Peterborough North

[great northern]

Another day of gloom forecast, and we are down to the last two images in store. All is not lost though, as earlier in the week someone heard that it was brighter a bit further North, and went and got some pictures at Little Bytham, so they are in reserve.

 

Another WD clanks past Crescent Junction box with coal empties.

 

 

 

But at the station, all is confusion. 60070 is a Gateshead engine, but the Heart of Midlothian is a Heaton duty. Some incompetent has sent the wrong engine down from New England. Apparently he'd mislaid his glasses, and saw 52A instead of 52B. Anyway, despite the Gateshead driver's loud complaints, he's been told to take the train anyway, and "sort it out when you get there". The thought of holding everything up while the right engine was located and brought down was considered unthinkable.

 

 

[JeffP]

Just to go back to management, (sorry), the final straw for me that got me to quit teaching was the huge number of folk who could walk into my classroom, unannounced, with a clipboard, and watch me teach.

Then, at the end of the lesson, they'd tell me I wasn't  doing this, that, or the other, right.

But on being asked how it should have been done, their response was always the same: " That's not for me to tell you, that's for you to find out".

And yet I knew that not one of them could have done my job.

And that included the odious OFSTED inspectors, and so-called advisors.

[Mallard60022]

57 minutes ago, JeffP said:

Just to go back to management, (sorry), the final straw for me that got me to quit teaching was the huge number of folk who could walk into my classroom, unannounced, with a clipboard, and watch me teach.

Then, at the end of the lesson, they'd tell me I wasn't  doing this, that, or the other, right.

But on being asked how it should have been done, their response was always the same: " That's not for me to tell you, that's for you to find out".

And yet I knew that not one of them could have done my job.

And that included the odious OFSTED inspectors, and so-called advisors.

Recognise that particular situation in every, single way you describe. The Headteacher and or 'management team' at that particular school of yours should have been receiving retraining mate.

Trains are so much more well behaved and they tend not to tell you what to do.

P

[bigwordsmith]

19 minutes ago, Mallard60022 said:

Recognise that particular situation in every, single way you describe. The Headteacher and or 'management team' at that particular school of yours should have been receiving retraining mate.

Trains are so much more well behaved and they tend not to tell you what to do.

P

having just rediscovered the tales of Thomas the Tank with my granddaughter, I’m not sure that Sir Topham Hat would agree with your last statement Phil,

[Oldddudders]

2 hours ago, JeffP said:

Just to go back to management, (sorry), the final straw for me that got me to quit teaching was the huge number of folk who could walk into my classroom, unannounced, with a clipboard, and watch me teach.

Then, at the end of the lesson, they'd tell me I wasn't  doing this, that, or the other, right.

But on being asked how it should have been done, their response was always the same: " That's not for me to tell you, that's for you to find out".

And yet I knew that not one of them could have done my job.

And that included the odious OFSTED inspectors, and so-called advisors.

OFSTED seems to be having a re-think. Sherry's daughter, a well-regarded (yes, of course we would say that) deputy head for the last decade, has recently had an initial week's course as part of training to be an OFSTED inspector. If she does inspections, it will be in parallel with her regular duties. This seems to be the new slant, which presumably puts teachers in touch with other teachers, rather than those who had side-stepped teaching, and were  thus poachers turned gamekeepers.  

[7APT7]

6 hours ago, JeffP said:

Just to go back to management, (sorry), the final straw for me that got me to quit teaching was the huge number of folk who could walk into my classroom, unannounced, with a clipboard, and watch me teach.

Then, at the end of the lesson, they'd tell me I wasn't  doing this, that, or the other, right.

But on being asked how it should have been done, their response was always the same: " That's not for me to tell you, that's for you to find out".

And yet I knew that not one of them could have done my job.

And that included the odious OFSTED inspectors, and so-called advisors.

 

Hi JeffP

 

I feel your pain, and how ones like you can be a teacher today with kids attitudes and all the rights they have, I don't know You copes personally.

 

Regarding that same attached note... 

The building site is just the same with that word H&S and for the younger generation that Health & Safety, they come on to the building site unannounced and watch you.  Like you say with no one to say who they are, and watch you do your job as a craftsman would do to the best of your ability. H&S would say, " I'm not here to tell you how to do your job, I'm here to see that you have done the job properly "... eh... WHAT...!  The Craftsman as done minimum 3 years at best or more like 5 to 7 years as apprenticeship to learn the skills they need to be a true craftsmanship and H&S stand there like they know how to do a Dove Tail Joint, yet... I bet you if you ask them what joint is that, they wouldn't have a clue and that's why I totally understand you, with all the standards we have today for what.... to create new unwanted jobs out of thin air and these companies make tons of money from it to, its sickening. 

 

It is Health & Safety as and when it suits..., is what the craftsman would say about it all, and I totally agree.

 

Regards

Jamie

 

 

[7APT7]

On 24/01/2020 at 12:03, bigwordsmith said:

 

A couple of months ago one of my Facebook Friends, a former client who is a real friend as well, shared this with me. I think it is very apposite to the discussion!

 

 

 

Brilliant and so true of business today...

 

Where would we be without Dave and without Dave, the job would never get done...

 

Regards

Jamie

 

[great northern]

Tonight I have been celebrating the fact that I am no longer Chairman of the Golf Club. Before so doing though, a short glimmer of daylight allowed me to take a few photos. Only one got processed though, so here is Green Arrow with the 1230 Up Hull/Doncaster.

 

 

[7APT7]

Hi great northern

 

I love the track weathering, it looks absolutely superb, and makes the layout look so realistic. Adding the Sky also helps the realism. Great photo...! 

 

Regards

Jamie 

[Clive Mortimore]

37 minutes ago, great northern said:

Tonight I have been celebrating the fact that I am no longer Chairman of the Golf Club. Before so doing though, a short glimmer of daylight allowed me to take a few photos. Only one got processed though, so here is Green Arrow with the 1230 Up Hull/Doncaster.

 

 

Hi Gilbert

 

Does this mean you will have to find something new to moan about?

[great northern]

10 minutes ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Hi Gilbert

 

Does this mean you will have to find something new to moan about?

I prefer to think that it gives some people less opportunity to moan at me. Having said that, I am sure I shall find a replacement moan quite soon.

[landscapes]

9 hours ago, great northern said:

Tonight I have been celebrating the fact that I am no longer Chairman of the Golf Club. Before so doing though, a short glimmer of daylight allowed me to take a few photos. Only one got processed though, so here is Green Arrow with the 1230 Up Hull/Doncaster.

 

 

Hi Gilbert

 

A very nice composition to the photo of 60800, it’s just a-cured to me all the excellent photos you have published over the years but  I cannot remember seeing a photo of a Britannia class locomotive running on Peterborough North?

 

Regards

 

David

[great northern]

A very quick visit, as we have sunshine for the first time in days, but apparently it will be replaced by heavy rain before noon, so I'll run some trains while I can see.

 

For some reason, Green Arrow was allowed a six minute stop here, so there was plenty of time for a second photo. She will only have come on at Doncaster, so surely no need for an engine change, in which case, why six minutes?

 

 

[JeffP]

Not sure they were used until 1962?

Immingham got half a dozen ex GE  ones for express duties. 

Sorry, this was a reply to the question about Brits. 

Edited January 26, 2020 by JeffP

[31A]

26 minutes ago, great northern said:

 

For some reason, Green Arrow was allowed a six minute stop here, so there was plenty of time for a second photo. She will only have come on at Doncaster, so surely no need for an engine change, in which case, why six minutes?

 

 

Parcels.

[CUTLER2579]

1 hour ago, JeffP said:

Not sure they were used until 1962?

Immingham got half a dozen ex GE  ones for express duties. 

Sorry, this was a reply to the question about Brits. 

 

Jeffp,

more or less spot on,but 3 went to  40B in December 1960 and 4 more followed in October 1961.

70035,70036 & 70037 then 70038,70039,70040 &70041. 

I must confess I thought it was 1958 from memory, but I was wrong. !!! Oh the pain of such an omission 

[CUTLER2579]

1 hour ago, 31A said:

 

Parcels.

 

To meet a connection.

 

The Railway tried to provide a service to passengers in those days. 

 

We were Passengers not Customers and Perhaps profit was not such a criteria.

Coat,Hat,  DOOR

[john new]

On 24/01/2020 at 12:14, stewartingram said:

I find it quite amazing when watching "The Chase", or similar quizzes on TV, that so many contestants are managers (and usually at a youngish inexperienced age, and often scruffy too). Doesn't anyone actually have a job making things any more?

 

Stewart

Some of it though is just name changing. When I started work (1970), the Admin office team had names like Office Junior, then Clerk, typist, cashier etc; above them in roles with some seniority and minor decision making for task allocation etc., were the Senior Clerk or Cashier  (and very often female despite the masculine role name) leading the small group and above that possibly a Supervisor covering several offices and only the Head of Section would be called the Admin Manager. In our Drawing Office teams and those working out in the field similar names like Tracer, Draughtsman, Technician then up through Engineer and so forth.

 

Now even a basic clerical job doing filing seems to be advertised as a Data Resource Manager. Why? I think firstly due to a recruitment problem, in the years with less school leavers after the baby boomers had got jobs, followed by perfectly valid ideas of making names less male orientated and then changes in the workplace roles, the supervisory roles were renamed into Junior Managers and so on. Combined with that many routine office tasks across all spheres disappeared as the first wave of, cheap, desk-top computers killed off a lot of the repetitive redoing of work meaning a smaller number of lower paid specialists were now needed for things like typing and drawing.

 

Then we had the other changes, first someone cottoned onto the idea of Work Study (a new layer of people), some efficiency savings arose, but in the long-term were they enough to compensate for the cost of the staff? Then as stated H&S, and I do think it is needed but is so often overkill, and now the whole raft of costs and centrally based employees that have come about via IT, as the specialists and equipment for that probably costs more nowadays than the low-level staff cleared out in the 1980s and 1990s ever did. 

 

Edited January 26, 2020 by john new
Typos corrected

[St Enodoc]

19 minutes ago, john new said:

Some of it though is just name changing. When I started work (1970), the Admin office team had names like Office Junior, then Clerk, typist, cashier etc; above them in roles with some seniority and minor decision making for task allocation etc., were the Senior Clerk or Cashier  (and very often female despite the masculine role name) leading the small group and above that possibly a Supervisor covering several offices and only the Head of Section would be called the Admin Manager. In our Drawing Office teams and those working out in the field similar names like Tracer, Draughtsman, Technician then up through Engineer and so forth.

 

Now even a basic clerical job doing filing seems to be advertised as a Data Resource Manager. Why? I think firstly due to a recruitment problem, in the years with less school leavers after the baby boomers had got jobs, followed by perfectly valid ideas of making names less male orientated and then changes in the workplace roles, the supervisory roles were renamed into Junior Managers and so on. Combined with that many routine office tasks across all spheres disappeared as the first wave of, cheap, desk-top computers killed off a lot of the repetitive redoing of work meaning a smaller number of lower paid specialists were now needed for things like typing and drawing.

 

Then we had the other changes, first someone cottoned onto the idea of Work Study (a new layer of people), some efficiency savings arose, but in the long-term were they enough to compensate for the cost of the staff? Then as stated H&S, and I do think it is needed but is so often overkill, and now the whole raft of costs and centrally based employees that have come about via IT, as the specialists and equipment for that probably costs more nowadays than the low-level staff cleared out in the 1980s and 1990s ever did. 

 

Many years ago our office secretary went on a course. When she came back, she told us that she was now a "Team Organiser". We asked her what that meant. "About two grades" she replied.

[great northern]

1 hour ago, 31A said:

 

Parcels.

But it is considerably longer than any other train which didn't have an engine change Steve. Presumably some of the others would have had parcels transfers as well?

[great northern]

49 minutes ago, CUTLER2579 said:

 

To meet a connection.

 

The Railway tried to provide a service to passengers in those days. 

 

We were Passengers not Customers and Perhaps profit was not such a criteria.

Coat,Hat,  DOOR

I agree with your sentiments Derek, but there was nothing around that time to connect with.

[great northern]

3 hours ago, landscapes said:

Hi Gilbert

 

A very nice composition to the photo of 60800, it’s just a-cured to me all the excellent photos you have published over the years but  I cannot remember seeing a photo of a Britannia class locomotive running on Peterborough North?

 

Regards

 

David

There was one for some years David, which was supposed to be used on the E.Lincs expresses. However, as later posts point out, the Brits didn't arrive at Immingham till 1960. I know that, and so it bugged me whenever it appeared. Eventually, it just sat and did nothing. I have details of at least three seen at KX in August 58, so I suppose I could have used it that way, but at the time they were going for silly money on E Bay, so off it went. And yes, I did get silly money for it.

[stewartingram]

49 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Many years ago our office secretary went on a course. When she came back, she told us that she was now a "Team Organiser". We asked her what that meant. "About two grades" she replied.

When my wife was still at work, as an assembler in a small electronics factory nearby, they had a visit from a youngish guy. When they asked him what he was doing there, he replied "Vision Technician".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turned out he was the window cleaner.....

 

Stewart

Edited January 26, 2020 by stewartingram

[31A]

3 hours ago, great northern said:

But it is considerably longer than any other train which didn't have an engine change Steve. Presumably some of the others would have had parcels transfers as well?

 

I'm sure they did; in fact most passenger trains would in those days, but some carried more than others!

 

[jazzer]

5 hours ago, great northern said:

A very quick visit, as we have sunshine for the first time in days, but apparently it will be replaced by heavy rain before noon, so I'll run some trains while I can see.

 

For some reason, Green Arrow was allowed a six minute stop here, so there was plenty of time for a second photo. She will only have come on at Doncaster, so surely no need for an engine change, in which case, why six minutes?

 

 

 

Long station stops on the ECML have always puzzled me .  According to my 1960 timetable almost everything that went through PN stopped for around 3-5 minutes  even without an engine change, and it wasn’t only PN. A train stopping at PN, Grantham Retford and Newark might easily have over 12or 13 minutes journey time standing at stations before it got to Doncaster. They weren’t all waiting for parcels, and any connecting services would be timed to arrive before the mainline train, and anyway it doesn’t take 5-6 minutes to load a few parcels in the guards van. 

I have no explanation for these long stops but I do sometimes wonder if it was just lethargy by those making the timetables. We spoke earlier about the effect on morale as a result of poor management in the ‘50’s. Were they just making the timetables on auto pilot because it had always been done that way with no thought for improvement ?  It was certainly the case, for example that some trains on the Southern and Western were scheduled for stops of up to 10 minutes when milk churns had to be loaded then these long stops remained in the timetable for no good reason long after milk churn traffic ceased, because it never occurred to anybody to change it or maybe there was some obscure working directive that was never rescinded.

 

I don’t suppose we will ever know the real answer but at a time of motorway building and loss of traffic to road transport it is rather surprising that so much time was wasted standing in stations.