Rivercider

There was a thread or two about modern local wagon repair depots including pictures of Westbury on RMweb some years back. The building at Westbury was known by some as the 'Elephant House'. cheers

That is a great comprehensive reply, Frodingham was a place I only visited a couple of times, My last visit over 40 years ago, and I am struggling to place the other photos I took there. Traincrew were boarding 31192 in the yard at Frodingham. 25/6/82 31111 in the yard at Frodingham. What was the yellow van behind the loco, a former fish van? I see on Paul Bartlett's site that 042206 (former 88038) was still in the Scunthorpe area many years later. 25/6/82 cheers

Although most of the photos have dropped off there might be something useful here cheers

My last visit to Taffs Well was in about 1983, I guess I would not recognise the place now. To contrast Brian's photo looking south at Taffs Well here is a view from a wet day in 1980. 37162 heads north towards Pontypridd with coal empties past Walnut Tree Junction signal box 14/11/80 cheers

I would think more likely that the class 22 is either on the Barnstaple/Marland/Meeth freight and clay trips, or the Torrington milk trip, cheers

By the mid 1970s how many stations still had a station pilot loco? I have found the Inter City Railway Society 'Shunter Duties' booklets to be a good guide based on the listings for the WR compared to my recollections and WR publications I hold. For the LMR the 1979 Shunter Duties booklet shows the following specifically mentioned station or parcels pilots:- Liverpool Lime St, Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton Parcels, Rugby, Bedford Midland Rd, Bletchley, Shrewsbury, Stafford, Crewe upside, Crewe Downside (3), St Pancras, Derby(2), Holyhead, Carlisle (2), Manchester Mayfield, Leicester, Oldham Clegg St, Preston, Wigan North Western, Birmingham New St, Curzon St Parcels (2), Nottingham Parcels (2), Note some of these are listed to also trip and shunt elsewhere, while other duties are shown to be based elsewhere but spend evenings or nights shunting at other stations, I have a complete set of Local Trip booklets for the West of England Division of the WR dating to May 1975. A few station pilots were available and manned 24 hours a day excepting weekends, while others were present only a few hours a day, often evening and night time. The following West of England stations had a station pilot duty in May 1975 (* limited hours only) Swindon 1*, Bristol Temple Meads (2), Exeter St David's 1, Newton Abbot 1, (plus one *), Plymouth 1, Penzance 1, Gloucester 1, Worcester 1 (plus 1*), Taunton 1*, cheers

My memory is that in the 1970s there was still a significant amount of parcel train services. As mentioned above some intermediate locations were served by a platform call only with no attaching or detaching, but a number of locations did receive or dispatch vans. I was a TOPS clerk in Bristol from 1978 and remember processing parcel van releases to various location, including Swindon, Gloucester, Worcester, Birmingham New St, Manchester (Mayfield and Piccadilly), Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Peterborough etc. From Bristol the weekly Observer colour supplement was also loaded at Pylle Hill, this would be one GUV or BG a week to a number of destinations. Also remember there was Readers Digest traffic in SPVs from Aylesbury still passing in the 1970s. What overnight Newsvan services ran on the Midland? On the WR where were a number of services from Paddington, some of them detached a van (or two) at locations along the way. I believe it was 1980 when BR made a significant reduction in the parcel train network, this resulted in a major cull of pre-nationalisation stock, and also 4-wheeled stock, cheers

Last week when visiting the lovely South Devon Railway I noticed this little collection on the up platform while changing trains at Totnes. Totnes 24/7/2023 And of course although the Atmospheric Railway was never commissioned beyond Newton Abbot the buildings of the pumping station still remain at Totnes, Totnes 24/7/2023 cheers

Thanks for that, I see some incidents I had not picked up before. I see there was an accident in May 1859 on the Cornwall Railway at Grove Viaduct with three fatalities where two carriages fell from the viaduct, cheers

Thanks. The M7 derailment at Tavistock in 1898 was one that I had thought of, but fortunately there were no fatalities, M7s were no longer used on Plymouth to Exeter fast services after that incident. cheers

Thanks for that link. Looking through quickly it seems all fatalities in Devon and Cornwall were of train crew, or railway workmen cheers

Thanks for that link. The Menheniot incident ('alright Dickey') involved two goods trains with one fatality, so no passengers involved. The only incident involving passenger fatalities I can see was the unfortunate incident at Bere Ferrers involving a troop train in 1917. Ten members of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force were run down and killed after leaving the train believing in error that they had reached Exeter. edit - There was also the bombing of Newton Abbot station in August 1940 with ten members of the public killed (in addition to railway staff), I think they were all passengers on a local train stood in the station at the time cheers

Have there ever been any passenger train fatalities in Devon or Cornwall, (excluding passengers falling from trains, or suicides)? I am guessing there must have been a passenger train incident resulting in fatalities at some point in history, though I can't think of one myself. Any ideas? cheers

According to the Freight Train Load books they could haul the same as the British built ones, which for many routes was 36 MGR wagons full of rice pudding, - the same as class 58s, (and six more wagons than a class 47) cheers

I first remember Gloucester from around 1971 when passing through there on trips from Somerset heading north. Gloucester Old Yard is the name of the sidings to the north of the station, I remember there usually being a good selection of parcels stock there as well. Good luck with the project, I will be interested to see that. cheers

Yes, during my time in Freight Train Planning in WR HQ Swindon 1985-86 I remember Penallta was one of the forwarding points for coal to Aberthaw, I wish I had retained even just one weekly freight train notice from those days. cheers

Hi Rob. I had a good day out at Larkrail yesterday, it was a good show. I enjoyed Sheep Dip, it is very atmospheric, and as others mentioned at the time the trees and bushes look really good. I see you have a lot of followers cheers

In previous years I have found that the Larkhall Inn acts as a perfectly satisfactory change dispenser, mind you as I am not driving to the exhibition I will not be ordering black coffee at the Larkhall Inn, - edit - it will be something stronger... cheers

Back in the late 1970s, early on in my railway career, I was given some generally good natured stick about my trainspotting and railway photography. However on the occasions when I took some of my photos in to work it was surprising how many of my colleagues took an interest. To be fair most of the old hand supervisors that worked in the Bristol Area Freight Centre with us were very supportive and encouraging to me. Towards the end of my railway career in the early 2000s there did seem to be more railway enthusiast railway colleagues that I became aware of. Thinking about my personal views as an (ex) railwayman about other enthusiasts, I think it depends on the specific interest of the enthusiast(s) concerned, and how they carry it out. Railways in general is a huge subject, so the interest may be in numbertaking, photography, haulage or route 'bashing', preservation, railway history etc etc. I have a lot of time for those who are generally 'enthusiastic' about railways. Occasionally find it tiresome to hear or read some of the repetitive banter about the relative merits of certain loco classes over others, especially when they seem to have no understanding of the practical reason why operationally one class of loco might be preferred over another. cheers

My interests lie further west. The book 'London and South Western Railway - Engine Sheds Western District' by Hawkins and Reeve is excellent. It has depot plans, allocations, and also notes the duties the locos worked and the drivers links and their route knowledge. Is there another another similar book covering the London District? cheers

I enjoyed that cheers

After many years of good intention I finally managed to get to see the Penarth exhibition for the first time yesterday. I thought it was a good show, some layouts I had enjoyed before, and a number that were new to me. It was a friendly show, I enjoyed lengthy conversations with several operators, and it was good to catch up with a few people I have met before. Thank you to the organisers and exhibitors. cheers

This is an interesting thread, with a lot of useful contributions. It is relevant to me and Mrs Rivercider as I am intending to fully retire from my part time job in October, hopefully concurrent with a house move. We do try to keep a watch on our finances (Mrs R in particular), but are able to eat out from time to time, and take short hotel breaks several times a year. I think we could describe our lifestyle as being moderate, the quoted figure of £34,000 for a moderate lifestyle seems pretty accurate I would say. Our income had been somewhat lower than that, but Mrs R made some voluntary additional NI contributions to increase her State Pension, just as the rate increased earlier this year. We were both made redundant from full time work back in 2007 co-incidentally within 4 months of each other, but both of us had seen the redundancy coming from some years ahead. We had already increased our mortgage repayments to the max, and used some of her redundancy lump sum to pay off the remainder of our modest mortgage. She had the benefit from work (DWP) of a day of financial advice, and access to a financial advisor who has since been invaluable, also advising me when I left EWS. Since 2007 we have both enjoyed part time working, and were both able to draw our respective occupation pensions from age 50 (though at a reduced rate). We both reduced our part time weekly hours over the years, which I think has been a good way to go, rather than a sudden move from a 5-6 day week to a full retirement stop. When we can we both like to do some walking, (coast path or similar), and I intend to do more of that if I can. I think that most of my friends, (now aged 55 - 70) do not have such good pension arrangements even though many of them were probably on a much higher salary back in the 1980s/90s/2000s. I count myself lucky to have been born into a railway family in that respect - basic pay was not great, but I worked many unsocial shifts over the years and made addition contributions to BRASS, which has helped put us where we are now. cheers

From Facebook, the transporter hauling 43041 broke down on Haldon Hill east of Exeter, cheers

A friend of mine went down to Portbury and photographed it coming out of the dock gates. We were discussing the class 93s at last nights railway society meeting. He thinks the other members of the class will also come through Portbury. Perhaps once the first one has been assessed and accepted the others might be able to travel by rail on arrival? cheers