Jim Martin

This is excellent news! I'm not even bothered about the lead time (within reason): my class 92 buying spree means that I haven't been able to afford any Farish 90s yet (although I'm waiting for grey or original green Freightliner, really) and I could still use a couple more 86s.

I'd really be after one or more of the noughties liveries, though: First BR blue w/ orange window surrounds,  LNWR black etc. They seem like the sort of thing that might be a dealer commission. 

I rode on them quite a lot, mostly on lines like Wigan-Southport, Preston-Ormskirk, Liverpool-Warrington etc; but also Darlington-Middlesbrough and a few others. They could be perfectly okay - I think some people got carried away with the thrill of saying the most creatively negative things they could about them, justified or not - and if nothing else, the big windows gave an excellent view out.

That said, a trip from Carlisle to Newcastle was possibly the most uncomfortable journey I've ever made on any train, anywhere. It literally felt like someone was kicking me up the backside every few seconds for the entire trip. Every station stop was a blessed minute or so of relief before the battering started up again.

On 15/07/2023 at 09:18, 31A said:

 

Already happening to some extent, admittedly not with the passenger train operators but two firms are using 'repurposed' former passenger rolling stock - converted Class 321 and 319 EMUs.

 

https://www.varamis.co.uk

 

https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2021/11/23/orion-confirmed-first-trains-spark-a-new-chapter-in-uk-mass-market-light-logistics-by-rail/?gdpr=accept

 

Does Orion actually operate? All the references to it (including its own Twitter account) date from 2021.

I was at Wigan NW the other evening,  putting my daughter on a train to Glasgow (for the first time as someone who lives and works in Glasgow, rather than as someone studying there) and I was planning to stay for a while to watch some freights, including the Varamis service. Unfortunately, my plans were wrecked by a southbound pendolino (City of Coventry) experiencing an on-train fault which left it sitting at platform 4 (the up main) for an hour. I did see the Warrington-Shieldmuir mail; and also glimpsed the corresponding southbound train, which was put through platform 1, which is a rarity. The Varamis train, though, was apparently held at Preston and hadn't arrived by the time I had to leave.

On the Great Central, which is the company I know best, new wagons would be numbered either in blocks or inserted into gaps in existing number series. This was basically an accounting-driven distinction: stock charged to revenue - essentially replacements (in theory, at least) for worn-out stock - reused old numbers; while stock charged to capital - which actually increased the company's capacity to shift traffic - took new numbers. 

Did companies do the same thing with locomotives?

19 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

He was Transport Secretary from 1988 to 1990

He wasn't even that. He was Minister of State for Transport, which is a junior ministerial post. The Secretary of State was Paul Channon, then Cecil Parkinson.

I won't be able to attend this year, which is a shame because last year's was one of the best exhibitions I've ever been to. I have a lot of super-expensive stuff happening in June (baseball in London the following weekend; my daughter's graduation) and I just can't afford it.

I'm definitely looking forward to next year's,  though.

On 11/05/2023 at 08:35, Oldddudders said:

I think some customers imagine that on day 1 they will find a whole new cadre of staff at station level and driving the train.

I recall someone commenting on the Guardian website that Northern had only been "renationalised" for a month, and already new trains had been delivered.

I was really looking forward to this - especially the chance to see Kensington Olympia, which I've been following on RMWeb for years - but I realised this afternoon that it clashes with a big party we're hosting, with people travelling up to stay the weekend and all sorts. Bit of a disaster, tbh. ☹️

This accident report from 1911 describes a collision at Liverpool  Central involving a special fruit train which was working into the station.

Jim

23 hours ago, DY444 said:

I seem to remember the solitary Paddington-Birmingham via High Wycombe was a 50 from time to time and there was a lengthy single line section back then on that route.

 

Not lengthy and not WR 🥴 but:

Leamington to Kenilworth

Romsey to Eastleigh

 

Yes, from Prince's Risborough to Aynho Junction, with a passing loop at Bicester. In the early 80s it was diagrammed for a 50, I think. At least, it was a 50 most of the times I saw the evening (northbound) train. I used to walk home from school, then cycle to a spot overlooking Wycombe North Yard to see it.

Jim

5 hours ago, Peterem said:

stations that have platforms with no obvious passenger access

Wasn't Cornbrook on the Manchester tram network originally built as an island platform with no street access? I think it was intended only for interchange between routes.

Jim

Thank you all very much. I think the thing that threw me a bit was the height of the building. It has a GWR-ish look to it, but I can't think of many stations that run to five storeys.

Jim

Finding myself in Newport (the South Wales one), I walked past this building, which backs onto the railway at the eastern end of the station.

Based on its location and general appearance,  I was wondering if it was a railway-built structure and, if so, what it was originally built for. Can anyone tell me, please?

Jim

7 hours ago, Johann Marsbar said:

The other ones I mentioned are the "Pathfinder Railway Guide" - Published in Boston and seemingly available in two versions.

The standard one is about the same page size as the ORG but is obviously a lot thinner as it generally deals with lines in the greater New England area, though this one does include through services and RR companies catering for long distance journeis down to Florida and also Transcontinental routes, including the likes of CP.......

 

 

Interior page layout tends to follow the ORG style format.......

 

 

The other version is the "Baby Pathfinder" which is actually smaller than A5 and designed to fit in a breast pocket of a jacket by the look of it...........

 

 

This deals purely with local New England roads (B&M, NH, B&A, MEC etc) and is in a much more condensed t/t format......

 

I was going to post that the fact that other companies were printing competing editions suggested that the National Railway Publication Company used the word "official" in the same way that radio djs do: to mean "this is important because it's ours"; but then I saw the rider on the cover: "Resolution of the National General Ticket Agents' Association: that the Travelers' Official Railway Guide be considered the official organ of this Association".

15 hours ago, 30851 said:

 

I have the March 63  Official Register of Passenger Train Equipment  - only such thing that I do have! Didn't know they existed when I found it for sale.

 

 

Cool! Including the notorious automat cars, too!

17 hours ago, Johann Marsbar said:

I started collecting US timetables back in 2000 whilst visiting the Galesburg Railroad Fair and have since built up quite a collection of the things, the number more than doubling in the last couple of years after I secured a collection formerly owned by a deceased friend from an uncertain future.

I've got 11 of those "Official Guides", the oldest by far dating from 1891, though the rest date from the 1934-1971 period and which progressively get thinner in page content as the years pass by as the various passenger operations stop running. The 1934 edition has over 1530 pages in it and still includes a numer of electric interurban lines that were operational at the time.

It's a bit of a specialist collecting field this side of the Atlantic but I have managed to pick up some "sensibly" priced examples in the UK, though the majority of the collection was bought on trips to the US.

I've been sort of looking out for an early 60s edition, so I jumped on this one (it was only £14, which I considered very reasonable for what you get). It's the only copy I own, and probably the only one I ever will, although if I saw an Official Register of Passenger Train Equipment from a similar date, I'd be quite tempted. I have a copy of the ORER too, but that's from the 1990s. 

The 1891 edition sounds interesting. I've seen those CD-based pdfs of older editions that you can buy, but how well do the originals last? They're printed on pretty cheap paper, aren't they? I was looking at an LNER-era (1928, I think) working timetable in the National Archive at Kew last summer and the pages were so fragile that you could barely touch them.

Jim

This is just me showing off my new shiny thing, really; but I thought that some people would find it interesting. It's the July 1962 edition of the Official Guide of the Railways - a recent eBay purchase - which was kind of the US equivalent of Bradshaw's Guide or the National Rail Timetable, but with more stuff in it.

Although the 1960s are generally seen as a time of ever-deepening decline for passenger trains in North America, I've always found it a fascinating period. Some very grand trains were still running, while others were shells of their former selves: trains of a single locomotive and a couple of passenger cars were quite common, as were trains with a string of head-end cars and a single coach at the back. A really good book on the decline of passenger trains is Twilight of the Great Trains by Fred Frailey: I'd strongly suggest that you try to get the second edition, particularly if you're interested in the Illinois Central. 

As you'll notice from the cover, it's not only about trains, and the first timetable section covers airline schedules.

If you check the very bottom of the page, you'll see that flights are either by "Britannia Empress" (recalling the CPR's "Empress of..." steamship naming style) or "Douglas DC-8 Jet Empress": this was early enough in the Jet Age that those airlines which had them weren't shy about pointing it out.

After the airline schedules comes the meat of the book: the railroads. This is more than a passenger timetable: it lists the names,  and sometimes the contact details, of officials and agents in various cities; it includes some freight schedules (particularly for fast freight services); it includes many small railroads that had long since given up on passenger service:

Among the bigger roads, some were still making an effort:

And, of course, trains of this stature were also covered by the equipment guides which were a feature of American timetables, so that travellers could select the desired accommodation:

Of course, many branch and secondary routes were freight-only by this time, and there are plenty of pages like this one:

The book covers a fair chunk of Central America too: especially Mexico, which had connecting services and even a couple of through cars from the USA. I was surprised to find just how big Mexico is: check the mileage on the MoPac/National de Mexico Aztec Eagle and you'll see that the St Louis to Mexico City sleeper was a 3000-mile ride, 1300 of it south of the border, which is 800 miles further than Chicago to Los Angeles on the Super Chief.

And so it goes on. The whole book is 1200-odd pages long. There are some shipping line schedules (not that many, if truth be told), there's an interesting list of military bases throughout the USA and the nearest railroad stations to them, and there's a 228-page index of stations that runs from Abajo, New Mexico, on the Santa Fe, to the New York Central's Zylonite, Massachusetts (neither of those locations had passenger service: first and last among places that did were Abbeville, South Carolina, a stop for the Atlantic Coast Line's New York-Birmingham Silver Comet, and Zwolle, Louisiana, which the Kansas City Southern served with a nameless daily local in each direction between Shreveport, Louisiana and Port Arthur, Texas). It's a mighty book and a fascinating snapshot of the railroads at a time when passenger service was down, but not yet out.

On 28/02/2023 at 11:58, Ian Morgan said:

I would be interested in an N scale Vauxhall Viva HB90, if that is what your 1960's drawing is for. It had the 'coke bottle' shape rather than the boxier HA version. I had one when I was at university.

I had an HB estate with the, ahem, "high performance" 1047cc engine (Stromberg carb: and I knew how to strip it all down in those days) around 1980. Regarding the body shape: I doubt I put it like this at the time, but for many years now I've described it as having "child-bearing hips".

25 minutes ago, arran said:

HI Jim

 

I would go with a reverse image on the opposite side if you cant find info that proves otherwise 

 

Regards Arran

That was pretty much what I was thinking. 

Jim

2 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

There's been someone who modelled Georgemas Jct, I believe, and included some models of the containers. 

I think I know the one you mean. The gentleman I'm thinking of wrote an article about modelling the containers for Rail Express, but his were in the original Safeways scheme with a navy blue swoosh of some sort.

Jim

3 hours ago, arran said:

 

HI All

 

Like this ?

 

Regards Arran  "=C=Rail=

 

 

 

 

Very much like this: thanks! The olives cover a lot more of the side than I'd imagined: maybe twice as much. I don't suppose you know if the boxes had the same picture on each side, or whether olives on one side meant strawberries on the other  or something like that?

Jim

Does anyone have or know where I might find any decent side-on photographs of the Safeways containers used on their north-of-Scotland service? I'm particularly looking for photos showing them in the snazzed-up later colour scheme (2006-ish) with the huge pictures of fruit and vegetables on the side. I'm not fussed about whether they show the Safeways name or the later Russell branding: it's the produce that I'm mainly interested in.

I've found a few pictures showing them at an angle, but I'd really like some side-on shots to clarify the layout of the side, how much of it is taken up by the food pictures etc. Thanks

Jim

2 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

But not the Wirral, which is more important...  🤪

 

When the 507/8s are finally withdrawn, they're going to strip out the interiors and remove the glass from the windows.

Then you're getting them and we're having the 777s! 😀 (we might even have them on  the Southport line by then)

On 28/02/2023 at 16:26, Hroth said:

The same thing happened to some new Merseyrail class 777 units before they were delivered to Kirkdale depot in 2020. Typically, Merseyrail have yet to bring their fleet of new trains into service*, they're still running the cranky old 507/508 units.

 

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/new-merseyrail-train-covered-graffiti-18676844

 

* Reasons include Covid, manning disputes and the ongoing industrial actions.

 

Keep up! The class 777s (aka "our new triple-7 fleet" on some Merseyrail posters) have been in use on the Kirkby line for a few weeks now. At last!

Jim

2 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Fifth class is "Tough - you'll have to walk."

Ah! Sadly, it seems that I was wrong about 5th class: It seems to be just 1-4 in Germany. France seems only to have had 1-3.

What's interesting about both countries is that by no means every train carried every class. Unlike Britain, where even very modest services usually had some first class accommodation (I'm not counting workmen's trains or things like excursions; or services worked by railmotors), quite a lot of continental trains on major routes were 1st and 2nd only; or, in Germany, 1st, 2nd and 3rd; or 1st, 2nd and 4th.

Jim