Recent content by Tom B

I was born 44 years after the end of WWII and growing up, although it was clearly a long time ago, there were plenty of people around who had experienced it - either indirectly as children, or those who had served. Indeed I recall there would always be a local veteran or two who would come and...

One thing I often think would be a good idea for tills is to have a designation of 'fast, efficient, in-and-out no frills' lanes, with operators who are speedy and hurl the shopping through at 200mph, and 'slow, calm, have a natter' lanes with the operators who are happy to have a chat and take...

At the end of the day, I had the choice today of driving or getting the train. I thought I'd do the latter as it was supposedly quicker, easier, etc. As they clearly don't wish people to actually travel without being messed around and delayed, I will do as they want and drive next time!

Surely there is somebody, probably quite highly paid, working in an office working out what workforce they'll need in the next 1, 2, 5, 10 years time - especially with grades which require a long lead time, such as drivers. There will be cases of course where this isn't 100% accurate, but...

Needing to travel to Birmingham today, I booked tickets with Avanti for Watford-Birmingham. I checked last night and lucky I did, the 10.31 has been cancelled, along with 56 other services due to "lack of staff". As a result my choice is to either travel an hour earlier (and loiter around at my...

About 25 years ago (!!!) there was a freeware project called Rail3D which, distinct from anything else, focussed on the network building and had some pretty good features allowing you to lay track, set up schedules, routing etc. It was a fairly rudimentary isometric type view, and then later...

I hope so. The current government have been in place for about 1.5 years of a 5 year term; it's still fairly early on; things haven't been great, but fixing 14 years of insidious cutbacks doesn't happen overnight. I can only hope things feel better in a year or so time. It's interesting (yet...

When I used to live in Scotland I would frequently travel to/from London or Yorkshire and used to have great fun each time. Surprisingly, it seemed to vary - I would have thought that large chains, for example, would have better training programmes than independent retailers (in that, I assume...

Further tangentially, how long would it take for troughs to replenish to full after being emptied by a passing locomotive?

In the eyes (ears) of an average person listening to the news, "the guard" is probably universally understood more than "senior conductor" or whatever their actual job title may be.

Quite, but very often tabloid papers throw in references to drivers pay for any or no reason in any story involving the railways...

Let us hope that the quick thinking, well executed response of the driver/guard/signalman is held up next time the gutter press grumble about the amount drivers are paid.

I understand that this unusual state of affairs persists even today. Everywhere else it is the norm for drivers to drive a selection of different services either on a given day or over a period of time, but London operators tend to keep drivers on single services (although I understand many are...

It always interested/raised my eyebrows how some of the 'part route' destinations, very seldom used, were very similar. For instance you might have a 22 part route "Foot o' the' Walk", a 25 part route "Duke Street" and a 35 part route "Easter Road" which would all, effectively, be turning around...

In GNER days, it was fairly common for HSTs from Aberdeen/Inverness to have a fairly long layover at Waverley - 15 minutes or so? Whether this was for paths to travel south, or a desire to have a bit of 'recovery time' to avoid a delay on up north spiralling, I'm not sure.