When the 'traditional' railway became the 'modern' railway

[F-UnitMad]

On 19/06/2024 at 19:14, stewartingram said:

Nowadays we have basically a passenger railway, with a small amount of freight traffic imposed on it.....

That's just one of many reasons why I take more note of & model American trains - because it's the exact opposite, an overwhelmingly freight network, with a few passenger trains shoe-horned in (apart from urban commuter services).

For me UK railways changed irrevocably when the WCML services effectively became PushPull trains. Class 86 & 87s just didn't look right at the back of an express train!!! 😱

[Reorte]

On 09/09/2024 at 08:19, MyRule1 said:

My second answsr is that has not happened yet. There are still outposts of semaphore signals etc it won't be a modern railway until in cab signaling is universal.

Since everything overlaps and evolves by that point in cab signalling may be regarded as not very modern. That might just be on those traditional old fashioned lines that still have a person up front driving the train (all depressing dystopian stuff as far as I'm concerned, but that's by the by).

[Southernman46]

16 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

That's just one of many reasons why I take more note of & model American trains - because it's the exact opposite, an overwhelmingly freight network, with a few passenger trains shoe-horned in (apart from urban commuter services).

For me UK railways changed irrevocably when the WCML services effectively became PushPull trains. Class 86 & 87s just didn't look right at the back of an express train!!! 😱

I do remember an American (Texan) visitor to Waterloo General Offices back in the early days of the rail-grinder development saying "Don't all these passenger trains get in the way of the freight" much to everyone's bemusement. 

[The Stationmaster]

On 10/09/2024 at 12:30, Southernman46 said:

I do remember an American (Texan) visitor to Waterloo General Offices back in the early days of the rail-grinder development saying "Don't all these passenger trains get in the way of the freight" much to everyone's bemusement. 

Since the Liz Line opened that is exactly what happens on the GWML - freights forever being signal checked by slow moving (Liz Line)  passenger trains.

[Nearholmer]

While agreeing with all the points made about modernisation having been a constant of railways since they were invented, I do think there was a period during which operational practices and technology remained stable enough for long enough, over a large enough proportion of Britain’s railways, that a tradition might be said to have become established. I’m thinking of the post-c1890 scene, with “lock block and brake”, semaphore signalling, steam motive power, common carrier goods services using four-wheeled wagons, and an at least basic passenger service to nearly every settlement in the land, which persisted until c1960.
 

While there were all sorts of exceptions right from the start (study the Liverpool Overhead Railway as one the was always exceptional, for instance), and exceptions increased as time went by, there was very much a “British standard model” of a railway over this period, one which was widely exported too. 
 

If I’m right about this, then everything post c1960 might be “modern” as opposed to “traditional”, but it took BR so long to shake-off it’s Victorian legacy, knock redundant stuff down, flog-off surplus land etc, and to emerge from a period when there was a very real prospect of railways being altogether jettisoned as a transport mode, in the way that canals had been, that maybe “modern” didn’t really get into its stride until at least 1980, perhaps even later, and that what CJF saw as “modern image” might now better be called “transitional”.
 

To me, once things got to  “unit” style trains for all passenger traffic (I’m counting HST in that, and anything involving a DVT of any sort), and a streamlined freight network based around containerisation and block trains, all running under MAS, we reached a place which again has stabilised for long enough in terms of technology and operating practices that it might be called “the current tradition”. Like the previous tradition it has odd exceptions, bits of leftover stuff from the old tradition, and bits like the core of Thameslink that are recognisably “further on”, but for the most part it is common - you can go anywhere in the land and travel on a boringly effective unit passenger train, operating under MAS and a largely common rulebook, and if you see a freight train it will be a container or block train, mostly hauled by a Class 66, and it’s been like that for a couple of decades, maybe three, now.

 

TBH, I don’t think that changes of ownership structure count much in all this, they’re sort-of froth on the beer. The beer is brewed from technology and operating practices.

 

Dont get me started on ticketing and the publication/accessibility of timetable information.

 

 

Edited September 12 by Nearholmer