It was certainly a poor job of explaining operating procedures to the public, but still, didn't someone think about the possible benefits of a revenue vs non-revenue working once the path had been established? Perhaps they had a perfectly sound operating case, but they made themselves look daft by failing to explain it.
I remember the time when there used to be such things as Carriage Sidings and Locomotive Depots at major termini and principal intermediate stations. Why does today's elongated tramway need such immensely long empty-stock workings?
Well, I suppose I was harking back to the days of 'lodging turns' - if your shift took you from your home depot A to remote depot B, you lodged at or near depot B before returning home to A the next day.
I think it was the CIE shed at Limerick which had an old coach as sleeping accommodation for 'lodging' crews. Apparently, the men preferred to sleep on the footplate of their engine (which would at least stay warm overnight!) on account of the old coach being infested with bed bugs...
Quite. At least today's railway staff can (mostly work) in a clean environment - having lived for several years very close to a busy steam depot, I can recall how dirty, sooty, smoky, dusty, and generally mucky the place and everything around it was!
The 7.00 off Manchester sounds rather fun. Stockport, and then non-stop to Euston, via whatever route. Not many true non-stops these days.
Getting up early enough to catch it - hmm, maybe not.
Presumably the operators (Avanti?), who want it to take passengers, think there's enough business at that ungodly hour to make it worthwhile, quite apart from the need to get the train and the crew into position at Euston.
I once mistakenly caught a train at Waterloo East, which I thought was the semi-fast service stopping at Our Town. It was not - it was the preceding fast service, non-stop to Ashford - but in my haste, dashing down the ramp onto the platform, I failed to either look at the indicator display, or to hear the announcement.
I duly sailed through Our Town on the down fast line - a first for me, I think - and, on arrival at Ashford, sought out the guard on the first train back to Our Town. I explained what I'd done, and showed him my season ticket, whereupon he waived my offer to pay for a day return...
I see that the Flying Scotsman will stop at York from next week, so no non-stop from Newcastle. And, for some years, the 5pm East Anglian from Liverpool Street no longer runs non-stop to Ipswich. No Bristol-Paddington non-stops either - the best two run fast from Swindon.
Ha! Bring back the A4s, with their corridor tenders, and there's no need to stop anywhere...as long as you remember to re-install water troughs...
IKB would not approve of stopping at Swindon - he had no time for the refreshment-rooms there, but the Company somehow managed to get itself into being compelled to stop there...
IKB would not approve of stopping at Swindon - he had no time for the refreshment-rooms there, but the Company somehow managed to get itself into being compelled to stop there...
He should catch the 16.18 to Carmarthen or the 19.18 to Swansea, both of which (I now see) run non-stop to Bristol Parkway. Not quite the "Bristolian" of yore (which only went that way in the Up direction) but not bad and a lot faster - 70 minutes.
Ha! Bring back the A4s, with their corridor tenders, and there's no need to stop anywhere...as long as you remember to re-install water troughs...
IKB would not approve of stopping at Swindon - he had no time for the refreshment-rooms there, but the Company somehow managed to get itself into being compelled to stop there...
Doesn't Rolt's biography of IKB quote a savage letter to the manager of the refreshment room about his "coffee"?
The 7.00 off Manchester sounds rather fun. Stockport, and then non-stop to Euston, via whatever route. Not many true non-stops these days.
Getting up early enough to catch it - hmm, maybe not.
Presumably the operators (Avanti?), who want it to take passengers, think there's enough business at that ungodly hour to make it worthwhile, quite apart from the need to get the train and the crew into position at Euston.
My late father-in-law used to fairly often need to go into London for the day from Lancaster and would get a 6:30 train. It wouldn't surprise me if enough folk in Manchester had similar needs.
Agreed. After all, the Flying Scotsman from Newcastle - a longer journey - departs well before 6am; the first train from Swansea to London leaves at 3.46 with 5 further departures before 7am.
Ha! Bring back the A4s, with their corridor tenders, and there's no need to stop anywhere...as long as you remember to re-install water troughs...
IKB would not approve of stopping at Swindon - he had no time for the refreshment-rooms there, but the Company somehow managed to get itself into being compelled to stop there...
Doesn't Rolt's biography of IKB quote a savage letter to the manager of the refreshment room about his "coffee"?
Indeed it does, although IKB was more sarcastic than savage...
"I assure you that Mr Player was wrong in supposing that I thought you purchased inferior coffee. I thought I said to him that I was surprised you should buy such poor roasted corn. I did not believe you had such a thing as coffee in the place; I am certain I never tasted any. I have long ceased to make complaints at Swindon. I avoid taking anything there if I can help it."
He also wrote a very amusing letter to his wife about the deficiencies of the "Cow and Candlesnuffers" (as he called it) inn he was staying at while surveying the GW. Unfortunately it doesn't seen to be online.
I remember the time when there used to be such things as Carriage Sidings and Locomotive Depots at major termini and principal intermediate stations. Why does today's elongated tramway need such immensely long empty-stock workings?
Because separate carriages and locomotives are things of the past. Everything is a multiple unit nowadays, and that means that if a train is stuck in Manchester you can't just call up some spare carriages and a loco from the nearby sheds to make up the service from Euston that it should have been.
I remember the time when there used to be such things as Carriage Sidings and Locomotive Depots at major termini and principal intermediate stations. Why does today's elongated tramway need such immensely long empty-stock workings?
Because separate carriages and locomotives are things of the past. Everything is a multiple unit nowadays, and that means that if a train is stuck in Manchester you can't just call up some spare carriages and a loco from the nearby sheds to make up the service from Euston that it should have been.
Yes, you're quite right. Alas!
Even so, an empty-stock working from Manchester to London does seem a bit OTT.
I remember the time when there used to be such things as Carriage Sidings and Locomotive Depots at major termini and principal intermediate stations. Why does today's elongated tramway need such immensely long empty-stock workings?
Because separate carriages and locomotives are things of the past. Everything is a multiple unit nowadays, and that means that if a train is stuck in Manchester you can't just call up some spare carriages and a loco from the nearby sheds to make up the service from Euston that it should have been.
Nearly - there are the sleepers, the Transport for Wales "premier" services, the TPE Mk5 sets now going into service with Chiltern. But they still don't get uncoupled!
It is delightful to arrive in Fort William to see the ex-Southern Region (formerly) electro-diesel class 73 locomotive, waiting to head south with the Caledonian Sleeper. That is another one of which I have to keep telling myself, "I do not need to buy that model".
Is one Class 73/9 loco enough to pull the train? Or are there just a few carriages from Fort William which are going to join the rest of the sleeper further down the route anyway?
Is one Class 73/9 loco enough to pull the train? Or are there just a few carriages from Fort William which are going to join the rest of the sleeper further down the route anyway?
The four carriages are joined to the Inverness sleeper at Edinburgh.
I see that the final Great Western "Castle class" HSTs will be withdrawn from the start of the new timetable next Sunday. Does that just leave Scotrail using them in normal service?
Well, they did get to 87s/Mk3s on the WCML and 91s/Mk4s on the ECML. But would they have had the Mk3s if the HST programme hadn't happened? I don't know.
I vividly remember the very first blue and grey carriage I ever saw.
I was waiting for my delayed train to school on a very foggy morning in (I think) February 1966. This was at Mill Hill Broadway on the Midand mainline, where the express locomotives were all "Peaks" until the Brush 47s came along.
Out of the mist came a down express with a Class 40 (I can still remember that it was D284) at its head - presumably diverted from the Eastern Region or the WCML. And, amidst the maroon carriages, there was one in blue and grey. After it had passed we all scratched our heads (well, we would have done had we not been wearing school caps) and asked, "So what was that?"
Each to their own opinion, but I'm afraid I never really took to the blue and grey. This may have been due to being familiar with the Southern Region, where (of course) green was the prescribed colour, at least in later days.
I'm old enough to recall the lovely 'blood-and-custard' scheme on mainline coaches - locally, Maunsell, Bulleid, and BR Mk1s - and also the plain red of some older pre-grouping coaches, such as the SECR 'Birdcage' sets and the push-pull sets made up from whatever old coaches the erstwhile Southern Railway could come up with (they rarely threw anything away...). Latterly, even the Birdcages and some of the older push-pull sets became green, but that still seemed a natural colour IYSWIM.
I don't remember seeing much in the way of malachite green, though there would have been EMUs further up the line towards London which bore that livery up until the 50s. There are photos of locomotives in malachite green at Our Station, taken when Ah wor a Nipper, but mostly I recall lined black, or Brunswick green...even the first main-line diesels (the D65xx/Class 33s) were green when they were new, as were the splendidly-noisy Hastings DMUs.
Neither do I, but as far as I'm concerned, Railway History (when they introduced that horrid blue/grey in 1964) came to a .
O, but surely not. Didn't those Heavenly Deltic years make up for the long, dreary post-war hangover of the 1950s when high speeds were frowned upon? I may have mentioned before the launch day of the down Talisman with the blue and grey XP64 set behind an immaculate green Deltic. We watched it hurtling past our regular spot near Three Counties, where it was fuzzily immortalised in my Brownie box camera. A magnificently memorable sight and sound. Gresley's ghost may have smiled that day.
Perhaps it is having grown up on ex-LMS lines, but I was never very taken with 'blood and custard'. I always felt the shade of the 'custard' had something yuk about it. The maroon that began to come in from summer 1956 was a big improvement. It also responded particularly well to being kept washed and clean, which 'blood and custard' didn't. To me, the sight of a complete rake of maroon carriages hauled by a clean Stanier pacific epitomises what a train is capable of looking like.
Incidentally, the plain red used in earlier BR days on non-corridor stock was not the same red as the maroon that came in later. The earlier red was more scarlet.
Perhaps it is having grown up on ex-LMS lines, but I was never very taken with 'blood and custard'. I always felt the shade of the 'custard' had something yuk about it. The maroon that began to come in from summer 1956 was a big improvement. It also responded particularly well to being kept washed and clean, which 'blood and custard' didn't. To me, the sight of a complete rake of maroon carriages hauled by a clean Stanier pacific epitomises what a train is capable of looking like.
Incidentally, the plain red used in earlier BR days on non-corridor stock was not the same red as the maroon that came in later. The earlier red was more scarlet.
Well, each to their own - but the 'blood-and-custard' livery was indeed hard to keep clean.
You're right about the brighter red. I think it was officially 'carmine'.
Perhaps it is having grown up on ex-LMS lines, but I was never very taken with 'blood and custard'. I always felt the shade of the 'custard' had something yuk about it. The maroon that began to come in from summer 1956 was a big improvement. It also responded particularly well to being kept washed and clean, which 'blood and custard' didn't. To me, the sight of a complete rake of maroon carriages hauled by a clean Stanier pacific epitomises what a train is capable of looking like.
Incidentally, the plain red used in earlier BR days on non-corridor stock was not the same red as the maroon that came in later. The earlier red was more scarlet.
Another memory jog there. I thought I remembered the earliest Triang carriages being red and cream, but also some in plain red, and as you say, more scarlet than the later maroon. Pictures are sparse on Google images, but they are there. I had two of the red and cream that ended their days in the traditional Triang warped banana shape.
The (G)WR's chocolate-and-cream coaches must have been as hard to keep clean as the BR blood-and-custard stock, even if restricted to the principal expresses.
The GW's combination of Brunswick green locomotives with chocolate-and-cream coaches was, I must admit, very attractive.
The Triang coaches mentioned by @Stercus Tauri were some of my first 00 models. The first were indeed plain red, the blood-and-custard versions coming along a little later. They all suffered severe warping into very odd shapes, but even later coaches (some in green, some in b-and-c, some in maroon) were much better, and can still be found today in such Emporia as Mr E Bay's...with a bit of detailing, and finer wheels, they pass muster against modern models, at least when seen from normal viewing distance!
Some time ago, I bought (for not many £££) a Triang GWR clerestory brake third, which (along with a matching composite coach) was introduced in around 1960! At the time, they were by far the best pre-grouping coaches available in 00 scale at a reasonable price (10 shillings and sixpence IIRC), and were much admired for the quality of the panelling.
Railway Modeller quickly published an article showing how to pick out some of the details (door handles, raised mouldings etc.) and to add a second footboard. The bogies were the standard Triang bogie of the time, but I doubt if anyone bothered too much about that...
Numerous articles appeared subsequently, showing how to modify the coaches into resembling some other railway's stock, including an article in Model Railway Constructor on making a Southern push-pull set. A suitable locomotive was provided by converting a Hornby-Dublo R1 0-6-0T into an H-class 0-4-4T, but that wasn't quite so convincing.
Ah! Happy days! A E Housman puts it rather well:
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
I've still got somewhere three Triang clerestories from long ago, to which I added footboards, though they would not stay on. They usually ran with a diecast Gem Pannier.
I can also remember the Western Region chocolate and cream Mark Is appearing. The pattern was slightly different from pre 1948 GWR colours as they had a chocolate line at the cantrail, whereas I think the GWR did not.
One thing that was always very impressive in the late 50s was how much cleaner the Western Region express locomotives at Paddington were than their equivalents on any of the other regions. The combination of Brunswick Green and copper and brass set each other off very well.
My friend P had a set of three Triang clerestories (two brake thirds and a composite) which were the only passenger coaches on his modest 00 branch-line terminus. For some reason, they were usually hauled by a kit-built LBSCR E4 0-6-2T (on a Hornby-Dublo two-rail chassis) painted a sort of light brown...peculiar, maybe, but the train looked OK.
Goods traffic (mostly Peco Wonderful Wagons - remember those?) was handled by a two-rail R1 in BR black.
Track was Eric Killick's Elkway, with points operated by rod, wire, and levers concealed in the back of a Superquick signal box. Station building and goods shed were also Superquick - the first editions, so to speak.
Comments
12:52: Blackpool North – London Euston (Monday to Friday)
09:39: London Euston – Blackpool North (Monday to Friday)
19:32: Chester – London Euston (Monday to Friday)
17:53: Holyhead – London Euston terminates at Crewe (Sunday)
Of course, if "they" allowed passengers on board, then they wouldn't be ecs workings!
I think it was the CIE shed at Limerick which had an old coach as sleeping accommodation for 'lodging' crews. Apparently, the men preferred to sleep on the footplate of their engine (which would at least stay warm overnight!) on account of the old coach being infested with bed bugs...
Getting up early enough to catch it - hmm, maybe not.
Presumably the operators (Avanti?), who want it to take passengers, think there's enough business at that ungodly hour to make it worthwhile, quite apart from the need to get the train and the crew into position at Euston.
I once mistakenly caught a train at Waterloo East, which I thought was the semi-fast service stopping at Our Town. It was not - it was the preceding fast service, non-stop to Ashford - but in my haste, dashing down the ramp onto the platform, I failed to either look at the indicator display, or to hear the announcement.
I duly sailed through Our Town on the down fast line - a first for me, I think - and, on arrival at Ashford, sought out the guard on the first train back to Our Town. I explained what I'd done, and showed him my season ticket, whereupon he waived my offer to pay for a day return...
IKB would not approve of stopping at Swindon - he had no time for the refreshment-rooms there, but the Company somehow managed to get itself into being compelled to stop there...
Doesn't Rolt's biography of IKB quote a savage letter to the manager of the refreshment room about his "coffee"?
My late father-in-law used to fairly often need to go into London for the day from Lancaster and would get a 6:30 train. It wouldn't surprise me if enough folk in Manchester had similar needs.
Indeed it does, although IKB was more sarcastic than savage...
Because separate carriages and locomotives are things of the past. Everything is a multiple unit nowadays, and that means that if a train is stuck in Manchester you can't just call up some spare carriages and a loco from the nearby sheds to make up the service from Euston that it should have been.
Yes, you're quite right. Alas!
Even so, an empty-stock working from Manchester to London does seem a bit OTT.
Yes, his exchanges with Stephenson were a revelation to me!
Nearly - there are the sleepers, the Transport for Wales "premier" services, the TPE Mk5 sets now going into service with Chiltern. But they still don't get uncoupled!
The four carriages are joined to the Inverness sleeper at Edinburgh.
I was waiting for my delayed train to school on a very foggy morning in (I think) February 1966. This was at Mill Hill Broadway on the Midand mainline, where the express locomotives were all "Peaks" until the Brush 47s came along.
Out of the mist came a down express with a Class 40 (I can still remember that it was D284) at its head - presumably diverted from the Eastern Region or the WCML. And, amidst the maroon carriages, there was one in blue and grey. After it had passed we all scratched our heads (well, we would have done had we not been wearing school caps) and asked, "So what was that?"
I'm old enough to recall the lovely 'blood-and-custard' scheme on mainline coaches - locally, Maunsell, Bulleid, and BR Mk1s - and also the plain red of some older pre-grouping coaches, such as the SECR 'Birdcage' sets and the push-pull sets made up from whatever old coaches the erstwhile Southern Railway could come up with (they rarely threw anything away...). Latterly, even the Birdcages and some of the older push-pull sets became green, but that still seemed a natural colour IYSWIM.
I don't remember seeing much in the way of malachite green, though there would have been EMUs further up the line towards London which bore that livery up until the 50s. There are photos of locomotives in malachite green at Our Station, taken when Ah wor a Nipper, but mostly I recall lined black, or Brunswick green...even the first main-line diesels (the D65xx/Class 33s) were green when they were new, as were the splendidly-noisy Hastings DMUs.
O, but surely not. Didn't those Heavenly Deltic years make up for the long, dreary post-war hangover of the 1950s when high speeds were frowned upon? I may have mentioned before the launch day of the down Talisman with the blue and grey XP64 set behind an immaculate green Deltic. We watched it hurtling past our regular spot near Three Counties, where it was fuzzily immortalised in my Brownie box camera. A magnificently memorable sight and sound. Gresley's ghost may have smiled that day.
My memorable day at "the Cross" was when a slightly strange-looking Deltic appeared - it was in fact DP2.
No, I'm afraid not. They were mostly confined to the Brighton section IIRC.
Incidentally, the plain red used in earlier BR days on non-corridor stock was not the same red as the maroon that came in later. The earlier red was more scarlet.
Well, each to their own - but the 'blood-and-custard' livery was indeed hard to keep clean.
You're right about the brighter red. I think it was officially 'carmine'.
Another memory jog there. I thought I remembered the earliest Triang carriages being red and cream, but also some in plain red, and as you say, more scarlet than the later maroon. Pictures are sparse on Google images, but they are there. I had two of the red and cream that ended their days in the traditional Triang warped banana shape.
The GW's combination of Brunswick green locomotives with chocolate-and-cream coaches was, I must admit, very attractive.
The Triang coaches mentioned by @Stercus Tauri were some of my first 00 models. The first were indeed plain red, the blood-and-custard versions coming along a little later. They all suffered severe warping into very odd shapes, but even later coaches (some in green, some in b-and-c, some in maroon) were much better, and can still be found today in such Emporia as Mr E Bay's...with a bit of detailing, and finer wheels, they pass muster against modern models, at least when seen from normal viewing distance!
Some time ago, I bought (for not many £££) a Triang GWR clerestory brake third, which (along with a matching composite coach) was introduced in around 1960! At the time, they were by far the best pre-grouping coaches available in 00 scale at a reasonable price (10 shillings and sixpence IIRC), and were much admired for the quality of the panelling.
Railway Modeller quickly published an article showing how to pick out some of the details (door handles, raised mouldings etc.) and to add a second footboard. The bogies were the standard Triang bogie of the time, but I doubt if anyone bothered too much about that...
Numerous articles appeared subsequently, showing how to modify the coaches into resembling some other railway's stock, including an article in Model Railway Constructor on making a Southern push-pull set. A suitable locomotive was provided by converting a Hornby-Dublo R1 0-6-0T into an H-class 0-4-4T, but that wasn't quite so convincing.
Ah! Happy days! A E Housman puts it rather well:
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
I can also remember the Western Region chocolate and cream Mark Is appearing. The pattern was slightly different from pre 1948 GWR colours as they had a chocolate line at the cantrail, whereas I think the GWR did not.
One thing that was always very impressive in the late 50s was how much cleaner the Western Region express locomotives at Paddington were than their equivalents on any of the other regions. The combination of Brunswick Green and copper and brass set each other off very well.
Goods traffic (mostly Peco Wonderful Wagons - remember those?) was handled by a two-rail R1 in BR black.
Track was Eric Killick's Elkway, with points operated by rod, wire, and levers concealed in the back of a Superquick signal box. Station building and goods shed were also Superquick - the first editions, so to speak.