TheSignalEngineer

And before the days of riding in the back cab there would be a standard BR Vac-fitted Brake Van just to keep the guard warm.

The familiarity factor can have a large bearing on SPAD and similar incidents. When i did a road commute I regularly drove the same roads at the same time every day. By Friday I would get to the state where I had no idea where on the M1 I actually was. To overcome this I worked out four routes of similar length and drove at least one variation during each week, sometimes depending on roadworks, incidents etc. I found that by doing this I was also more awake when I got to work than using the same routine every day. I remember that before sectorisation most New Street drivers used to work cyclic rosters which took them on different routes and traction. Over a period of about two months they would cover most of the relief points and loco types on services passing through. It must have been much better than driving the same type of train on a captive service for a TOC or tram operator.

For footplate staff a second contributory accident was that at Stafford in August 1990 where a driver was unfortunately killed. It turned out that he was working his 26th consecutive shift. http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/HSE_Stafford1990.pdf A big difficulty we had in policing working hours at our works depot was people moonlighting and turning up for a day shift after doing a night shift as a security guard or similar activities. Fragmentisation of the industry makes it even more difficult with the number of agency staff particularly in on-track roles. I had people turn up for weekend shifts when they had already done a full week with a civils contractor on building works.

Didn't think any got to Barry.

Looks like my point rodding will be on hold for a little while until yours appears. Have you any plans for LMS/BR style?

As an example if the regulating rule was that a freight could be let out if the next passenger was due in more than 12 minutes, then one freight per gap could be let out in a 20-minute interval passemger service, two could be let out into a gap on a 30-minute service. Increasing the passenger service from 2 per hour to 3 per hour reduces the freight capacity from 4 to 3. Increasing the passenger service from 3 per hour to 4 per hour increases the available gaps to 4.

Theoretical headways for through running are of little use in deciding what a line will take. Usually the deciding factor is the time taken to stop and start plus station dwell time. When I commuted on the Birmingham - Coventry line in the 1970s a Bescot - Banbury freight was booked out in front of our local at Stechford. Quite often the 25 came trundling past us as we ran into Stechford. From Marston Green to Canley the local was running on greens all the way because its overall average speed including stops was only 30mph but the freight could do 35mph. The North London Line in the 1980s was another good example of the effect of stopping patterns and train mix on headways. Freight trains could mostly out-perform passengers over the full length of my section due to station stops. At the time there were three all-stations passengers per hour with one freight in each gap. the gaps were not quite big enough to reliably allow two freights. The Freight man was very pleased when NSE suggested running four stoppers per hour as there was still time to get one freight in each gap so he got an extra path.

Is 3203 at Gloucester Central?

92022 was at 9D Newton Heath from June 1964 to February 1966.

In those days some stock still had the toilet tanks filled through the roof. I remember some ex-GWR stations with filling hoses on the platform canopies and hearing staff walking alomg the top of the train.

What a fantastic train. Bagged cement in the 12T van fitted with end door so you don't have to unload onto the cess or opposite track. Man pushing barrow over boards laid on top of sand and gravel in 3-plank opens. Concrete mixing on a completely unguarded flat wagon and another flat with a water tank.

It looks as if three of the vans could be scrappers or en route to works. I can't tell what the vehicle behind the vans is but looking at the back of the train there is something else, possibly another loco. A bit of positioning going on?

I don't recall any coal drops in the Birmingham area, all of the local yards seemed to be hand unloading from 7-planks and 16t minerals in my boyhood. When the CCD at Small Heath opened it was served by 21T hoppers. Nechells Power Station had a side-tipper and Coventry Power Station had a full rotating tipper. In the main, Stourbridge and Dudley areas were connected to the GWR, many by the Pensnett Railway. The South Shropshire area around what is now Telford was served by a miriad of branches owned by both the GWR and LNWR. The LNW served much of the Cannock Chase coalfield but it was also crossed by the Midland's Walsall Wood branch. Hamstead Colliery at Birmingham and the Coventry/Bedworth area of the Warwickshire coalfied were LNWR. The Kingsbury and Stockingford areas of the Warwickshire coalfield were served by the Midland, although Baddesley Colliery was connected to both the Midland's Kingsbury Branch and the LNWR's Trent Valley line near Atherstone. The other thing to remember is that many of the collieries had connections to canals, e.g. Baddesley mentioned above had a basin on the Coventry Canal served by the line connecting the colliery to the LNWR.

In the 1960s we still had the old Crown Agents set-up, where a lot of BR engineers went to the Commonwealth countries to work on modernisation of their railways. This helped with continuity during slack periods at home amd maintained a good export market for our contractors. A far a signaliing was concerned a lot of LMR engineering trainees like myself worked on the original West Coast and Weaver-Glasgow electrification. In between we were on Saltley, Derby and Trent which at the time were being billed as part of the proposed Swansea to York and St Pancras to Leeds electrification schemes. Some stayed with the HQ Modernisation section whilst others went into local offices to cover maintenance and renewal activities and individual remodelling projects. Because of the way the department was structured in those days we got involved in everything from drawing the plans and diagrams, digging the holes, running the wires, testing and commissioning, supervising staff and managing projects, through to keeping the system performing in service. This structure for gaining, maintaining and passing on knowledge and skills was almost completely destroyed during the Sectorisation and Privatisation processes. A lot of records of why particular things had been done in the way they were also went into the skip at the same time.

Correct. I forgot about the Hitchin hiatus. IIRC Hitchin completed 1978, Peterborough not done until 1987. Shows up my point even more.

Probably because some of those commenting have done it for 40-50 years. Things my Grandad taught me about sequencing jobs still hold true today in many instances and he learned his trade on the LNWR.

Not just NR are useless at planning work in "Possessions" On the main road near us United Utilities are renewing the connection from the main in the middle of the road to a property being refubished. Day 1 - Road dug up, new pipe connected to main, meter and stop tap installed in pavement. Day 2 - No sign of anyone, trench still open. Day 3 - Ditto What will Day 4 bring? Probably no change and still suffering temporary traffic signals. Unfortunately this sort of thing is the way of the privatised world, where a job formerly done in one session by one in-house team is now sub-contracted and sub-sub contracted with a delay between each step as the subcontactor is waiting to be told the previous step is complete before allocating anyone to the job.

Unfortunately we don't have many proper trains these days. When WCML was originally done it was easy to do a section and change traction type with the same carriages. This was fortunate for, as told to me by one of the senior engineers involved from the late 1950s, BR was able to start from Manchester and Liverpool. No Government would completely pull the plug before it got to London. If they had started at Euston the view in some parts of BR in the 1960s was that they would have been lucky to get north of Rugby. Just look how long it took ECML to get to Edinburgh after Kings Cross - Peterborough Hitchin went live. Edited for Hitchin break.

We have already had this week a clear demonstration of what can happen when information is released. The BBC and RedTops are already putting out uncorroborated statements at least one of which BTP have refused to confirm. When commenting on any incident we need to stick to known facts rather than speculation and social media comment, however close to the scene.

As there is a BTP investigation in progress regarding the cause I suggest this thread is locked until further notice.

One of the main contractors on WCML was BICC, who had been involved on GE and Woodhead for the previous 10 or more years. Pirelli, the other main contractor had been supplying wires for Italian railways since about 1905. BR may not have had a lot of internal experience but what they bought in was good.

I worked occasionally at a coal merchant in Birmingham where a relative was the manager in the 1950s/1960s. All we had was shovels and muscle power. Drive the lorry alongside a 7-plank or 16-Tonner, drop the wagon door onto the flatbed and start shovelling. If it was for immediate delivery it went straight into the bags, but for storage it was taken to the bins and shovelled off again. Around 1964 all of the local yards closed and a Coal Concentration Depot was opened at Small Heath. This was operated by LCP (iirc). Coal came in trains of 21T hoppers and there was a discharge hut with a conveyor system which took the coal to the bins or bagging machine.

GW can have some of Northern's Pacers in exchange for the stock they have coming off lease.

The former GCR Glossop Coal Drops are now part of the garden centre.

Most headed for the field just along the line. I preferred Rugby, although I got thrown off there once. Most times a friendly crew would let us in the Relief Cabin for a brew and a warm. A lookout with binoculars was posted to get the numbers of trains on the GC bridge. In good weather we used to go where the PSB was built, but if BTP moved us on we went into the field between the main and Peterborough lines next to the GC.