#Railnatter

In this week's #RailNatter, I'm talking about all of the ways in which railway rails - yes, just the rails themselves - give up and stop holding trains up in the air.

What's a squat? Fatigue got you down? Want to crack gauge corner cracking? Well, this is the episode for you...

Join LIVE to ask your questions and I'll do my best to respond!

*we won't be covering one hundred failure modes

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting me at patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via paypal.me/garethdennis.

The venerable Dr David Turner is back on the show! In Episode 28 of #RailNatter, we'll be turning our attention to the humble quail...

Why? Well, because it allows us to explore the shape and development of supply chains on the British railway network through time, including thinking about how they operate now. It also lets us look at wider international supply chains, and how for a long time freight across the globe moved through Britain (for better or worse). But most of all, because an episode on quails is what all of us need at this point.

Join us LIVE for the usual japes, and bring along something to drink!

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting me at patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via paypal.me/garethdennis.

In a change to the announced schedule, Episode 27 of #RailNatter is going to be a marathon page turn of Network Rail's freshly published Traction Decarbonisation Network Strategy - a.k.a. The Electrification Map Report!

Join us LIVE as we flick through all 257 pages, check out all of the areas that AREN'T proposed for wiring and consider how realistic it is that Britain might finally get the rolling programme of electrification that was first mooted over a hundred years ago.

Download the report: https://www.networkrail.co.uk/wp-cont...

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting me at patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via paypal.me/garethdennis.

We're finding out how sleeper trains work in this week's #RailNatter... And Edward Schofield (@CapotrenoEd on Twitter) shall be our guide!

You've been asking for this one - and it is a subject I'm looking forward to learning a lot about... Join us LIVE to ask your questions!

Ed's blog: https://railguideeurope.com/night-tra...

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/5CPAC8W

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting me at patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via paypal.me/garethdennis.

Well here we go - it is finally time for a #RailNatter with interactive railway creation... In Episode 25, I'll be providing you with the tools you need to make your crayon railways as realistic as possible!

I'll show you how to dodge towns, make use of existing alignments and skip your way between ancient woodlands as we look over a few examples of railways that I've already fiddled with...

Join the natter LIVE to see a railway appear in real time, to have your say over how it looks, and to ask any burning questions you might have!

Mike Spencer's postcode map: https://mikerspencer.carto.com/viz/c7...

PRE toolbox: permanentrail.co.uk/toolbox

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting me at patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via paypal.me/garethdennis.

We've talked about it before, but what is road pricing and is it the future for managing road traffic? Well, this is what Edward Leigh (leader of Smarter Cambridge Transport) and I will be talking about in Episode 24 of #RailNatter!

With electric vehicles being the future of road transport, income from fuel duty will start rapidly decreasing. At the same time, road users need to be rewarded for reducing their miles and for driving sensible vehicles. Can road pricing achieve this?

Join us LIVE to find out and ask all your questions!

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting me at patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via paypal.me/garethdennis.

In this week's #RailNatter we're being joined by Luke Agbaimoni (@TubeMapper on Twitter) to talk about his mission to expose the ostensibly mundane as the aesthetically beautiful!

Here are Luke's social media links: tubemapper.com (website) @tubemapper (instagram and twitter)

Buy a first edition signed copy of the book (!): https://unbound.com/books/tubemapper/

Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/075099437...

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting me at patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via paypal.me/garethdennis.

In this week's #RailNatter I'm very pleased to say we will be joined by the electrifying Garry Keenor (@25kV on Twitter)!

In Episode 22, we'll be talking about all things OLE (OCS if you're elsewhere in the world)... Given that national electrification was suggested seriously back in the 1910s, how on earth can we finally get Britain to #ElectrifyAllTheThings, over a century later?

Join us LIVE to ask all of your electrification questions!

Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting me at patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via paypal.me/garethdennis.

Episode 21 of #RailNatter is being hijacked as a #NotAMetro soapbox!

This is one of my all-time bug-bears: what is and is not a “metro”, and why the UK in particular is fixated on calling tram systems “metros” despite them being a long way short of that. But where does the line sit?

Is the DLR a metro? Is the Tyne and Wear Metro a metro? Is Thameslink a metro? Watch to see as I try to create the definitive categorisation system for railways!

Episode 20 of #RailNatter is going to be an hour of me making a rod for my own back, no doubt... Why? Because I am going to make my proposal for what the organisational structure of Britain's railways should look like!

Do I want a return to Grouping? Sectorised BR? The Japanese model? Tune in to find out!

(Here's Alasdair Rae's CityMetric piece explaining his Federal England map: https://www.citymetric.com/politics/w...)

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.