"Mizter T" wrote in message
...

You can get from Aberdeen to London by rail in between 7 and 8 hours,
including by direct train, so saying it'd take a couple of days is
simply exaggeration. Additionally there's the sleeper between Aberdeen
to London, so you can do it when your asleep too (if you can sleep etc
etc).

It's not that long ago there was an open access operator trying to get on
the route. Presumably they thought there was a rail market to tap, but the
ORR turned them down...

Paul S

"Paul Scott" wrote in message

"Mizter T" wrote in message
...

You can get from Aberdeen to London by rail in between 7 and 8 hours,
including by direct train, so saying it'd take a couple of days is
simply exaggeration. Additionally there's the sleeper between
Aberdeen to London, so you can do it when your asleep too (if you
can sleep etc etc).

It's not that long ago there was an open access operator trying to
get on the route. Presumably they thought there was a rail market to
tap, but the ORR turned them down...

There may well be a small rail market, but it's going to be mainly
leisure travellers. Someone in the oil business is not going to waste a
whole day travelling by train when they can do the same journey in not
much over an hour by plane. Ineed, day returns to Aberdeen are perfectly
feasible by air, with plenty of time for a meeting or two (I did it
often enough).

On Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:22:24 +0100
"Recliner" wrote:
There may well be a small rail market, but it's going to be mainly
leisure travellers. Someone in the oil business is not going to waste a
whole day travelling by train when they can do the same journey in not
much over an hour by plane. Ineed, day returns to Aberdeen are perfectly
feasible by air, with plenty of time for a meeting or two (I did it
often enough).

Given recent events I don't think oil company employees are really up there in
the top 10 of people whose examples we should follow.

B2003

On Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:31:05 +0000 (UTC), d
wrote:

Given recent events I don't think oil company employees are really up there in
the top 10 of people whose examples we should follow.

While air is an option, many companies think the same. I do IT, not
oil (though I have worked under contract for an oil company) and we
use air because it allows us to weekly commute for a pretty much full
working week without losing Sunday night or any more of Friday evening
than a rail commute to London would.

Neil
--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To reply put my first name before the at.

On Jul 24, 10:37*am, Neil Williams
wrote:

On Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:31:05 +0000 (UTC),
wrote:

Given recent events I don't think oil company employees are really up there in
the top 10 of people whose examples we should follow.

While air is an option, many companies think the same. *I do IT, not
oil (though I have worked under contract for an oil company) and we
use air because it allows us to weekly commute for a pretty much full
working week without losing Sunday night or any more of Friday evening
than a rail commute to London would.

Perhaps a close to the bone question, but I might as well ask it -
elsewhere in another thread you've mentioned your "moral code" - I
wonder if you have any thoughts on regularly using (and choosing) a
form of transport that is more polluting (higher CO2 emissions etc)
over other modes? (That's not meant in an aggressive way, but it's
just something that's always in the back of my mind when it comes to
these sort of discussions.)

On Sat, 24 Jul 2010 04:56:25 -0700 (PDT), Mizter T
wrote:

Perhaps a close to the bone question, but I might as well ask it -

Not at all. I'm quite happy to debate these points.

elsewhere in another thread you've mentioned your "moral code" - I
wonder if you have any thoughts on regularly using (and choosing) a
form of transport that is more polluting (higher CO2 emissions etc)
over other modes? (That's not meant in an aggressive way, but it's
just something that's always in the back of my mind when it comes to
these sort of discussions.)

You can mean it how you like - robust debate is always good in here

The answer is - I'm to some extent being a bit of a hypocrite. But
read on.

Normally, I choose other modes than car (mainly rail) for personal UK
domestic travel, so I think it offsets the effect to some extent,
though that said I am (probably temporarily) doing a long car commute
at the moment. I've never taken a domestic UK flight for my own
purposes, and am not all that likely to do so in the near future.

To some extent, my relatively high use of air travel is driven by
work, and is not something I have much choice in (unless I wish to
relocate fully each time I change contracts, which I think would be a
bit much, or to lose my entire Friday evening and Sunday
afternoon-evening to go by rail, which almost makes going home
pointless). Normally, we are contracted to be on site for a whole
working week, and that just isn't feasible with other modes.

It might be worth bearing in mind that air travel on full planes (I
tend to choose easyJet, and they run high load factors) is fairly
comparable by car, though not as good as long-distance rail with
decent load factors, and nowhere near as good as road coach, which I
think often comes out best of the motorised modes.

But on my own European travel, should I consider the train instead?
Most probably, or maybe I shouldn't travel at all (I travelled a lot
less when I had a bit of a fear of flying - I did do European trips by
rail from time to time, but the time taken for them unless you're
going to Paris or Brussels tended to be a bit of a killer, as is the
difficulty of booking and the often astronomical price tag). It's
certainly something I've thought about on many occasions, though
perhaps my morals aren't quite good enough to prevent me doing it
completely as perhaps I should.

Neil
--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To reply put my first name before the at.

On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:58:04 +0100
Neil Williams wrote:
difficulty of booking and the often astronomical price tag). It's
certainly something I've thought about on many occasions, though
perhaps my morals aren't quite good enough to prevent me doing it
completely as perhaps I should.

If you work in IT it should be no problem getting a job that doesn't require
you to travel far.

B2003

On Jul 23, 2:22*pm, "Recliner" wrote:

"Paul Scott" wrote:

"Mizter T" wrote:

You can get from Aberdeen to London by rail in between 7 and 8 hours,
including by direct train, so saying it'd take a couple of days is
simply exaggeration. Additionally there's the sleeper between
Aberdeen to London, so you can do it when your asleep too (if you
can sleep etc etc).

(Sloppy and embarrassing grammatical error included above to keep the
reader on their toes / provide extra proof if it were need that I'm an
imbecile (delete as you think applicable)).


It's not that long ago there was an open access operator trying to
get on the route. *Presumably they thought there was a rail market to
tap, *but the ORR turned them down...

There may well be a small rail market, but it's going to be mainly
leisure travellers. *Someone in the oil business is not going to waste a
whole day travelling by train when they can do the same journey in not
much over an hour by plane. Ineed, day returns to Aberdeen are perfectly
feasible by air, with plenty of time for a meeting or two (I did it
often enough).

I wouldn't seek to disagree with that, but I couldn't leave the notion
that the railway was somehow a completely hopeless way of making the
journey unchallenged! And I'm sure I read somewhere that the sleeper
gets some degree of patronage from the oilmen - and using it would not
result in a day spent travelling, but a night instead (departures from
either end are between 9 and 10pm, whilst arrivals are before 8am.)