Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms The end of diesel?

I think the old road warrior rule remains.

If you are doing high mileage on open(ish) roads a good diesel remains a great tool. Some of the new diesel engines (Merc E400d was impressive) are clean and still provide great mpg and smooth torque to make it relaxing.

BEV is catching up for certain and with new battery technology it just needs the charging availabiltiy/speeds to catch up to be a serious alternative. However the price remains a barrier for most people. Lets see what happens with the US going all market protectionist and China having to incentivise other markets to take up the slack? We might see them invest heavily to drive BYD, Geely etc to soak up the extra product through the EU.

It would be interesting to see how it works with the delivery driver market and other non-domestic usage. Whilst the town/city based drivers do many stops with low miles they also drag a lot of weight with stop/start/accelerate which hurts. I don't see it working for regional delivery drivers so a modern diesel still makes sense there?

Still at horses for courses at this point but a very fast rate of change?

Yes Euro 6 diesel do suffer from clogged DPF if used frequently for short journeys. But a simple high speed run once a month to get the engine hot, or a DPF cleaner added to the fuel every few tankful tends to minimise the issue. A small price to pay for the much cleaner emissions compared to pre Euro 6 diesels. Downside tends to be you lose a spare wheel to the AdBlue tank.

I reckon for the 'road warrior' (love it) market diesel will continue to be attractive for a fair time.

If you're the sort of driver who regularly puts in 2 or 300 miles a day then the problem with using BEVs is in charging them at home overnight where the max rate is 7kW unless you have a domestic 3-phase supply. Leaving aside any cheap rate issues, at 7kW you're only going to be able to put around 20-25 miles range into your car per hour overnight, and if you're doing those kinds of mileages you're probably leaving home early and getting back late.

The alternative, of finding a high-power DC charging station when you're out on the road, is both expensive and life limiting on your battery if you do it all the time.

On the other hand, the rate at which battery technology is evolving means this is likely only to be the case for the next 5 years or so, but I believe it'll be a very long time indeed before we see a workable alternative for HGVs.

The Railway?

For the long(er) distance parts of journeys probably. However there's a lot of routes/destinations missing from the network, plus goods still have to be moved to/from railhead/distribution centres. Perhaps time to resurrect a good proportion of missing PWay miles

Wouldn't that be something? To restore all the lost lines and add more on top, and with modern signalling and train management technologies you could probably run much denser traffic too. Flipping marvellous.

That takes you back to the old BRS days when they used to work in conjunction with the railways to reduce the amount of goods carried by road, using the rail network and rail distribution hubs transferring to road for the final local journey where ever possible Back to the old days of heavy engineering, large manufacturers etc. having rail heads to service their goods inward and outward movements.
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Actually, the density of traffic depends on line speed and gradient, weight of trains and their braking distance. We have had 4 aspect signalling now for quite a few years, 5 aspect was tried but was ditched. We have had ERSE (Electronic Route Setting Equipment) for some time as well, before the railway was sold off cheaply privatised.
Graham, that's what I was thinking, long haul then local deliveries.
Bring back British Rail.

We get a lot of rail containers through Doncaster already, but I remember when the Post Office cancelled its rail contract, just after some new bespoke units were delivered.

Oh and also tanker shaped wagons, which may not be liquid cargo.

Steam was ended prematurely on the back of political dogma.

And Woodhead was an early electric main line to European loading gauge, as I recall, but not the right voltage to survive. Some of those early electrics were sold to the Netherlands.

Politicians are intrinsically stupid. They can't help it. Beeching was a classic case, when Marples had his fingers all over road building. The Tories rushed through privatisation just before being booted out. The list is endless.

I used to work at Donny box as a Technician Officer on the signalling side. I remember I hink it was Goole rotary bridge with the signalman in the middle of the bridge. He was nicknamed "Captain"!.We covered Drax where the coal dust played havoc with the track circuits. We had to put in treadles to count in and out.