Pet hate idioms used by railway enthusiasts

[Reorte]

For the benefit of the ignorant like myself, what do "Box" and "Nby" mean on that? The times suggest something between the individual workings.

 

edit: Just seen this has gone on to the top of the next page, I'm referring to the post immediately previous to this one.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Reorte

[Oldddudders]

6 minutes ago, Reorte said:

For the benefit of the ignorant like myself, what do "Box" and "Nby" mean on that? The times suggest something between the individual workings.

 

edit: Just seen this has gone on to the top of the next page, I'm referring to the post immediately previous to this one.

I don't know either, but that post does highlight a desire in many hobbies to talk 'the lingo', even when it's wrong!

[St Enodoc]

31 minutes ago, Reorte said:

For the benefit of the ignorant like myself, what do "Box" and "Nby" mean on that? The times suggest something between the individual workings.

 

edit: Just seen this has gone on to the top of the next page, I'm referring to the post immediately previous to this one.

Nby = via Newbury; Box = via Box (strangely enough).

[The Stationmaster]

28 minutes ago, Reorte said:

For the benefit of the ignorant like myself, what do "Box" and "Nby" mean on that? The times suggest something between the individual workings.

 

edit: Just seen this has gone on to the top of the next page, I'm referring to the post immediately previous to this one.

Nby means Newbury (long used  (G)WR abbreviation for that place) and Box means exactly what it says - Box.  They are place names which indicate route the set is booked to take on that particular leg of the diagram which is useful when assessing mileages for various purposes such as fuelling and is also handy for Driver diagramming.  Very handy when you consider how many potential routes area available for those trains.

[Oldddudders]

An interesting explanation, and one I might have considered had I thought about it. To a Southern man, the idea that both routes from Exeter to Padlington would be 'A' is simply unfamiliar. Just as Southern head signals - discs on the front of a loco - were route-identifiers, rather than indication of class, so train numbers do the same thing, albeit with the added leading numeral to indicate class, as elsewhere. 

[St Enodoc]

3 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

An interesting explanation, and one I might have considered had I thought about it. To a Southern man, the idea that both routes from Exeter to Padlington would be 'A' is simply unfamiliar. Just as Southern head signals - discs on the front of a loco - were route-identifiers, rather than indication of class, so train numbers do the same thing, albeit with the added leading numeral to indicate class, as elsewhere. 

The second character of the four-character code signified the district(s) in which the destination was located.

 

In this example A = London and C = Exeter and Plymouth.

[Oldddudders]

16 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

The second character of the four-character code signified the district(s) in which the destination was located.

 

In this example A = London and C = Exeter and Plymouth.

So rather like the ticket office Routing Guide 'any reasonable' route will still have the same letter. Must need some extra thinking time for junction setting, be it human or machine. Or do the last two digits tell it something? For example, 2E17 might be all stations down the Greenwich line, but 2E85 was fast from Cannon St to Woolwich Arsenal.

 

Intriguingly different uses by Regions, as they were. 

[Artless Bodger]

On 20/06/2021 at 12:00, Pacific231G said:

Interesting. These would presumably have been used only by short wheelbase shunters.

Yes, the drawing relates to internal tracks in East Mill, maybe only the contractors lines shown in some of the photos I posted in another thread. When I worked on the site in the late 70s the only rail traffic in East Mill, and earlier, was 4 wheeled, wagons and Ruston Hornsby diesel shunters, earlier 0-4-0 STs were used. When the chlorine deliveries switched to bogie tank wagons the internal tracks from the reception siding to the chlorine spur were relaid, though I'm not sure all the pointwork diverging immediately off the reception siding was changed.

[The Stationmaster]

Just now, Oldddudders said:

So rather like the ticket office Routing Guide 'any reasonable' route will still have the same letter. Must need some extra thinking time for junction setting, be it human or machine. Or do the last two digits tell it something? For example, 2E17 might be all stations down the Greenwich line, but 2E85 was fast from Cannon St to Woolwich Arsenal.

 

Intriguingly different uses by Regions, as they were. 

The original 4 character system (which was not adopted by the SR in some respects as it, sensibly, stuck with its route number system for passenger trains worked lu ike this -

Leading, numerical, digit (also a headlamp code if only 3 digits could be shown) = class of train

Second, alpha, digit, worked in different ways indicating either destination area, or destination Region (e.g V for WR, O for SR), or a special of some sort (either X or Z - which originally had different meanings, the WR also used Z for light engines going to depot), or a particular type of train (this was an unusual one but the WR in early days used 'T' for trip freights).

The final two numerical digits had different meanings depending on the class of train - the WR system used numbers below I think 50 as individual train numbers for Class 1 trains,.  Numbers above  50 were used as route numbers for Class 2 trains.  Any numbers from 02-99 were used freight trains other than Class 9, and all specials (1X00 and 1X01  were specially allocated. for a train in  its own livery).   Class 9 trains used any number and were also identified by the use of T which created more numbers as the same number would be use in different areas because the freight trip ran internally to that area.    That was the WR system, other Regions were basically the same but used the letters differently and in some cases made a. different use of the number series for passenger trains. 

 

BTW Ian ('Oldddudders') there are three basic routes in everyday use between Paddington and Exeter - via Newbury, or via Melksham, or via Box/Bristol.  There is also the route via Badmnton - which I don't thank has any booked West of England trains (but I might be wrong) plus the two diversionary routes (Bradford-On-Avon or Yeovil).   There are two basic routes from Paddington to Bristol - via Box, or via Badminton plus two diversionary routes (via Bradford-On-Avon and Melksham, or via Bradford-I=On-Avon and Newbury).

[lanchester]

On 16/06/2021 at 16:52, Pacific231G said:

One of the words that seems to annoy people as being a modeller's idiom is frog, with the "correct" term given as common crossing. I've always understood the word frog (named for its resemblance to that part of a horse's hoof) to have been an Americanism However, I've just been reading a fascinating War Office book from 1940 titled "Notes on Miitary Railway Engineering, part II Engineering".

Everything in it, including PW, signalling, interlocking, and the use of FPLs and traps, seems to follow normal British practice, albeit adapted or rationalised where necessary for use "on active service". Rationalisations included using FB rather than BH rail, ballasting with whatever material was locally available and generally simplifyng and reducing the range of components required to be stocked and therefore transported. Turnouts were standardised on no.6, used only for congested areas like docks with small shunting locos, no 8, for general yard and station work, and no 12 but only in places where high speeds were expected. Turnouts also used straight swirches and frogs that could be either left or right hand. 

The book does though go into the theory of simple turnouts of all sorts since, as well as those they built themselves, military railway engineers were very likely to have to modify or add to existing civilian railways. The interesting thing is that the section on turnout theory starts with this sentence. 

"A turnout consists of a pair of switches connected to a frog or crossing by straight and curved rails." After that, though "frog or crossing" occasionally appears, the word frog  is used almost universally. 

 

I'm curious about this. My 1990 OED (which by the way doesn't include turnout in its railway context but only points) does include have a definiton of frog as "a grooved piece of iron at a place in a railway where tracks cross (19th C.: orig. unkn)" so it seems that the word must have been in English usage for quite some time. If so, when was it dropped (in Britain not the US) in favour of crossing and was it still widely used in places like India and other parts of the British Empire where British military railway engineers were likely to have been active? 

'A grooved piece of iron..' If you look at the old wooden waggonways, like the bits discovered at Lambton a few years ago, there are shallow grooves in the timbers, rather than proper flangeways, and I'm guessing the chaldron or whatever might have needed a bit of a heave to get the wheels over. So I wonder whether they might have called that a 'frog', because that is where you 'hopped' over to the other track? No evidence for that, of course, but I think it''s a nice idea! 

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, lanchester said:

'A grooved piece of iron..' If you look at the old wooden waggonways, like the bits discovered at Lambton a few years ago, there are shallow grooves in the timbers, rather than proper flangeways, and I'm guessing the chaldron or whatever might have needed a bit of a heave to get the wheels over. So I wonder whether they might have called that a 'frog', because that is where you 'hopped' over to the other track? No evidence for that, of course, but I think it''s a nice idea! 

I've asked the Early Railway Group if they have any contemporary accounts of early railways and plateways that may shed  light on this. I think it's well established that frog came from that part of the horse's hoof: the real question is whether the term appeared before "crossing" and whether it did so in Britain or America. Early railways were of course almost entirely horse powered so parts of the horse would have been as familiar as track components.  

[Compound2632]

As an aside, the idea of a grooveway rather than a railway stuck in educated non-technical circles for quite a while, as witnessed by a famous line of Tennyson, discussed here.

Edited June 22, 2021 by Compound2632
Grooveway not Goveway!

[Steamport Southport]

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

As an aside, the idea of a gooveway rather than a railway stuck in educated non-technical circles for quite a while, as witnessed by a famous line of Tennyson, discussed here.

 

Is that a Michael Goove- way?

 

[big jim]

Sorry if it’s been mentioned before but when it comes to railway modelling the phrase “a certain Merseyside box shifter” when discussing Hattons really annoys me, like uttering it’s name will summon the apocalypse!

 

 

[Compound2632]

10 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Is that a Michael Goove- way?

 

 

Grooveway! (Now corrected in post.)

 

I can imagine a Goveway though. Something like a cross between a slipway and ski-jump. 

[Paul.Uni]

9 hours ago, big jim said:

Sorry if it’s been mentioned before but when it comes to railway modelling the phrase “a certain Merseyside box shifter” when discussing Hattons really annoys me, like uttering it’s name will summon the apocalypse!

 

 

Worse is when they say 'a model shop in Widnes' when they mean Hattons. There are two model shops in Widnes and because the post is so vague someone has to ask if they are referring to Hattons or Widnes Model Centre.

[Compound2632]

If “a certain Merseyside box shifter” is used for the avoidance of prosecution for libel, I doubt it would stand up in court since it would be deemed that the average intelligent reader would know who was intended. As to "a model shop in Widnes", well, that's exposing the writer to prosecution for defamation by the Widnes Model Centre as well as Hattons.

[Oldddudders]

"Box shifter" itself is rather insulting. These people - there are several - have a business model that works by selling in volume, at prices necessarily attractive to many. Setup-costs and overheads are commensurately large, too, so some risk is there. There is no shame in success, I hope. 

[frobisher]

16 hours ago, big jim said:

Sorry if it’s been mentioned before but when it comes to railway modelling the phrase “a certain Merseyside box shifter” when discussing Hattons really annoys me, like uttering it’s name will summon the apocalypse!

 

It's fairly symptomatic of a lot of peeps hereabouts who insist on calling a spade an horticultural earth displacement tool at every opportunity.

[Pacific231G]

22 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

As an aside, the idea of a grooveway rather than a railway stuck in educated non-technical circles for quite a while, as witnessed by a famous line of Tennyson, discussed here.

I always wondered about Tennyson's "ringing grooves of change". but would the eighteenth/early nineteenth century literati have ever gone anywhere near a wagon or plateway and did the tracks of those look any more groovy than an edge rail ? 

It's often been said that artists of the time didn't really understand what they were looking at with railways and, as Tennyson himself said "When I went by the first train from Liverpool to Manchester (1830), I thought that the wheels ran in a groove. It was a black night and there was such a vast crowd round the train at the station that we could not see the wheels. Then I made this line." However, the representation of railways in paintings often looked as if their wheels were running in grooves rather than on rails .

Claude Monet though knew exactly what he was painting, he was definitely a railway enthusisast but he painted what he actually saw as in his 1872 painting "The Railway Station at Argentueil". With early railways it was quite common to fill in the ground between the rails, particularly in stations, with sand or gravel, presumably  to enable railwaymen to work there more easily. Making up trains by shoving individal carriages around on turntables etc. was far more hands on so they'd have been "on the ground" far more.  To the untutored eye that would certainly have made it look as if the railway wheels were running in grooves but Monet's railways in particular, though impressionistic, are far more accurate  than critics often think.

 

It's often been assumed by art historians that, in Monet's first image of a railway "The Train in the Countryside" (1871) he got the carriages completely wrong. 

In fact these were the four wheel double deck carriages (absolute death traps for passengers on the upper decks) used a lot around Paris particularly by the CdF de l'Ouest. They're very simplified, he hasn't represented the ladders at the ends of each coach but, apart from being a bit forshortened, the overall impression looks about right.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 22, 2021 by Pacific231G

[Pacific231G]

7 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Grooveway! (Now corrected in post.)

 

I can imagine a Goveway though. Something like a cross between a slipway and ski-jump. 

Definitely a track that lies on the ground!

[Compound2632]

7 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

Definitely a track that lies on the ground!

 

Your idea represents the person in question; mine was more what I'd like to see happen to him...

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, Pacific231G said:

...... With early railways it was quite common to fill in the ground between the rails, particularly in stations, with sand or gravel, presumably  to enable railwaymen to work there more easily. .....

Railwaymen and railway horses.

[AndyID]

23 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

As an aside, the idea of a grooveway rather than a railway stuck in educated non-technical circles for quite a while, as witnessed by a famous line of Tennyson, discussed here.

 

It's not well known that this was also the inspiration for a popular 60's number.

 

"We got a grooveway kind of love"

[SamThomas]

7 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

"Box shifter" itself is rather insulting.

I beg to disagree as I find nicknames such as these quite lighthearted.

 

Rather like ;

 

Accountants - Bean Counters

Doctors - Bones

Carpenter - Chippy

Electrician - Sparks

Scientist - Boffin

Road Mamnager - Roadie

 

& so on.