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What will be your preferred coach for nostalgic travel in 40 years time?


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There will be no opportunity to travel by rail for pleasure in 40 years time; H&S will see to that.

 

Virtual reality will be the only way to recreate the nostalgic feeling and with advances in technology you'll be able to recreate every bump, every lurch, every whiff of steam or smut in the eye of every train train journey ever made from Stockton to Darlington to HS2.5.

 

Me, I'll be sat in my i-ride deluxe experience chair enjoying my first class compo and class 47 on load 15 up the Highland mainline to Inverness, looking forward to the return journey when I fold my i-ride deluxe experience chair flat to re-create a BFK on the internal overnight to Edinburgh with a pair of class 26's (door closed, curtains drawn, bulbs out, window open)

 

 

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Hi All,

 

How about this for a future rail tour announcement then?

 

Adelante Back to Paddington.

 

The Class 180 Adelante Preservation Society will be rerunning the original  inaugural public revenue earning service of the type to celebrate 50 years since the type entered service on the Great Western Main Line.

 

The Class 180 Group succeeded in preserving a complete unit after much negotiation with First Land & Space Travel Group. It has taken much work to restore the unit to its original condition over the last ten years. They have also fitted unit 180101 with the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven signalling system and at a cost of £2,000,000. When asked about the money spent, Class 180 society chairman, Ian M. Batty, said: "At least we didn't have to pay the £4,000,000 and their first born child it is costing the steam guys out there these days! I think we have proved that Diesel Multiple Unit preservation is the way of the future."

 

When asked about the groups motives and aims for the future, Mr Batty said that they "were keen that the sights, sounds and smells (particularly that noxious niff that came from the toilets on a hot day) of a class 180 should not be denied to future generations. It's ok looking at a full size hologram of one in your virtual reality room at home but this can't beat the real thing. We believe that being in touch with the real thing give us a connection to a time when things were made with traditional tools like CNC lathes and milling machines and not spat out on a 3D printer. It keeps these and other vital heritage skills, such as ordering parts by hand out of a catalogue over the Internet, alive."

 

When asked if 180101 would be changing liveries any time soon, Mr Batty said: let us get the 50th anniversary out of the way first. I know that there are a lot of people out here that would love to see and photograph her in Grand Central black. This will not be for at least a couple of years though. We feel it only right that we recognise the contribution made to this project by First. In the future however, who knows?" When asked about it's role in the event, the AI computer now on board 180101 said "I've got a brain the size of a planet and I end up doing this. It's not funny being stored at the museum depot for weeks on end when all you want to do is get out and smell the roses. At least you flesh bags can get off at the stations. That it would come to this. I used to be in charge of a space airliner you know! I've been to Mars! God help me... Go away and leave me alone."

 

I'll get my coat...

 

All the best,

 

Castle

 

PS : the last paragraph is of course posted with an nod to and due reverence for the late, great, Douglas Adams.

 

PPS: I would have loved a go on the GWS Vintage Train. Imagine that with 4079 out front singing away at 75 mph...

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Loved the mark 1 SKs when they ran the Network Expresses from Newbury to London in the late 1980s - the wooden panellings - ah!

 

I actually like riding in an air con mark 2d when the air con is working(!) - I quite liked the sound of the dynamic brakes....

 

Pacers belongs to the Beamish museum together with the Victorian 4 wheelers!

Edited by Welly
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  • Seems the old mk1 coach was pretty popular ! The over varnished wood around the window frames with that little groove along the bottom where you could leave your spotting pen ! I can remember thinking that the window frame companies must have been making a fortune from BR with all those mk1/2s everywhere , i think the company names were Widney and Beclewat or something , Its amazing to think i havent thought of those names for years and this thread jogged my memory !!!!!!
  • Regards Paul

 

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i get the feeling nobody realy wants air-con by the above posts......... !

Mk1 FK with orange curtains, horsehair/spring seats and hot feet but cold nose. Lights on dim, Sulzer up-front. Moonlit snow........ .

 

Swap the Sulzer for a Thousand or a D800 at Temple Meads and I'll bag a compo.... ;)

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A few, note no BR1 bogies!!!!

 

Mark 2D FK for compartment and comfort

 

Mark 1 FO as SO for real world room and view

 

Mark 3 TFO for high speed travel - want Paxmans

 

Steam service, I like the Collett Sunshine stock and also Gresley Teak stock

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It's interesting to see how popular BR Mk1 coaches remain - I wonder if it's because they're what folk grew up with or if they offer something better (opening windows, compartments, steam heat?) than later builds ? Or is just because folk associate them with particular journeys behind certain types of traction and they're rolling that into the 'complete experience'?

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Nail hit firmly on the head there Mike... difficult to seperate one from the other really, as the sights, sounds and smells are all part of the 'picture' and can transport you instantly to another time and place. I think the closest thing I've ever experienced on a preserved line to certain 'real railway' memories is riding in a steam heated Mk1 compartment behind 47 105 on the Glos & Warks line on a rain lashed late December evening.... or even better, a pitch dark late evening run behind Warship D821 on the SVR last October with the top vents wide open.... glorious, even at the regulation 25mph going up hill. I was born just too late to experience Warship haulage on the mainline, but on that particular night I got a small taste of what a night time assault on Dainton bank or the Glynn Valley must have sounded like c1971.

Edited by Rugd1022
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  • 8 years later...
On ‎20‎/‎05‎/‎2012 at 18:36, Penrhos1920 said:

My neighbours have just returned from holiday and spent a fare amount of time travelling around Scotland in Mk1s with steam haulage. Now my preferred coach for a railtour or preserved railway would be something a bit older, say a pre-grouping 4 or 6 wheeler or a GWR toplight.

 

Given that most of us probably would prefer to travel in something that evokes youthful nostalgia what would you like to be travelling in on a railtour in 40 years time? Will the youth of today be wanting Pacers and Sprinters?

 

Well I'll probably be long dead and buried by then, but my favourite would be a Maunsell Open 3rd (either type) as used on the Bluebell Railway, with the new Gresley P2 up front.  That'll be old by then too !

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For me it would be an air conditioned mk2 like the first time I rode on a loco hauled train.  I used to hang around Durham station in the mid 90s and one day D9000 turned up on the 4:30pm Virgin Cross Country service to Newcastle after the 47 had failed at Crewe, Not expecting to get that chance again me and a friend happily bought cheap day returns for about £3.50 each.

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Actually scrub that. My favourite train to work and travel in was and is the class 143 when they had the thinner floors and the bus type seating. They were fast and thrilling to ride! Never tried a 144. Also worked 142's but they lacked the character of the 143 and I found 142's too soft and bouncy.

I know this was supposed to be about coaches... But 143's are sort of coaches!

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1 hour ago, johnofwessex said:

4REP power car doing the ton through the New Forest (Did that once by mistake!!)

 

Class 309 doing a ton UP Brentwood Bank.  I used to time them on their Liverpool St to Chelmsford non-stop runs.  One evening we would have done Chelmsford in about 25 minutes (normally 29 in the mid-afternoon slots and 31 during rush hour).  It turned out that the East Anglian that we normally followed was delayed so we had greens all the way, not the usual amber or double ambers out of Liverpool St.  The driver must have known it and thought he'd put his foot down.  I guess he was hoping to get to Witham where the East Anglian could pass.  Unfotunately we were looped outside Ingatestone.

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I can't go in coaches with air conditioning for long. Somehow I struggle. Occasionally I will find air conditioning that I get on with. It is like cars. Though my current cars air conditioning does not work and I have not te funds to get it looked at. (Never worked since I bought the car secondhand but it was well looked after and serviced apart from that and a few things which needed changing through lack of use e.g. tyres etc).

Only one car I have had had air conditioning that I got on with and that was an Audi, and even then I often just preferred to open the windows instead. The strange thing is with that car is whatever I did to it and however I drove it, it always gave me exactly 35mpg. 

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On 23/05/2012 at 17:05, Cornish Triang Paul said:

i get the feeling nobody realy wants air-con by the above posts......... !

Mk1 FK with orange curtains, horsehair/spring seats and hot feet but cold nose. Lights on dim, Sulzer up-front. Moonlit snow........ .


I do. With large opening windows now banned by the ORR on the national network, non air conditioned trains can get uncomfortably warm during sunny weather (like what we just had in May).

 

The big bug-bear for me is the lousy seating  fitted to modern trains. Given decent seating an Electrostar or a Desiro would be a pretty good unit.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Mountain Goat said:

I can't go in coaches with air conditioning for long. Somehow I struggle. Occasionally I will find air conditioning that I get on with. It is like cars. Though my current cars air conditioning does not work and I have not te funds to get it looked at. (Never worked since I bought the car secondhand but it was well looked after and serviced apart from that and a few things which needed changing through lack of use e.g. tyres etc).

Only one car I have had had air conditioning that I got on with and that was an Audi, and even then I often just preferred to open the windows instead. The strange thing is with that car is whatever I did to it and however I drove it, it always gave me exactly 35mpg. 


The usual issue with air con is humidity - if set wrongly and the air is too dry it can cause issues with the throat and nasal passages suffering  drying out - which in turn can cause headaches etc.

 

This can be made worse if the body is subjected to sudden changes - fairly humid outside but ‘dry’ air inside.

 

Making sure you drink plenty of liquid in small does to help moisten the airways and can help.

 

Obviously there is also an individual element - no two human bodies are exactly the same.

 

 

Edited by phil-b259
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