British Rail Database - valuable resource - has it been lost?

[Peter Kazmierczak]

So glad that this valuable resource has not been lost.

Loco allocations are a minefield at times - BR themselves were not above making errors. But if this site is used in conjunction with, say, Longworth's steam loco allocation book, then in most cases you'll get an accurate result. Sometimes, though, you have to make a judgement call, and Longworth (even his so-called "revised edition") has errors - notably when in some cases he doesn't fully appreciate some shedcode changes.
So I imagine a great sense of relief that this site is back.

[The Stationmaster]

59 minutes ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

So glad that this valuable resource has not been lost.

Loco allocations are a minefield at times - BR themselves were not above making errors. But if this site is used in conjunction with, say, Longworth's steam loco allocation book, then in most cases you'll get an accurate result. Sometimes, though, you have to make a judgement call, and Longworth (even his so-called "revised edition") has errors - notably when in some cases he doesn't fully appreciate some shedcode changes.
So I imagine a great sense of relief that this site is back.

Another thing worth remembering is that in most cases the official  dates are the '4 weeks ending date'.  In other words the actual date of arrival at, or departure from, a shed could have occurred at any times in the 4 weeks preceding the date shown.  Also they are 'official' dates and might not entirely reflect absolute accuracy - for instance clerical errors occasionally occurred and sometimes the Swindon records possibly took an extra 4 week period to catch up a transfer which had been made locally.  But generally they give a pretty good idea and are the best evidence we have (apart from the logs of shed visits).

 

The only real discrepancy from the actuality was when transfers were made on paper and the actual transfer of the engine never took place for whatever reason.  Sometimes a  hint of where this has happened is if re-allocation dates closely follow each other  or if a similar engine appears in a shed's allocation very closely following the paper allocation in order to keep the allocation up to strength.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Plus the LMR had 13-periods in a year; OK to correlate to months in Jan/Feb/Mar/Oct/Nov/Dec, but could go either way in the middle of the year. I tended to make a judgement call as to which month by looking at how the Sundays fell. All good fun...

 

Oh, and sometimes locos might be reallocated whilst in works, and then reallocated again as traffic circumstances changed. Even better fun...

 

Then there were the real "wild" ones which were obvious errors, eg IIRC, a "King" was allocated to somewhere like Aylesbury when it was actually a 61xx - the numbers being wrongly written down. 

Edited February 26, 2023 by Peter Kazmierczak

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

Plus the LMR had 13-periods in a year; OK to correlate to months in Jan/Feb/Mar/Oct/Nov/Dec, but could go either way in the middle of the year. I tended to make a judgement call as to which month by looking at how the Sundays fell. All good fun...

 

Oh, and sometimes locos might be reallocated whilst in works, and then reallocated again as traffic circumstances changed. Even better fun...

 

Then there were the real "wild" ones which were obvious errors, eg IIRC, a "King" was allocated to somewhere like Aylesbury when it was actually a 61xx - the numbers being wrongly written down. 

All of BR worked on 13 x 4 week periods per annum (apparently sometimes called the Kodak system because it was one of the best known users of 4 weekly accounting).  

 

So we also got paid 13 times a year and, any pay rises or extras apart it meant that we always got exactly the same amount every pay day with no need for it to be adjusted to the length of the month (it didn't affect the annual total of course).    And exactly the same system was used for timetabling although when I reorganised Freight WTT publication on the WR they ran for 8 week periods - but still on a continuing cycle (which is, in many respects, a good bit simpler for freight than it is for passenger).  So we never needed to look at a calendar for dealines bur simply kept an eye on where were were within every 8 week period for all our cut-off days.

 

Having worked with it for my entire railway career and having been paid that way, including my railway pension, for something a tad over 50 years I ceased to pay much attention to monthly dates long ago - the 4 week cycle just rolls on and of course 13 x 4 = 52 weeks = 1 calendar year.  the nly problem it creates is comparing revenue with previous years because Bank Holidays don't necessarily fall in the equivalent period nor do they fall in the same place within a period comnparing one year with another

[The Johnster]

4 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Another thing worth remembering is that in most cases the official  dates are the '4 weeks ending date'.  In other words the actual date of arrival at, or departure from, a shed could have occurred at any times in the 4 weeks preceding the date shown.  Also they are 'official' dates and might not entirely reflect absolute accuracy - for instance clerical errors occasionally occurred and sometimes the Swindon records possibly took an extra 4 week period to catch up a transfer which had been made locally.

 

I referred to this in my recent '6762' thread in 'Modelling Questions'....  According to BR Database this loco was built in 1948 at Swindon and allocated new to Tondu, to be transferred to Swansea East Dock some five years later.  In fact it was accepted into traffic early November 1948, allox TDU late November 1948, a 'four weeks ending date' and xfer Danygraig (Swansea) early Janurary 1949, another 'four weeks ending date;.  I'd not crosschecked the BR Database information and modelled the loco as a Tondu engine on Cwmdimbath, despite not being clear about what reason a loco without vacuum brakes intended for dock shunting had been sent there for, then purely coincidentally discovering a photo of it on Pinterest on yard pilot duty at Briton Ferry in 1951, which made no sense at all if the loco was at Tondu at that time, as I erroneously believed it was.

 

Enquiries here in the mentioned thread revealed the error.  I know that the loco was released to traffic 5/11/48, allocated to Tondu, and xfer Danygriag by 3/1/49. but even with the new information it's exact movements in it's first two months of existence are a bit sketchy because of the 'four weeks ending dates'.  It is entirely possible that the loco never went to Tondu at all, as there is no photographic or corroborating documentary evidence that it ever did.  It is not, for example, mentioned in the John Hodge/Stuart Davies Tondu Valleys books; it probably went straight to Danygraig at some time during the first two months while clerical allocations and transfers were taking place at the same time.

 

I am unsure of the procedure when a brand new locomotive is taken into traffic at Swindon.  Were there 'acceptance trials' before or after this handover, how exactly was the loco allocated, and how did it make the journey to wherever it was allocated?  More importantaly, perhaps, when did it make this journey, and how long might it have taken for it to arrive at it's new home shed, and was this at the same time as the allocation was made, or at least at the next 'four weeks ending date?

 

I've decided to replace the vacuum hoses and pipes and renumber this loco as a known 1948-58 Tondu 8750 that I have corroborating photographic evidence for.

[D1001]

As a follow up to the recent downtime on www.BRDatabase.info, I just wanted to thank everyone who has made donations to and comments about BRDatabase in the past week. I have probably received more in the past week than in the last 5 years combined. I am currently going through allocations in the late '40s and early '50s as I believe there are a few discrepancies that I am trying to iron out, which will probably please some here!

 

As an aside, I mentioned that I had taken c. 48,000 photos of documents at the National Archive in the past 5 or 6 years. Does anyone have collections from elsewhere, such as the NRM or provincial museums and would be willing to share them? Thanks.

[Yeldarb]

I have been using this brilliant resource for the last couple of weeks as I catalogue my newly expanded collection of locomotives and it was working fine last night. This afternoon all I get is a page saying "Account Temporary On Hold".  Is this just a server glitch?

[melmerby]

12 minutes ago, Yeldarb said:

I have been using this brilliant resource for the last couple of weeks as I catalogue my newly expanded collection of locomotives and it was working fine last night. This afternoon all I get is a page saying "Account Temporary On Hold".  Is this just a server glitch?

Yep and "Please check your billing for outstanding invoices"☹️

[kevinlms]

11 minutes ago, Yeldarb said:

I have been using this brilliant resource for the last couple of weeks as I catalogue my newly expanded collection of locomotives and it was working fine last night. This afternoon all I get is a page saying "Account Temporary On Hold".  Is this just a server glitch?

The earlier problem was the domain name as not paid, this time it appears to be the web host. The owner did say that he's sometimes not good at keeping track of invoices.

 

Too busy adding data perhaps?

[AY Mod]

On 29/07/2023 at 17:23, kevinlms said:

The earlier problem was the domain name as not paid, this time it appears to be the web host. The owner did say that he's sometimes not good at keeping track of invoices.

 

Too busy adding data perhaps?

 

No, it's not that. During the week there was a cautionary note to advise that 96% of the bandwidth for the month had been used up already due to attempted hacking attempts by data exploiters - not that there's any user data so it's not a risk to anyone using the site.

 

It advised that if they hit the limit the site would be available again from 1st August.

[Yeldarb]

Understood.  Thank you.

[Bucoops]

1 hour ago, AY Mod said:

 

No, it's not that. During the week there was a cautionary note to advise that 96% of the bandwidth for the month had been used up already due to attempted hacking attempts by data exploiters - not there's any user data so it's not a risk to anyone using the site.

 

It advised that if they hit the limit the site would be available again from 1st August.

 

This. Denial of Service attacks from Romanian IP addresses rinsing his data. He is planning on getting the site through cloudflare who are very good at repelling such things. I know our work site is through them but no idea how it works. When I saw the note I figured I'd used the site enough to bung over another small donation.

[adb968008]

1 hour ago, Bucoops said:

 

This. Denial of Service attacks from Romanian IP addresses rinsing his data. He is planning on getting the site through cloudflare who are very good at repelling such things. I know our work site is through them but no idea how it works. When I saw the note I figured I'd used the site enough to bung over another small donation.

In simple terms…
 

Incoming traffic is routed via them, it literally duplicates the traffic at a specific switch, with one routing  data requests to /from the server, the other to an analyszer.

if the analyzer detects anomalies it filters all traffic from that source away from the target server. (Typically called a blackbox server or a bates motel server).

This tech is also used by law agencies, financial etc. Your isp uses them routinely as well.

 

bates motel server: data checks in but doesnt check out. 
 

Supermarkets use them differently, if they detect web scrapes on pricing for instance, they will return a whole bunch of preprepared guff data thats incorrect to distract the competition. This is a whole industry in itself as pricing is often at a local level.

 

 

in non IT terms, its like sending mail to a celebrity/senior person.. there admin opens it and handles it, making sure the celeb only gets whats relevent, files the junk, sends standard replies etc. You wont know their actual address, only the correspondance one.

 

 

Edited July 29, 2023 by adb968008

[Bucoops]

And the site is back :)

[Keegs]

Oh dear... seems it's offline again. Went to check prevalence of large logo BR Blue in early 1980s but received this message:

[bécasse]

On 27/02/2023 at 00:40, The Stationmaster said:

All of BR worked on 13 x 4 week periods per annum (apparently sometimes called the Kodak system because it was one of the best known users of 4 weekly accounting).  

 

So we also got paid 13 times a year and, any pay rises or extras apart it meant that we always got exactly the same amount every pay day with no need for it to be adjusted to the length of the month (it didn't affect the annual total of course).    And exactly the same system was used for timetabling although when I reorganised Freight WTT publication on the WR they ran for 8 week periods - but still on a continuing cycle (which is, in many respects, a good bit simpler for freight than it is for passenger).  So we never needed to look at a calendar for dealines bur simply kept an eye on where were were within every 8 week period for all our cut-off days.

 

Having worked with it for my entire railway career and having been paid that way, including my railway pension, for something a tad over 50 years I ceased to pay much attention to monthly dates long ago - the 4 week cycle just rolls on and of course 13 x 4 = 52 weeks = 1 calendar year.  the nly problem it creates is comparing revenue with previous years because Bank Holidays don't necessarily fall in the equivalent period nor do they fall in the same place within a period comnparing one year with another

A certain gentleman who was once a sector director and who has more recently been associated with the Ffestiniog Railway would certainly agree with that final comment. In the second half of the 1980s the Treasury insisted that BR moved the basis of its accounting from the traditional calendar year to the fiscal year. After one very strange year that contained 16 accounting periods, the next year reverted to the normal 13 4-week periods but what no-one in authority noticed was that Easter, then a period for bumper InterCity receipts rather than an opportunity to dig half the network up, had fallen in late March before the new fiscal year started and then the next Easter fell in mid/late April after fiscal year had ended. Apparently the period-by-period receipt out-turns were largely in line with forecasts through the year until the final out-turn, with no Easter to bolster it, fell well short, meaning that the year as a whole also fell well short. The result was that the aforesaid gentleman went ballistic, I didn't personally see his "performance" but I did see his shell-shocked sub-sector directors immediately afterwards and they weren't a pretty sight. The real irony is that the aforesaid gentleman had, prior to becoming a sector director, held a senior position in the Board's HQ strategy planning office and consequently might just have been expected to notice the emerging problem himself (rather than constantly trying to score points against the other sector directors).

[Wellyboots]

@D1001 (who runs the site) has posted an explanation of the present situation in Blogs;

 

 

 

[Aire Head]

On 16/03/2024 at 09:35, Big_Bad_John said:

That's the second time this has happened since I started using the site, I guess Philip K. Dick is hoping to get something for nothing, we'd all like that I'm sure! lol

Honestly how would you feel if someone wrote this about you?

 

It's nothing to do with non payment as the website owner has made clear. Speculating on this and in doing so casting aspersions on someone's character isn't a good look.

[melmerby]

It's back on.

[melmerby]

Off again, same message as March 12th.