Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

 

One of my minor appreciations is British Light Music, here's an appropriate piece....

 

 

 

I remember Ronald Binge's Watermill as the music used by the BBC in its '70s adaptation of The Secret Garden.  Thank you for that.

 

British light music is also one of my guilty secrets! 

 

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

 

 

 

Mmmmmmmm...  There's not enough pre-raff redheads around.  We need more!

 

 

 

 

I agree. I could drape some old curtains over Miss T and she can pout at you (she's good at pouting)

 

[Nearholmer]

49 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

No No No... it's gone too far in that direction already.

 

Agree.

 

I've curbed my natural inclination to rise to provocation when it comes to political opinionising.

 

We really do need a refuge from all that, and the rest of current reality TBH, right now.

[Regularity]

6 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

We really do need a refuge from all that, and the rest of current reality TBH, right now.

A definition of a hobby, if there ever was!

[St Enodoc]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

One of my minor appreciations is British Light Music

Me too. How I enjoy listening to my collection of CDs recorded by the New London Orchestra under Ronald Corp that were released by Hyperion a number of years ago.

[runs as required]

On 03/03/2020 at 07:57, CKPR said:

... the M&CR was one of the oldest railway companies in the UK and certainly the oldest company in the LMSR ...

 

I'm envious of your handle CKPR (and always regret I never travelled over it or the SD&LUR when I had the chance).

Can I ask about "certainly the oldest in the LMSR?  I assume this to be justified because the M&CR actually survived as an independent Company up to the Grouping in 1922 ? 

2

I'd claim my avi Brunton's 'Steam Horse' in 1813 travelled successfully over the waggonway up a 1in 50 from Jessop & Outram's 1794  Cromford Canal at Amber Wharf to Crich on a network that included the C&HPR  (authorised in 1825, opened in 1830)  that eventually spanned the Peak District from the Trent to Manchester.

Stephenson made his fortune building the York & N Midland past the Butterley Co's mines below Crich. The Midland went on to absorb the Cromford Canal. The LNW formally absorbed the C&HPR in 1887. The LNW even went on to try a Buxton to Euston express (via Parsley Hay and Asbourne) to compete with Buxton to StPancras via the Midland!.

3
I enjoyed the Wiki history of the Maryport and Carlisle Railway:

Quote

 

1749 Humphrey Senhouse constructed a harbour and founded the town of Maryport ...

... His son (also Humphrey Senhouse) was involved in the 1790s in the promotion of a canal from Newcastle upon Tyne to Maryport, but the project lapsed in the financial crisis of 1797 ...

 

Living in the Tyne Valley, we still hear a fair amount about this. It invariably gets revived in Regional media (like recently with Brexit) as a great C2C Seaway whenever the Scots threaten Independence!

dh

PS

Most of this post should be in one of Edwardian's other scattered Empire of threads Regency Rails - Georgian, Williamine & Early Victorian Railways

[Compound2632]

The LNWR and Midland both incorporated railways that obtained their acts and opened for traffic before the M&CR. 

[Nearholmer]

Ditto the SECR, in the form of the Canterbury & Whitstable and the London & Greenwich (which I think beat the M&C, although I may be wrong on that one).

 

Another 'ancient' was the Swansea and Mumbles, but that was never grouped with another railway/tramway, and ended its days as the property of a bus company IIRC.

[Regularity]

3 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Another 'ancient' was the Swansea and Mumbles, but that was never grouped with another railway/tramway, and ended its days as the property of a bus company IIRC.

Well ahead of its time, then - bus companies (founded by the railways for the large part) became significant owners of the railways immediately following privatisation!

[Nearholmer]

In a reversal of the situation whereby railway companies held major blocks of shares in bus companies pre-nationalisation.

 

I need to go and look in a big, dull book to find out how those shareholdings, and others in dock companies, airlines etc were dealt with at railway nationalisation ........ did bus companies become de-facto part-publicly owned, and if they did, how were directors appointed to represent the public holding? Pre-nationalisation, the SR, for instance, had a director whose prime role seems to have been to represent its interests on the boards of companies in which it held large holdings (Leo Amery, who seems to have been a director of every major company in Britain during the 1930s).

[runs as required]

As  I interpreted CK&PR’s post about the M&CR it was as if the S&D had fended off merger with the NER right down to the Grouping as a company in its own right.

2

The railway that became a bus company I most enjoyed was the Loch Swilly out around the glorious Donegal coastline, 

The driver always stopped and ran off to various off-road croft’s to deliver odd shaped parcels.

dh

Edited March 4, 2020 by runs as required

[Regularity]

28 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I need to go and look in a big, dull book to find out how those shareholdings, and others in dock companies, airlines etc were dealt with at railway nationalisation

This is part of the big picture that people forget: the railway companies were actually "transport conglomerates" (railways, local delivery, busses, canals, shipping, air services at one point, and hotels)* able to control the internal costs across their activities and also to cross-subsidise operations within the overall group. Upon nationalisation, the whole caboodle became state owned, with all revenues (or losses!) going straight into that rapacious body known as The Treasury without any concern for where it had come from or whether where it was going was funded by income from what was formally part of the same group. Instead of using profits from one former activity to subsidise the railways, things were dismembered and treated separately, being either sold off or closed down if they earned a profit or provided a better service than the private sector. (Thinking of Marples and his road transport interests here.)

 

* I am aware that at various times the railways had to step back from close management as it was seen as anti-competitive of them to operate a regional bus service, rather than working more closely to create a more and better integrated operation.

[runs as required]

4 minutes ago, Regularity said:

This is part of the big picture that people forget: the railway companies were actually "transport conglomerates" (railways, local delivery, busses, canals, shipping, air services at one point, and hotels)* able to control the internal costs across their activities and also to cross-subsidise operations within the overall group. Upon nationalisation, the whole caboodle became state owned, with all revenues (or losses!) going straight into that rapacious body known as The Treasury ...

That is what gave the old Euston its charm and its smells, nosing around between the departure and arrival sides north of the Great Hall. My favourites were the baskets of dirty laundry and crockery waiting to be laundered and re-dispatched.

Happy days

[runs as required]

And my old BR(E) boss Jerry Fiennes had an agreement with the Briish Museum whereby  their leading Hieroglyphics decipherer and his wife would be put out to grass as Stationmaster at Gorleston on Sea (costs born by the railway) 

They were was very gracious to me when I turned up to modernise the  ticket office and got everything A about Face regarding up & down platforms. 

Dh

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, runs as required said:

And my old BR(E) boss Jerry Fiennes had an agreement with the Briish Museum whereby  their leading Hieroglyphics decipherer and his wife would be put out to grass as Stationmaster at Gorleston on Sea

 

... moving onwards and upwards to the task of interpreting the fares and rates instructions!

[Annie]

3 minutes ago, runs as required said:

........when I turned up to modernise the  ticket office.

 

Modernise?  Please do not use profane language within the rambling halls of this august thread.  

[Nearholmer]

Sniffing dirty laundry is, I suppose, one aspect of railway-enthusiasm.

 

The British way of doing nationalisation does seem to have served the railways quite badly. Other countries seem to have done/do nationalisation differently, but the only non-UK model that I've ever delved into properly is the Irish one (what are known as "semi-state bodies", but are actually companies with one shareholder, the government.). They've had many of the same challenges, and a few unique ones, but their system seems more stable than ours.

 

Didn't stop Ireland closing a very high percentage of their railways, but then most of the lines concerned were spectacularly un-busy, even when compared with the ones closed here, and the man who led it managed to retain a very positive, un-Beeching-like, public reputation, because his leadership of other state bodies was so well-respected.

[CKPR]

6 hours ago, runs as required said:

Can I ask about "certainly the oldest in the LMSR?  I assume this to be justified because the M&CR actually survived as an independent Company up to the Grouping in 1922 ? 

 

Yes, the M&CR was  indeed the oldest company in the LMSR but it was  merely a subsidiary company rather than a constituent company per se.

[CKPR]

11 hours ago, runs as required said:

I'm envious of your handle CKPR (and always regret I never travelled over it or the SD&LUR when I had the chance).

 

Only the one journey in my case in late 1971 - early 1972, which was recorded by chance by Border TV and hence I can be seen, albeit very fleetingly, on the 'Trains to Keswick' DVD [NB Don't watch hoping to see a 'Precedent' or a 'Cauliflower' , though, - strictly Derby Lightweights by this stage !].

Edited March 4, 2020 by CKPR

[robmcg]

7 hours ago, Annie said:

 

Modernise?  Please do not use profane language within the rambling halls of this august thread.  

 

Careful, or an aspiring  IT manager will re-design you, and then ask you to do a 15 minute survey.... with questions like are you 1/ always happy, 2/ sometimes happy, 3/ rarely happy, 4/  never happy.

 

This will then be sold to Google, who will sell it to, you guessed it, transport conglomerates,  run by managers... 

 

 

Edited March 4, 2020 by robmcg

[brianusa]

23 hours ago, Hroth said:

Bernie Sanders: His initials say it all, he reminds me of our own beloved Jeremy Corbyn (lets not even consider HIS initials).  Sanders as a prospective Democratic presidential candidate would certainly mean 4 more years of Trump.  I don't think the world could stand that.

 

And then there's TizerVirus.

 

 

 

 

Take heart!  DV, Joe Biden will get the job, he should live that long.  With all his backing now, its his to lose.  The general idea is to get rid of you know who, by any legal means and as those who have given up are backing Biden and not angry Bernie of heart attack (couldn't have happened at a worse time) fame.  There's still a long way to go, full of rednecks and Trumpsters.

 

    Sorry Kevin, but I didn't start the drift off topic! 

            Brian.

[Compound2632]

These US Presidential campaigns have lost their romance:

 

 

Roosevelt in 1912.

[Hroth]

23 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

That leads me to wonder what influence the ladies in this photo had on the locomotive and carriage designs of Messers Johnson and Clayton:

 

Wider carriage doors and seats?

 

22 hours ago, Edwardian said:

I agree. I could drape some old curtains over Miss T and she can pout at you (she's good at pouting)

 

Provided she's also clutching a Harp (Instrument, not lager)

 

18 hours ago, Regularity said:

This is part of the big picture that people forget: the railway companies were actually "transport conglomerates" (railways, local delivery, busses, canals, shipping, air services at one point, and hotels)* able to control the internal costs across their activities and also to cross-subsidise operations within the overall group.

 

Cross-subsidisation, a dirty word in certain political circles.  One of the reasons the BBC is being held over a barrel at present regarding the licence fee, etc is that thanks to lobbying by certain other media interests, they've been shorn of their money-making enterprises over the years because its "anti-competitive". Meanwhile, other media conglomerates have been quietly cross-subsidising their own activities to create monopolies of provision in certain money-making areas, pricing the public service provider out of the market.

 

The amount of "fake news" about BBC "bias" from certain media interests is deafening, in an attempt (which seems to be working very well) to reduce the Corporation to a meaningless shell of its former self.

 

Hmphhh....

 

BBC "bias", a case in point - this mornings Daily Telegraph front page...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-51746742

 

 

 

 

Edited March 5, 2020 by Hroth
Update to comment about the BBC

[St Enodoc]

9 hours ago, runs as required said:

That is what gave the old Euston its charm and its smells, nosing around between the departure and arrival sides north of the Great Hall. My favourites were the baskets of dirty laundry and crockery waiting to be laundered and re-dispatched.

Happy days

You cannot be serious!

[RedGemAlchemist]

21 hours ago, Edwardian said:

the BBC in its '70s adaptation of The Secret Garden. 

An excellent version in my honest opinion. 

[Northroader]

The station to go to for smells was Inverness, as you had a fairly low overall roof, closed off at the end, so the air was trapped in, and you could get the sulphurous smoke from a black 5 at rest, mixing with the canvassy smell of mailbags, and then a whiff of fish from vans passing through. A marvellous mixture.