PerthBox

Japan has an Imperial Shinkansen. As for the Royal Train, the King is very fond of it and has been by far its most frequent user in recent years so I wouldn't write it off yet.

RHTT and MPV runs are starting on 1st of October in Scotland at least.

There are/were examples of Forms 1 and 2 on Flickr, though rather unhelpfully I can’t find them now so perhaps they’ve been deleted.

There are not one, not two, but three funiculars in Lisbon - Lavra, Gloria and Bica. Each with a different design of car.

It has been running regularly as usual… in fact it ran today! https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:R02133/2022-07-18/detailed https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:R02139/2022-07-18/detailed The traffic from Aberdeen has never run to Sleaford (as far as I know) but the 2020 trial to Spalding didn’t result in a contract.

It wasn’t a criticism, there’s no need to be so defensive.

The 1941 LMS Royal Train armoured saloons (798 and 799) had what was described as ‘air conditioning’ but was actually a pressure ventilation system which could be arranged to direct the incoming air over/through a box full of ice. The ice had to be regularly replenished.

Please correct me if I’m wrong but my understanding is that the proper official name for the loco is just DELTIC and referring to it as DP1 is something that was only adopted by enthusiasts after the appearance of DP2.

The shrouds were partly to reduce draughts but mostly to stop you being able to poke your fingers between the face plates as they slide relative to each other on curves. A mk1 pullman gangway is easily capable of amputating a child’s finger when traversing pointwork…

That’s right, the hinged doors as per the above pic had a handle set in a circular indentation. It’s probably also worth pointing out that the hinged doors had a ‘tower bolt’ for secondary locking while sliding doors had a ‘French pin’ which was retained on a short chain. The General Appendix emphasised that the rubber gangway shrouds had to be disconnected before attempting to uncouple coaches but I’ve never seen an instruction as to where they were supposed to be stowed or whether they could be left hung up (as they often were)

Well I’ve learnt something new today! I can’t imagine many circumstances where you’d want the thing to trundle about on its own but I suppose it might come in handy on a depot. Were driving controls provided at the other end too?

Exactly!

With GSM-R you can 'role share' which allows a nominated adjacent box or panel to take over the GSM-R profile of another box or panel if there's a failure or when the box is closed. I'm surprised that it would be as extreme as Leicester to TVSC but that might just have been down to teething problems as the system was being rolled out. Interestingly the FTN switching centre (which controls the GSM-R network, all calls on the network are routed via there) is located in a seperate building at Didcot so I wonder if that's actually who you spoke to...?

As you rightly say, for Network Rail it was always a pipe dream to have standby duplication for the ROCs. The whole thing would cost far too much and would be fraught with impracticality. However, I visited NATS Prestwick Centre in 2018 at at the time I visited they were in the process of spending very very serious amounts of money installing a large bank of standby radar workstations in a corner of the operating floor, intended as a contingency if the Swanwick Centre is ever unusable for a prolonged period. The idea being that controllers based at Swanwick would be transported up the road and would be able to maintain some sort of reduced capacity service once the big frankenstein switch was thrown to transfer control north. I was told that workstations duplicating some of Prestwick’s functions (excluding the Oceanic bit) were also being installed at Swanwick as part of the same project. The whole idea was intriguing and I would love to know whether or not they actually got everything to work. If I were a betting man I’d guess it has probably all been quietly forgotten about by now!

One of the interesting things at West of Scotland SC at Cowlairs in Glasgow (which is built to the standard NR ROC design) is that there’s no running water if the mains power supply fails and drops onto the emergency generator. An extended power outage in 2019 saw the toilets become completely unhygienic and unusable within a single shift. I presume all the other ROC buildings would be similary afflicted.

Yes the Mk3 Royal saloons, Household coaches and the Mk2 escort/power coaches have had controlled emission toilets since conversion/new.

Hi Ed, did you ever finish these? If so any chance of a few photos please?

That’s very interesting - thanks for filling in the missing details. Information is scarce online so I could only report my own observations. The tanktainers on 4H47/4D47 are a relatively recent development so presumably the traffic ex Avonmouth went by sea or road all the way.

LNG returned to rail in Scotland a couple of years ago, supplying Wick and Thurso which are isolated from the gas National Transmission System. It is conveyed in tanktainers on 4H47 0504 Mossend - Inverness then north by road to be injected into the local Scottish Gas Networks gas grid. The empty tanktainers return on 4D47 1310 Inverness - Mossend. Here’s a photo (not taken by me):

There’s a memorial on platform 4 at Dundee station to the victims of the 1979 Invergowrie accident and one was unveiled last year at Stonehaven station dedicated to those killed in the 2020 Carmont accident.

One traffic that lasted into the mid 2000s was seed potatoes from the north east of Scotland to various estinations in the east of England. Here's a typical shot from Jim Ramsay and Alan Mitchell respectively:

It does, in great detail. Why not have a read of it?

Is that a TV aerial on the station building? Seems odd to have one there in 1959

Check out the pole route in the background, a great illustration of the lineman's art!

Perth men signed them in the 1960s and they were regulars on Perth shed until it closed in October '69. I am sure I've seen a black and white photo on Flickr of a class 46 at Inverness but, of course, I can't find it now.