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Comment by lambdas | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, the steam operators raised hell over having to follow the central locking for doors and sealing of windows passengers could stick their head out of.

Wasn’t even prospective, preventative action. There was pretty rash series of decapitations/fatalities in the past decade of people who think sticking their head out of a moving train is risk free that lead to this ruling being made mandatory.

They kicked off claiming it would ruin the ambience, but really it cost a very pretty penny.

They’d do anything to save a few quid; it’s amazing how they used to get cheap oil lube and coal from Russia, and since the war they’ve miraculously been managing to procure the same rates from new companies that have appeared overnight/moved production to sanction-less countries just over the border like Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan etc.

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The "slam door" carriages survived way past their sell by date. I travelled on them in the 1990s. The only advantage is quick de-boarding .. because you can open the door while the train is still moving. Everything else about them is spectacularly dangerous 1800s levels of safety.

I'm confused about what exactly constitutes "slam door", because wikipedia says they were last in operation 2005, but there were definitely still the type of "open the window to open manually" type used on the Reading / Paddington line well after that. Is the difference that they had central-locking?

IIRC it largely depended on the age of the carriage. Some newer slam-door carriages had the door sensor and remotely operable lock, but most of the stock did not and was of an age already that they were due for replacement so retro-fitting wasn't cost-effective. That subset which did have the mechanisms in place may not have been counted in what was decommissioned in 2005 & prior. I'm pretty sure I used slam doors later than 2005 too.

Which specific Lithuanian companies are you suggesting are supplying Russian oil and coal? I call bullshit. Anyone found doing that in Lithuania would get lynched.

As for calling them “sanction-less”, you clearly have no clue what you are talking about. Spouting nonsense based on a rudimentary understanding of the geography and little else.

Sorry, but sticking your head out the window is one of the greatest perks of going on a heritage train. That really IS about the ambiance.

It turns out UK society wasn't OK with "Sometimes people get decapitated" as the price of this perk, and it also wasn't happy with "Increase the clearance for structure gauge" because that would solve the decapitations but is eye-wateringly expensive in many places or would mean demolishing things society also wanted, like bridges, castles, or other buildings which are too close.

what about "make one car skinnier than normal so that folks can open windows on it without risking their necks"?

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