Line naming conventions

[SWTurbo]

Probably been asked before, if so apologies, but I can't find the thread!
What's in a name? I'm on about the conventions of naming lines ie. Fast/Slow, Main/Relief etc.
Some are fairly easy (ie. the Windsor Reversible at Waterloo is a bi-di line towards windsor) but there are the more obscure ones and the odd ones (Why are the "slow" lines out of Liv. St the "Electrics" when the Mains (And Subs/Fasts) also wired lines?
How is this decided and why are there so many differences? Is it just to do with the privatisation era and the individual companies?
TIA!

 

[snowball]

Like so many things for which people seek explanations, it's largely a result of historical accidents, not any grand organising scheme.

The GWR preferred main/relief terminology where other railways used fast/slow.

I imagine out of Liverpool Street the "electrics" are the lines that were electrified first.

 

[InkyScrolls]

Historical precedent. An example is platform four at Skipton, which is still known officially as the 'Shipley down slow'.

 

[D6130]

Historical precedent. An example is platform four at Skipton, which is still known officially as the 'Shipley down slow'

....or, to be pedantic - the 'Down Shipley Slow'!

 

[David Burrows]

Probably been asked before, if so apologies, but I can't find the thread!
What's in a name? I'm on about the conventions of naming lines ie. Fast/Slow, Main/Relief etc.
Some are fairly easy (ie. the Windsor Reversible at Waterloo is a bi-di line towards windsor) but there are the more obscure ones and the odd ones (Why are the "slow" lines out of Liv. St the "Electrics" when the Mains (And Subs/Fasts) also wired lines?
How is this decided and why are there so many differences? Is it just to do with the privatisation era and the individual companies?
TIA!

The 'electric' lines out of Liverpool St were indeed those electrified first for the new EMU suburban service to Shenfield - the name just stuck and still sticks. All staff in the area know that that is what they are called so, althought all the other lines habe been electrified for many years, changing the name for the sake of it would probably just cause confusion, mistakes etc.

 

[mr_moo]

Having been involved with projects for some time, it's partly just down to someone coming up with something that sounds good really, usually namd after something local or occasionally someone or something significant for the project. Areas have general conventions as mentioned above, so they will tend to follow those with tweaks.

For example, the new bit of track to be installed just South of Cambridge to allow passing moves will be called the imaginative "Hills road spur" after Hills Road overbridge which passes over it.

 

[Ken H]

Are these names in the sectional indices?

 

[Annetts key]

Conventions / standards on the railways

You need to understand that back when railways started, each railway company decided on its own conventions and standards. And there were hundreds of different companies at the peak of railway building. Some got lost by mergers. But some stuck. And once it’s stuck, it tends to stay until someone comes up with money to intentionally change it.

As it’s cheaper to not spend money on moving everything to one single set of conventions and standards, existing conventions and standards live on…

 

[The Planner]

Are these names in the sectional indices?

A lot of them are noted in the timetable planning rules.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

There are also many railway locations where the original naming was for people or places that had some relevance around the 1850s but which have long since vanished.
They often lived on in signal box or line names.

One I noted locally was Muspratts Sidings on the North Wales coast line.
James Muspratt was a chemical magnate around south Lancashire and had a factory near Flint.
Many of these industrial firms ended up in large corporations like ICI or Unilever, but more recently the old names have reappeared as those firms have restructured.

In Warrington the is/was a siding called "New Found Out Siding" to the SW of BQ station - I've never figured out what that means.
Then there's Gas Factory Jn, North Pole Jn etc etc.
The railway is rich with such cultural references.

 

[InkyScrolls]

....or, to be pedantic - the 'Down Shipley Slow'!

Thank you! I thought it didn't sound right.

 

[Ken H]

There are also many railway locations where the original naming was for people or places that had some relevance around the 1850s but which have long since vanished.
They often lived on in signal box or line names.

One I noted locally was Muspratts Sidings on the North Wales coast line.
James Muspratt was a chemical magnate around south Lancashire and had a factory near Flint.
Many of these industrial firms ended up in large corporations like ICI or Unilever, but more recently the old names have reappeared as those firms have restructured.

In Warrington the is/was a siding called "New Found Out Siding" to the SW of BQ station - I've never figured out what that means.
Then there's Gas Factory Jn, North Pole Jn etc etc.
The railway is rich with such cultural references.

I looked up Pouparts Jct in Battersea. It was named after Samuel Poupart , a market gardener who at one time owned a farm on land that is now Shaftesbury Park Estate.

 

[contrex]

I seem to recall that when I was a boy, the Main and Windsor lines out of Waterloo had Local and Through but I think they are Slow and Fast these days?

And let's not forget Dr Day's Junction in Bristol. Wasn't it once called Dr Day's Bridge Junction? Some say it was called that because the doctor treated many of the navvies who built the line, others that it was just they needed a name for the junction and his then isolated house was the nearest landmark.

 

[CW2]

In Warrington the is/was a siding called "New Found Out Siding" to the SW of BQ station - I've never figured out what that means.

I believe "New Found Out" is a local contraction of "New Foundry Outlet".

 

[D6130]

I seem to recall that when I was a boy, the Main and Windsor lines out of Waterloo had Local and Through but I think they are Slow and Fast these days?

Yes, the London & South Western Railway - and its successor the Southern - used 'local' and 'through' designations for their lines out of Waterloo. This was perpetuated in the Waterloo-Hampton Court Junction resignalling of 1936, which also involved the contruction of the Durnsford Road flyover between Earlsfield and Wimbledon, which altered the line pairing between there and Waterloo from directional (Down Local-Down Through-Up Through-Up local) to functional (Down Local-Up Local-Down Through-Up Through). When the Woking-Basingstoke resignalling (for the Bournemouth electrification) was commissioned in 1966, the 'Through' and 'Local' designations were altered to 'Fast' and 'Slow' and when Surbiton panel box opened in 1969 the same alterations were made between New Malden and Woking. The final changeover of line designations - between Waterloo and New Malden on the main line and Waterloo and Barnes on the Windsor lines - happened in 1988, when the Wimbledon Area Signalling Centre opened, IIRC.

 

[norbitonflyer]

I looked up Pouparts Jct in Battersea. It was named after Samuel Poupart , a market gardener who at one time owned a farm on land that is now Shaftesbury Park Estate.

Pouparts moved to Twickenham when the railway compusrily purchased his land, and became quite a big business in that area - the family business's jam factory was still operating in the 1950s. (My grandfather was a delivery driver for them until he was made redundant in the 1930s, when the Road Traffic Act made steam lorries uneconomic and, rather than switch their fleet to internal combustion, they started using a haulage firm).
Pouparts also had a warehouse in Covent Garden, which was used for an "on location" scene in an early Doctor Who episode (the one with the Yeti in the Underground)

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I believe "New Found Out" is a local contraction of "New Foundry Outlet".

That's very interesting - the BQ area was a hive of early industry, with both river and rail access.
On the Low Level line there were Monk's Siding, Litton's Mill Crossing and Crosfields Crossing signal boxes, all within a short distance of Bank Quay.
The signal boxes have all been eliminated now, but they reflected the mid-19th century factories which fed the railway.
I still know the Unilever works as Crosfields* or Joe Soaps as we called it around 1960, but the rest has long been history, and none of it is rail-connected today.
I wonder if we will actually see HS2 and NPR trains on this old route?

* the old name is still on the facade of the main office building

 

[FGW_DID]

Reading has the “Reading Festival“ line which allows trains from Platform 3, 7 & 8 to access the Relief Lines (and vice versa).

The Festival site is adjacent to the reliefs & depot.

 

[Trog]

Some years ago I did some diagrams for a proposed connection between the GWR and LNWR mainlines at Old Oak Common / Willesden No7 junction.
I think the idea was to divert some of the WCML local trains on to the Elisabeth Line and into Paddington.

I marked the two lines up as being the Up and Dn North & Great Western nothing ever came of the scheme but I did wonder if the name would stick. Perhaps would have had some chance as the S&T seemed to like using GWR style line names, and it mentioned their favourite railway.

 

[Annetts key]

And let's not forget Dr Day's Junction in Bristol. Wasn't it once called Dr Day's Bridge Junction? Some say it was called that because the doctor treated many of the navvies who built the line, others that it was just they needed a name for the junction and his then isolated house was the nearest landmark.

See here

Dr Days Junction was named after Dr Willam Edward Day who lived in Barrow Road. The area was named after him when the bridge at Barrow Road needed to be cut for the railway to pass.

And here

Quoted from the Book "Bristol Railway Panorama"
by Colin Maggs:
"Leaving the Bath line at South Wales Junction just east
of Temple Meads, the Filton Line curves past the site of the orginal
GWR engine shed to Dr Day's Bridge junction where the direct line
from St Annes Park avoiding Temple Meads comes in.
The juction's curious name arose because Dr William Edward Day lived
in Barrow Road, and when the South Wales line was cut, the bridge
required was named after him. At it's maxium extend, Dr Days's
carriage siding had 21 roads. Out of use of coaches by 1969, it was
used for vans and cripples. The nearby Barton Hill repair shops are
now one of only two in England maintaining parcels vans; they also
repair engineers's wagons."

I think some BR documentation still referred to it as Dr Day’s Bridge Junction.

 

[Railsigns]

I'll confess that it was me who gave the lines between Springburn and Garnqueen North their slightly comical designations, Up Stepps and Down Stepps, in the 1990s.

Later, I had the thought that it would have been a fitting nod to the line's history (as the route of the historical Garnkirk and Glasgow Railway) to have named them the Up and Down Garnkirk lines.

 

[SWTurbo]

There are also many railway locations where the original naming was for people or places that had some relevance around the 1850s but which have long since vanished.
They often lived on in signal box or line names.

One I noted locally was Muspratts Sidings on the North Wales coast line.
James Muspratt was a chemical magnate around south Lancashire and had a factory near Flint.
Many of these industrial firms ended up in large corporations like ICI or Unilever, but more recently the old names have reappeared as those firms have restructured.

In Warrington the is/was a siding called "New Found Out Siding" to the SW of BQ station - I've never figured out what that means.
Then there's Gas Factory Jn, North Pole Jn etc etc.
The railway is rich with such cultural references.

Crossings are even worse for the “look around and name after the first thing you see” gig!

I have to say my least favourite (or just the most unimaginative junction has to be Junction Rd Junction…
Thanks for all the responses!

 

[Pinza-C55]

The North Eastern Railway liked to call Slow lines "Independent" and rarely used the term "Goods Line". I once bought an NER block instrument and logical deduction led me to believe it was from Kirkby Stephen East which had Up and Down lines, plus Up and Down Independents and Goods Lines. The Newcastle & Carlisle Railway was unusual in having East and West Lines rather than Up and Down. The NER also tended not to give signalboxes the suffix North, South or Station if they could help it. Pickering had about 6 signalboxes none of which were called Pickering.

 

[Railwaysceptic]

. . . . Then there's Gas Factory Jn, North Pole Jn etc etc. . . . .

North Pole Junction undoubtedly takes its name from the nearby North Pole Road.

 

[Magdalia]

Crossings are even worse for the “look around and name after the first thing you see” gig!

I have to say my least favourite (or just the most unimaginative junction has to be Junction Rd Junction…

On the other hand, Junction Road Junction is one of my favourite railway location names.

 

[D6130]

On the other hand, Junction Road Junction is one of my favourite railway location names.

I have often wondered which came first....the chicken or the egg? Was the road named after the junction....or was the railway junction named after a road, which in turn was named after a nearby road junction?

 

[Magdalia]

I have often wondered which came first....the chicken or the egg? Was the road named after the junction....or was the railway junction named after a road, which in turn was named after a nearby road junction?

Junction Road runs northwards from outside Tufnell Park Tube station towards Upper Holloway. The railway junction being named after the road seems more likely to me.

 

[Senex]

I have often wondered which came first....the chicken or the egg? Was the road named after the junction....or was the railway junction named after a road, which in turn was named after a nearby road junction?

The junction was named after the road, which was built in the second decade of the century as a junction road between Kentish Town and the Holloway Road.

 

[43096]

North Pole Junction undoubtedly takes its name from the nearby North Pole Road.

I believe there was a North Pole pub in the area at one point after which the road was named.

It did give one of my favourite delay reasons, though: winter weather in the area led to Eurostar trains being delayed off depot, which was announced at Waterloo as “Eurostar services are being delayed due to snow at North Pole.”

 

[Flange Squeal]

All staff in the area know that that is what they are called so, althought all the other lines habe been electrified for many years, changing the name for the sake of it would probably just cause confusion, mistakes etc.

The route between Surbiton and Guildford via Cobham was opened in 1885 but is still known as “The New Line” some 137 years later, and staff refer to services over it as “New Liners”. While the tracks themselves are the Up and Down Cobham, I believe the Network Rail Engineers Line Reference is ‘NGL’ (standing for ‘New Guildford Line’).