and not for the last time I am sure!

Join LIVE(ish) to keep up to date with the chat, even if I am not about to follow!

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #RailNatter​ at https://patreon.com/garethdennis​ or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethdennis​. Join in the discussion at https://garethdennis.co.uk/discord​.

This week’s #RailNatter​ is a return to the railway colouring-in book!

In the previous Crayonista episode, we listed seven top tips for creating vaguely useful or realistic railway alignments. This time I’ll be jumping into Google Earth and looking in more detail at the process of actually creating sensible alignments using these top tips…

Where are we linking up? Well, I will be attempting to add Wetherby back into the national rail network!

Join LIVE to watch along and have your say!

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #RailNatter​ at https://patreon.com/garethdennis​ or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethdennis​. Join in the discussion at https://garethdennis.co.uk/discord​.

We’re flicking through another PDF on screen today, and this time it is the rather exciting Rail for All report created for the Scottish Greens.

No other UK party has created a document like this in modern history – and the country is all the worse off for it. But does it hold up to scrutiny?

Join LIVE to find out.

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #RailNatter​ at https://patreon.com/garethdennis​ or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethdennis​. Join in the discussion at https://garethdennis.co.uk/discord​.

We’ve done it – #RailNatter​ is a year old!

To celebrate, we’re getting all of the Patreon supporters on to talk about their favourite moments and episodes, and more importantly to hand out the GOLDEN PANDROL CLIP to the award winning episodes…

Join the chaos LIVE at the usual time!

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #RailNatter​ at https://patreon.com/garethdennis​ or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethdennis​. Join in the discussion at https://garethdennis.co.uk/discord​.

Much as the situation appears to be improving year on year, the railways still aren’t safe enough, as we were tragically reminded of earlier this year with the death of Tyler Byrne at Surbiton station.

But how has railway staff safety changed over the years? Is there anything we can learn from accidents from decades and even centuries gone by? There are few better people to ask than Dr Mike Esbester, who leads the Railway Work, Life & Death project out of the University of Porstmouth. We’ll talk about both contemporary and historic safety incidents, and see what we can learn from both.

Join us LIVE as we chat about the project and what Mike has learned…

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #RailNatter​ at https://patreon.com/garethdennis​ or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethdennis​. Join in the discussion at https://garethdennis.co.uk/discord​.

This week’s #RailNatter​ is harking back to the days of AOL and email chains (oh, and more recently, THAT daft Twitter thread about track gauge, horses bottoms and rocket boosters)…

Yes, friend of the show John Morgan Christoph is joining us to bring his space and geology skills to bear and guide us through the more interesting spacey side-stories associated with this silly set of myths! Why did the Shuttle use solid rocket boosters? Why did they travel by rail? How did the railways help build the Kennedy Space Centre in the first place?

Join us LIVE at the usual time to find out this and more!

The Hyperloop paper is here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/…​

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #RailNatter​ at patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via paypal.me/garethdennis. Join in the discussion at garethdennis.co.uk/discord.