Search results

What baffles me is that a helicopter was allowed to fly around so close to the approach to an airport and a very busy one at that, and at night. I'm sure that this would not occur around a British airport.

Or that famous scene from Airplane or the disaster films it parodies? This happened to me in a café. The proprietor called 'Is there a doctor here?' as someone had fainted, and a couple of my pals pointed to me and another pal, saying gleefully, 'These guys are doctors!' We had to explain that...

I've long thought that. Original plans for Heathrow show another east/west runway, to the north of the Bath Road. Otherwise the neat little villages there would have been swallowed up in the Middlesex sprawl southwards from Hayes and westwards from Hounslow. I grew up in Richmond in the 1960s...

The concrete footbridge at North Sheen, constructed when the station was opened there in the 1930s, lasted until the 1980s, when it required replacing (its replacement is a story in itself, but not for this thread); the one over the line between St Mary's Grove and Sheendale Road in Richmond...

A very short, perhaps 50 yards, new line to connect the up line at Twickenham with the up bay platform 2, which would thereby become a through platform. This would give Twickenham four through platforms. The bay was originally built as a through platform, although the track was never connected...

When I was a kid in the early 1960s, I think that the Reading trains ran non-stop to Staines, with a few stopping at Twickenham and Richmond in the rush-hour. Perhaps someone can confirm this one way or another. 1736970465 I seem to remember a scandal when it was revealed that SW Trains added a...

One of my dad's work colleagues was injured in this accident. He was on the Hayes service that was stopped at the signals and was hit from behind. Somehow, he was thrown through a window and was trapped by his feet, and was dangling downwards until he was rescued. Another of my dad's work...

Yes, I've noticed in several places where a bike lane will suddenly veer across to the other side of a busy road, such as London Road near the Park Road roundabout in Kingston, or suddenly end at a bus-stop outside a busy railway station, as at Raynes Park. I guess there are real problems in...

Willesden Junction is still an important station, but it has lost quite a few platforms. It had until the 1950s four platforms for the main lines (all now gone); three upstairs (now two); two bays (now one) and two through platforms for the DC lines.

I guess that the time taken up reversing at East Croydon was taken up by running non-stop to Balham.

I noticed that services through Streatham Hill this afternoon (18 November) have been diverted because of a failed train. The London Bridge > Victoria via Crystal Palace services are being diverted between Sydenham and Balham with little or no delay or gain in time. Any idea of the route they...

A motorway to Skegness -- and to some obscure point between Lowestoft and Yarmouth? Someone's having a laugh, surely? These places were on their way out half a century ago.

In and around London we have a new invention: a combined bus-stop and bike-lane. I'm riding nicely along a bike-lane between the pavement and the carriageway, and suddenly there's a crowd of people milling around the entrance of a bus, and a stream of people alighting from it, all in the...

My grandparents' neighbours near Lowestoft pronounced it 'Narge', rhyming with 'barge'. It took me a while before I deciphered 'Gaunta Narge?' as, 'Are you going to Norwich?'

Pollockshields to London Fields Aberdeen to Bethnal Green Denby Dale to Ebbw Vale Linlithglow to Clitheroe Mytholmroyd to Betws-y-Coed Heysham Port to Hampton Court Manningtree to Leigh on Sea Riddlesdown to Kentish Town Garelochhead to Sanderstead Bardon Mill to Gypsy Hill Pontypridd to...

I've lived near Heathrow for most of my life, and it makes me laugh when I hear folk complain about aeroplane noise. I remember the 1960s, and some jet planes were very loud. The BAC-111 was extremely loud for its size. As for 'country smells', my grandparents bought a cottage near Lowestoft...

I don't if the Evening Standard (once one of London's three evening papers, now the only one and a weekly to boot) has done it yet, but there's an obvious rhyming one for their London railway quiz -- linking two named stations via four others for whose names one has to solve the clues --...

The original A340s seemed to be underpowered, as they took much longer to get to their cruising height. When they regularly flew from Heathrow over my house, they always were a fair bit lower than other planes, including the A330s, which were the same plane but with two engines. Wags would say...

His name was Tiddles. He arrived there one day as a kitten and was adopted by the attendants, and lived there until he died. He was a bit of a chonk, to say the least. More about him here. For quite a few years there was an unofficial station cat at Teddington, a friendly one-eyed little chap...

I'm sure I saw an article on the Blue Pullman services and someone referred to the drivers' uniforms as a 'milkman's coat' or something similar. Perhaps someone might confirm this one way or the other.