Michael Delamar Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 This should be of interest to some people. Mike Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rivercider Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 Thanks Mike I had not seen that before, I joined Bristol TOPS in 1978 after the system had been introduced nationwide. I recognise the TOPS clerks dress code well though! cheers Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Bigbee Line Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 Dress code? Yours truly in the TOPS/Supervisors office at Dover Ferry Peter Roberts - TOPS Clerk Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rivercider Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 Although the film is faded there are some interesting clips showing early 1970s freight traffic at Swindon and Gloucester Lanthony cheers Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Robert Shrives Posted January 5, 2015 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 5, 2015 Hi , I still have shirts with logo on sleeve, hardest wearing and miles better than recent uniform issues !! TOPS still is top! recent attempts at creating systems seem to be nothing more that toys compared to the functionality that tops offered - remeber eddata - pre email email!! punch cards long gone but I know a few who saved a few just for the sake. I still have trainlist books tucked away along with old gaurds log books... a lost time compared to the wizzo wonders of today like TMS amd Integrale. great film .. Robert Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paddy Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 Great film and takes me back to my days as a computer programmer using punched cards! Paddy Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
synthnut Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 Thanks for bringing this to attention! Despite searching for it I can't even get YouTube to come up with it without your link. A fascinating snapshot of the state of the art back then for sure. Shame it's suffered from fade no colour shift rather. It would benefit from a better telecine transfer to correct that a bit, and the flicker too, nonetheless less, most enjoyable to see. I wonder how many other gems of this kind are to be found? I have the box set BFI BTF collection, but the more industry insider stuff is more my bag... TTFN, Ben Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ron Ron Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 Thanks for the video Mike. Punch cards, computer tape, input output devices and all the other old computer paraphernalia...... half way through, I almost expected Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble to make an appearance. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Stationmaster Posted January 5, 2015 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 5, 2015 Fascinating stuff - definitely takes one back. It included someone looking remarkably like a much younger Lawrie Hall (who was on an implementation team at that time) and wide range of terminals which was all too typical of the early days, including the enormous IBM punch cards. Nice little clip at the of a D10XX on what looked like the return empty working of the Park Royal 'steelliner' which was running back in those days and the final shot of what looked very much like Pangbourne, definitely a WR nostalgia trip. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rivercider Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 This is the interior of Bristol TOPS on 24th May 1980, taken on a saturday, probably in the afternoon when I was on my own. We were one of the last TOPS Offices in the West of England Division to go cardless, there is card rack on the far wall, the smaller sized card punch machines are mostly obscured by the printers. There were four terminals of which we can see the right hand three, the nearest is the Y1 machine which received incoming consists next is the Y2 machine which was also on-line and used for inputting data. The third machine in the corner was off-line and it, and the fourth terminal out of site to the left were used to produce shunt and train lists. The machines all operated at 200 baud (whatever that means) and were very slow by modern standards. The printers were very noisy as well as slow, this meant that for the first few weeks I worked there the room was continually noisy, it was not until I started to work weekend shifts, when traffic levels dropped, that the all the machines were silent at the same time. By the windows we had two or three Mufax facsimile printers, which used a rolls of moist printer paper, for receiving messages from local yards. I was a young and impressionable 18 year old when I started there and it took me a few weeks to get used to the banter which was pretty lively for a clerical work place, but once I settled in it was a great place for a railway enthusiast to work. TOPS Offices provided a good grounding in the operational side of the railway and many former TOPS clerks progressed well up the ladder, happy days cheers Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold russ p Posted January 5, 2015 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 5, 2015 Great film, interesting to see that the wagons weren't displaying tops codes although they showed up on the list. Quite amazing how much traffic the railway has lost in the last 40 years Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacific231G Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 What a great find Michael. Thanks very much for posting this. The film was fascinating and it was extraordinary to see an advanced (for its time) computer system controlling a still very traditional system. I found the opening sequence particularly poignant where you see the wagonload operation trying desperately to compete using small unfitted wagons and blokes writing down their numbers with a road haulage industry who were being given a brand new motorway network at public expense. Seeing the BN yard with bogie box cars running on roller bearings and automatic couplers just seemed to underscore that. In 1974 when that film was made I was using punch cards to feed and ocasionally program the IBM mainframe computer at UCL (which I think was an IBM360 so a bit older than the TOPS 370) but they were 80 column Holerith cards? Were the short punch cards used specifically for operations like TOPS? BTW 200 Baud means 200 changes of signal per second and is a term that comes from teleprinters. In those days it probably did equate to 200 bits (200 1s or 0s) per second. That's about five hundred times slower than the 100Mbps (megabits per second) that my PC says it's currently receiving from my broadband. That does sound a little slow even for the early 1970s but was presumably robust over fairly ancient phone lines. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rivercider Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 In 1974 when that film was made I was using punch cards to feed and ocasionally program the IBM mainframe computer at UCL (which I think was an IBM360 so a bit older than the TOPS 370) but they were 80 column Holerith cards? Were the short punch cards used specifically for operations like TOPS? BTW 200 Baud means 200 changes of signal per second and is a term that comes from teleprinters. In those days it probably did equate to 200 bits (200 1s or 0s) per second. That's about five hundred times slower than the 100Mbps (megabits per second) that my PC says it's currently receiving from my broadband. That does sound a little slow even for the early 1970s but was presumably robust over fairly ancient phone lines. Thanks for the explanation. I seem to recall that when Bristol TOPS went cardless we were upgraded to 600 baud which was a revelatioin at the time. In the 1970s some TOPS enquiry terminals, like the one used by both Bristol Civil Engineers and Bristol DM&EE Office, had a shared line with another terminal in another building, which meant before you could make an enquiry you had to poll the system and hope the other terminal was not in use, if it was a bell would ring when the line became clear and you had about twenty seconds to make your enquiry before you lost the line! edit - Towards the end of the film the man taking a phone call and then making an enquiry first presses a button that says 'bid', he will be hoping the line is not already in use. cheers Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rivercider Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 Dress code? Yours truly in the TOPS/Supervisors office at Dover Ferry I thought it was the law that railway clerks had to wear sports jackets, perhaps that was in the 1970s! Here I am in my 1977 issue BR Priv Identity card, (I carry it with me still!) A former good mate of mine who also worked in Bristol TOPS Tony Williams told me that if he was out with his wife she could spot off duty railwaymen from 100 yds by the way they dressed! Cheers Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Downendian Posted January 5, 2015 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 5, 2015 Good grief what a historic film. Also a valuable record of 1970s computing, when those huge mainframes have probably the same computing power as your average smartphone, I knew that cards were commonplace, but hadn't realised how many of them were required. It would be so good if some 1970s TOPs records were still accessible, especially consists, workings etc. Neil Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
40044 Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 Bizarre to think that, despite being 40-odd year old computer technology, and despite numerous changes in the industry and attempts to replace it, TOPS is still the best tool for the job. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
40044 Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 A couple more links: http://www.les-smith.com/software/tops.htm http://logistical.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/tops-a-decade-a-head-of-its-time/ Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Delamar Posted January 5, 2015 Author Share Posted January 5, 2015 Do they still use it in the states? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium jamie92208 Posted January 5, 2015 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 5, 2015 That brings back a lot of memories. As a young beat bobby in South Leeds, No 4 Hunslet beat, included the Hunslet South yard TOPS office. It became one of my regular tea spots on night shifts. The staff were very helpful to me and often did printouts of what locos were on which depots to help me plan shed bashing trips. One night I was even able to watch the Holbeck Steam Crane re-railing a tank wagon in the yard. The punched cards even had uses as the 'chads' produced made very good 4mm scale brickwork. There were no VDU's just printouts. TOPS was of the same era as the Police National Computer (PNC) that came on stream in (IIRC) 1974/5 for stolen vehicles. They both used the 'polling' system to communicate with the mainframes and are both still in use today at the centre of their respective databases. I have heard that support staff for both systems have to have special training to learn the ancient programing language. Jamie Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium jamie92208 Posted January 5, 2015 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 5, 2015 Do they still use it in the states? I'm not sure. Certainly SP continued to use it until the takeover by UP in the late 90's and the new UP system has now been rolled out over their entire network. I believe that the current UP system was the one that EWS tried to use to replace TOPS. Jamie Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Delamar Posted January 5, 2015 Author Share Posted January 5, 2015 Girobank had and still had when i worked there a few years back a similar looking programme called CALM. Now i work with TOPS and TRUST. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rivercider Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 Good grief what a historic film. Also a valuable record of 1970s computing, when those huge mainframes have probably the same computing power as your average smartphone, I knew that cards were commonplace, but hadn't realised how many of them were required. It would be so good if some 1970s TOPs records were still accessible, especially consists, workings etc. Neil A large number of cards were issued, imagine an empty stone train with 40 wagons heading towards your yard, it will require at least 44 cards, one to report arrival, one to confirm wagons arrived OK, one to confirm loco arrived OK, one for the loco and 40 for the wagons. Then imagine that train gets tripped to the local quarry, at least another 44 cards get punched. Then the quarry reports the train loaded, the clerk now produces a card with the loading details and adds that to the 40 cards and feeds that into the system, the computer responds by punching 40 new cards with the revised loading info, the 40 old 'empty' cards are now binned, and so it goes on. The storage of cards in the TOPS office varied from yard to yard and depot to depot, for a small yard one or two 'pigeon' holes would suffice, and the cards were kept in numerical order. If the wagons were a block train likely to stay together (eg mgr) then they would be kept with an elastic band around them. For a main yard where shunt lists were supplied each road was represented by its own 'pigeon' hole and the cards were kept in road order. When a shunt was made the pack for the road was taken out and literally shuffled into the new roads, sometimes by the yard supervisor himself I imagine and not the TOPS clerk. Beware the clerk who knocked over, or dropped a yard file, it did happen......... Shunt lists and train lists were prepared off-line not via the mainframe. cheers Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Delamar Posted January 5, 2015 Author Share Posted January 5, 2015 Reminds me of this Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rivercider Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 While I did not routinely keep printouts or consists I did find a handful of them in my old notebooks, when I spent a day out taking photos I would sometimes take a loco or wagon number, then later on I would call into the TOPS office and make an enquiry to see what train I had seen. On 25th January 1982 I spent the morning at Newport and walked to Gaer Junction where one train I photographed was worked by 46049. I must have been booked late turn that day, at 14.41 that afternoon I made an F4 train enquiry of 6C43 a Severn Tunnel Junction to Llandeilo Junction service. The photo of this train is on my Flickr album '1980s W.R. A.D. Jn and Gaer Jn' cheers Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
40044 Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 I'm not sure. Certainly SP continued to use it until the takeover by UP in the late 90's and the new UP system has now been rolled out over their entire network. I believe that the current UP system was the one that EWS tried to use to replace TOPS. Jamie TCS (Transportation Control System). EWS binned the idea as TCS couldn't be made to interface with TRUST. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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