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May I just add something else to the discussion (and apologies in advance for drifting further off topic) - electric vehicles I believe are rather heavier than internal-combustion, so will damage roads more, requiring more repairs. I also mention again the fact that the energy they consume still will have to be paid for (in every sense of the term); I do not think E.V.s are going to be the 'white knight' motorists think. Again, it will require a change of personal paradigm to want to catch that train/'bus/ride a bike, etc.

Please forgive me if I have misunderstood you, but I think this illustrates the points (if I understand correctly) made by some previous posters - (1) It does not have to be like this, because (2) If people change their mind-set, they could vote for a decent public transport network and wish to pay for it. I am old enough to remember Southdown's rather good rural 'bus service, which was destroyed by the Tory Government's 1985 Transport Act. Alternatives are available. There are economic systems (and transport policies) possible other than 'market forces'.

Mea culpa ; you are quite correct. Thanks for giving me a kick out of my own 'era/setting'. I was thinking of late-B.R. wagon-load yards being shunted 'off the running line'.

Please may I just add a point I forgot in my previous contribution, and a 'bete noir' : if operating a goods yard, I think one-half to two-thirds of your available siding length should be devoted to arrivals and departure tracks. I mused in a blog post ages ago about seeing all sidings full of wagons in magazine photographs of model layouts, when some should be clear for an arriving train (unless the daily freight has just arrived, and is doing the shunting, etc.). Hope this helps.

I agree with this as well, for what it is worth. Having grown up with a 'tail-chaser' in my parents' loft, I miss not having the space to run prototypical-length trains of which I have 'emotional attachment' from years past (e.g., last Manchester Picc. - Newhaven Marine, 33-hauled West Coastway services). However, watching a simple stretch of double-track main line at an exhibition becomes tedious to me if one does not know what trains are going to be exhibited, and turns thoughts to admiring the scenic work and contemplating what cake to choose soon from the refreshment hall...

While most has been said above far more eloquently than can I, if "operational interest" is another phrase for 'variety' or 'complexity', I would suggest some sort of shunting is involved. Whether this is passenger and/or N.P.C.C.S. and/or wagon-load/Speedlink goods trains is then down to your interest and space available. Post a draft layout on the web-site of what you considering, and you will not be short of ideas for amendments. Let us know a little more detail, and we may all pitch in. Good luck! It is always of interest to see a layout being created.

As a Cross-Country commuter, my thanks to you all for your contributions to this thread. All details gratefully received. I will get drafting a letter to the local M.P.

Just to alert anyone to Andy Gibbs's wonderful web-site devoted to these services www.1s76.com W.T.T.s, photos, and all one could want to know about them.

Quite inspiring. I hope to find time a.s.a.p. to trawl through your previous posts. Wonderful work.

I was not going to open the 'can of worms' of 'unions - good or bad' ...

I regret I do not quite understand what the M.U. glass panels are to which you refer, but I am reminded of a possible 'urban myth' I know - a trade union (A.S.L.E.F.?) demanded extra pay for drivers to change the roller-blind head-codes, so these were stopped on 1st Jan. 1978. Is this true?

May I just say that the (1st Class) commuting is, for me, the best thing about being in employment, and this on a Voyager by one who yearns for a 4CIG compartment. The train-crew are wonderful, and I am putting pennies aside as and when to donate to the inevitable strike-fund I see looming, for the local R.M.T. branch... Not that this adds much to the discussion, but I wanted to nail my colours to the mast.

Suddenly occurred to me there could be another hyphen in "INTER-CITY", depending on how '1970's' Mr Gibbs wishes it to be. I think it was in the 1980's it became all one word, with a Swallow.

Looking forward to this title as well very much. Any news of a publication date, please? I think the hyphen is set to align with the font in lower-case, hence its looking wrong 'when all about is upper'. As an appalling compositing pedant, if you could get it corrected it would please me greatly.

According to the O.E.D., the first citation found is from 1960: Line manager. [Meaning] 19d. In business or management organization, the chain of command or responsibility; the persons responsible for the administration and organization of a business (as opposed to the staff). Hence line manager, line management. 1960 L. C. Nanassy & W. H. Selden 'Business Dictionary', Englewood Cliffs, U.S.A.: Prentice-Hall. p.27 "Following are the basic types of internal organization of a business: (1) line: The owner gives orders directly to the workers. As the business grows, the owner appoints a few executives, who are responsible to him... (3) line-and-staff: Authority flows from top to bottom, with responsibility falling on staff supervisors and special experts." 1964 J. M. Argyle Psychol. & Social Probl. viii. p.111 "In several British factories it was found that the division between ‘line’ supervisors and ‘staff’ technicians tended to disappear—technologists must have supervisory responsibility." 1967 C. Margerison in G. Wills & R. Yearsley Handbk. Managem. Technol. p.25 "The accountants considered that they had responsibility for the end-product and sought to control certain actions of line managers. Line managers resented this interference with their authority and started to obstruct the accountants in their ordinary accounting function." Just to add to the collection of people's work practices above, in a Library service, I am supervised on a day-to-day basis by two 'Superintendents' (wonderful old expression), one of whom is my Line Manager who has formal responsibility for my discipline, Annual Review, leave permissions, etc. However, both Supers are the same grade and give us daily orders, draft rosters, etc. They are degree-grade posts; mine requires only G.C.S.E.s and is called 'Support Staff'. In a previous library, I had a Supervisor between my Line Manager (whom we shared). She supervised our work on a daily basis, sat in on Annual Reviews (if I wished), but had no formal responsibility for the team members. Her grade was a higher Support Staff, but required only 'A' levels as qualifications. Hope this helps.

Thanks as always @Mikkel for your attention and kind remarks. The paradox about figures struck me when first I started taking photographs. When running trains one has restful poses, but these look less interesting than 'action' figures in one's photographs. This was an excuse to draft a two-part list, of characters found in a goods yard and what they could be doing both 'in motion' and 'at rest'. I would give examples, but I can not put my finger on it at the moment. The only one I remember is two shunter poses, one leaning on a pole and the other reaching over buffers to uncouple wagons.. Composing the list also lead to ideas for tableaux and the multitude of lorries required for the different goods. One day I might have time to play trains.

Please forgive me if I missed it being mentioned previously, but there is also the dismal 'just in time' logistics concept that has taken root. As I understand it, warehouses no longer exist to hold buffer stocks of widgets. As soon as a lorry-load of these is made, it is driven straight to the shop/ firm using them. I remember vividly the television series 'The Factory' (with that irritating ex-green-grocer) about tea-bag manufacturing. The tea-bags were packed, loaded into an artic., and driven off to a super-market who was about to run out of this line. We are now seeing the consequences (and I am told it is to get worse in the next few years) of demolishing all these 'buffer store' warehouses, with interruptions to manufacturing meaning there is no 'slack' for customers to purchase. The bean-counters realised warehouses cost money, so should be eliminated to increase short-term profits. Railways are much more suited to flows to warehouses, I think, concentrating goods in distribution centres that are then delivered over each's 'region' for the firm. Unless firms' distribution models are returned to the more Edwardian system as outlined by @Nearholmer , The accursed lorry will have the advantage. As one who would love dearly to see the return of 'Speedlink', marshalling yards, and shunting 'cuts' of wagons, this is not going to happen with the 'free market' having to lower costs but not pay the environmental consequences. I agree also with Nearholmer's remarks about people's pay, costs, and disposable income. The politicians are scared of increasing people's basic costs back to the Victorian proportions of income because we have a low-wage economy, and we are all paying too much in rent or mortgages. Housing costs have shot up as a proportion of income over the last fifty years. As an aside, when I listen devotedly to Radio 4's 'The Food Programme' droning on about artisan food-makers of quality produce at three or four times the price of supermarket basics, I wonder what proportion of the people can afford to shop thus. There is a reason why the poorer eat cheap bad food, and no amount of farmers' markets and twee stalls will solve this without addressing the underlying poverty of many in the U.K.

Just wanted to thank you again for this (although the link appears to have vanished now), and show my recent attempt when I had the tin of silver paint open to do the tea-chests and a steady hand: Hope people agree this is an improvement. I will have a go at window surrounds mentioned further down the thread later.

I would add that if you intend running model parcels/mail trains on your layout, the film Night Mail is a must for illustrating the exquisite precision planning and platform choreography as described by @Nearholmer above.

Delighted to be of assistance. Herewith the missing pages: And I thought you might like as well from: the following lists: As to there being "nothing in your diagram for AG (Kensington O. to Brighton)", I can only assume there were no trains diagrammed thus for the duration of this time table. I could have missed it, of course - the diagram has one omission in the Corrigenda - but perhaps others more knowledgable can enlighten us. Incidentally, I would suggest the c.15 mins. wait at East Croydon was for un-loading, not necessarily shunting. This was the time given to un-load the Newspaper trains on weekday mornings at Lewes, if I remember correctly.

Just a quick addendum to @Lacathedrale 's plea for loco-hauled head-codes (if I understand correctly). Sorry it is a quick 'shot'; I am off work till Tuesday so no access to a decent scanner. Anyway, from here: ... the relevant section is: Do say if you want the other pages copied ("Headcodes--main line--loaded passenger trains"). Hope this is of use. I can do a few more recent time tables as well if required.

Sorry, in a rush, but this was my effort: Hope of use.

Sorry to return this subject from the depths of the archive, but I have been reminded of it this last month commuting. I have watched the crops along the line ripen slowly under variable skies, the sun now lower and the yellower light prettier on the khaki and golds in the fields. From a shimmering green crop (barley?) that looks like the softest animal fur, to the gold-brown coarser textured crop (wheat?) like a carpet (memories of crawling around the living room as a child with my die-cast motor-cars), all now are being slowly harvested, leaving stubble and bales. Occasionally I see the combine harvester at work on the train home, circling into the centre of the field, lit by the late after-noon sun. There is also the wonderful 'three-second vignette' one glimpses on journeys that inspire one's models, beautiful cameos crying out to be reproduced. A gated crossing, with a cottage next to a small river; the bright primary colours of a rolling field of yellow rape, bordered by a lime green hedge under a clear blue sky, and a jogger in a bright red top running along the path beside it; allotments (always a wonderful sight I think); decaying lineside huts. But I ramble. Each will have her/his own examples, but these are to me more joys of train travel 'when it works', and never experienced on the awful weekend 'rail replacement 'bus' rumbling along a motor-way.

Excellent idea! I have not got as far as thinking of foliage yet, but this is good. It is 'OO' by the way. It was a feeling of 'exasperation', for want of a better word, at how to join two cuts in a plastic sheet of English (or any other) bond that got me. Having smoothed it over with filler, etched in the courses again, and painted over carefully, I was (as usual, quite unrealistically!) expecting perfection to result. I have learned though it is better to 'cut and shunt' at the side of a recessed panel than half-way between two on the outer buttress. Anyway, I must stop moaning and put it down to experience. I do love my brick structures though, so it rankles rather... Were it some concrete brutalist monstrosity I would not care.

Thanks for your kind words. The new arches' brick-work painting just appeared worse than the first batch's - I am losing my 'dry sponge technique' - with the pointing less visible. Also, I was hoping the joins would be hidden better. Having done my best at smoothing over the cuts, they still show. What more can one do? But enough whining. I can pick up my brickie's trowel another day, and there will be more enjoyable tasks ahead when this is completed...