Recent content by Taunton

Although not commonly encountered elsewhere, my thought then was this was just the role one often heard of elsewhere "Will the Carriage & Wagon Inspector report to Platform 6", and just that instead of waiting for the command, which could be a broken window or a steam heat bag needing...

There was a fascinating story in a magazine around 1960 of the independent refreshment room at Gainsborough Central, who on summer Sundays used to employ a team of ice cream selling young ladies. A sequence of day excursions from Nottinghamshire mining districts, etc, to Cleethorpes used to stop...

I suspect this could have been Carlisle, because from May 1974 just about every WCML service I was on was tapped there while stopped, pretty much unknown anywhere else as you say. The main platforms suited one side Up, then the other side Down. Was there some suspicion of defective tyres from...

I can't quite reconcile these two statements. It's a bit like those who say the M25 motorway is unusable because it's full of traffic ...

Actually it did. Still a reasonable diagram. I met/put back on people using it, and used it myself a couple of times - for the aforementioned £5 return. There was a Sunday diagram as well, I took this one morning from Lime Street, but apart from being a full length scratch Mk1 set it was...

OK. Though I don't think they, or much else, was converted to dual brake, it was a challenge to fit both sets of gear, plus the complex rigging to the blocks, into the underframe. St Rollox certainly did one, it was a Mk1 dual heat BCK, which when dual braked gave one of everything, class, van...

The Liverpool to Edinburgh promotion certainly lasted several years, ending up I think at £5, I had others come to visit me for the day on it. There was a full length (ie no Preston or Carstairs split) service, early morning out, evening return, which gave about 6 hours in Edinburgh. Stock was...

Was the main line direct from Motherwell to Newton electrified for the Blue Trains in 1960? I did believe only the loop round through Bellshill was done until 1974.

This was no different to what had long been done on the ECML at night with Deltics, where after the daytime services it was straight onto sleepers, mail, etc back where they had come from. Depending on how they were doing (starting with how many were in Doncaster works) they could do the 0800...

High level platforms were long a feature of only the North East Corridor in cities, and everywhere else low level was, and pretty much still is, standard. Broadly speaking I recall inter-city streamlined cars (1950 onwards) having trapdoors, and traditional heavyweights (pre-WW2) only have the...

We can all have our opinions, of course, but the LA architectural community has determined that Parkinson's design is so. Their own expression for such a variant is "Streamline Moderne" (pronounced 'Modern'), and Los Angeles has probably the largest group of such structures in the world, as ever...

When I knew (and extremely occasionally used) LA Union, it was down to about six trains a day, three to San Diego and one each to Oakland, Chicago and New Orleans, all hauled by Amtrak F40s. It's had a remarkable renaissance since, in fact rail usage across the metropolitan area has. Notably...

The sheathing over the prestressed concrete frames and reinforced concrete columns is quite the thing architecturally https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/los-angeles-union-station-platform.html?blackwhite=1&sortBy=relevant

It was desolate in the 1960s, too.

Los Angeles Union hasn't been built over because the platform canopies themselves are streamlined art deco official historic structures. Yes, unusual for US stations, as the canopies, and the platform ramped entrances, were part of the whole, designed by LA architect Don Parkinson's firm, which...