Nicknames of the railway companies.

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, john new said:

GWR - Gresley was right.

That's just a modern anachronism, never a nickname

[Barry O]

Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway... Dirty, Noisy and slow......

 

 

Baz

[kevinlms]

GWR = Greasy, Wet & Rusty. 

 

or more politely 

 

Great Way Round

[97406]

“East Midland Strains”, to bring things up to date.

Edited August 20, 2021 by 97406

[iands]

... or a fairly recently extinct TOC - WAGN - We're All Going Nowhere (actually said to me by a WAGN staff member whilst visiting KX 'box). 

[nightstar.train]

Another modern one - worst late western.

[APOLLO]

The Lancashire & Yorkshire railway was nicknamed "The Business Line"

 

The Clog & Knocker nickname was given to more than one line as I recall reading, Beighton Jcn to Langwith Jcn (GC) and Stafford to Uttoxeter (GN)

 

Stations had nicknames too, Finsbury Park was known as Pneumonia Junction.

 

Now this is interesting for Railroads over the pond (some humdingers !!)

 

i.e.  Eat Taters & Wear No Clothes  ---  East Tennessee & Western North Carolina

 

https://www.rlhs.org/Reference/sort_nick.shtml

 

Brit15

Edited August 20, 2021 by APOLLO
typo

[62613]

LNWR - Long and Winding Road

GWR - Gooch's Weird Relics

Edited August 20, 2021 by 62613

[Rugd1022]

13 hours ago, Andy Kirkham said:

Stratford-on-Avon & Midland Junction - Slow, Mouldy and Jolting

 

and of course its supporters would assert that the Somerset & Dorset was Swift & Delightful

 

The Southampton & Dorchester was known as Castleman's Corkscrew after its promoter and its circuitous route.

 

 

 

The S&MJR was also known as 'the old smudge' but some who worked on it.

 

'Grub, water and relief' was another variant on the finest railway of them all .

 

At Rugby the WCML was sometimes referred to as 'the premier line', definitely a local thing amongst train crew and some signalmen but I heard it quite a lot when I first started on BR in '82. My great uncle Harry who wrote a book about his time at Rugby (and all of the lines radiating from it) from 1922 onwards also used this nickname.

 

Back in 1983 when I was at Old Oak my grandad was in Charing Cross hospital having just had his fifth heart attack, when I visited him there his first words to me were ''how's Brunel's billiard table doing these days...?''.

 

 

[Rugd1022]

13 hours ago, Andy Kirkham said:

 

 

 

Duplicate post deleted.

 

Edited August 20, 2021 by Rugd1022

[kevinlms]

14 minutes ago, Rugd1022 said:

 

The S&MJR was also known as 'the old smudge' but some who worked on it.

 

'Grub, water and relief' was another variant on the finest railway of them all .

 

At Rugby the WCML was sometimes referred to as 'the premier line', definitely a local thing amongst train crew and some signalmen but I heard it quite a lot when I first started on BR in '82. My great uncle Harry who wrote a book about his time at Rugby (and all of the lines radiating from it) from 1922 onwards also used this nickname.

 

Back in 1983 when I was at Old Oak my grandad was in Charing Cross hospital having just had his fifth heart attack, when I visited him there his first words to me were ''how's Brunel's billiard table doing these days...?''.

 

 

The LNWR often referred to itself as 'The Premier Line', in some of it's advertising material.

[Hibelroad]

LMS - Lazy Miserable and Slow

I heard this from people born in the 1920s and 30s who I met when I first started work so it could be genuine. 

[Colin_McLeod]

Dublin & South Eastern Railway:-

Dublin Slow and Easy.

 

 

[Ian Smeeton]

14 hours ago, Andy Kirkham said:

 

When I lived in Glasgow, I noted that Glaswegians loved to assert that the Underground was known as the Clockwork Orange, but seldom actually referred to it as such in ordinary speech..

 

13 hours ago, pH said:

It was the Subway.

 

The then Lord Provost of Glasgow Michael Kelly promoted the newly reopened Subway as the Clockwork Orange, but most Weejies I came across called it the Subway, while a few preferred the 'Electric Worm'

 

Regards

 

Ian

[Nearholmer]

I’ve heard the pre-orange version called ‘the shuggle’, after its motion.

Edited August 20, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Denbridge]

Weston Cleveland and Portishead railway.  The WC & PEE

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, kevinlms said:

The LNWR often referred to itself as 'The Premier Line', in some of it's advertising material.

Yes.  it had previously regerred to itself as 'The oldest company in the business' which while actually not correct in any way no doubt made an impression.  This [presumably morphed into 'Premier Line' when people mentioned that the Stoch kton & darlington was older than the Liverpool & Manchester.  

 

The LMS definitely didn't try it after 1923 which was just as well because they were still wrong - the oldest railway company mentioned in the nationalisation legislation was actually the GWR.   

[APOLLO]

GWR - Gas Works Railway

 

So named by an GC line driver at Woodford Halse !!

 

Brit15

[mervyn]

One of my favourite Lines the Clebury Mortimer and Ditton Priors ..known as the ' Gadget !'

[The Johnster]

'The Premier Line' is rooted in idea that one of it's constituent companies was the Liverpool & Manchester (opened 1830), the first railway offering timetable and common carrier freight services at set rates by the authority of it's Act of Parliament.  The Stockton and Darlington was more of a rail road, in the sensed of being of open access to anyone who wanted to run vehicles on it, something catered for on later railways by private owner wagons in addition to what we think of as 'proper' railway services.  The L&M introduced much that we take for granted; locomotive haulage exclusively with no horses except for shunting in yards, up and down lines, standard minimum dimensions for loading gauge, the '6 foot', the cess, platform width, and for ramps at the ends of platforms. 

 

The GW may have had similar concepts of it's own position in the scheme of things to the LNW, but was from it's outset very much based on operating methods and dimensions (excluding the gauge of course) that had been pioneered by Stephenson on the L&M, as did all main line railways that followed the L&M chronologically, and it is worth mentioning that Brunel's right hand man and the person who had most influence on the GW once the trackbed had been built was Daniel Gooch, head hunted from Stephenson's after he came down to supervise the erection of 'North Star'.  The 'Great Way Round' came about after the connection to the South Wales (1850, and from the outset worked by the GW) to the Gloucester branch and the absorbtion of the Bristol and Exeter and rebuilding of Temple Meads to provide through platforms for Paddington-Exeter services.  The ultimate result was the Badminton cut off providing a direct route from Swindon to Stoke Gifford for South Wales trains, and the Westbury, and Castle Cary cut offs to provide a direct route from Reading to Taunton.

 

The S&D had no signalling, timetables, or regulation of traffic by class of train, not at the beginning anyway, and was worked in the same way as a turnpike road, only on rails.  It was a sort of half way house between the previous tramroads and colliery railways and a 'proper' main line railway, which it is reasonable to regard the L&M as being.  'Brunel's billiard table' was not well known outside the railway community, but I heard it used on the railway in the 70s; it only referred to the Paddington-Swindon section.

 

It depends to an extent on what you define as a 'proper' railway.  The NER, one of whose constituents was the S&D, never AFAIK challenged the LNWR on the matter, though if you regard the S&D as a 'proper' railway they would presumably have had a case for doing so.  'Premier Line' says as much about the regard in which the LNW held itself as it does about it's genetics.

 

The first public passenger carrying railway was the 1804 Swansea & Mumbles, which the LNWR ran alongside for some distance; this could also have had a case for describing itself as the 'premier line'.

 

Somebody (Nock?) once said that the Brecon & Merthyr would make a good toboggan run...

 

Edited August 20, 2021 by The Johnster

[Caley739]

Even as late as the 1960s you could hear Carlisle railwaymen refer to "The Lanky", and they meant the Lancaster & Carlisle and not as you might think The Lancashire & Yorkshire.

 

The Caledonian Railway in its publicity material called itself "The True Line" also the present day name of The Caledonian Railway Association magazine.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Caley739

[Jeremy Cumberland]

My favourite (although I have no idea whether it was ever actually used) is the Manchester South Junction and Altrincham Railway (MSJ&AR):

• Many Short Journeys and Always Reliable

[pH]

Two from the US:

 

New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway - the “Susie-Q”.

Missouri Kansas Texas (MKT) Railroad - “Miss Katy” or just “The Katy”.

[Nearholmer]

Eastern Tennessee and North Carolina - Tweetsie.

 

The US ones ring true to me, because they turn a load of verbiage into something easy to say.

[Welly]

9 hours ago, Barry O said:

Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway... Dirty, Noisy and slow......

 

 

Baz

My personal nickname for that line is the "Diddleycot, Noodlebury and Soothampton Railway"