21T Mineral Wagons

[Wickham Green too]

Once the office clerk became a TOPS computer it knew exactly what each wagon was .................. in theory, at least.

[Michael Hodgson]

My father worked for the Forestry Commission and when the first computers came in it amused him that they got listings in which everything was totalled - including railway wagon numbers.

[Fat Controller]

7 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Something to do with writing down a list of numbers p'raps ?

Not so much writing down numbers, but more the Telex that preceded TOPS; my recollection was that wagon numbers were sent, but no sort of descriptor. Not too bad if you had 50 or so wagons per day, as we did, but when you got into the several hundreds or more, numbness set in.

[The Stationmaster]

15 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Once the office clerk became a TOPS computer it knew exactly what each wagon was .................. in theory, at least.

Provided the correct information was in the database.  Which was sometimes something of a struggle to get right when numbers on the vehicle didn't agree with the rolling stock library or even more so when the numbers on the vehicle didn't agree with each other and the correct one had to be established (which was easy if the wagon plates on each side agreed with each other but a lot more difficult when they didn't).