Peterborough North

[great northern]

Grime once again this morning. Sun Stream, an inappropriate name for an engine in this condition, is now standing at Platform 2, but not far down, as it only has seven on.

 

 

At the other end of the station, equally uncared for D11 Zeebrugge is off to Grimsby.

 

 

[great northern]

I think I detect a sympathy vote in the last poll, or perhaps admiration for sheer persistence. Reedsmouth, however you spell it, 8 and nothing else more than 1.

 

Today, country junction stations in the rest of Scotland. Plenty of choices there.

[LNER4479]

Hurrah! Yes, indeed, perseverance. It is a cracking location though.

 

Talking of which, my nomination for Scottish country junction station would be ...

 

Killin Junction (cracking name!), on the sadly lost CR route to the West Highlands through Callander and Glen Ogle

[David Bell]

Now we are in an area I know something about. and so many to choose from. I am rather taken with Cairnie Junction with its island platform. Tillynaught is another favourite and Craigellachie too.

Then there is The Mound on the Far North Line, less than 10 miles from where I am sitting now where a restaraunt car was cut in and out of the trains to and from Wick. Further up the line is Georgemas where the line splits to Wick and Thurso. So not an easy choice but I am going to vote for Maud Junction - junction for Fraserburgh and Peterhead (an area known as the "Broch"). I can do no better than quote from the "Romance of Scottish Railways" book.

 

"While Maud was of course inland, it thought constantly of the sea. For example, a light engine on its way back to Kittybrewster shed meant poor landings at the 'Broch'; one in the other direction showed an extra fish train was needed."

 

Despite closure at the end of the seventies much of Maud remains. Attached are pictures of the station in 2015.

[Oldddudders]

Those are smashing, if sad, pictures. Gilbert's generous broadening of his thread to matters beyond ECML has borne all sorts of rich fruit. 

[Clive Mortimore]

Boat of Garten today, I know it won't win but who cares.

[great northern]

12 hours ago, davidw said:

Gilbert, I'm always fascinated by the consistsof the coaching stock. I assume like others that you've worked from carriage working books and or prototype pictures. Do you have a spreadsheet that describes the consists. Would that make a good starting point for an article? Could you give any further pointerstell to determine what goes into the rakes. I've got Robert Carroll's PDFs for 1958/60. Where else should I look?

Thanks.

That's a good question David. Would sufficient people be interested in a rather esoteric article about ECML train formations in 1958, and how one can make them up properly if you are lucky enough to have a space most people can only dream of?

 

I have Robert Carroll's PDF for summer 58, without which none of this would be possible. I also have the one for E.Anglia, and the Express Publishing books which give M&GN formations. Nothing so far for the E.Lincs services.

 

TW and I have had long debates about the degree to which actual formations were as the official book dictated. I won't go into all that here, but I'm satisfied that, particularly on seat reservation trains, a concerted effort would have been made to keep to the book. The HMRS Journal survey article shows quite considerable variations on the trains it covers, though as they are mainly the stopping services, that is perhaps not surprising. I discussed this with dear departed Andy Rush, and he told me that the major concerns would be:- don't delay the train if you find a carriage has to be found at the last minute, get the most easily sourced replacement, and if its a choice between a run down MK1 as prescribed by the book, or a low mileage Gresley or Thompson car of the same type, take the latter.

 

So, what I did was to put all the services I intended to run onto spreadsheets. At first I then had to pick a "typical" formation for the West Riding and Newcastle trains, which served to represent all of them. When I started the cassette system I realised that maybe with a little ingenuity I could do them all, and so I printed off copies and stared at them for hours, looking for common combinations which I could fit into cassettes. When I found them, I colour coded them, as below.

 

 

 

 

 

The second one should be to the right of the first, but I can't work out how to do that on here.

 

Anyway, when I got the colours in, various sub formations became much clearer. CP stands for "Cassette Portion" by the way. Just as one example, take the yellow highlighted three coaches. First, this combination occurred quite regularly, so it was worth putting into a dedicated cassette, and secondly, I would need two of them, as it cropped up twice in the same train. So that sorted CP1 and CP2, and the exercise continued from there. I have two triplets not in fixed formations, so I can ring the changes with them, as I can with the other catering combinations.

 

Of course there are, as you can see from the spreadsheets, plenty of occasions when it doesn't quite work out that a whole formation can be put together from cassettes, so I have drawers of loose stock too. It's all a bit like a jigsaw puzzle really, but it can be done, and I do get satisfaction from seeing the "right" formation for whatever train is now running. It takes a little while to put the trains together, but hey, I have plenty of that, particularly at present. It would never work for an exhibition layout, but this isn't one, and never will be, so that doesn't matter in the least.

 

What it does do is to make my stock work better for its living, for example by cutting down on the number of brake coaches I need. I realised quite belatedly that I had goodness knows how many BSKs BCKs and BSOs sitting in the fiddle yard which only moved twice in a 360 train sequence. Why not just have a representative few (comparatively), which can be used to top and tail formations? That works.

 

In fact, if I were starting again now, how much of a conventional fiddle yard would I have? It certainly wouldn't be 18 tracks wide, as the present one is. It might even have let me have the long stretch of "railway in countryside", which I had on the old loft layout. And that has got me thinking. Oh dear!

 

 

[great northern]

40 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Those are smashing, if sad, pictures. Gilbert's generous broadening of his thread to matters beyond ECML has borne all sorts of rich fruit. 

It is about a love of railways in the end though, isn't it?  I have mixed feelings when I see images like this, sadness that the railway has gone, but great relief and pleasure that some of the infrastructure survives, and that I can get a fair idea of what was there by looking at it, and then widening my interest to find out more about the area.

 

I'm really grateful to those who are not only expressing a preference, but telling us why as well, and even including these lovely pictures. Now I know why Graham feels he wants to get Reedsmouth into his grand scheme. I would want to do that as well. And I found Clive's pictures of Deadwater very evocatve too. Both illustrate perfectly what I was hoping for, the isolated rural railways that we never saw, and perhaps didn't know even existed. Keep them coming chaps please.

[LNER4479]

1 hour ago, David Bell said:

I can do no better than quote from the "Romance of Scottish Railways" book.

 

Cracking book - as indeed are the other Whitehouse / St John Thomas books in the same style. I don't actually have the Scottish one to hand (my Dad has a copy) but I think there's something in the introduction about the increasing excitement as your train heads north from England then crossing the border, stepping on to the platform in Glasgow or Edinburgh, before taking the train onwards for the real adventure to begin. There's then a lovely provocative question along the lines of: 'why, when we knew of such wonders, did we not make the journey more often?'

 

I was fortunate that my Dad lived on the Isle of Mull for the best part of 20 years in the 1980s/90s so I made the trek from the North West generally about three times a year, almost always by rail. So I've definitely done the West Highland line to Oban more than 50 times, as well as numerous trips to Fort William & Mallaig. Yet you can never tire of it; each one is indeed an adventure.

 

Been all over the Scottish rail network; would loved to have been able to explore the coastal routes north of Aberdeen (alas!). And - Clive - nothing wrong with Boat of Garten. Good shout. On one of our trips, we arranged to stay overnight at the Boat hotel just across from the station. Was rather a nice experience, after our sumptuous full Scottish breakfast, to step across to the station where our steam-hauled train was waiting to take us onwards...

 

Fantastic place, Scotland - if it wasn't for the weather and the midges there wouldn't be anywhere in Europe to touch it.

Edited August 21, 2020 by LNER4479

[davidw]

1 hour ago, great northern said:

That's a good question David. Would sufficient people be interested in a rather esoteric article about ECML train formations in 1958, and how one can make them up properly if you are lucky enough to have a space most people can only dream of?

 

I have Robert Carroll's PDF for summer 58, without which none of this would be possible. I also have the one for E.Anglia, and the Express Publishing books which give M&GN formations. Nothing so far for the E.Lincs services.

 

TW and I have had long debates about the degree to which actual formations were as the official book dictated. I won't go into all that here, but I'm satisfied that, particularly on seat reservation trains, a concerted effort would have been made to keep to the book. The HMRS Journal survey article shows quite considerable variations on the trains it covers, though as they are mainly the stopping services, that is perhaps not surprising. I discussed this with dear departed Andy Rush, and he told me that the major concerns would be:- don't delay the train if you find a carriage has to be found at the last minute, get the most easily sourced replacement, and if its a choice between a run down MK1 as prescribed by the book, or a low mileage Gresley or Thompson car of the same type, take the latter.

 

So, what I did was to put all the services I intended to run onto spreadsheets. At first I then had to pick a "typical" formation for the West Riding and Newcastle trains, which served to represent all of them. When I started the cassette system I realised that maybe with a little ingenuity I could do them all, and so I printed off copies and stared at them for hours, looking for common combinations which I could fit into cassettes. When I found them, I colour coded them, as below.

 

 

 

 

 

The second one should be to the right of the first, but I can't work out how to do that on here.

 

Anyway, when I got the colours in, various sub formations became much clearer. CP stands for "Cassette Portion" by the way. Just as one example, take the yellow highlighted three coaches. First, this combination occurred quite regularly, so it was worth putting into a dedicated cassette, and secondly, I would need two of them, as it cropped up twice in the same train. So that sorted CP1 and CP2, and the exercise continued from there. I have two triplets not in fixed formations, so I can ring the changes with them, as I can with the other catering combinations.

 

Of course there are, as you can see from the spreadsheets, plenty of occasions when it doesn't quite work out that a whole formation can be put together from cassettes, so I have drawers of loose stock too. It's all a bit like a jigsaw puzzle really, but it can be done, and I do get satisfaction from seeing the "right" formation for whatever train is now running. It takes a little while to put the trains together, but hey, I have plenty of that, particularly at present. It would never work for an exhibition layout, but this isn't one, and never will be, so that doesn't matter in the least.

 

What it does do is to make my stock work better for its living, for example by cutting down on the number of brake coaches I need. I realised quite belatedly that I had goodness knows how many BSKs BCKs and BSOs sitting in the fiddle yard which only moved twice in a 360 train sequence. Why not just have a representative few (comparatively), which can be used to top and tail formations? That works.

 

In fact, if I were starting again now, how much of a conventional fiddle yard would I have? It certainly wouldn't be 18 tracks wide, as the present one is. It might even have let me have the long stretch of "railway in countryside", which I had on the old loft layout. And that has got me thinking. Oh dear!

 

 

Thanks Gilbert. I suppose it would be esoteric. But a subject I find fascinating. Would it appeal? To some , I think so. Perhaps related to a how to approach making a train prototypical. Research methods, the "joy" of armchair modelling. 

I've been surprised at those who are delighted with their near £200.00 or more for a commissioned kit purchase and don't care what runs behind it.

Excuse the ramble. 

Edited August 21, 2020 by davidw
Correct in grammar on a tiny phone!

[St Enodoc]

Ah, yet again so much choice. I will narrow it down to a few locations that I had something to do with over the years either in my professional or personal life I think:

 

Craigendoran, Crianlarich, Ladybank, Stanley...

 

Ladybank it shall be (although the breakfasts from Crianlarich refreshment room make a strong case too).

Edited August 21, 2020 by St Enodoc

[Clive Mortimore]

25 minutes ago, great northern said:

That's a good question David. Would sufficient people be interested in a rather esoteric article about ECML train formations in 1958, and how one can make them up properly if you are lucky enough to have a space most people can only dream of?

 

I have Robert Carroll's PDF for summer 58, without which none of this would be possible. I also have the one for E.Anglia, and the Express Publishing books which give M&GN formations. Nothing so far for the E.Lincs services.

 

TW and I have had long debates about the degree to which actual formations were as the official book dictated. I won't go into all that here, but I'm satisfied that, particularly on seat reservation trains, a concerted effort would have been made to keep to the book. The HMRS Journal survey article shows quite considerable variations on the trains it covers, though as they are mainly the stopping services, that is perhaps not surprising. I discussed this with dear departed Andy Rush, and he told me that the major concerns would be:- don't delay the train if you find a carriage has to be found at the last minute, get the most easily sourced replacement, and if its a choice between a run down MK1 as prescribed by the book, or a low mileage Gresley or Thompson car of the same type, take the latter.

 

So, what I did was to put all the services I intended to run onto spreadsheets. At first I then had to pick a "typical" formation for the West Riding and Newcastle trains, which served to represent all of them. When I started the cassette system I realised that maybe with a little ingenuity I could do them all, and so I printed off copies and stared at them for hours, looking for common combinations which I could fit into cassettes. When I found them, I colour coded them, as below.

 

 

 

 

 

The second one should be to the right of the first, but I can't work out how to do that on here.

 

Anyway, when I got the colours in, various sub formations became much clearer. CP stands for "Cassette Portion" by the way. Just as one example, take the yellow highlighted three coaches. First, this combination occurred quite regularly, so it was worth putting into a dedicated cassette, and secondly, I would need two of them, as it cropped up twice in the same train. So that sorted CP1 and CP2, and the exercise continued from there. I have two triplets not in fixed formations, so I can ring the changes with them, as I can with the other catering combinations.

 

Of course there are, as you can see from the spreadsheets, plenty of occasions when it doesn't quite work out that a whole formation can be put together from cassettes, so I have drawers of loose stock too. It's all a bit like a jigsaw puzzle really, but it can be done, and I do get satisfaction from seeing the "right" formation for whatever train is now running. It takes a little while to put the trains together, but hey, I have plenty of that, particularly at present. It would never work for an exhibition layout, but this isn't one, and never will be, so that doesn't matter in the least.

 

What it does do is to make my stock work better for its living, for example by cutting down on the number of brake coaches I need. I realised quite belatedly that I had goodness knows how many BSKs BCKs and BSOs sitting in the fiddle yard which only moved twice in a 360 train sequence. Why not just have a representative few (comparatively), which can be used to top and tail formations? That works.

 

In fact, if I were starting again now, how much of a conventional fiddle yard would I have? It certainly wouldn't be 18 tracks wide, as the present one is. It might even have let me have the long stretch of "railway in countryside", which I had on the old loft layout. And that has got me thinking. Oh dear!

 

 

Having seen Gilbert in action with his cassette system it is less complicated than the above chart suggest.

[LNER4479]

3 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

breakfasts from Crianlarich refreshment room make a strong case too).

Mmmm - more fond memories.

 

'Railway refreshment rooms I have known and loved'. There's another poll idea ... (perhaps after a suitable pause?)

[FarrMan]

Again, so much choice. Lots of lovely contenders already mentioned, to which I would add Connel Ferry, Spean Bridge and Muir of Ord. But if it classes as 'country', I will plump for Dingwall, having lived there at one time (as well as quite a few other places in the Moray Firth area). Always a problem if you were rushing for the train south from where we stayed on the north side of Dingwall - if the train was from Kyle, you had to get to the level crossing before it, and you had a choice of three level crossings, so that whichever way you went, one of them would be in the way.

 

Lloyd

[St Enodoc]

1 minute ago, LNER4479 said:

Mmmm - more fond memories.

 

'Railway refreshment rooms I have known and loved'. There's another poll idea ... (perhaps after a suitable pause?)

Good idea!

 

My memories are of the 0600 Queen Street to Mallaig, where the signalman at Ardlui would telephone the order on to Crianlarich and the food would be brought out to the loco, piping hot, as we arrived. Happy days!

 

Do you remember the buffet at Crewe, where you could get 1p off a cup of tea (but not coffee) if you showed a duty pass?

 

Then there was the Talisman Bar at Waverley. Not only did the restaurant car manager refer to it in code as "his other office" but after a post-work rendezvous one Friday night a colleague rushed out to catch his train, missed it, came back for another drink, rushed out to catch his train, missed it, came back for another drink...

 

This happened three times and the final time was the last train, so he had to call his wife to pick him up from a different station altogether. Somehow she seemed to think it was my fault.

[David Bell]

52 minutes ago, LNER4479 said:

And - Clive - nothing wrong with Boat of Garten. Good shout. On one of our trips, we arranged to stay overnight at the Boat hotel just across from the station. Was rather a nice experience, after our sumptuous full Scottish breakfast, to step across to the station where our steam-hauled train was waiting to take us onwards...

 

 

I stayed at the Boat last year, all very agreeable.

[simontaylor484]

Forres (old station) used it visiting my brother when he wss based at RAF Kinloss late 90s 

 

[jwealleans]

That spreadsheet is highly reminiscent of the one I work from on Grantham to make up different consists through the sequence.   It seems to work  - at least, people other than me seem to beable to follow it.

Edited August 21, 2020 by jwealleans

[LNER4479]

1 hour ago, jwealleans said:

That spreadsheet is highly reminiscent of the one I work from on Grantham to make up different consists through the sequence.   It seems to work  - at least, people other than me seem to be bale to follow it.

Following the spreadsheet is the easy part; it's reading those damn ornate coach numbers from sides of the teak coaches that does my head in 

[LNER4479]

3 hours ago, great northern said:

It is about a love of railways in the end though, isn't it?  

 

I'm really grateful to those who are not only expressing a preference, but telling us why as well, and even including these lovely pictures. ... Keep them coming chaps please.

Now you need to be VERY careful saying things like that where I'm concerned, Gilbert. I'm famed for boring people senseless with my interminable photo collections ...

 

But, in the spirit of David's posts of Boat of Garten, here a few from that Scottish trip in 2008 when we also stayed at 'The Boat'.

 

Caledonian Sleeper from Euston (we travelled to London to maximise our sleeper experience). Sad news (apparently?) that the semaphores are no more.

 

Always a sense of adventure stepping on to the platforms at Aviemore. A most splendid-looking station; typical Scottish weather for August

 

Our train on the Strathspey a little more mundane that David's but at least it breathed steam...

 

No pictures at 'Boat' (I do recall that there might have been a touch of rain in the air ...) so we journeyed on, via Inverness to another surviving relic of the once extensive network of bucolic country railways.

 

 

Can you tell where it is yet?

 

One to make Clive perk up and even I would declare a rather attractive traditional railway scene, straight out of the late 1950s pre-Beeching era.

 

A pleasant trundle into Whisky land and even more DMU vehicles to shake a stick at.

 

Finally, to rather neatly (even though I say so myself) bring us back to ECML business, after an overnight in the Granite city, here we are about to depart from the route's northern extremity, Aberdeen. So, outward via WCML and return via ECML. All the best journeys are circular!

(Interesting to reflect on this scene already being history. Not only do HSTs no longer ply the ECML, that operator branding is from about four franchises ago, I shouldn't wonder)

 

Hope you enjoyed them (but you really mustn't encourage me any more). Next stop, PN 1958 ...

[37Oban]

Well, after due consideration of all the delightful junctions I've plumped for Craigellachie.

 

Roja

[mullie]

I will go with Boat of Garten, been there though it was around 30 years ago! Had a lovely five days in Scotland, Euston to Edinburgh return on the motor rail/sleeper then five days driving round. Isle of Mull, Fort William, Inverness, Balmoral then back to Edinburgh for the sleeper back. Road tested a number of very nice single malts not available in England! A lot younger then, didn't book any hotels, took a chance and simply found a hotel wherever we ended up.

 

Martyn

[thegreenhowards]

Gilbert,

 

While ECML formations on 1958 might be rather esoteric, an article about the importance of running authentic formations and how to go about doing so is well overdue and would be very informative. The process as I understand it is:

1. shifting through and interpreting CWNs;

2. comparing with photos and other records (such as the HMRS survey);

3. Sourcing the vehicles - the need for kits (and scratch building?);

4. Minimising your storage requirement and financial outlay through intelligent grouping as you’ve done with your spreadsheet/ cassette system; and

5. finally, running the trains to a timetable.

 

Writing this up with some example photos and diagrams would be well worthwhile. It’s not for everyone, but you’ve been an inspiration to me and I’m sure to many others. Sharing this best practice would be well worthwhile.

 

All power to your pen!

 

Andy

Edited August 21, 2020 by thegreenhowards
Clarification and typos

[great northern]

What an interesting day this has been. I've never been to the North of Scotland, but now I wish I had. Many thanks for all the contributions.

 

At PN, nothing has been done today at all. By the time I was ready to go and do some running the clouds had rolled in, and it was too gloomy for photography. I really can't remember anything that I've done, but somehow the time has passed quite quickly. We have images from the last running session though, the featured train being the 7.50 Up Leeds which brings 60114 through Peterborough for the umpteenth time. I'm afraid it did get shouted at rather a lot.

 

 

 

 

[drmditch]

Crianlarich, with fondly remembered breakfast please.

 

Although the best railway breakfast was southbound from Durham at the end of one term in the early 1970s. The cheerful crew had prepared for a much larger number of passengers than had actually arrived, and the four of us had second, third, and fourth helpings all the way to York. I remember the mushrooms as being excellent.

 

I'm afraid I can't remember the vehicle, but the cutlery and table ware was all marked 'GNR'.