Operation London Bridge

[spikey]

No, not the plan for when Betty Windsor turns her toes up, but rather a wonderful 1975 British Transport film I've just discovered, very much of its time, about the works being carried out at London Bridge Station.  If it's new to you too, just ignore the singing schoolkids and check out the sideburns, the work clothes of the PW gangs, and the apparent fact that to get on in BR management, a chap needed to smoke a pipe.

 

Edited February 19, 2020 by spikey
the inevitable typo

[Oldddudders]

The first pipe, at 5.15, is Mickey Phelps, the Project Manager, closely followed by that of Percy Burt, Area Ops Manager in effect, but I'm not sure we had such titles on Southern then. Other luminaries include Trevor Bawden, then Operating Officer, South Eastern; Doug Brown, Special Duties Officer South Eastern; Roy Bell, Project Signal Engineer; David Brown, Signal Engineer. I think I can half-see Ian Bailey, then with the Divisional Civil Engineers, South Eastern, I think. 

 

I didn't get involved until a few days before the big commissioning at Easter, 1976, when I was asked to take a role as one of several temporary supernumerary Traffic Regulators, a job that lasted about 4 months, I think. 

[spikey]

59 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

... I was asked to take a role as one of several temporary supernumerary Traffic Regulators ...

 

That's quite a job title.  But then just think - if you were in the pay of the Bundesbahn, you'd have been one of the stellvertretende vorübergehende überzählige Verkehrsaufsichtsbehörden ....

 

 

 

[KDG]

2 hours ago, spikey said:

 

That's quite a job title.  But then just think - if you were in the pay of the Bundesbahn, you'd have been one of the stellvertretende vorübergehende überzählige Verkehrsaufsichtsbehörden ....

 

 

 

That's easy for you to say....

[The Stationmaster]

23 hours ago, spikey said:

 

That's quite a job title.  But then just think - if you were in the pay of the Bundesbahn, you'd have been one of the stellvertretende vorübergehende überzählige Verkehrsaufsichtsbehörden ....

 

 

 

Always good fun these literal translations,  I used to have to regularly translate my job title into French for folk at various meetings (Chef de Planiification d'Exploitation) which wasn't all at all difficult.  Translating it into German was far worse, in fact so much worse that I've forgotten what it was, but it included a considerable number of letters and I had to use 'leiter' instead of 'führer' for sensitivity reasons  

[rodent279]

7 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Always good fun these literal translations,  I used to have to regularly translate my job title into French for folk at various meetings (Chef de Planiification d'Exploitation) which wasn't all at all difficult.  Translating it into German was far worse, in fact so much worse that I've forgotten what it was, but it included a considerable number of letters and I had to use 'leiter' instead of 'führer' for sensitivity reasons  

Isn't Lokführer a common term? Leiter means conductor or leader, and Führer means pretty much the same, possibly with more emphasis on overall direction and strategy.

[DavidB-AU]

Lokführer and Triebfahrzeugführer are still the job common titles. A recent term is the more generic Eisenbahnfahrzeugführer (railway vehicle driver). Those are the masculine forms and there are equivalent feminine terms Lokführerin u.s.w. The legal term in Switzerland is Triebfahrzeugführende which is gender neutral. Zugführer is the title for a conductor in Switzerland and Austria, although DBAG now uses Zugchef. 

 

The word Manager has crept into everyday German. For a management role described above, der Manager (or die Managerin) would have been acceptable. Geschäftsführer is the common equivalent of executive director.

 

My favourite German railway job title is Eisenbahnknotenpunkthinundherschieber.

 

Cheers

David