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A quarter of a mile in addition to the braking distance provided by the Distant signal of course, let alone any additional Stop signals provided beyond the Outer Home, which would only be cleared by the signaller when he was satisfied that the train was fully ‘under control’.

Thank you to @HSTEd for his manifesto. So part of the nationalisation 'magic bullet' will be paying for a system-wide conversion to ECP brakes and reaping system benefits soon afterwards. Practically all freight rolling stock is 'privately owned' one way or another but I suppose that Network...

Images of shunters diligently adding a banana van to the Flying Scotsman. (Their code was, of course ‘BANANA’, as distinct from, err, FRUIT, MEAT, ALE, YEAST… , all in the code book.)

I’m surprised that @HSTEd feels that freight has suffered from “contractual paralysis”. The sector has seen both entry and exit from the market, handled huge changes in the coal and other industries, massive changes in intermodal flows, innovation with new locomotives, wagons and operating...

Presumably it would come with additional costs as well. What sort of annual NET income (profit) could The Treasury and The Taxpayer look forward to?

Power stations and colliery loading bunkers were in private sidings rather than ‘railway’ property of course; so could have their own design of signs.

KASLO not being a telegraph code word though. Surely just a contraction/ abbreviation like IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) in the Disputes section.

Definitely Troon x 2 Much altered by electrification and subsequently a huge fire since.

The OP got off lightly. Services from Bristol to London later on were severely disrupted by a sad incident near Taunton and some other problems.

Making a valiant attempt to get this thread back onto railway telegraphic code: I was once with the Station Manager at Gravesend (a long-experienced traditional railwayman) where he was puzzling over a teleprinter message along the lines of “1234 CHX-GRV QUAIL” He was well aware that QUAIL...

With apologies for thread drift I can assure readers that the NCB were mere amateurs at overloading 16t Mineral wagons. Sheerness Steel would ‘borrow’ such wagons to catch what I can only describe as ‘steel dust’ from the electric arc furnace. Noting one that, ahem, seemed a bit low on its...

I note that your profile shows you in Liverpool. Yesterday Sheffield was 35 degrees. Fair play to Kew Gardens that broke the record for this year at just over 38 degrees but it’s not that much cooler in the ‘North of England’ (as described by some).

Well, yes. But if “human error” can lead to emergency personnel with ladders potentially getting electrocuted it does emphasise the importance of obtaining absolute assurance that all live equipment in an area has been isolated and earthed.

This has been going on for a long time. A problem that was discovered at the Newton collision in the early 1990s where the overhead line equipment was ‘confirmed’ as ‘off’ but it was subsequently discovered that longer distance ‘bare feeders’ suspended from the outside of the masts were still...

Why are stations ‘pulling the shutters down’? Presumably staff unable to get to work as their trains aren’t running. I.e. booking office still closed from last night.

Very possibly. Having been extensively involved in ‘coal’ for a while there seemed to be endless variations of moves of Concessionary (miners’ “free” coal), Landsale between sites, movements to a nearby Washery, Blending purposes, Stocking sites, movements of local Opencast coal into colliery...

Whilst some extensions will obviously help I would give more urgent attention to strengthening power supplies on the existing routes. We will need to support: More or longer passenger trains to accommodate growth; Electric haulage of freight, including a 75% volume uplift; and Heavier loads for...

Fair comment but for any consumer organisation the fact that a dissatisfied rail passenger who had quite possibly popped out of a workplace to make a call from a public kiosk during their lunch break about a current issue of rail redress then ended up with a poor opinion of an official...

It’s not exactly a new thing. When the Rail Users Consultative Committees were set up in 1994 (replacing the the former TUCCs) each area only had three staff in total. In those days there was still a lot of postal correspondence. The phones would be diverted to answering machines some of the...

The subway ramps at Preston are a long way from compliant with modern standards in terms of gradient, lack of break landings and chicanes. Quite apart from 1/2 having no ramp at all. (A similar syndrome to Derby, Crewe, Peterborough and some others.)