Recent content by Dr_Paul

I forgot that there's two-way traffic on the service road alongside the north side of the A3 along that stretch, and the bustitution service needn't have to cross the main carriageway at any point.

I saw a 701 near Kingston station yesterday, and the angle of the sun shining on the carriage enabled me to see that there had been lots of vegetation scraping along the side. As it was in the new GB Railways livery, this could have occurred only in the last few weeks. The amount of vegetation...

Thanks for the correction.

Kingston station was originally on the LSWR main line in open countryside about a mile and a half south of the town centre, and was rebuilt in the 1840s half a mile down the line. It was renamed Kingston Junction in 1852, which is odd, as, although it was a junction station, the two branches...

That's true; I noted this in my original post, as there's no way to get from the down to the up line at Kingston except by using the facing crossover at the country end of the down platform on to the up line, which effectively takes a ten-car train into Hampton Wick station. I was making the...

Kingston would be a more suitable station than Hampton Wick for this event, as it has much better access; the latter station has steep and narrow staircases up to the platforms, and is unsuitable for disabled people. It's only a slightly longer walk from Kingston station to the Kingston gate...

Because of engineering works, there are no services between New Malden and Surbiton on the weekend of 6-7 June. A replacement bus has been laid on between the two stations, some of which also call at Berrylands en route. On Saturday, the half-hourly Shepperton and Kingston Loop via Kingston...

Perhaps a tram station could be built on the curve leading to Wimbledon station; there seems to be sufficient space at the north-east end of the old Wimbledon down yard to build one. Then the former tram platform in the station could be used for services to Sutton. The main problem I foresee is...

Wooden keys can indeed dry out and shrink. I was working on the Cob on the Ffestiniog Railway back in the 1970s, checking the keys and oiling the fishplates, and several keys were loose and were replaced by new ones which were then wedged with a special sledge-hammer between the rail and chair...

I agree. Lots of people walk to and from London termini: take a look at Westminster, Hungerford, Waterloo and London Bridges during the rush hour. I commuted to Waterloo or Vauxhall for all my working life, except for two years, and always walked to my workplaces, except in heavy rain when I'd...

I use a McAfee's virus chaser and their Webadvisor extension for Chrome.

A 'bustitution' trip from Berrylands to New Malden station is obliged to take a rather roundabout route. There is no road connection east from Berrylands towards New Malden, it's a footpath; nor is Lower Marsh Lane to the north-west a roadway, it's a bike-track and footpath. From Berrylands to...

My dad, born 1925, always called the BR Southern Region 'the Southern', presumably because it was the Southern Railway when he was growing up, and it was still 'the Southern' for him after privatisation, regardless of what company was actually running the services.

Yes, my virus chaser recommends not visiting this site.

The lack of provision of step-free access to the new Berrylands station has been a matter of concern in the vicinity. I would have thought that it is possible to provide a ramp up to each of the platforms; the embankment is not that high, and there is a fair amount of space around the station on...