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Have read on internal coms that a 10’’ gas main has a 12’’ hole put in it and it is venting towards the railway. It’s unable to be isolated and repairs could take up to two days. I don’t think you could blame NR for being over cautious about this event. We shall see how quickly the repair can be...

Great story, thanks for recounting it. It brings back memories of my own trip to Ft Bill/Mallaig in the winter of 83 with 27’s. A perfect little loco for those lines. I suppose I am biased though being a huge fan of the Type 2’s we used to have at BS at the time.

The staff and unions don’t like it, it’s purely a management idea to increase productivity. It has actually been recognised as causing problems and said management has coined the trendy phrase of ‘over optimisation of diagrams’ for it. Nothing changes though, who wants to be the manager who...

Interesting thanks, I must go and investigate.

Seem to remember reading that Dovey Junction had no public access to it. It was only used for changing trains.

Saturdays have always been part of the working week, and Avanti have committed Sunday rostered overtime. That meant not far off every other Sunday rostered. They able to refuse any overtime above and beyond the roster but that is a long way from what you are wrongly describing.

The triangular yellow cut out denotes the site of catch points. No doubt redundant now most have been removed.

Surely this is two private rail companies, both soon to be no more having a bit of a jolly using a part of their advertising budget. It seems to be nothing to do with government departments just railway staff having a bit of fun and hopefully raising morale, which otherwise seems to be ebbing away.

I would imagine Alston wouldn’t want the unit running its engines in the shed and gassing the VIP’s. It might lessen its green credentials.

221’s have a traction cut out switch which allows for the engine to run and supply the auxiliaries, heat / light / compressor etc but without producing traction power. This is sometimes used if the power packs a bit ropey, just to keep the engine running and avoid putting extra strain on the...

You appear to be referring to what we called ’Triple’ Valve’ fitted stock. Not many trains used that system and those that did were mainly EMU’s to my knowledge. It wasn’t popular and was an inferior setup to the more common air brake system with distributors on every vehicle. I believe these...

To the nay sayers, 200mm of rainfall in the last 24hrs reported on the Honister (Northern Lakes) rain gauge. That’s 8’’ in old money. Network Rail can’t guarantee exactly where the rain will actually fall so I can understand their caution. I see the Spey viaduct(near Inverness) has partially...

I’m sure Wyrleybart does. You have fine Railwaymen in your family. BS was a good training ground.

Large shed reported on the line near Madeley. (WCML, south of Crewe)

No, there are cocks between vehicles if I remember right. but you would need to release the parking brake if the air was all drained out of the vehicle. They are spring worked. The amount of damage underneath to that equipment is an unknown factor. Dragging as a swinger shouldn’t be a problem...

Most definitely this. The pipe work to extend the coupler will probably be damaged anyway. The air train pipe also goes to the coupler and will be need to be undamaged for the recovery even if the loco is on the northern end. I suspect even after the vehicle is rerailed recovery won’t be...

On my last visit to the Poplars, around two weeks ago the wiring seemed complete except for the connection at Acton West Jn. Though I’m not sure if the other end at Acton Wells was connected either, it was too dark. The contact wire had been installed since my previous trip.

As the 196’s came from WMT they would not have operated DOO thus far, so has any 196’s actually been in service running DOO, for another company? If not has the DOO equipment ever been passed as ‘fit for use’ ? We have all heard stories about awful quality camera’s and sunlight obscuring the...

It will interesting monitoring the performance of the 800’s under the new MU profile. I expect the times to vary quite a lot initially depending on the mindset of the driver. Even when driving within the ‘Professional Driving Policy’ driving styles vary a surprising amount. Some drivers focus on...

The drivers themselves will work out what new braking points to use and everyone will probably do it slightly differently. I wouldn’t expect much time saving at least initially until people can get in to a new routine. Even then some of the shorter raises in linespeed might not be really worth...