Trog

There was a short platform right next to the power box at Euston known as the restaurant car dock. But I don't know how it was used. If restaurant cars were shunted in there for resupply, or kept there until needed in a train formation. Or if perhaps supplies were brought in and distributed from there to the restaurant cars as they sat in the passenger platforms.

Back in the early days of Railtrack I worked for a contractor and Railtrack HQ in their wisdom moved us off our traditional patch and gave us a contract elsewhere, it was evident that the local Railtrack engineers did not want us there. Partly because we had displaced their mates and partly because we put in loads of variation requests as their specifications for the work were dreadful. They eventually got so fed up with us that they decreed that we should just do what the specification said and that they would not be issuing any more variations so don't bother asking. A couple of weeks later I am given a specification asking for new concrete CWR plain line to be installed from A miles XX yrds to A miles XXXX yrds. Fair enough you might think except for the fact that this mileage included a double junction. A variation having been refused it was so tempting to just gas axe the lead and diamond and lay in the requested plain line. But I thought Trog someone has to be the adult here, and I also thought that regardless of the stupid orders it would probably still be me that got fired when the s**t hit the fan on the following Monday morning. So I did the sensible thing and curtailed the relaying job at the crossing joint of the lead. As the S&C was bullhead I also finished the relaying with a 30' - 0" length of new bullhead on hardwood sleepers. As you must not change the sleeper material within two sleepers of a joint, and the crossing joint was also an IBJ. Taking the flatbottom right up to the crossing joint and just managing the sleeper transition with a couple of flatbottom pan11 baseplated hardwoods would have been slightly nearer the letter of the specification. If that mattered much compared with me cutting 150 odd yards off the length of the job. But would have gifted the local maintainer with two pairs of worn bullhead to new flat bottom lift and junction insulated plates. A potential nightmare for the maintainer as finding a pair of them when they inevitably decide to break on a snowy February night would not be fun. Sure enough a couple of weeks later one of the Railtrack Engineers was complaining about the unauthorised changes to the specification and also wanting to know why I had done some of the relaying in timber sleepered bullhead, when my betters had specified flatbottom concrete.

I had specified a track relaying job through a platform with catch pits and stated that short ended concrete sleepers were to be used to fit the track round them. As I thought the practice of using timber sleepers that cost more, lasted half as long and were an un-necessary discontinuity in the track was a bad idea. {3" and 6" short ended concrete sleepers having been a standard catalogue item in BR* days.} *(Before Railtrack) The contractors came back stating that short ended sleepers were no longer available, so I double checked with the manufacturers engineer that it was still OK with the newer designs of sleeper, and told the contractor to get a diamond cutting saw and chop three or four inches off some normal ones then. The reply was that I would not be able to find anyone from Railtrack willing to sign that off so they would have to use timber. The look on their faces when I asked for a pen and paper and wrote them an instruction to do it on the spot.

Ordered a little something from Hattons that was sent to me via Amazon. 15th of Dec email reported shipped. 17th of Dec email reported to be out for delivery. 17th of Dec tracking button on delivery email reported parcel had been delivered on 16th Dec. Just as a matter of interest should you spot an Amazon delivery van, could you please report back as to if it is a DeLorean or one of the old fashioned Police Box conversions. However back in the present there is still no sign of the parcel and no delivery man was seen on my security cameras, also none of my neighbours have seen it. One thing my cameras did pick up a couple of weeks ago was an Amazon delivery driver dropping a parcel for a nearby house on my wheelie bin and literally running away. I can only assume that his guide dog had forgotten his reading glasses as the proper delivery address house is right on the road, painted bright orange and has a six foot long name board on its front wall facing the road and set back from the road by just three feet. With that sort of cowboy service,it is no wonder parcels are going missing. E-mail from Hattons today 23-12-22 they are going to refund my money, but I won't be getting the coach I ordered. Can only assume that one of the Amazon delivery bloke or his friends children will be getting it for Christmas instead.

I notice that there are a couple more types of coach available today than there were yesterday. So might be worth another look.

In the days before elf and safety I worked on my own at night in both those places. Tring Cutting on a reasonably still night is quite a strange place. All the sounds of the countryside seem to just go straight over the top and it is so quiet in the bottom of the cutting that your ears ring, and all you can hear is the occasional sound of water running in a catch pit that West Coast Route Muddle missed filling with ballast.

I knew of some of those which is why I specified railway engineers (and even then I was thinking more of the Civil Engineers department) rather than railways generally. Probably best not to be blamed for causing demarcation disputes in heaven,

I have long thought that Saint Emeric of Hungary should be the patron saint of railway engineers. As he was St Stephen's son.

Could it have been an engine used for local trip workings, misheard.

The colour will be due to Network Rail using Wear Resisting A rail as standard these days instead of the Normal Grade rail that was used previously. Wear Resisting A contains a little more manganese and this makes it rust to a more red brown colour than Normal grade rail which tended to a more grey brown colour. The pads and nylons used suggest that these particular rails are of the 113A section. With G44 and EG47 sleepers the most useful diagnostic is the corners of the pads as this difference can be seen even when the nylons colours are obscured by rust and dirt. On these sleepers a square cornered pad tells those who know their P-Way that the rail is 113A, while a pad with the corner trimmed off at 45' says CEN60.

Interesting as back in the day some of our staff used to sit on the con rail to eat their sandwiches, as it was at a more comfortable sitting height than the running rails. Truly the past is a foreign country they do things differently there. It was also easy on safety courses to spot which trainers had worked in 3rd rail areas. Those who had not were wildly over dramatic about the dangers of having an electric rail under foot. As if it was a 25Kv overhead wire that had decided to descend from on high. Those who had DC experience were more just mind the juice lads.

The green FC1504 fastclip (Purple if sheridised) used on G44 and EG47 concrete sleepers and the more recent designs of steel sleeper. For timber sleepers with NRS1, NRS2 or Combi baseplates fitted, the blue E2007 Pandrol e clip is used.

I thought that current practice was to have a third rail sited on the sleeper ends usually on the 6' side and 3" above the plane of the running rails?

L1 chairs are for use with ordinary 95lb RBS bullhead rail, they are often used at the heel end of switches as the rails are still often too close together to allow the use of two S1 / AS1 chairs. The even smaller M1 chairs are most often seen used in the middle area of slips where the rails are really packed together. While L1 and M1 chairs can be used on long timbers it is better to avoid particularly the M1 type as their smaller foot print increases the load per unit area on the surface of the long timber. There is however a special chair similar to an M1 designed for smaller cross section long timbers, where the chair screws are angled inwards to reduce the chance of them bursting the side out of the timber.

Square type SHC clips.