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The Leeds Northern Railway became one of so many embarassing leftovers from the Railway Mania. Once the early railways had been consolodated it was of little use beyond providing local services in an area of low population density. Road haulage soon made freight traffic unprofitable leaving just...

Mea culpa, that is so heavily stripped I didn't recognise it as being a train!:oops: Below the missing light cluster there appears to be a white patch, possibly with "text" on it. Is that a trick of the light or is it a temporary identification sign? Someone with serious image enhancement...

And even if it was there is still the question of how to pay for it all. The national economy is struggling, with no obvious signs of improvement happening any time soon, so the pressures on the public purse will continue for many years yet. Within the national political conversation spending on...

I would suggest people look at the picture more closely. On the left hand side is a view through the doorway on Track 14 where the bodyside of the mystery vehicle can be seen: it is surely a 170. And the the yellow above the cab window does not extend to the roofline but meets a grey painted...

Based on what? Having long spells of domination in a league that is now barely third-rate? Or being the first British winners of the European Cup, nearly 60 years ago?! Exactly this. Countries with both population and money now dominate in Europe. On current trends Poland might one day join...

Unfortunately Dr Morgan completely failed to raise much consistent support among the local populace, so much so that North Yorkshire Council eventually dropped all mention of the idea from their long-term transport plan citing that lack of local support. While the parallel bus service is...

The reality is that most people have fallen out of love with deregulation so change is now almost inevitable. The big unknown is what approach will be taken in more rural areas. Franchising seems a good fit for the large metropolitan areas and could well be suitable for larger "free-standing"...

A continuing legacy of Thatcherism. Until we shake off this mentality we will continue to have mediocre public services.

Once they got the shiny new trains that came with the franchise, sure, they were decently competent. Prior to that, not so much. And it was Virgin that closed their traincrew depot at Carlisle leading to the regular collapse of services when there's a problem north of Preston, something that...

Great British Railways will be based in Derby. Not sure it's realistic to expect any more than that.

Routeing via Guide Bridge and reversing at Piccadilly involves crossing the whole layout there. Running via Ordsall completely eliminates that source of unreliability. Also the demand between Leeds/Huddersfield and Manchester Airport is well established, the potential demand from Bradford...

Welsh imperialism?

Beaten to it by @D1537 ! But can add that south of York it was a public service and in some timetables ran to/from Selby.

Absolutely no mystery whatsoever, it's called politics. When there are potential votes at stake politicians can move quite quickly. But railway issues very rarely have an effect on voters' decisions, as well as having long timescales to implement, so it's easy for ministers to continually fudge...

I would suggest the key driver for the use of batons is to ensure that dispatch signals to train crew are only given by suitably authorised staff, the baton effectively being their "badge of office". As such between trains the baton should either be kept in their posession or stowed in a secure...

The story which has long done the rounds was that DP2 used a spare Deltic bodyshell: it's possible this is not quite factual. Could simply have been that the Deltic bodyshell jigs were still in place so it was simple just to build an extra one. Ceausescu had tried to make Romania non-aligned...

Electrification of the Harrogate line would be useful too, it would allow some extra flexibility in diagramming the Aire Valley routes.

Pre 153s I remember the timetable was somewhat irregular with some services having different termini, ie terminating at either Nuneaton or Rugby at one end and Stafford/Stoke/Crewe at the other. Traction was a 2-car DMU from Tyseley. I actually used one early on a Saturday morning to pick up a...

Lots of people do indeed have enthusiasm for their work. But given the attitudes of so many directors/senior managers towards their workforce and the lack of incentives such as overtime premia most people do absolutely expect to go home at their scheduled finish time, especially in jobs, as on...

Why so negative? Most bus depots are practically empty by 0800 (on weekdays): who is using those buses? Concessionary passes aren't valid at that time and schoolkids certainly aren't filling all those buses. Your location is apparently Reading: perhaps you should spend some time observing the...