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Stupid people


Shocking picture captures the moment a child was left on tracks as worrying stats show surge in people risking their lives at level crossings: A small child was left on the tracks at Marlow


www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk

Shocking picture captures the moment a child was left on tracks as worrying stats show surge in people risking their lives at level crossings

Network Rail and British Transport Police are concerned at the dramatic increase in the number of people risking their lives at level crossings after a surge in people not using them correctly.
www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk
 
But I only wanted a good clear uninterrupted view of the train as it approaches for my dear little child.....doh
 
editor said:
Stupid people


Shocking picture captures the moment a child was left on tracks as worrying stats show surge in people risking their lives at level crossings: A small child was left on the tracks at Marlow


www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk

Shocking picture captures the moment a child was left on tracks as worrying stats show surge in people risking their lives at level crossings

Network Rail and British Transport Police are concerned at the dramatic increase in the number of people risking their lives at level crossings after a surge in people not using them correctly.
www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk
Click to expand...


That sort of thing is going to be a real problem ...

People seem to forget that trains run outside of timetabled hours, or even to the published timetables.
As a guard on a private railway, this has always been a cause of nightmares. EG one time my train came to an abrupt halt. luckily the driver had been watching the line and not the rhododendron flowers - there were a group of walkers on the line. At the point we encountered them, the line runs along the top of a wall with a decent drop on both sides (a stone built embankment that is barely wide enough for the train, that's how it was built in the 1850s)
 
Soham to get its station back. It won't be a looker, but a new station is always fine in my book!

Green light for Soham station: Soham station image


www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk

Green light for Soham station

Proposals to build a new station for Soham were confirmed by East Cambridgeshire District Council on Friday 26 June 2020, giving the go-ahead for the new station to be built.
www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk
 
editor said:
Soham to get its station back. It won't be a looker, but a new station is always fine in my book!

Green light for Soham station: Soham station image


www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk

Green light for Soham station

Proposals to build a new station for Soham were confirmed by East Cambridgeshire District Council on Friday 26 June 2020, giving the go-ahead for the new station to be built.
www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk
Click to expand...

Good news. Hopefully this one won't get blown up like the original!
 
Pleased to see more re-openings like these (even if the costs are getting towards eye-watering !)

Hope that a vaccine is available sooner rather than later - even 1m+ social distancing / masks would reduce carriage capacity significantly - maybe there should be more WFH, becoming the new "normal" ...
 
Roadkill said:
Good news. Hopefully this one won't get blown up like the original!
Click to expand...

Did some work ,when I was employed on getting this one through - and recognising the supreme efforts by railwaymen that morning in 1944 , I am hopeful that with some effort their bravery can be re-commemorated.

Apart from uncoupling and drawing clear a burning open wagon loaded with high explosives ,(train crew) it took some courage to set the line clear ahead and then approach the conflageration with a fire bucket. RIP Driver Gimbert, Fireman Nightall and Signalman Frank Bridges. (plus others)
 
existentialist said:
Think of all the signalling and interlocking infrastructure that's operating that lot. What you're looking at there is a machine...
Click to expand...
And that is just one part of the huge railway infrastructure that existed already at that point. It's amazing to think of and almost impossible for us to comprehend how intricate it all was
 
I still don’t understand how all the railway lines in south London work, so many weaving in and out. I suspect nobody really knows, it’s been around so long it just works and systems have evolved over centuries to make it so.
 
Dogsauce said:
I still don’t understand how all the railway lines in south London work, so many weaving in and out. I suspect nobody really knows, it’s been around so long it just works and systems have evolved over centuries to make it so.
Click to expand...

it involves short bits of time travel.

in 1978, a train disappeared in to an unexpected vortex in the battersea park area and was never seen again...




:p
 
Mumbles274 said:
And that is just one part of the huge railway infrastructure that existed already at that point. It's amazing to think of and almost impossible for us to comprehend how intricate it all was
Click to expand...

Yes, and how manual as well. Nowadays one big signalling centre can control hundreds of square miles, but back then there were individual signalboxes - and sometimes more than one - for pretty much every station and junction, all operated by blokes pulling levers to operate fantastically complicated mechanical systems. Small wonder BR inherited more than 600,000 staff when it was created in 1948.
 
Actually, having mentioned 'fantastically complicated mechanical systems,' here's one they're still using, at Greenford signal box in west London:

Upstairs:

BlockShelf+LeverFrame.jpg


Downstairs:

Interlocking.jpg


InterlockingDetail.jpg


Just looking at that mechanical interlocking makes my head spin.

Of course, the interlocking room had other uses. IIRC Stephen Poole writes about one signalman on a quiet route in the 70s or early 80s who got a bollocking when photos started circulating of a woman wearing not a great deal draped over the interlocking frame. As he remarked, BR used to expect people to work long and antisocial hours for not a lot of money so they didn't come down too hard on people who brought bits of their private lives to work with them, but shagging prostitutes in the signal box really did cross the line...
 
Last edited:
As a callow youth - newly minted BR employee with a free pass , late 1979 I hunted these units down on evenings and weekends before they were withdrawn. Real characters - built like proverbial tanks and basic in the extreme. No driver / guard communications - used to flag them off - or flick the lights in the dark.

Much later on I enjoyed a cab ride on an empty 4732 from the South to Wimbledon. Perfect summer evening and greens all the way. Old girl enjoyed a thrash. .
 
davesgcr said:
As a callow youth - newly minted BR employee with a free pass , late 1979 I hunted these units down on evenings and weekends before they were withdrawn. Real characters - built like proverbial tanks and basic in the extreme. No driver / guard communications - used to flag them off - or flick the lights in the dark.

Much later on I enjoyed a cab ride on an empty 4732 from the South to Wimbledon. Perfect summer evening and greens all the way. Old girl enjoyed a thrash. .
Click to expand...
They were amazing machines, and probably my introduction to trains - my earliest recollection of a local train journey was from my local station, Tolworth, into Waterloo, all looked after by SUBs. Quite a lot of my later commuting, 15 years later, was also done on some of the last surviving SUBs. There was a tank-like massiveness to them that I think nothing else ever quite achieved (Westerns, perhaps?). I took them pretty much for granted, though, and it wasn't until much later that I realised just how primitive they were compared even with all the other EMU stuff on the same line, let alone all the shiny plastic stuff that started to turn up post 4-PEP.
 
davesgcr said:
and basic in the extreme. No driver / guard communications
Click to expand...

Presume this was lack of a low voltage system?

I remember encountering them close up at a Selhurst (?) open day some time in the 80s - even the windscreen wiper was hand-worked

existentialist said:
There was a tank-like massiveness to them that I think nothing else ever quite achieved
Click to expand...

I think the 1951 EPB units were (broadly) the same body shell (and of course a few EPB units ended up with ex 4 SUB trailer cars) but the SUBs seemed more substantial.
 
Puddy_Tat said:
Presume this was lack of a low voltage system?

I remember encountering them close up at a Selhurst (?) open day some time in the 80s - even the windscreen wiper was hand-worked



I think the 1951 EPB units were (broadly) the same body shell (and of course a few EPB units ended up with ex 4 SUB trailer cars) but the SUBs seemed more substantial.
Click to expand...
I think the SUBs had about half the power of the EPBs, which definitely lent to a sense of mass, as they ground themselves from a halt to whatever their maximum was (40mph?).
 
existentialist said:
I think the SUBs had about half the power of the EPBs, which definitely lent to a sense of mass, as they ground themselves from a halt to whatever their maximum was (40mph?).
Click to expand...

60 mph on a good day , with a good unit , good driver , clear signals and enough juice into the third rail - which in many areas was less than 750 in those innocent days.

No speedo in any case ....

No such things as roller blinds to change headcodes / blinds - you had to open a cab window and grope around with metal stencils to show where you were going etc.

Finally - you had to carry a lit oil tail lamp. This is in working memory I have to say. Minimalist standards like this were only beaten by the French.
 
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