Recent content by 4069

What? The prosecution of (for instance) Driver Trew is described in a footnote to the Lewisham report (he was acquitted in a second trial after the jury in the first failed to agree). Prosecution of the individuals involved is not a modern development, and many railwaymen have been jailed over...

Are you sure about that? There's no mention of such a device in any of the standard histories.

If the railway were still actually important to the short-term economic life of the country, it would be reinstated much more quickly. But it isn't, so it's not.

Re-using expired circulars and similar bumph by writing on the back would have been standard practice in those days, a hangover from paper shortages during WW2. It's more likely that the menu was something that came into the GM's in-tray every day, and would have been fair game for re-use. I...

Since the station remained open to passengers until 7.12.64, and trains calling at it had to use the loop, that would have been difficult. Cooke records that the down goods loop from Ashbury Crossing to Shrivenham station was converted to a siding (accessed from the Shrivenham end) on 27.5.62...

The standard source for this kind of informations is R A Cooke's Track Layout Diagrams of the GWR and BR WR. Section 23 of this mammoth work says that at Shrivenham the up loop was converted to a siding on 20.5.66, and the down loop was taken out of use and the signal box closed on 5.6.66, and...

No, that was not the subject of an RAIB investigation. The preliminary examination concluded that there were no lessons for the railway in this event. RAIB staff provided evidence for consideration at the inquest, as reported in your link.

The investigation will cover That will include the competence and fitness of the driver.

I fell foul of this in 1974 when I travelled, aged 14, from Liverpool Street to Wymondham. Told by the ticket clerk at Liverpool Street that he could only sell me a ticket to Norwich and I would have to rebook there, I duly stood in a long queue at Thorpe, only to be told curtly when I got to...

All of the South Western suburban lines which came under Feltham panel around 1973 were worked by Sykes up until then.

Here's one of the early wooden prototypes:

Photos of the tour show that any repaintng was limited to the front buffer beam. The repair for Butlins was actually done after the tour, in July 1963: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/king-class-6018-king-henry-vi-undergoing-overhaul--583145851746502570/

Many previous histories agree that 6018 was stored at Swindon over the winter of 1962-63, and then put to work for a week on Birmingham-Leamington services to enable it to be fettled up for the SLS tour, but I have not seen any evidence that it was put through the works- where has this unlikely...

The shop on Harrow Hill was called The Roundhouse, and was the successor to Mike's earlier establishment in Northwood High Street, from where he published several books in the 1960s. The long-suffering assistant was Iris.

Any block instrument using ordinary three-position three-wire block can communicate with another instrument using the same system, regardless of who manufactured each instrument. So, for instance, a box with BR standard "plastic" blocks can work with a box using LNWR Fletcher's blocks, Midland...