caradoc

They clearly were not mad dogs or Englishmen then!

From personal observation the predominant traffic by far at Oxford Parkway is people getting on and off trains to and from Marylebone; Although the journey time to London is longer than that from Oxford to Paddington the station is well located for the areas north and east of Oxford, including the large village of Kidlington and parts of the city itself, such as Summertown, Marston and Headington. The number of passengers using the line to travel between Parkway and Oxford is far smaller (although I did make that trip myself in May returning from the Severn Valley Diesel Galas, the combination of train and bus times made this a quicker way to get from Oxford station to Marston than the direct bus!)

Indeed not, but I was responding to the equally irrelevant point you made about shared platforms.

At Risborough the preserved railway uses a section of NR line to access their platform, although a wholly independent track is being constructed.

Revisiting this thread after recently having holidayed in Bridport, a lovely small English town. A particular delight was finding the Wild & Homeless Bookshop on South Street, which has a fantastic selection of railway titles. It occurs to me that the branch would have made an excellent preserved line, with its own independent access to the national network at Maiden Newton - Although with no run round loop the procedure with loco hauled trains would have been interesting - If still allowed! Presumably the branch railcar would have had to go to Bristol for maintenance, and the same, or perhaps Westbury, for fuelling - Which can't have helped the line's economics. Thanks @KeithMacdonald for the posts.

Which reminds me in turn of the time the Driver of a southbound express from Edinburgh phoned Control to say that his train had departed without him! How? - Traction Inspector and Trainee Driver had taken the train without checking where the booked Driver was.

Not Driver but Guard related; One winter Saturday there was no Guard for an Ardrossan-Glasgow Central train, but we (Control) spotted that another Guard was booked to travel passenger on that same service - Problem solved! However the Guard was nowhere to be seen, it transpired he had gone into Glasgow earlier to do his Christmas shopping....

For an awful lot longer than a decade or two! When I joined BR in 1978 6 12-hour shifts a week in summer was not unusual, and when I retired in 2016 I was still being asked to do similar.

Merrymaker/'Holiday Preview Express' memories from the 1970s, all from Oxford; Blackpool, from where we immediately returned to Preston to spot. Sheffield (presumably a stop on a train to York), on Saturday 19th April 1975. From Sheffield we took the train to Rotherham then bus to Wath, and later train to Darnall to walk to Tinsley. We didn't mess around that day! Barry Island, in a 9-car Class 117 DMU formation. We did the scrapyard, and also Radyr. Glasgow Central, on Saturday 11th November 1978. As part of an Inter-City Railway Society group which included a coach tour of various Glasgow area depots, and Glasgow Works.

No doubt! One SPAD I was aware of occurred during a shunt move, the Driver and Signaller, being acquaintances, agreed not to report the incident. However someone else knew what had happened, and when, as was inevitable, the higher-ups became aware, the staff were in more trouble than if they had reported the SPAD in the first place.

Hmm.... they were certainly different days back then, but I am not sure that the non-reporting, and therefore non-investigation, of a SPAD which could have caused points to be run through, if not a collision, is really how a railway should be run.

Not surprised at all, having been responsible as a Controller for agreeing and arranging many such moves with Signallers; But in all cases these would have been a short distance back to a station platform where passengers could detrain. Running a passenger train for 16 miles in the wrong direction with neither bi-directional signalling in place nor single line working instituted is a very different thing, and even when the section concerned was under the control of the same Signaller this did not, ever, happen during my time; The only exception being when, for example a train had failed on the WCML and a wrong direction move between the nearest crossovers was agreed to get an assisting loco to the front of the failure.

Would that move, for a passenger train, have been possible without instituting full Single Line Working, ie with a Pilotman? And if it was, would the Signaller not have suggested it to Control (although maybe they did)?

The cable suspension bridges holding up the catenary are headspans, and while they are used in the UK they have the disadvantage that a failure can affect multiple tracks, rather than just one with independent (or more robust as per the GWML) overhead line supports. BTW thanks for your interesting and amusing travelogue!

The walk from Partick station to the Riverside Museum is not far, just go under the railway and head for the river! I would say 10 minutes, 15 at most. If travelling by train from Central Low Level, the Museum is visible approaching Partick. The only issue is a busy road to cross.