The Stationmaster

I much prefered using the thinnest grade of florists' wire beaten flat because you can easily (and carefully) recreate all the different right angle bends in different directions in some Western lamp irons. Plus you have something round to fix into a nice round hole drilled into the loco/tender body.

Think of the alternative - all the exterior doors would not be locked, and as they don't have CDL passengers would still not be permitted to travel in those vehicles. Yet again WCRC appear to be taking the whatsit and ignoring the Rules (again).

Sorry Phil but in some respects that was not how The Treasury financial model for privatisation was intended to work. Because I spent a dau y with teh Treasury team who worked on the financial aspects of privitisation I had the chance to ask them lots of questions, and they were happy to give straight answers. Yes it did have a base case that the total sum paid to franchises would reduce (and also that income from some franchises would increase) because of improved efficiency. In this respect 'efficiency' would probably be best measured as headcount in , for example, the way in which Virgin tore into middle management and supervisory jobs on the WCML when it first got that franchise. But that was only part of the model. The other art of the mdel - which the politicos failed to understand and gave in to greed - was in the way infrastructure would be financed. This would be via Access Charges which would ensure that the infrastructure authority would be solvent and have the necessary funds to do its job. Ths that money was seen as simply passing through the operating companies to the infrastructure authority as, in effect, a hidden subsidy which would be off the direct Govt books. So the model did two things - first franchise costs would reduce due to improvements in efficiency, and secondly the infrastructure authority would remain cad sh positive without any ther form of subsidy from Govt. But where it started to go desperately wrong was when the politricos decided to sell off the infrastructure authority and those who bought it saw it as a cash cow to pay duvidends rather than a not. for profit concern which invested its surplus income in its network. Bob Horton had an awful lot to answer for let alone the gauge cornner cracking problem which was reallya direct consequence of teh way he ran the company seeking ever larger dividend payouts at teh cost of cutting maintenance. Where the franchise costs went wrong was probably just as simple - removing the Franchise Director and putting the job with Civil Servants who had probably been licking stamps in a Labour Exchange the week before (nowadays they seem to commute from Vienna) removed the one vestige of professionalism and consistent involvement the system had. And of course The treasury also got its mitts in there as well and started screwing non-existent moneys out of franchisees who could never get in that much revenue ina month of Sundays. Compare the passenger franchise costs with the freight operators who in many respects have n0 choice but to stand on their own financial feet. Personally I don't see all that much wrong with teh franchise system but it is alas wide open to poor or non-existent management bu y those who let the franchises - and the last people I'd employ to do that are Civil Servants. No wonder it all costs more when you look at the financial shambles DafT created all on its own with the IET project. if they can't control costs on their own project why would one expect them to be able to question the costs implied in franchise bids?

So how do the cost of all those things compare with the costs of doing the same things in BR days? For a start all of the committees established to sort out disputes barred absolutely the presence of the legal trade from their deliberations - in fact we used to love chucking them if anyone was daft enough to be ring one with them. That has changed so why has it changed - it wasn't necessary previously so wj hy is it now with extremely clear procedures and no wriggle room for the legal trade to make money out of it. And what ec xactly has been duplicated since BR vanished - all the BR sectors and sub-sectors had these various managerial functions you mention and 'disputes' or disagreements between them still had to be sorted out - sometimes in terminable meetings where doodling became the main task of some present (that was before bullsh*t bing was invented). And what quangos are there? The only one I can think of is RSSB which is a separate organisation which does what used to be done by committees inside BR that probably involved more people than does RSSB. What isn't joined up about decision making any less now than it was in BR days - the multiplicity of coupling systems began on BR (and on some of the Grouped companies too); traction variety is less now than it has ever been. Yes the railway costs more but ask why that really is and what is being unnecessarily included in the totals now that wasn't in the past. Forget money and just look at the number of people involved above frontline jobs - that would make a very interesting comparison and that number is more relevant than the £ signs..

Define 'economic devastation'. If you start off with an empty piggy bank how do you buy new toys/? Similarly if you start off with empty state coffers how do you set about spending money? As for "economic devastation' what we are seeing now is as nothing compared with real economic devastation as in the 1920s and '30s and compared with the rates some of us were paying back in the 1970s mortgage rates while no longer at an all time low are still quite reasonable. similarly the ercentage of average household income spent on food has dropped massively over the years - in 1957 it accounted for 33% of household spend - currently is around 12%. AWages and other incomes have increased massively even after taking into account inflation and the number of people out of work and actively seeking employment is fewer as a percentage of the total labour force than it has been in teh past although the raw number remains very high. I know thi ngs vary around the country including salaries but benefits are. national. I'm not saying we liv ina land of milk and honey because we don't but what please is this 'economic devastation. of which you speak

Except the Rules do not allow passengers to travel in a vehicle with all its doors locked.

So the train does not comply with Module TW5 of the Rule Book - good old WCRC.

I'll tell you one thing Phil - one of the best things to come out of privatisation was contracts. As an operator contracts actually gave me protection - protection against Railtrack carrying on with its increasingly daft levels of stupidity, protection which simplified a number of our work procedures, and protection which avoided wasting hours and hours of management time as we'd had to in BR days before we had the protection that Access Contracts gave us. And as teh railway industry had been going on & on for years about separation og f infrastructure costs from other costs privatisation also gave people that. I was against privatisation because in my view, and experience, BR was doing a good job. But once in it and working within it certain benefits were there and useful. Only problem is now that the idiots at DafT don't know how to let Franchise contracts and they just want to interfere in everything right down to staff rostering. Which is why lots of things are going, or have gone, the DafT kiddiwinks of a modern InterCity train which doesn'thave the comfort and performance of the 1970s BR design it has replaced (at much greater cost to trains operators - and hence to fares).

I could tell you why a certain person finished up on the Chiltern Line in a managerial role but I don't think I will except to say that he was sent there, from his previous post, after considerably upsetting various people at the BRB. Olddudders might also lknow what happened but I doubt if many, if any, others on here do.

The reason it happened is very simple - fares. And that was in many respects down to one person, a certain Tory MP who tried to stop the privatisation legislation but was eventually bought-off by allowing a clause regarding linking maximum fare increases to inflation. What the meant was that The Treasury lost control of railway fare increases and the way it had been pushing them up as hard as it could go -even if they were dressed up as increases made by BR. Pretty new liveries and sometimes 'names' such as Branson's made a bit of difference but really than main growth was very much down to Robert Adley MP, RIP. In my view Adley, somewhat improbably considering his views on it contributed far, far, more to the commercial success of rail privatisation than any other single person.

Spot on Roy. I doubt there are very many senior railway managers around today who are prepared to tell the seemingly clueless (un)Civil Servants at DafT to go away, or put in in even stronger terms. there one or two about but teh est of them don't seem to have much idea and some have definitely got where they are by making money saving cuts of various things then moving on after being so clever and leavinga mess for their successors to sort out. In BR days some of those wouldn't even have been put in charge of a station toilet in case they made a hash of it. So great big NO!! BR cannot be recreated and a part of the reason is they way that has happened is that since tit ended 'they' have set out to simply destroy it and its handed down managerial training, experience, and competencies.

Well the trains starting From Paddington Goods were of course Goods rated traffic but in a variety of vehicles and for a variety of destinations as the trains were segregated to simplify the working at the various intermediate yards at which they called. As I mentioned at one time the coal empties from Crimea Yard - which was a large domestic coal yard, called at Aberdare Sidings at Old Oak to pick up although that stop was not made if the train was already up to full load. A lot of the London are coal traffic - both loaded and emopty was routed vu ia Old Oak c Common yards and not Acton - particularly transfer traffic routed via the West London Line. aberdare sidings at Old oak got their name for the very obvious reason that they were where coal empties were collected. The routes used by coal trains from South wales to the London Division were at one time far more dic verse than many people realise. At one time there were several coal trains a day from Pontypool Road which ran via Worcester and Oxford and one of these survived into the 1930s if not later. The reason this route was used as that it was better graded than going via Gloucester or the Severn Tunnel but finally of course all remaining South Wales coal traffic for that area went via the Tunnel. Coal empties at various local yards were - as you say - cleared by local trips although the yard they went to depended very much on the way the trips were organised so many never went to Acton but were worked to either Old Oak, Southall, or Reading West Jcn or picked up at various other locations which had siding space to hold them. Originally I think the only ones which went to Acton or Old Oak were those destined for the Midlands although by the mid 1960s most of these were worked via Reading West Jcn which was a starting yard for several trains of coal empties running via Banbury etc to the Midlands. By that time very few coal empties went from the London Division to South Wales! Lots of changes over the years as I mentioned previously and WWII, with opening of new/expansion of existing sorting sidings and marshalling yards made a tremendous difference. For example post war when the GWR reintroduced fast vacuum fitted/part fitted freights one of the Paddington Goods starters made its first stop at Newbury Racecourse (partly for load reduction as well as transfer of traffic to another train) - not a place many people would think of as freight train sorting sidings.

Changing the theme away from the surplus stock mountain a change at Hornby made public yesterday. Lyndon Davies will 'for personal health related reasons' step down as non-exec Chairman of Hornby PLC on 30 April. John Stansfield will takeover the role pending seeking a new non-exec Chairman. LD will remain as a non-exec Director I hope that Lyndon is not suffering serious health problems. And now sorry to hear what happened to him. Having recently had two eye operations I know, in a very minor way, understand what it's like to be without the sight in one eye for no more than a day; losing it all must be a terrible blow.

Don't forget - unless things have changed - that Bachmann out out to retailers every year a list of what amounts to unsold stock being offered at a lightly reduced trade price. Hence any retailer who takes up that offer (and not all do) will have stock bought in at reduced price and therefore saleable at more than the usual discount below RRP. I don't think Hornby did the same but simply allowed the stock mountain to grow, and grow, until one lot of past management decided to reduce it by means of 'fire sales'. Unlike Bachmann's approach I believe - and am obviously open to correction - that this sort of heavily discounted stock was not offered to all retailers but (in some cases??) was left to reps to sell to those whom they expected would both be interested in it and able to pay for large amounts of it. I suspect that more recently when Hornby have been selling surpius stock at reduced prices they have followed the Bachmann approach. I don't follow all the retilers but I know that both Hattons and Kernow have bought such stiock and I also know that someone else, in a smaller but still quite busy, way of business has had such stock offered to him but hasn't bought any.

Hornby definitely needed to find a niche and really TT was all that was left to them and it struck an old chord of course. They were seriously looking at going back into TT 7-9 years ago but got a poor reception from TT/3mm scale modellers when they started to sound them out so nothing happened. The present TT120 has been a long time in the making and development and has cost them a lot of money especially after what one source described to me as serious mistakes in their first stab at it - when all the design was done in China. Hence it's seemingly come later than it should have done but apart from under resourcing stocks at first and making some model choices which don't appeal to the railway modelling fraternity I think they have done the right thing. But I do wonder if it's a bit too close to N in scale terms - 'Gallows Bait's remark on that was very interesting I thought. But it's here and I'm sure that it will stay and ultimately be financially very positive for them especially by opening new markets. I suspect they didn't really understand what direct selling would cost them in support etc terms plus the sheer number of additional labour resources they had to inject into their organisation. So no surprise that they have decided to let in stockists in the model railway trade. And hopefully they will get sets, if nothing else, into the wider retail market especially at Christmas - if they can get the right price point and retailer margins.

Could this be construed as a political remark I wonder or does that only come into play when we get round to the choice of livery? (sorry no emojis but I'm sure you'll treat it in tthe spirit in which it was meant)

Absolutely spot on Ron. And nothing that lots of folk don't know is even BR had started leasing rolling stock. And in fact one of the original prime movers of the idea of leasing rolling stock later became Deputy Leader of the Labour Party andwas regarded by many as being a left-winger and was even sponsored by the NUR. Leased rolling stock and traction is very definitely an economically sensible way of running a railway - whoever owns that railway.

It didn't work for Network rail - which started as exactly that. But because Govt guaranteed its debt (how else could it have borrowed money?) that ultimately that it became a state owned company.

And a squadron of Gloucester Old Spots has just passed overhead. Under BR Footplate Staff were on an 'all line vacancy list' with the very simple effect that men (most were in those days) moved to unpopoular depots in order to get their grade and then waited their turn to for their seniority in the grade to get them where they really wanted to be (often for better or more interesting turns and very often for more money). Net result was that certain depots, especially SR inner suburban ones , were perpetually short of Drivers as even those who went there for a grade quite often went elsewhere before they had finished umpteen months worth of road learning. All privatisation did was re-frame the attractions of working in certain places or on certain types of work in a different way from what had gone before - and Drivers at last started to get a basic salary that more correctly matched the responsibilities of their job. As for telling people where to go in order to work NR has already faced a lot of industrial trouble over trying to to reorganise some staff to s do exactly that. In reality contractors can get away with it, nationalidsed industries usually can't Fares are of course already set by Govt (or rather DafT) and in most cases ticket revenue goes direct t them, not to the operating companies. The lack of commercial freedom fort operators is a net result of teh change for franchises and in places it has worked out to the disadvantage of passengers. But if n effect fares have always in many respects been state controlled so that won't change. The only change will be if politicos are prepared tp stand the costs of reducing rail fares and that goes straight back to one long standing question in any nationalised industry - would you rather have a new hospital or school etc or would you like 10% etc off train fares or your water bill? Guess which one will always win - and whatever they say all the politicos know that is the case. But worst of all further state ownership would put more into the control of DafT - who didn't get that additional letter 'a' in there for nothing. MPs don't like state controlled railways - it fills their post bags with moans and expectations of them 'doing something'; and, for what it's worth the person who said that was the then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. So any 'bright new railway' hopes resulting from a Labour Govt are at best illusory and at worst unrealistic. But the oddest thing about Labour's stance is that it keeps on about nationalising NR - which was effectively nationalised by the Conservatives some years ago.

Yes, no, maybe. In some cases trains were starting from goods yards and sidings (various) long after marshalling yards had opened nearby. For example trains started from and terminated at Paddington Goods long after yards had been opened within a few miles of it - and that continued until it was closed. But it had suitable sidings to ffacilitate that sort of thing. And Paddington Goods wasn't unusual in that respect and neither was the GWR/WR. On the other hand Crimea Yard, Westbourne Park, was a domestic coal yard and handled no other traffic but for many years - long after marshalling yards were available within a couple of miles of it - a train of coal empties for South Wales started from there 9including first having to cross the Hammersmith & City Line. The train was also booked to call at Aberdare Sidings, Old Oak Common, in order to attach any coal empties which might be available there. So it all needs a bit of research into teh sort of things any particular modeller is looking to reproduce.

I'm pretty sure they have always doen exactly that by describing it as building up stock levels for ... etc. But while I agree that it is accounted for it is clearly not part of a massive heap of stuff piled up on pallets or whatever at considerable warehousing and balance sheet expense and which showed an almost continuous growth under the immediately previous management. That is where there's the really serious problem - previously tackled by 'fire sales' - that they must deal with (as, I'm sure. we're all agreed).

One thing which has changed over the years is the time of payment. in many cases in the apast payment was not made ion Chinese produced model railway items until they had been received at the UK shipping agent's port premises. But. certain behaviours by various -but particularly one person - in the UK market has meant that final payment is now often raised at factory gate. Thus although the goods are not taken into stock at that point money is being paid out. However Hornby's mountain of unsold stuff has, I'm sure, very little to do with that change of payment arrangement and is largely, if not entirely, down to past mismanagement and very poor to non-existent marketing decisions. For years a retailer friend f mine was loud in his complaint that if Hornby repeted a model in many cases they couldn't even be bothered to offer a different running number. If you don't make what folk will buy then you aren't going to sell it. Factory payment arrangements also vary with some folk repotedly still being able to get end-loaded payment where various stages of work aren't paid for until tooling starts or - I have heard in one case, -until end production starts. The time of paying out during development thus varies although hopefully it will all be ciming out of a development budgeting process which takes account of the way payments are invoiced by the factory. But whatever happens, and presumably exacerbated by the Red Sea shipping route debacle, money is now usually having to be paid out a much longer time before it can begin to be recovered as sales revenue. But budgeting and cash flow management should, I hope, recognise that problem

The difference is that the Lanarkshire models version hasn't got the section cut out of the beam to avoid excessively damaging Dellner couplings in the event of a stop block collision

Not quite as a lot of their railway design and operational requirements exactly reflect UIC requirements - i.e. they are set by an international, rather than a national, body. Although BR, and its successors have been/are UIC members we have until recent years rigorously avoided paying any attention at all to UIC requirements except in respect of traction units and rolling stock operating internationally. Somethings - such as advanced notice of Bank Holiday and engineering work train alterations would be a darned sight improved if the UK were to apply UIC requirements. Signed past member of timetable conferences, and certain other meetings relating to train operation, organised in accordance with UIC procedures.

The latter contains some errors. For example the notes in respect of 'Grove' implying it was originaly an SR code are incorrect it was a national code issued by the REC. The word was directly derived from the name of the wartime LMS headquarters at The Grove, a country house near Watford and in later years a BR training Centre (various of us on RMweb attended courses there - a long while after the war!!).