Search results

The Ffestiniog line between Boston Lodge and Porthmadog and the Boston Lodge depot itself, and the Welsh Highland at Caernarfon, where the new station has just been completed, will surely be in jeopardy if sea levels rise more than a couple of feet.

That actually happened. My dad can remember a new work colleague who had only recently arrived in London, who saw the names on the line up through Hackney Downs, thought they sounded very nice, and was rather disappointed when actually travelling along that route.

The Shepperton branch was intended to go through to Chertsey, hence the through platforms at Shepperton. Which way the junction was going to face at Chertsey -- towards Staines or Weybridge, or perhaps both -- I don't know.

I don't think there was ever an Ashford (Kent) to Ashford (Middlesex) service even when there was a connection between Waterloo and Waterloo East.

There's something admirable about the Porkers. They just will not go quietly into the night. Every time we think they've been withdrawn, they get a refurbishment and turn up somewhere on the old Southern Region network. Now they're back on their original patch, Waterloo to Bournemouth and beyond.

When I was working with ex-BR 60' track on the Ffestiniog Railway, I think it was around 75lb/yard, we could carry a rail around quite easily with eight of us using four sets of tongs. Any fewer than that would have been rather hard work for us, so we didn't try it.

There's something remarkable about the 442s. How many time have the Porkers been withdrawn only to be refurbished and reintroduced somewhere around the former Southern Region? Now they're back where they first started 30 years ago, Waterloo to Bournemouth and beyond. Here's for another decade or...

Following out of curiosity on RTT a freight working across South Wales today, I discovered that the freight line avoiding Swansea from Briton Ferry across to Llangennech / Ponteddulais does have an occasional passenger service along it, such as a late evening Manchester to Carmarthen service and...

There are several terraces of cottages near Willesden Junction on and parallel to Old Oak Lane, hemmed in by the WCML, a railway yard and the canal, which are not in the usual Victorian London style of building, and which I suspect were railway housing. That there was a railway hostel and...

I remember at the level crossing on Manor Road in Richmond there used to be a couple of small cottages for railway staff. They outlasted the automation of the level crossing, but were demolished when railway land was sold off for redevelopment, and they have been replaced by some new houses, for...

To return to the attraction of steam locomotives, I think that there is something about a steam locomotive that is very different from other forms of traction and which is implied in the name of another form of power, the internal combustion engine. A steam locomotive is an extremely visual...

What's wrong with them that's making South-West wish to dispose of them so soon after their coming into service? I've been on them quite a few times to and from Waterloo and have had nothing to complain about.

I must admit that a few people do get a bit above themselves at railway events. One incident especially springs to mind; I was at Horsted Keynes on the Bluebell Railway with my dad on a special day -- was it when a V2 was visiting? -- and there were a lot of photographers on the platform. We...

Another vintage building in need of restoration that went on fire in suspicious circumstances.

According to Real Time Trains, it left York six minutes late, and made up time to be one minute late at Sherburn-tin-Elmet; after that it became progressively delayed (with occasional making up of a little time): 30 minutes at Meadowhall, 49 minutes at Burton on Trent, 112 minutes at Coleshill...

Perhaps a completely new Broad Street station could have been incorporated in the Broadgate development, maybe with four or six platforms. The old Broad Street had lots of redundant space, including a large station throat and a long-disused goods yard to the west, along with much space...

Is this just a modern phenomenon? I have somewhere in a book -- I'll try to find it -- a photograph of railway enthusiasts all over the platform ramp, the track and the six-foot back in the 1960s at a Southern region station, Chichester perhaps.

I didn't know that some main-line diversions stopped at Staines. That must be handy, especially if they only stop at Clapham Junction on the way to Waterloo; a bit like when the Reading services are diverted via Kingston, as in my earlier post. That also reminds me of when I was a kid, when some...

Last Saturday, when the line through Twickenham was not working, the Kingston loop service went to Shepperton, running non-stop between Teddington and Shepperton, thus giving Shepperton a 15-minute interval service rather than the normal half-hour one, and half of them running fast for some of...