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That Sunday/Monday difference looks to me like the classic distinction between "Brought into use" and "Commercial traffic began". So I thought it worth seeing what the press had. Manchester Metro News, 21 May 1993: "The line opened to the public at midnight on Sunday, ..." West Lancashire...

Why is it that if I go to a book-shop and receive perhaps quite a few minutes of expert advice (or to an ironmonger's and likewise) there's no question of tipping, but if I queue at the counter in a café to order a cup of coffee and that's then brought to me at a seat I am expected to pay a...

The first letter-post rate I remember is 2½d. For that, we normally did get next-day delivery, i.e. what would now be called the first-class service. Updating for inflation, your 87p for the second-class service seems expensive and the present cost of first class seems outrageous. The answer...

Yes, it's essential that the social contract should be repaired and essential to raise the standards of public services. We should all pay for public services of a quality we are all happy to receive. When you means-test or just provide services of such a basic quality that people feel the need...

A useful guide (though it stops a few years back) is Britain's Growing Railway : A–Z of Rail Reopenings, Railfuture (i.e. Railway Development Society) 2010. It has station openings 1960–2009 and line openings 1969–2009 (misleadingly just titled "Reopened lines and chords in date order")...

But which communities does Labour represent now? It seems to have become just the party of the ever-growing numbers of claimants and of those sections of the working population that remain strongly unionised. Given that the Tories remain, as they really always have been, the party for the very...

At St Pancras you had a set-up where a cab bringing a passenger to the station would turn off the Euston Road and come under the tower arch to drop the passenger off outside the booking office, then carry straight on to drop back down to road level, turn under the tracks (if the driver wished)...

But I still don't get how a platform can be claimed to have an operational length of 260 m if you have to start by saying we must lop so many metres off that at one end to allow the driver to see the signal and so many at the other end because you mustn't aim to stop hard up against the blocks...

So if St Pancras has a usable length of 260 m for all four platforms, then that is enough to hold two of the "standard" 800-series 5-car unit as produced for the ECML. Looking back, the stuff put our about the planned purchase in 2019 seems to suggest that the idea was that it would be pretty...

Please forgive if this is a very naive question ... What is the difference between the "operational length" of a platform and the "working length". The sectional appendix gives 260 m as the operational length of the four Midland platforms at St Pancras, but you're giving a working length of 20 m...

Lowton Jn (between Golborne Jn and Parkside Jn)? As you come south, the east curve towards Manchester is the smooth curve but is signalled with feathers, the west curve towards Liverpool comes out of the back of it but is signalled as the main line. (Utterly horrible layout here, with the signal...

The original powers (1842 Act) were to inspect any line that was going to be used to carry passengers and postpone opening if it were consdidered that there might be any danger to passengers. But once a line was opened, that was that. A company could make what changes it wanted. The 1871 Act...

Put the British civil service in charge — now there's a recipe for clear long-term policies and world-class success!

There is a very interesting report in today's Green Signals () by Richard Bowker on the recent Transport Select Committee hearing. The MML electrification "pause" figures quite extensively. It seems to boil down to two things, from what Lord Hendy had to say. The first (and it came out in other...

Surely we have a much longer shared history with Europe than we do with the USA? How much of the feeling of closeness (for some people) with the USA a product of the mass media, especially audio-visual, ove r the last century (basically post WW1) and many years of the BBC paying much more...

The trouble is that in this, as in so many other areas, the UK has never actually created a system but has just allowed all sorts of different customs to develop into a "system", each without regard for any of the others. And then it's far too difficult to rationalise things, and in any case...

There is some freight use of that line too, isn't there? I seem to remember that one of the reasons for not allowing a rise in the normal permitted maximum from 250 to 280 km/h was the possible aerodynamic effect (on the freight train) in tunnels of an ICE at full speed passing a freight. Isn't...

Why over many years do the East Midlands (I'm thinking of Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Sheffield and their areas) seem to have had such a raw deal from governments of both parties? They just seem to lack political clout. The most massive big railway change for the better in many years was the...

But how much more popular might it be if the journey-experience were like Paris-Brussels or Brussels-Cologne rather than like any journey by air with all its hassle. If only London-Paris were as easy as London-Manchester or London-Newcastle, then a half-hourly service might by now have become...

Are you thinking of the old route over the Swinton & Knottingley (or the very brief time when it was once again via Normanton? I think via Doncaster wins out over both of those in speed terms—I think you could probably manage 45 minutes with a stop in Doncaster quite easily. But as for the...