Recent content by Taunton

The Ravenglass & Eskdale, whose timetable appeared in the BR national one in the 1970s-80s, had what looks pretty definitely a works service (the day seems too long for a school train), down the valley in the morning, arrive 0820, back up in the evening, depart 1640, which was shown to run all...

"The Train that Ran Away", by Stewart Joy. He was Beeching's Chief Economist, a very practical Australian, who makes interesting comments, for example about how the Beeching figures were inaccurately calculated by those sent to collate them, or massaged to suit their own purposes, and such like.

A very extensive series of articles on the "old" museum is here (parts 1 and 2 cover it) which I think will answer all points: https://machorne.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/britains-national-railway-museum-part-1/ There has been confusion (including in past posts on here) about its location...

USA the same, but the flags are flown on the front of the locomotive, both sides, so much more obvious. White is an Extra train not in the timetable - on some routes this was most, or even all. Green is Extra Following In Same Direction. Another in can't recall (yellow?) is Extra Following In...

This was normal in those times. Of course, it would be jobs not connected with train operations. The same was true on the loco side, you looked after your own, recognising even then that men were commonly asked to strive beyond reasonable capability. David L Smith wrote that he met Driver...

Part of the project is rearrangement of the main depot at Beckton, which has led to weekend (including Fridays) restrictions of services. Today this was exacerbated by a train breakdown, actually a rare DLR event, somewhere on the Woolwich branch in the morning peak. Unfortunately a bit of...

For those who believe that "consultation" means what the dictionary says, let me inform you. The Consultation Industry has moved on to where they believe their job is to produce a statement of what they are going to do. End of text. This may be in some supposed media form, eg in the back pages...

... and in this thread, by the look of things.

The difficulty with not aligning the age limit with school leaving age, or similarly if you said graduate trainees are not taken until two years after they typically graduate, is that a good number of competent candidates will have gone and started careers elsewhere. There may be a large...

The key to such projects is to manage community relations in such a way that people not only feel well regarded and respected, but they actually are. For Network Rail to have got into this morass they must have completely failed in this. Whether they have been supremely arrogant, rude...

Yes, it was a long-running event. I believe there were several places around the country like Taunton where the busmen were members of the NUR, which all went back, of course, to when the buses were once run by the Great Western Railway (the proper one). The union branch was Taunton but the...

£10k is nothing. Their homes would be unsellable during this time. Used to be four tracks here, nowadays two. However can the engineers take so long to reinstate what was previously there, now just overgrown. Sounds like the engineer is taking the cheapest way out, inconvenience to lineside...

A common misunderstanding is that the line was overhead electrified. The project was under way, but the wiring had not been strung at the time, and the line was still under local signalbox control. By the time photographers went afterwards to take general establishing shots of the scene it...

Over in the USA in WW2 things were different, and the less-involved population complained about various delays and, especially, shortages of passenger vehicles. The railways there had a particular rush to move vast numbers of troops very long distances, exacerbated by the way the railroads there...

Speaking with those actually there, there was little actual control of the passengers offering. There were large military movements, many of which seemed handled by scheduled services rather than specials. Trains were overloaded, which had not been experienced before. There was not a lot of...