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The human side of the railway...


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Or looking for the missing pages, as I had to do a couple of times with Canton DMU's.

 

Paul J.

 

And not just Canton DMUs.  I had a Driver at one depot who was in perpetual war with 'the fitters' and he was always a good bet for storming into the office and throwing a Repair Book across my desk with a myriadof comments about missing pages and useless entries (by 'the fitters').  He also had a thing about dirty cab floors (I blame him not one bit for that obviously as he was dead right) but one day he came into the office and demanded I accompany him to the stabling point/servicing shed to see the latest example - and I have to admit it's the only mainline diesel I have ever seen with a row of oily footprints across the cab ceiling, which had no doubt happened when the loco had been in works. 

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And not just Canton DMUs.  I had a Driver at one depot who was in perpetual war with 'the fitters' and he was always a good bet for storming into the office and throwing a Repair Book across my desk with a myriadof comments about missing pages and useless entries (by 'the fitters').  He also had a thing about dirty cab floors (I blame him not one bit for that obviously as he was dead right) but one day he came into the office and demanded I accompany him to the stabling point/servicing shed to see the latest example - and I have to admit it's the only mainline diesel I have ever seen with a row of oily footprints across the cab ceiling, which had no doubt happened when the loco had been in works. 

 

Australian drivers visiting?

Road learning the old fashioned way at Worcester...

 

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That's not the way we done it at Waterloo...

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When I was a guard, I used to salute drivers all the time.  I had plenty of fingers to do it with.

 

To quote the old rhyme:-

 

'The guard is the man

Who rides in the van

The van at the back of the train.

 

The driver, in front,

Thinks the guard's a big ****

And the guard thinks the driver's the same.

Edited by The Johnster
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I don't think I have offered this one before. I am not very organised about logging what I have uploaded where. On some sites one can pull up all your own entries to a particular group or thread, which makes life easier. Anyway here it is -  (If I really wanted to be kind to Dad, I would clone out those telephone wires, that spoil his photo.)

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Edited by phil_sutters
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It's hard not to draw comparisons between the end of the thousands and the end of steam less than a decade before, not just with regard to enthusiast sentiment but even the decrepit external condition of many of them at the end.

Perhaps all understandable today, but at the time I'm sure a lot of non WR people couldn't quite fathom why so many got so worked up about the end of a relatively short lived class, that is perhaps except for the Deltic aficionados on the East Coast of course.

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Keeping with the Talyllyn theme.  Brynglas Crossing around 1966.  No shelter for the blockman, but he is complete with his portable radio probably tuned into the BBC Home Service or the Light Programme.  And he has his own Hi Vis top well - before the days of Hi Vis. 

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Another parallel with the end of steam is the sense that the locos were being withdrawn before their time because of a political decision to eliminate diesel hydraulic power in some sort of anti-Swindon crusade.  This is nonsense, though partly true in that the National Traction Programme specified that no more hydraulics were to be built and electric transmission was to be the future standard, but the Westerns would have had significantly longer service lives had not the NTP also specified that electric train heating was to be fitted to all locos used on passenger work; this was the real reason for the premature withdrawal and replacement by the class 50s, themselves displaced from the LMR by the completion of the WCML electrification and introduction of the class 87s.  There was nowhere aboard the Westerns to put the eth equipment.

 

Similarly, the other hydraulics succumbed to the lack of on board space to fit air brake equipment and compressors.  Part of the Swindon hydraulic design philosophy was to build locomotives that were no larger or heavier than they needed to be in the late 50s and early 60s, in the search for better power to weight rations than could be achieved with diesel electrics, short sighted even without the benefit of hindsight as it was fairly obvious that vacuum brakes and steam heating had a limited future at that time.  There was no anti-Swindon crusade, or if there was it had no bearing on the fate of the hydraulics; after all, the Hymeks were Beyer Peacock's idea!

 

Despite the fondness of enthusiasts for them, they had major shortcomings.  They were unbelievably awkward and arguably dangerous to climb on or off from ground level, with an overhang and handrails that were recessed into the body sides but not enough to provide good grip if you were wearing gloves, and the violent vertical oscillation between 55 and 65mph that rendered them next to useless for the 60mph running on air braked freight trains was never fully overcome.  The cabs were like ovens in direct sunlight, and the side windows were draughty.  The front skirts took up room and got in the way when one had to go inbetween to couple the brake pipes, and they were banned from some hump yard reception roads because of the likelihood of grounding over the summits.  As with the other aluminium bodied hydraulics, the paint finish was difficult to keep in good order, although I believe chemicals in the carriage washing plants played a part in this as well.  On the plus side, the cabs were the quietest I ever rode in.

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Just found this thread. Wow, going to enjoy wading through all 77 pages ;)

 

A couple from me, dating back to 1986 and electrification of the Ayr-Glasgow route. A time when Health & Safety wasn't quite as hot as it is now ;)

 

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