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Pet hate idioms used by railway enthusiasts


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2 hours ago, big jim said:


no no no no no!!

 

 

I'll give in, Yellow it is then !!!!!

 

We had a Jim at work (Gas industry). Gas escapes were generaly measured as a % GIA (% gas in air). One day Jim was pontificating on the job at night, no fluorescent jacket and got hit by a car, sent him flying and a week in hospital. From then on any 100% reading was termed !00% Jim in air on the district !!!!

 

Jims bones healed, and a large fluorescent jacket was purchased which was swapped around between standby engineers !!!! (a long time ago). Sackable offence not to wear them on duty when working on the highway these days.

 

Incidentally I got a right bollocking from a British Rail signalling engineer for wearing my green Hi Viz when attending a gas escape near the Warrington power box. I was marched off the track to the box and loaned an orange one !!!

 

Happy days !!!

 

Brit15

 

 

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19 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Just like font and fount

Typecast letters "founts" were made in a foundry.

The US calls them fonts and it has stuck for computer use.

 

A font is for drowning babies in church............:D

 

Alas, you have lost the battle. There are more than two billion Anglophones and most of them are not in England. I suppose you could try to control English like the French try to but it's probably a bit late for that.

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22 hours ago, deepfat said:

I would like to add unrebuilt in the context of a Merchant Navy locomotive and see that term replaced with original or air smoothed 

Andrew 

I guess they would be un-rebuilt, as in not rebuilt. But we are now wandering into the territory of German re-unification. It's a little pedantic I think, but technically, East & West Germany could not have been re-united, as both had not existed independently before 1949/50. Had they both had separet existences, been united, then divided, then it would have been possible to re-unite them.

(In fact, if you really want to get down to the nitty-gritty, I believe the actual mechanism used was the East German state, the GDR, was dissolved, and the eastern Lander were absorbed into the Federal Republic.).

Edited by rodent279
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5 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Points are points. Every signalbox refers to them as such on lever plates and diagrams. How the PW describes them is up to them. 

 

A point (or a set of points) will consist of many individual components working together.

 

It is not necessary for the signaller to know the component parts - but is very relevant to P-way or S&T disciplines!

 

You do not go to Unipart Rail (or even the BR stores division before them) and order 'a point'!

 

The movable rails are called switch rails and come as separate parts (i.e. 'right hand switch, E length, Flat Bottom Vertical' - so if a p-way person is talking about points they are likely to refer to them as switches reflecting the fact they need to be far more descriptive than signallers do.

 

Similarly a S&T person may refer to a set of points as 'the HWs' (as opposed to 'Clamp Locks' - yes its perfectly acceptable to have each end of a crossover use a different operating mechanism)

 

Ultimately though 'Points' and 'Switches' are part of the official UK railway terminology and both terms appear in the relevant standards where necessary. By contrast you will NOT find the use of the word 'Frog' in any said publication....

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On 09/06/2021 at 17:47, br2975 said:

I thoroughly detest the term "disassemble" - obviously invented by someone ignorant.....................ignorant of the correct term, "dismantle".

"No disassemble Number 5. Number 5 is alive!" :D

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Not exactly railway related but a common one in the US is "high rate of speed", frequently used by the constabulary and TV presenters. Speed is already a rate so I suppose a rate of speed is more likely acceleration.

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45 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

Would you call a bus station a road station?

No, but then it is not where the omnibus company bases/stations its roads.

 

I suspect that the term Railway Station comes from the military where for example a Naval Station was where the Navy stationed or based some of its ships. The describing word before station is then not what is based there but who is doing the basing, this is confused when the owning authority shares a name with what it bases. ie Police Force - Policemen. So a Police Station is where the Police force bases its policemen.

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6 minutes ago, SamThomas said:

We can probably blame Triang for that with their Transcontinental Range.

 

Excuse me! It's "Tri-ang" :D

 

Actually a clever bit of marketing. They could represent models of prototypes found anywhere in North America without being country or company specific.

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53 minutes ago, AndyID said:

Would you call a bus station a road station?

 

Obviously not, but why the comparison? We know railway stations as just that, stations served by railways, and bus stations as stations served by buses. Although the buses access them by roads, describing them as "road stations" becomes meaningless. Only trains use railways, vehicles (and others) use roads.

 

In any event, I just said that the expression jarred with me (and, I see, others). Obviously I know what is meant by "train station", but would prefer not to use it.

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2 hours ago, Firecrest said:

Have we had 'declared a failure' in here yet? 

Without going and checking I'm resonably sure that 'declaring' a train to be failed was the Rule Book wording before it went all Plain English and fragmented. There were lots of things a signalman could only do once the driver had declared his train to be a failure. 

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2 minutes ago, Derekl said:

 

Obviously not, but why the comparison? We know railway stations as just that, stations served by railways, and bus stations as stations served by buses. Although the buses access them by roads, describing them as "road stations" becomes meaningless. Only trains use railways, vehicles (and others) use roads.

 

In any event, I just said that the expression jarred with me (and, I see, others). Obviously I know what is meant by "train station", but would prefer not to use it.

 

I was just winding you up :D

 

But "train station" is actually more logical (if not traditional in the UK). You go to a bus station to catch a bus. Do you go to a railway station to catch a railway?

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1 hour ago, APOLLO said:

Incidentally I got a right bollocking from a British Rail signalling engineer for wearing my green Hi Viz when attending a gas escape near the Warrington power box. I was marched off the track to the box and loaned an orange one !!!

 

Happy days !!!

 

Brit15

 

 

 

Back in the 1980's it seemed that only British Rail staff wore orange coloured yellow HV vests, everyone else wore lime green or Saturn yellow, and if you saw someone on the motorway in orange your first thought was that they had been putting a bridge over the railway or some such last weekend. But such was the fame and glory of the wearers of the orange HV gear that everyone else wanted a share of it. So now you have almost everyone pretending that they are Railwaymen rather than their own lesser trades.

Edited by Trog
Removed errant Y.
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14 minutes ago, Trog said:

No, but then it is not where the omnibus company bases/stations its roads.

 

I suspect that the term Railway Station comes from the military where for example a Naval Station was where the Navy stationed or based some of its ships. The describing word before station is then not what is based there but who is doing the basing, this is confused when the owning authority shares a name with what it bases. ie Police Force - Policemen. So a Police Station is where the Police force bases its policemen.

Nurses Station? Where the Nurses are based

Fire Brigade Station?  Where the Fire Brigade is based.

Work Station. Where nothing happens:)

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23 minutes ago, pH said:

A dangerous one is the different meaning of ‘pavement’ in the UK and North America.

The American meaning is probably more correct; much American English usage dates from colonial times and preserves an older form of English speech.  None of which makes it any less dangerous, mind…

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Since railways don't base their operations from the stations in the same way that the police etc do, wouldn't it be more technically correct to say Train/ Railway Stop. Or Terminal (as at Airports).

 

I'm just off down the rail harbour...

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3 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

And nearly 40 years ago I had a top-boss who was a rusticated civil engineer. I'm not sure I knew the nature of Jim's  professional misdemeanour, but he tended to refer to a pair of points as a "CV nine-and-a-quarter" which left many of us out of further conversation!

 

Come to think of it, my immediate boss, Jim's deputy, was also a rusticated civil engineer. He is now a railway author. 


:D Yeah  a bit like when S&T warble on about TJs etc……although once I passed my S&T training I then understood their language. 

 

CV 9 1/4
 

C SWITCH length.     V VERTICAL    with 1 in 9 1/4 Crossing. The pairing of switch lengths and crossing angles used to be referred to as natural selection. e.g. D Switch 1 in 10  3/4 etc.  You might already know this Oldddudders, I just included it in case anyone didn’t 

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3 hours ago, Firecrest said:

Have we had 'declared a failure' in here yet? 

 

Declaring a failure is (or at least was) correct railway language.

If you had problems, if there was a phone handy (much easier with today's cab to shore) you spoke to the signalman - no signal persons then! - and let them know what was happening,  they would ask if you were a failure, but you would usually say give me a few minutes to try to sort it out. If there was no joy you would go back to the signalman and "declare" that it was a failure, that was the words the signalman needed and he then knew that you weren't going to move and could start arranging assistance.

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Yes, waiting for a driver to admit his train is a failure is a tiresome experience. Pride is involved, of course, although less so since the demise of steam. But no-one and nothing moves until he admits defeat. 

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2 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

Excuse me! It's "Tri-ang" :D

 

Actually a clever bit of marketing. They could represent models of prototypes found anywhere in North America without being country or company specific.

Before I joined RMW a couple of members told me that the forum was full of people with nothing better to do than to be pedantic & argue to the nth degree.

 

I'm more than aware that it's "Tri-ang Railways" & just thought I'd see if anyone bit to prove a point.

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