Time travel is possible

[Pacific231G]

nobody seems to have done the obvious - take the numbers for euro millions back to lunchtime the friday before last and cop a share of £127 million!

if the draw is truly random then your going back in order to put money on the result would probably change the universe enough to make a different set of numbers come up!! The gee gees might be a better bet as that's more about not knowing all the variables than betting on a truly random event.

 

Interesting to think what general railway experiences you really would have to go back in time for because they're not available at all in the here and now. After all if I want to travel on a typical British steam era branch line I could do so quite easily this afternoon. Apart from obvious things like going to Paddington to see Kings and Castles pulling all the expresses (and I'm so glad I did that when I still could so have the memory) the thing I'd really like to experience that I just missed would be a small rail served port in full operation with steam coasters, tank locos fussing about, maybe even a sailing barge or two and all the bustle of traditional ship and cargo handling. I'm thinking of the sort of port where the pubs and chandleries are on the quayside not one hidden behind high walls like London or Southampton. I was just a few years too late to experience this at Sutton Harbour in Plymouth though all the trackwork was still in place but somewhere like Weymouth or Dieppe when they were still handling plenty of goods traffic both at the marine station and on various sidings up and down the quays would do very nicely.

[beast66606]

I'd like to go back to Chester in say 1920, when the races were on and watch the working of the signal boxes, handling the race traffic, I have the timetables and Chester No.2 was manned by 4 signalmen, Chester No.4 by 4 signalmen too, the rest of the boxes were normal manning, when you consider the signalling was all mechanical I would love to see them deal with it.

 

I would also like to go back to the 1950s and spend some time in the signal boxes on the Northern (England) stretch of the West Coast, Grayrigg, Thrimby Grange, Oubeck to name but a few of the more obscure ones, Lancaster, Penrith, Tebay etc. are taken as read.

 

I'd also like to go back and be nice to my parents, I lost them both before I really had chance to get to know them as an adult rather than a petulant teenager,

[bluebottle]

I've just been reading the customers' reviews of "The Time Machine" on Amazon's American website; they include a large number of one-star "kid's reviews" which one suspects were submitted by some teacher with a down on HG's novel.

However, a line from one review casts an entirely new light on things:

"The Time Traveler was in his lavatory when he went into the future."

We all know how much richer the reading experience is while seated on the throne; did Wells deliberately obfuscate this essential detail of the time travel process because he feared the use we might make of it?

Excuse me while I make a quick bowel movement in the year 802,701 A.D...

[darrel]

1960 last year of the glasgow trams and the start of the glasgow blue trains still plenty of steamlocos around and green diesels. then go for a trip to liverpool to see the beatles

[Western Princess]

Like RJS1977 I'd like to travel down Wellington Bank behind City of Truro (with modern recording equipment - GPS etc) to prove once and for all that the record belongs to the GWR.

I'd go back to 1958 and relive the Diesel Hydraulic era. I'd like to be around and to be able to convince the BR Chairman that Diesel Hydraulics, not Class 47s, were the way forward.

 

Non rail related, I'd like to return to 1973 and meet my wife again so that we can relive the last 40 years together again.

I'd love to see living dinosaurs in their natural habitat, to watch the erection of Stonehenge, Avebury and discover exactly why Silbury Hill was built, I'd like to see first hand the voyages of James Cook, and live (with my current bank account and modern plumbing) in the Victorian era.

I'd travel forward to see how, and when, extra terrestial life is discovered.

[Western Princess]

I agree with Belsay Lad about the Vulcan - I well recall one turning away from the crowd at the end of a display and going to full power - I was hit by a solid wall of sound and felt I was going to get knocked over.

Nearly as good as being in the front coach of a Western taking 15 bogies over the South Devon banks in the 1970s!

[Rugd1022]

I've been thinking about this thread again quite a bit this week whilst on my travels... as far as the railway goes, it really all comes down to wanting to experience first hand almost any period in the history of British steam and on into the transition era... if the time machine's batteries were up to the job I'd just flit back and forth between whatever periods took my fancy, armed with a decent camera and lots of jam butties....

 

Having watched those lovely LMS films posted eslewhere by Michael Delemar it'd be nice to go back to the 1930s and enjoy the sights and sounds on my local patch and perhaps and then venture further afield.... jumping on a stopper to Euston with a Fowler, Fairburn or Stanier tank up front, then do a tour of all the London termini via the Underground, perhaps returning home via Paddington, Oxford, Banbury and Leamington Spa (General) behind a Swindon built 4-6-0, then catch the Push-Pull back home from the adjacent Avenue station.... all very nice ta!

 

You'd never get bored would you...?

[Belsay Lad]

I've been thinking about this thread again quite a bit this week whilst on my travels... as far as the railway goes, it really all comes down to wanting to experience first hand almost any period in the history of British steam and on into the transition era... if the time machine's batteries were up to the job I'd just flit back and forth between whatever periods took my fancy, armed with a decent camera and lots of jam butties....

 

Having watched those lovely LMS films posted eslewhere by Michael Delemar it'd be nice to go back to the 1930s and enjoy the sights and sounds on my local patch and perhaps and then venture further afield.... jumping on a stopper to Euston with a Fowler, Fairburn or Stanier tank up front, then do a tour of all the London termini via the Underground, perhaps returning home via Paddington, Oxford, Banbury and Leamington Spa (General) behind a Swindon built 4-6-0, then catch the Push-Pull back home from the adjacent Avenue station.... all very nice ta!

 

You'd never get bored would you...?

 

As far as railways are concerned a trip back in time with a modern video camera to:-

 

1 Cupar (Fife) railway station, a Monday evening in September, around 7 to 7.15pm (I know the day and time because I was on the way to the local camera club weekly meeting) but the exact date/year escapes me! 1976/77 perhaps?. However it was the first year of the IC125 (or HST) in service - as I walked across the road/footbridge over the station the evening northbound service passed by. My first view of a HST! Even with the engines throttled back due to the curve through the station I almost forgave it for displacing the Deltics! Having afterwards heard HST's, with their original engines, depart Edinburgh Waverley on full bore I did forgive them. But once again no camera!

 

2 Late 1970's - railway strike and services disrupted. The local evening service from Dundee all stations in Fife to Edinburgh was cancelled however the announcement was that the service arriving at platform 1? (I think which was the express service from Aberdeen to Edinburgh) was going to call at all stations en route. Finally the train arrived from the North - six coaches with a Deltic (sorry in my excitement didn't record which one!). The driver must have been a bit annoyed at being told to stop at every lamp post and wellied it from the platform way out on the straight out of Leuchars. OK maybe not quite the same as a Ferrari but pretty damn close in my view.

 

I would have loved to have been a viewer with a camera on the bridge to capture that!

 

3 Being taken onto the platform at Cupar by my mother in the early 60's to watch the trains on the mainline and also shunting the yard, and having said video camera to catch the scenes (OK age 4/5? I would probably have drooled over it!)