Railway General Knowledge.

[444045]

Is it ‘Gordon Petit’?

You are correct - Gordon Pettitt was the General manager of Southern Region BR - the floor is yours

 

[Cowley]

You are correct - Gordon Pettitt was the General manager of Southern Region BR - the floor is yours

What a lot of t’s...
I’m just about to go out for the day so I’ll say open floor.

 

[Calthrop]

Please name two African countries which do not have, and never have had, public passenger railways. (Industrial and purely port / harbour lines, thus don't count.) What with very recent developments -- there are fewer countries which qualify, than one might think !

 

[xotGD]

Western Sahara
Central African Republic

 

[Calthrop]

Western Sahara
Central African Republic

Both correct. (An inccidental oddity: the country-by-country book Steam in Africa, published 1981, tells of an 8 km. 600mm gauge line in what is now the Central African Republic, inaugurated when the area was a French possession; the line functioned for about thirty years, and ran alongside a stretch of the Ubangui River -- ran only when the river water level on this stretch was too low for navigation. For the purposes of the question, definitely one that doesn't count !)

Your floor.

 

[xotGD]

Open floor please.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 18 Aug 2020 ==

Edit:

Nobody has taken the floor and I've now thought of a question:

Which depot has/had the code BG?

 

[444045]

Would that be Botanic Gardens Hull ?

 

[xotGD]

Would that be Botanic Gardens Hull ?

It certainly is!

The floor is yours...

 

[444045]

Nostalgia question involving a tank engine - If Percy is 6 who was 7 - 8 - 9 & 10 ?

 

[SuspectUsual]

Toby, Duck, Donald and Duncan

 

[444045]

Toby, Duck, Donald and Duncan

3 out of 4 correct

 

[SteveyBee131]

Douglas might be the other possibly?

 

[444045]

Douglas might be the other possibly?

And you would be correct with Douglas - however as @SteveM70 got 3 out of 4 - the floor is all yours

 

[SuspectUsual]

Open floor

 

[341o2]

Lucy, Linda and Lisa were associated with which line?

 

[Cowley]

Lucy, Linda and Lisa were associated with which line?

Is Linda the Hunslet at the Festiniog nowadays?
I’m thinking Dinorwic?
(I’m aware that some of those spellings are probably wrong but I didn’t want to Google)

 

[341o2]

No, all three ran on the same line

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Aug 2020 ==

The names were unofficial while in mainline service. One has since been officially named

 

[444045]

Would that be Lisa on a Class 73 ?

 

[xotGD]

Bedford to Bletchley? Names of bubble cars?

 

[341o2]

Would that be Lisa on a Class 73 ?

Right region, but not a locomotive class. Two classes involved, Lucy 2003/4, scrapped, Linda 2004 preserved, Lisa 2005, preserved but scrapped following vandalism

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Aug 2020 ==

The answer is the Lymngton branch. Before the introduction of the two heritage 3CIG's in 2005, the branch tended to be worked by a regular unit, and these were unofficially named by staff at Bournemouth depot. Linda is currently on the Chinnor & Princes Risborough line and in 2015 at a ceremony at Chinnor was officially named Linda the Lymington Flyer. The driver who originally named the unit wanted to be present, but was working at the time.

Open floor

 

[DerekC]

What three railway related problems most hampered the Confederacy during the American Civil War? (There were quite a lot, but three big ones).

 

[Calthrop]

The Confederacy's railroads were on an assortment of different gauges, haphazardly distributed: more 5ft. than anything else, but that fact was of limited help. (The North was not immune from the same problem, but had a less bad case of it -- and / or coped with it better.)

The Confederacy was relatively poor in industrial plant for the making of all and any kinds of railroad equipment; the North was where the majority of the heavy industry was.

A guess: a shortage of skilled railroad staff in various capacities; on the analogy of South Africa a century later, presumably slaves were restricted to the lowest and most menial railroad jobs; this contributing to -- more to be done, than there were white men to do it.

 

[xotGD]

Were they also short of coal?

 

[341o2]

I recall a picture of a line of unservicable locomotives, so was another factor inadequate repair facilities due to either inability or lack of spare parts?

 

[DerekC]

The Confederacy's railroads were on an assortment of different gauges, haphazardly distributed: more 5ft. than anything else, but that fact was of limited help. (The North was not immune from the same problem, but had a less bad case of it -- and / or coped with it better.)

The Confederacy was relatively poor in industrial plant for the making of all and any kinds of railroad equipment; the North was where the majority of the heavy industry was.

A guess: a shortage of skilled railroad staff in various capacities; on the analogy of South Africa a century later, presumably slaves were restricted to the lowest and most menial railroad jobs; this contributing to -- more to be done, than there were white men to do it.

@Calthrop - You have two of the top problems - first, the impossibility of through running between the 5ft gauge railways in the deep south and the standard gauge railways in Virginia and North Carolina and second, the lack of manufacturing capability to replace damaged track and rolling stock. The shortage of staff was a factor too but doesn't seem to have stopped operations. The Confederate government was a strong believer in laissez-faire so at the beginning of the war many railroads which lost their traffic just packed up and laid their staff off and many went into the army. @xotGD - there was some coal in Tennessee and Louisiana, I think. @341o2 - I am sure you are right that spares were a problem too, but not in my top three.

One more go to get my final factor.

 

[Calthrop]

I'm tempted to suggest facetiously: Union agents sneaking in and wreaking temporary havoc on Southern railroads, a la the Great Locomotive Chase / The General saga -- but obviously, that would not have happened often enough to pose a serious problem !

 

[DerekC]

@Calthrop - you skirted round the third problem. It was that the railroads in the south were built as a haphazard collection of local lines with few connections between them. According to C.W. Ramsdell in an article "The Confederate Government and the Railroads" -published in The American Historical Review in July 1917:

When in May and June of 1861 the government began to collect an army in Virginia one serious weakness of the transportation system was distinctly revealed. At such points as Chattanooga, Knoxville, Bristol, Lynchburg, Savannah, Augusta, Charlotte, Raleigh, Wilmington and Petersburg - and there were many others - the roads terminating in those towns did not connect with each other and freight must be unloaded at one depot, hauled across town and reloaded at the other. Passengers frequently had to wait over until the next day. Since this arrangement made business for hotels and transfer companies, the town looked on it with favor as a valuable asset and strongly opposed every attempt to provide connections for through traffic ......

Moral victory - your field of battle, @Calthrop

 

[Calthrop]

That is most neighborly of you, suh.

Staying in the Western Hemisphere: there follow, several railway-associated titles -- whether official, or nicknames bestowed by those on the spot -- from various parts of, broadly, the Americas. All, authentically, in English; but not all pertain to a railway matter in an English-speaking country.


The Mad Mary

The Route of the Eagles

The Good & Quick (was maybe so in its distant heyday; but long since, badly come-down in the world)

The Banana Boat Steam Train


Please name the relevant country, re each title -- that's all that is asked in the way of answers; but any supplementary info "just for fun", will be welcome.

 

[DerekC]

I didn't have a clue about any of them but it was great fun Googling!!

 

[444045]

Wasn't the Route of the Eagles about the Missouri railroad ?