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Andy Kirkham

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Everything posted by Andy Kirkham

  1. Does anyone know how Portstewart Tram Loco No.1 ended up in Hull, of all places? Likewise the Ryde pier tramway "grapes" car?
  2. I began my spotting career in Bristol and there was an alien world only a few miles away. Severn Tunnel Junction was a frontier point beyond which reigned the hordes of Class 37s, almost never seen in Bristol. Just a couple of miles further came the sight of Llanwern steelworks, resembling a portal into Hades. Then came Newport where you could stand on the platforms and watch the unending succession of coal and ore trains passing through. Further on was the lure of Woodham's at Barry, and the mysterious labyrinth of the Valleys where, it was rumoured, steam locos were still to be seen at work.
  3. MIldmay is a bit awkward to say and people won't know if it's pronounced milled or mylde.
  4. Not from Flickr, but rather the Sankey Photographic Archive. https://www.sankeyphotoarchive.uk/collection/view/?id=900417 A picture of the Ravenglass & Eskdale when it was mixed gauge between Ravenglass and Murthwaite
  5. I think I remember this apricot colour on several stations in the Westcountry, as seen here at Newquay in 1974
  6. I stand corrected. Saturdays seem a good bet. However, as mentioned above, not much of a benefit to those of us who have railcards.
  7. I've tried again without success, so I'm not convinced that GWR are actually participating in the sale.
  8. I've tried finding some discounted tickets from Bristol but so far without success. I started at https://greatbritishrailsale.nationalrail.co.uk/#/great-british-rail-sale I left the "Trains To" field blank and searched. It brought up a list of destinations for which discounted tickets are supposedly available. It is evident that the only journeys available are those that involve a single operator. I scrolled to the destination Barnstaple, which is shown as having a Rail Sale fare of £10 I clicked Show Retailers, and was then invited to Buy Tickets from the default vendor GWR. I clicked Buy Tickets. Since the GWR site wasn't working I tried searching for the same journey on the Chiltern website, which helpfully shows Cheapest Singles for that journey. I iterated through all the dates up to the end of the sale and found NOT ONE offer of a discounted fare, On the other hand I looked on the Chiltern website for a journey from Birmingham via Chiltern and found plenty of Sale tickets. So it seems that GWR is being very mean and hardly offering any Sale tickets, or possibly they've failed to adapt their website in time to accommdate the sale. I did find on the London & North Western site a useful FAQ https://www.londonnorthwesternrailway.co.uk/railsale This confirms the supposition that railcard discounts are not applicable to Sale tickets, which means that the sale is in any case of limited benefit to railcardholderslike myself.
  9. Does anyone know an email address for Customer Support at The Trainline? I want to contact them about an apparent fault on their website. Although their website declares that Custoner Support can be contacted by email, I can find no reference to an address.
  10. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-great-british-rail-sale-returns-discounts-on-over-a-million-rail-tickets Does anyone know how this is going to work, based on experience of the previous such event two years ago? In particular, are the cheap tickets going to be offered on all routes, and how long before they all sell out? Do you have to be ready to book on the stroke of midnight on Jan 23rd in order to have a chance of getting any cheap tickets at all?
  11. I'd say that to qualify as a "real steam" service, regular fares should be charged and ordinary tickets be valid. Where premium fares are charged and passengers travel expressly to experience steam, that is not "real steam".
  12. A very enjoyable show with a great selection of layouts. Thanks to all concerned.
  13. Thanks. But what are those vehicles doing on the SVR?
  14. I was there on Tuesday. Dismal weather, hard to see out of the windows and an ominously full river. Still I enjoyed myself but had a miserable journey home to Bristol: multiple cancellations and finally got to Temple Meads by taxi from Gloucester at 1 am. But something intrigued me. There was a train hauled by the London Transport-liveried Class 20, which apparently ran from Bewdley to Kidderminster while I was up the line. It consisted of bogie wagons laden with concrete slabs. Then there were a number of modern-looking bogie vans branded with "RailAdventure". What was all this about?
  15. I always feel the GWR and BR (W) missed a trick by not opening a halt at the junction for the Wireworks branch. It would have been a lot more convenient for the village than the actual Tintern station.
  16. It's hard to believe that factory is just two-dimensional! I've put the Weston show in my diary, as I'd really like to see this again. I think Bridport succeeds in capturing the true spirit of British narrow gauge by being so mundane and utilitarian; it completely resists the temptation to be self-consciously quaint or quirky.
  17. Last night I was at a slide show at my railway club. One of the slides was of 4079 Pendennis Castle at Swindon in 1964, after it had been prepared for the famous high speed runs of May 9th. The presenter, who had been brought up in Swindon, recalls his father being told by a Works insider that 4079 had the reputation of being the most free-steaming of all the Castles. This made me wonder how this can be true, given that steam locos swapped boilers many times in their careers. If, then, 4079's reputation was founded on fact, what are the characteristics of a loco's mechanical parts that determine its steaming ability?
  18. I've sometimes wondered if this was related to to J W Greaves who owned the Llechwedd slate quarry at Blaenau Ffestiniog
  19. His birthplace still exists but it's disappointingly middle class-looking, and doesn't match the "squalid" environment required by the narrative. I would guess that in 1900 these houses would have been relatively new and quite respectable.
  20. In West Mall, Clifton, Bristol. One also comes across lamposts made by Avonside.
  21. Only indirectly a railway topic; the Kingsweston Iron Bridge lies on the route of a very attractive walk from Shirehampton station to Blaise Castle. It was struck by a lorry eight years ago and is only now being taken away for repair. https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/news/1-1m-works-repair-restore-kingsweston-iron-bridge-begin-soon/
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