Recent content by Golden Gripper

I often ride the line between Crewe and Stoke on Trent and what annoys me every time is that the Alsager is mispronounced on both the on train announcements and by the announcements at Stoke and Crewe. I know a number of people who live or lived in Alsager and they all pronounce the 'Al' as you...

For a general interest programme it was ok, though very sketchy due to squeezing into 2 week slot.I would agree the music was terrible and the pictures jumped around in a very confusing way. They could have used the pictures to enhance what was being said, instead they just jumped around...

The cause of this behaviour is targets, more especially the Public Performance Measure. Even if the branch service is run by the same franchise as the main line it's connecting out of, a delay to the branch train still goes against the PPM, and if that then causes a delay to another train (as...

No, but places do get links because they are in one franchise. For instance the Wales and Borders franchise specifies a Manchester - Cardiff service, but ATW extends it to west Wales to improve connectivity. However, there are all sorts of restrictions placed on franchises which restrict...

Philip Elliott might be right that the GC route between Newcastle and Bournemouth was quicker than via Birmingham, but they could only sell enough tickets for one train a day. There is much more traffic to be picked up at Derby and Birmingham than Leicester and Rugby.

That arrangement at Paddington only came in well into 60s. Prior to that there was a dedicated fleet of pannier tanks that brought the sets in from Old Oak Common. They were often of the 1500 class, of which there was, I think, only 10 built. They were unusual in that the tanks were only...

I remember the traverser at Moor Street, it was just long enough to hold a Prairie tank, as Moor Street was only used by suburban trains. However, it wasn't a single piece of track as at Crewe Works, but three parallel tracks that slid from side to side so that at the terminal end of the...

I think there are enough problems with different classes as it is. Firstly an additional class would complicate operations, especially if you were to call pacers 'third' and sprinters 'second'. Northern in particular use them interchangably. On Inter City there is already a problem with...

They were probably the first production run with retention toilets, but the first fitted was on a Mk1 in the late 1970s. BR built it for trials and it was put in a loco hauled set that ran between Liverpool and Newcastle.

Having worked for the railways for 30 years I heard quite a few commuting stories from various colleagues. One involved a person who lived in Doncaster (where he had family ties) and worked in York. He then got a job at the ond BRB HQ ay 222. This was in the 1980s, and the HST had just been...

Among the shabbiest I would probably include Shrewsbury. A lot of it looks distincly worn and battered. ATW have, for a number of years, been promising a revamp of the station, with direct access from the booking hall to platform 3 and the current waiting room and customer service point swapping...

In fact the perception of the privitised railway is so good that the majority of both travellers and the country as a whole is to renationalise it. (And East Coast customers are up in arms at losing DOR and it being refranchised).

Do you have any basis for that? I'm sure BR could have done much better with £5 billion pounds a year subsidy (instead of £1 billion) than the private train companies. If you're saying that the private companies are better at spending it than a state company I suggest you read '23 Things they...

I think quite a lot of people haven't read their newspapers properly, or perhaps the paper they do read is so biased they don't give a reasoned account. I have no axe to grind on Scottish independance (though it would make life more interesting) but there is nothing exceptional in their...

What if there is no footbridge. On the line from Crewe to Shrewsbury three stations (Wrenbury, Prees and Wem) the only means of crossing the line is by the road crossing, and it can be quite some time before the train arrives, especially when there is a train coming a little earlier from the...