beast66606

But I’ll never be able to forgive him for Coward of the County

The coward of the county is repeatedly self-isolating...

Just in case!

HDFRS (Heavy Duty Flexible Ramming Spike) deployed....

Then light blue touch paper and retire....

Damp squib - put back to May30th with 31st May as backup to the backup

And I had the box of matches all ready....

Evidently

Quote

The crew is looking into issues with electricity in the atmosphere at the moment.

Shocking, eh?

Better safe than sorry, we don't want it doing a Branson do we?

Watched it on catch up.  According to Lord Sugar in the days when we had steam trains, we had two and half thousand miles of track.  Who's gonna be the first to argue with him?  I suppose it was to be expected we'd have a stock steam train whistle dubbed over a Merchant Navy which has a very distinctive flat tone 

I've not watched The Apprentice for many years, I don't get much pleasure from watching over-inflated egos getting a comeuppance.  I've no idea what the aim of last nights task was, but it might have been amusing if they had been set one of the "Great Model Railway" themes to complete...

Comes of drinking his age in pints.  Never mind, Nanny will soon put a stop to it with minimum unit prices for alcohol.

McNanny

A video featuring genial Harry Grout and Commissioner Gordon!

The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town?

The last time that I saw a mouse was in a Parisian restaurant. It wasn't on the menu though.

Is that like one night in Bangkok?

Network Rail not paying their bills again?

Shocking! 

Go OHM !

If in doubt, shoot twice.

pew pew

Reappeared and now standing at CO460 with 1P25 at CO454 in front - Houston, we have a problem.

It's certainly not going to win any awards for time-keeping!

Broken rail at Florden

He should have gone to SpecSavers

lol

Just after you've modelled it (in S scale of course)

Going up Lickey?

Only to Gloucester apparently - the Lickey would be some sight !

A multitude thereof!

Lots:

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

👐

And the 10p was originally introduced in 1849 as the Florin, in a failed attempt to decimalise the pound.

It only took 122 years before we finally got around to it!

A Gentleman only use Guineas...

Still legal in horse trading

Aberfan?

Yep - a sad day which is etched in my memory

A few of the designers in our office were involved in the investigation / report after Clapham, so always a sad day when it comes around.

Simon

I find it rather worrying that many people in the industry today have not heard of the Clapham incident. Indeed the RAIB reports into the incidents at Cardiff in 2016 and Waterloo in 2017 state that the lesson of Clapham have been forgotten.

Unfortunately too many people recall that this was a wiring fault done by one individual. This is not a true reflection as to what really happened. The wiring fault , the events that led up to that fault and the subsequent events after the crash demonstrated the systemic failure of BR management and processes from the top down.

BR were blaming the individual and even supported the failed prosecution against him.   Anthony Hidden saw through this and his report is most illuminating and I think  is a milestone in incident investigation. 

I would recommend anyone interested in the incident, the rail industry or investigations to read the Hidden report. 

"Having been in the cab in the dark in fog at very high speed the nerves of steel are still required"

Funny though that you don't think of it that way, it's just part of what you do. (Canterbury West branch, 1990s, no AWS, semaphore signals...)

Running fast (e.g 125 mph) in thick fog struck me as the ultimate test test of road knowledge the only time I experienced riding in a driving cab.  Very different even from running at 90mph which never bothered me one bit.  None of that solves, nor ever will, what happened at Harrow that disastrous morning although for once lessons really were learnt.

Did 125 MPH ever happen on semaphore signals?

AWS is priceless.