The Stationmaster

Here we come to the essential difference between the way we do things and the way they are done in mainland Europe (although there are some variations between countries. Thus the ERMS displ=ys mentioned by Jim are basically an electronic format, with a few add-ons of what an SNCF Driver (for example) has on the desk in front of him when he is driving. A document called a Livre Ligne which he turns over from page to page as he goes - even on an LGV at =186mph. Highly stanmdardised siting distances for teh equivalent of distant signals atre also common in many mainland European countries. use of the Livre Lighne, with standardised signal distances ilke that allow SNCf to carry out road learning. very quickly, When Lille Drivers had to learn the road to Bourg St Maurice for the Eurostar ski train they were allowed 3 (three) days to learn the road, several hundred miles of it because it's all written down and in front of them as they drive. So naturally when all teh inputs to design of ERTMS were put together it came out having to offer all of that and a bit more - very different from the past British approach.

Exactly so - in order to distinguish it from a handsignal. A fixed signal can of course also, if it is a Distant Signal, be Fixed at Caution (or if it is a stop signal Fixed at Danger). But the term 'fixed signal' very definitely means a signal fixed in one place, And it has had that meaning for a very long time - for example the term was used in my grandfather's 1913 NER Rule Book.

Not exactly although they are sometimes used like that. The whole point of having a fixed red is that it allows a running aspect (single yellow) to read to it. Thus for example you will find them on certain goods loops at Southall where i specifically requested them to be provided to allow a freight c9ming off the Main or Relief Lines not to be slowed right down waiting a subsidary (tw white lights) signal to be approach released. In some ;ocations they have also been used instead of STOP boards on Goods and yard reception Lines for teh same reason as you cannot have a main running aspect reading to a stop board. Those at southall were installed as part of the resignalling for the LHR branch and electrification scheme where I wanted to get freight trains off, or across, the running lines more quickly through what was going to be much denser levels of traffic. Incidentally the idea of a fixed stop signal is not new - there were semaphore examples on the LMR and the WR created one at west Drayton as part of Slough resignalling scheme in 1963..

I had a lot of problems in the mid 197s witha boss imporyted from the ER who took his time (on purpose I'm sure) getting acquainted with WR language no doubt specifically to infuriate various of the locals - me included(! We also used the term 'dummy' for Ground Position Light sgnals GPLSs- which of course served the same purpose as a semaphore ground disc. I gaven't got a clue where and how the name originated but it seems to have gone back a long way in everyday usage on the Western Yje GWR, and WR, used a white light at danger - instead of red - in some dummies and also in Backing Signals and in some cases in Siding Signals. But while the meaning of a. white light dummy corresponded in some respects with a yellow arm dummy they were used in a totally different way and their use was a direct consequence of the lack of conditional locking on GWR pre-tappet locking lever frames. However they were used with tappet frames no doubt in order to reduce the amount of locking and the number of lever movements.

Agree, it is even visible in a photo of Churston station on sale at Steam Museum in Swindin https://www.steampicturelibrary.com/stations-halts/devon-stations-churston-station/churston-station-1960-25485799.html

Don it lasted until Reading reignalling in 1965. The tubular steel post version in my photo was replacement for an earlier signal with a timber post but I can't remember when that had been replaced - probably mid 1950s? The 'barrier, made of channel rodding was a later addition and I can vaguely remember it not being there in the form you see in the photo so it was probably altered/added in the early 1960s.

Mine had a tight spot when testedt at the shop where i bought it - it loosened with a bit of running-in .

The only time I went on mystery excursions was if I knew where they were going (yes - inside information, easy when I worked in an office which arranged them). And equally I'm with you when it comes to buying slow moving or surplus items look to see what's being advertised or search them out.

Simple matter of numbers and timescale I think. firstly there will be a finite market for these, even if they are dressed up in various liveries teh ereal ones are carrying or have cariried. This wil also be influenced by price as no doubt some of the 'maybe' buyers won't fancy the price from either company. The next thing is who has got to where with their model? ECT have shown a variety of 3-D prints which indicates they have some fairy advanced CAD work ready - minor adjustments apart they are at the threshold of starting tooling, the real money step in the game. That, on the face of it, puts them around a year ahead of KR - who have yet to show anything beyond a video including one real engine in the class while their initial announcement seemed to indicate they weren't aware of the existence of any other surviving engines or indeed where & when they had worked in Britain. This in turn implied that their research was not even complete or that they only intended to make a model of one of the preserved examples. So KR are some way behind - probably around a year maybe a little less, maybe a little more. And looking at what is likely to be not only a market limited in size but also one where they will arrive later than the competition. This might also disrupt what appears to be their normal business model where they use advance payments to cover work on development etc. Yhis wont matter too much if they are using a factory which back-end loads payments but they will need the money at some stage before their model can see the light of day and production samples are available. They could of course put in additional effort in the hope of catching up with ECT )or even getting ahead of them but taht will be a mah jor uphill slog. if they can do that they will grab a possibly larger share of the market - but it won't make that market much bigger.

Now ack down a little. but there was a reason for the price rising as that reflected share trading quantities following the issue of some information by RNS (which was nothing to do with revenue etc.

Seems not to have been the case as in 1947, when the BTC took over the LPTB, various LPTB stocks were valued for future payment in the form of BTC stocks. One or two parts of the UndergrounD still existed as separate companies until the 1947 Act - e.g. the GW & Mr et Hammersmith & City Joint Committee.

It makes sense ina number of ways - and not just avoiding compensation on contracts althugh I bet that was a major thought!). Old Oak is going to be next to useless for doing full turnround attention on an y trains unless someone has added lots of additional facilities such as service lifts to the platforms, a catering base, train watering, and quick, but thorough cleaning. with 7 platforms Curzon St would be much better fitted to handle some of that instead of it being done at the London end and provided it has good service access to the platforms. And surely it will look good for levelling up if Birmingham hasa better station than London! OF course one point to remember is that while it might have 7 platforms will they all have track to them?

An excellent point. Modern route knowledge management on the mainline network is very different from the old days but I often wonder if all operators fully subscribe to the principles and (expensive) training and re-training involved. In fact various incidents which have appeared in RAIB Reports suggest to me that some operators could do a lot better when it comes to monitoring and managing route knowledge. And yes I think you are spot on with the matter of more intricate local knowledge rather than bashing on through at line speed etc. This area was always a weakness in the past and any good operating company should recognise that now with a need to provide suitable training/re-training and pay for it (sorry DafT but we are talking about safety). I've had several instances where it has been obvious - maybe only for a station stop - where a Driver has been 'feeling their way' rather than braking from line speed in the usual places where they should be braking if they really know the road in detail. I haven't a clue about what took place in respect of road knowledge in this incident and there's no point in hazarding a guess without much great knowledge of the incident, But I am left wondering how often a, say, Crewe Driver might have carried out locak shunt moves at every place between Crewe and Carlisle or Crewe and London. And the same goes for any other long distance Driver. The ECML is, as a good example, a relatively simple route to drive south of Doncaster because of fairly even signal spacing if you are running a through train. I don't know how good 'landmarks' (for braking points) might be for stations at which through ECML trains don't normally call - that's a very different issue from running through and braking according to signal aspects on evenly spaced signals. (Ken W might care to comment as he knew the route far, far, better than me),

An interesting point about the GCR is that it is permitted to operate movements at speeds up to 60mph. I presume that does not apply to trains carrying fare paying passengers. But if they are operating trains which don't stop ar all stations and which aren't provided with stewards (as the dining trains would be) maybe there is something which needs to sorted out?

No. If he was doing his job properly and there was not a competent qualified person in the other cab he must change ends before moving off in the opposite direction.

That sounds like very odd locking if a signal section is still occupied and points within it can be reset to conflict with the movement that is in that section. One thing where a train si going on its way in a very busy area where pre-releasing can havea. value in traffic movement but- very different when yo re shunting a light engine about If the Driver had not moved to the correct place priotr to reversing it was down to either him or any other person in charge of the movement. And if the Driver took, for whatever reason, a signal which did not apply to the line on which his loco was standing that is SPASD due to misreading (unless things have changed). and clearly someone in authority would seem to have adopted that view because he was taken off (as he indeed should have been). But once again this dangerously sloppy term 'behind the signal' appears. What on earth does it mean? if anyone had had given me that answer in a Rules & Regs exam theywould have been told that it was stupid and that as it was dangerous use of words they wouldn't be doing much until they returned properly prepared for examination. It fou look back in HMRI Reports , usually where someone on the ground had been killed, you will find use of that term very forcibly condemned

There is an element of that but 1st Class loadings on the West of England from what I have seen - including yesterday as it happens, thus loadings are far more varied than that and include business trab vel (as I saw yesterday with three people oposite me obviouasly travelling for business purpose and no doubt in 1st because it guaranteed than m a table at whoch they could sit and review what they had been doing during the day (reserved seats). Morning westbound trains also tend to ;pad well in 1st as do some of the balancing afternoon/early evening Up trains. Business travel still seems common on the Paddington/Reading - South Wales route and I'd be sirprised if that isn't the case between Euston and the West Midlands. Cross Country between Reading & Birmingham, in particular also tends to have quite busy business travel in 1st Class

As far as braking distance is v concerned it depends which braking curve is used to design the signalling. on most of the former Wr 'Mixed Traffic' braking distanc es were used in teh design so both are catred for. However with some of the Liz Line spacing I suspect it is well be low Mixed Traffic braking distances as will be the closing-up signals at Reading/. Hence east ofReading, rather illogically in some places where signal spacing is basically unaltered from 50 years ago, the maxiu mum permitted soeeds for freights has ben reduced (but they can still easily catch the Liz Line trains on some sections!. Whire space on timetable graphs is widely misunderstood with many folk (who often should know better) equating it to 'unused capacity. Of course sometimes it is exactly that but usually it isn't

That is absolutely, frighteningly, laughable - what kind of halfwits were - A. Driving the loco, and B, Controlling the movement ? And misreading used to count as a category A SPAD and it might well (I sincerely hope) still count as one. Interesting one this. SPADs are reportable, in bulk, monthly (so therefore not immediately reportableor within X hours etc unless the SPAD results in something worse). So the interesting question then arises about the status of the incident. Misreading (a signal), which seems to be being claimed as what happened in this incident, used to be considered a serious SPAD. I don't know if that is still the case but I'd be somewhat worried if it isn't. So on the basis of my rathert dated knowledge it would have been reported to RAIB as part of a bulk return. However if RAIB are keeping an eye on wider railway events there is maybe enough discussion on the 'net about this incident to ring their 'WCRC alarm bell' and they will be making discreet enquiries about the incident especially about whose Driver was involved. If RAIB deoes not become involved the incident will be dealt with solely within the railway industry and no report is normally made public

I'm sorry Phil but I'm not with you on this. If the loco hadn't reached the protecting signal how did it manage to run through some points because surely the signal in rear woiuld have been at danger if there were points in advance of it not correctly set? So was it a handpoint in a siding or what exactly was it? If the Driver misread and took another signal as applying to him he must surely have passed the protecting signal for his line in order to run through the points - how could it happen otherwise? To be honest it sounds a bit like e the old Saltley problem - although there it was due to GPLs being on the wrong' side of the line they applied to. This led to Drivers not very familiar with the place, especially Eastleigh men, taking a GPL as theirs when it wasn't and duly SPADing and running through points or hitting something that was making a legitimate move Incidentally the expression 'behind the signal' is one of the most dangerously ambiguous terms I have ever come across and use of it has killed a few people over the years. Unfortunately the current 'kiddiwinks reading age' version of the Rule Book dispensed with the terms 'in advance' and 'in rear' in the cause of 'plain English' (the same people who wanted the Rules to use the term 'faraway signal' instead of distant signal) This incident might however possibly take us back to WCRCs unfortunate past habit of not properly managing Drivers - assuming that it was their Driver. But whoever the Driver belonged to he should have known the road and the layout and driven accordingly and it woud appear from what is being said that he did not do so. That is a serious offence and probably still amounts to a Category A SPAD so the Driver would have to e relieved and taken off the job

The Backing Distants weren't dummies - they were semaphore signals with 2 foot arms.

I'm fairly sure that there were two rates - one for individual consigners and another for a member of some sort of pigeon fanciers or racing pigeon association. The latter I'm fairly sure was a sort of agreed flat rate but still included a mileage element while the former would still have been a pure mileage rate into the early '60s and probably never changed from that. Virtually all the parcels traffic mileage scales had been abolished by 1966/67 and I can't remember any mileage rates being in use when i was working in Slough Parcels in 1967 - everything seemed to be zonal based rates by then (not that we ever had any originating, or even received, pigeon traffic in my time there). Lots of the smaller livestock traffic was shed in the '60s. There used to be a considerable traffic in Day Old chicks which were sent in large cardboard boxes but that Had, or seemed to have, ceased by 1966/7. I know the WR were still accepting coffins (loaded) in 1965 from Paddington but by then I'm pretty sure they were only accepted for transit to Ireland. They were quite expensive as they were sole use of a large bogie van, Customs Declaration Forms, various medical certificates (and a death certificate of course). I would imagine Euston might also have still been accepting them at that time. Most Irish folk arriving in London invariably arrived at either Paddington or Euston hence when they had someone who wanted to go back to be buried in Ireland those were the stations they went to. And of course both stations were one of the first places where those who didn't already have a job to go to applied for one - lots of Irish names on the paybill at Paddington and quite a few still on the railway in that area 20 years later.

I don't now how common it is but some Traction Interlock Systems (TIS) interlocked with door controls and CDL are speed related and not absolute.. For example on a 373 Eurostar set the TIS interlock only applied at relatively low speeds and disengaged once the train was running above that speed range. Thus it was possible to manually force open a door, even though the electric door release control was still inactive, in such a situation. Hence one failed illegal entrant to Britain in course of immediate return from Waterloo to Paris managed to force open a door and jump out - never to be seen again. Which also proved that it had been a waste of BR money adding the necessary fittings to allow such miscreants to be firmly handcuffed to the interior of the train in the compartments provided for Immigration Service use.

Yes and no. If you increase the line speed (assuming it is permissible to increase it above 125mph where there is a level crossing with full barriers) what you actually do is push the green signal aspect (when the barriers are down) further back in rear of the crossing. In other words the crossing has to be closed to road traffic and rail signals cleared for a train earlier than would be the case for a lower speed train. But the critical factor which decides where that signal will be is in fact braking distance from maximum permitted speed of the fastest train (we'll forget heavy freights for a moment) and that distance will be no different for a train following another - it still needs the same stopping distance if the train ahead of it has come to a stand. Mixing in freights can make a difference depending on their load and brake performance - it might need a greater distance to stop 4,000 tons of freight train than less than 1,000 tons of passenger train. But if you push signals further apart to increase available braking distance to cater for faster trains you can, depending on the mix of trains, reduce line capacity because slower trains need shorter braking distances and signals can be closer together allowing more trans to run on green aspects. And that comes back to what the signalling specification requires in terms of lne capacity = headway at a stated speed (for a certain type of train). The big problem on a mixed train type/speed etc railway is how you define a path - not that many people bother to think of that because if the line has capacity for the traffic on offer. you don't need to get scientific. The UIC fiche on line capacity gets very scientific and most UK operators/planners and signal engineers have never heard of it anyway - which is a pity because it's handy source of numbers with which to beat accountants, Civil Servants, and the politicos, round the head when you want to increase total railway capacity; mainland European railways have been doing that for many decades.

The one at Aberdare was worked by a separate lever which was released by either of the two levers which worked a double ground dsc. Logically it would no doubt make a bit more sense as a distant for a Backing Signal but as these discs performed the same job as a Backing Signal it was really more a matter of semantics than anything else. A photo reputedly of 1920s origin (but possibly taken later?) definitely shows the ground disc(s) to which it applied.