rodent279

Straying slightly from topic, does anyone know why, when cdl was fitted to mk2 & 3 aircon stock, inside door handles were not fitted and the droplights sealed in the up position?

53 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Both the LT&SR and the GER used St Pancras as their West End terminus

Didn't know that! Did the LNER continue with this?

It's a bribe

Am I alone in thinking this is like watching a sort of a railway version of EastEnders/Coronation St/<insert favourite naff soap opera here>?

8 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

The Midland had been a long-term shareholder in the Great Western, from its early investment in the South Devon Railway

So did that mean the LMS was a shareholder in the GWR?

18 hours ago, montyburns56 said:

 

I wasn't familiar with this station and searched Flickr for more pictures of it and I can't think of another station whose atmosphere has been ruined so much by its "preservation".

 

 

A Grange with a 51xx coupled inside bunker first-model that and wait for the helpful comments!

45 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Maybe but the essential difference - like some other lines in the leisure category (rather than 'heritage') - is that it is not a preserved station.   It is now an intermediate station on a leisure line which is run as a business and is that railway's main engineering base.

 

Below are two photos which I took, during an IRSE visit back in 2009, n the building which is on the left in the third photo above .  they show parts if the new signalling control panel for the entire line which was manufactured in that building.

 

 

So that is a bespoke design? Did it need safety validation/certification?

Although we've strayed somewhat from the original topic, this is very interesting stuff-keep it up!

1 minute ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

I think that Fenchurch Street was owned by the London and Blackwall Railway. The Eastern Counties/Great Eastern also seem to have invested in it. Thus the station went with the GER and London and Blackwall to the LNER.

So who operated most trains at Fenchurch St? If it was the LTSR, that makes it unusual in being a major London terminus owned by one company,  but with most trains operated by another.

12 minutes ago, Aire Head said:

 

There is no reason to split off the LTSR from the LMS and such a move would have ilicitied much protest too and set an uncomfortable precedent. It would have bogged down the grouping even more by causing bickering over who gets to have what. After all if you can arbiterily remove a bit off one company what's to say you can't do it to another one?

Yes, thinking about it, this makes sense. One could imagine the Midland then protesting that the MSWJ went into the GW.

So were any companies split or partitioned under the RA1921? Was it simply an exercise in reduce the number of controlling interests, rather than an attempt at reshaping the geography?

Interesting that the LTSR had committed to electrify, would it have been 3rd rail DC or overhead line? Id assume 3/4rDC for compatibility with the District railway. One for the Imaginary Railways thread.

Perhaps another question would be if the MR takeover had not happened,  would the LTSR have gone into the LNER, or would it & the District Railway have been combined?

Yes, but could the Act not have split the LTSR away from the Midland and put it in with the LNER? The London & Blackwall Railway existed, in legal terms at least, until the Grouping, and was combined with the LNER.

This may have been covered before, but.....

I realise the the Midland took over the LTSR in 1912, and I have read that the LTSR dropped many hints to the GER about a merger or buyout, but they never took the hint.

Why then did the 1921 Railways act group the LTSR into the LMSR, and not in the LNER?

One from the LSL pool then-what have they got? A couple of Bulleids, a Scot, a couple of class 5s?

I suppose the thing to bear in mind is if that door, especially if it was one of the wider wrap-round doors of later mk2/3 stock, swung open as you grabbed it, then (if it is opening towards the rear of the train) at anything above about a walking pace, it will act like a sail, swing open very quickly, carry you with it, and you wouldn't be here relating this tale.

So, if WCRC have now been banned from using their Mk1s on the mainline with immediate effect, that must place a whole load of railtours at risk? For example, the tour I did with a pair of 33s in early Dec was all WCRC mk1s. Ok they could have used a rake of mk2s, but only if they are not required elsewhere. Cromptons being air braked and ETH fitted could brake and power them, but certain kettles would have a problem.

They really should have called it Birmingham University Train & Transport Society.

20 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

So we've got to kill somebody before we fix a problem?

OT, but sometimes that does seem to be the approach. We used to live on a road that was used as a rat run. It was a residential area, 30mph, lots of parked cars, several bends and on a hill. We asked the council about traffic calming measures and they put up a speed trap right outside our house for 6 months.  After the data collection period was over, the council said they would not do anything as the median vehicle speed was only 40mph*, and only 3 cars had been detected exceeding 70mph.

I read that as "until someone dies or is seriously injured, we won't do anything".

*might not have been 40, but certainly well over 30.

9 minutes ago, 03060 said:

 

Or is it a line up of Pannier tanks and @2ManySpams new software has been at work ?? (See p.738 of The Sheep Chronicles !)

Tribbles, they're filming a new Star Trek there!

4 minutes ago, class26 said:

A simple example which we have all seen is on coffee cups "warning, the content of this cup might be hot" and similar, If I buy a coffee I hope it is hot.

Why exactly is this a problem? Doesn't bother me in the slightest, I don't need to be told either, but I'm quite happy for it to be printed on a cup, it's no skin off my nose.

4 hours ago, black and decker boy said:

for now, I think everyone expects WCRC to do what it should have started doing 4 years ago and fit / reinstate working CDL to its fleet.

But even if they did fit CDL, would we trust them to maintain it in operable condition? How long before ORR are slapping another prohibition order on them because they were discovered using a carriage with CDL inoperative?

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

So you never played on bomb sites, ventured into old buildings to see what was there, swung from a rope tied to a tree branch, had a look over the other sides of fences (especially if you had an interest in trains), climbed up wooden advertising structures to look down on the people in the street below.

 

Children have always taken risks, it comes with the inquisitive nature of growing up and it's how you find yourself.

Two examples of common sense from "the good old days".

I used to love walking along the top of the fence that bordered the car park & recreation ground at my local station. It was made out of old railway sleepers, and was about 100m long, largely straight, but not an even height. 

Until I fell off it and broke my wrist. Fortunately I landed on the grass side, not in the car park with it's hard old ballast surface, or on a car, which could have resulted in something more serious. But no harm done really, apart from injured pride. Would it have been "nanny state, elf & softee gorn mad" to prevent me from doing it? Of course not, and that's what happened some years later, when access to the fence was restricted by iron railings between the footbridge and the start of the fence.

The other, more serious one, was around the same time, a couple of miles away at the local tunnel. A lad of about 17 was playing with a bit of cable, dangling it over the tunnel mouth as paying trains went through. This is the electrified WCML, so you can imagine what happened eventually. Stupid idiot? Yes, but should he be have been allowed access to the space above the tunnel? No, of course not. It was fenced, but not adequately, and shortly afterwards the fence was replaced with proper iron spiked fencing.

26 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

I find some of the inferences to 'elf'n safety gone made, nanny state-ism etc disappointing. The UK is a much safer place than it was when I was growing up and entered the work place. When I left school in 1989 there was a General Hague-ish mentality of 'you have to expect casualties in a heavy industry' and a certain level of major industries and fatalities was seen as just part of doing business. There has been a complete sea change and we now question any injury, let alone fatality (and rightly so) as it is no longer normal for any industry to just have accidents. I think that is something to celebrate, not deride. Are there examples of H&S sillyness? Yes, but usually it is people in H&S who don't understand H&S legislation or the industry they work within. I've worked in commercial shipping, offshore oil and gas, electricity generation and nuclear fuels, in all of them I say a steady escalation of safety regulation and demands to improve safety performance, in none of them did it stop business or even make it unduly inconvenient or more expensive.

I agree, it seems to be a knee-jerk reaction on the part of the old guard reactionaries, for whom any improvements in H&S are seen as nanny state, 'elf & softee, namby-pamby etc. I'm tired of it, it's like a broken record.

Back in the "good old days", irresponsible people still did silly things that put themselves and other in danger, so it's not that "we didn't need it then", we did need it, but a few deaths and serious injuries were taken as par for the course. We take a different,  much more pro-active view now, and I for one am glad of that, and am unapologetic about it.

Really, BR should not have been allowed to build a whole raft of passenger rolling stock from the late 60's on without at least CDL, and ideally anything mk2 & upwards should have had power operated doors. Slam door emus were still being built as late as 1976.

But as usual we insist on doing it on the cheap, so it didn't happen. 

8 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

The Hastings Thumper I understand was the first preserved mainline “mk1” set to have cdl fitted.

This was signed off in 2007, thats 16 years ago now, since the concept was proven to work in heritage use… they actually started work on it in 2005.

 

Theres a very good page about cdl here…

 

https://www.hastingsdiesels.co.uk/news/articles/2005a02/

 

And as if to prove it works after 16 years, the thumper itself was still out and about on the network just last week.

 

 

 

Is the thumper vacuum braked? Steam hauled thumper for the Jacobite? Paint it maroon, the normals will never know the difference! Problem solved 🤩

They're just playing stupid pr games, trying to make ORR take the blame if the Harry Potter thing falls apart. Well done ORRfor getting tough.