TheSignalEngineer

78004 lined black at Swindon, Feb 1953 https://rcts.zenfolio.com/steam-br/br/2mt-2-6-0/ea0fae1cb

78047 looks decidedly black in a Colour Rail picture at St Boswells dated as 1963

Deleted, invisible ink syndrome.

And mind you don't lose anything in the long grass

When I was working on the Camp Hill line in 1966/7 we often used to get a Hymek on the Washwood Heath turn worked by WR men to keep up route knowledge. In steam days it had usually been worked by a Hall or sometimes a Grange.

I can remember a few platforms at suburban stations only maintained for part of their length in the 1970s.

Except that most have never been rebranded since the old stkcky back plastic was taken off. Plenty of anonymous sets west of the hills, anything not refurbished or due off lease.

The Southern Region did have a reputation for being a bit tight. The standard for placing TC joints at clearance came about after an incident at East Croydon in the 1970s. A train was right up to the platform end but without the last wheels being on the track circuit through the points. A train crossing to the next line lost a lot of door handles.

The six-foot should be the minimum space between the outsides of the rails. This is an extract from the MOT Requirements 1950 revision, although the dimension was quoted by the Board of Trade for new construction at least as far back as the 1890s. 11' 2" track centres is 39.08mm in HO and 44.7mm in OO. In terms of clearances in the 12" to the foot world the usual objective was to achieve 18" passing clearance at the worst case of side and end throw. I remember when bogie tanks were introduced we couldn't get adequate clearance for the end throw if the connections to the Up and Down Loops outside the Shell depot at Rowley Regis were used at the same time so interlocking was provided to prevent both sets of points being reversed together.

Good to see the thread back in action, Does that and the slight addition to the title mean that I can't spend all night talking carp on here and have to get on with some work in the railway room? Eric

Going back a bit in time to my era this came up on one my Facebook feeds today. Barbarella's was one of the early Eddie Fewtrell clubs and IIRC operated from about 1972 to 1979. These were the guest acts in February 1978. Although he used a lot of support acts from shows going on elsewhere in the city and a lot of people who were fairly unknown at the time he also seemed to have a knack of 'persuading' well known musicians to play relatively small venues. Perhaps something to do with the urban legend that he once saw off four associates of the Kray Twins when armed only with a Dimple pint pot. In the rock days it hosted AC/DC and Queen. After morphing to the punk/new wave era the bands included The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshee’s, Ramones and the Buzzcocks.

Yes, it was in the message I got. It was three that the starting stock level was one I think. Dan told me there was a sale coming up. Had a quick look as I was on the site placing an order just before the emails came out but nothing I was wanting unfortunately. Didn't think it was fair to hoover up the three in question then put them on Ebay Hope the winners don't.

Another great service from Dan. Sorted out my new account for me as I hadn't done it after the website changed. Order placed and promptly despatched with DPD. Personal service at box-shifter price, actually better than most including the delivery. Will be back as soon as I sort out likely delivery dates for my wants from 2020 offerings.

Thought I managed to post on this last night but it seems to have disappeared into cyberspace. There were some stored at Worcester before disposal but I don't know if they saw any traffic use there. @Phil Bullock may know. Also there's a picture at Warwick. My guess is that it arrived with the Regent tanks from Acton for the depot in Cape Yard.

Couldn't decide if 12 noon was am or pm?

I remember two being in different shades of green and some in blood & custard. I don't know whether there were any with the dark cab roof. @Phil Bullock is your man for all matters Worcester.

A quick update. I will be doing a couple of minor alterations to my sketch in the next day or so. Guy will then update the CAD and when the next print is done they should be available to purchase if anyone is interesred.

From privatisation this was not only a problem with drivers. Infrastructure maintenance and projects saw lots of new organisations created all wanting experienced staff . I signal engineering we had a single department for all day-to-day matters and managing the input of established UK cantracors. Overnight we had about 20 organisations all looking for a Head of Signal Engineering. People within Train Operations business units wanting their own Signal Development Engineer, Jarvis, Amey, Balfour Beatty, Tarmac et al running parallel organisations bidding against each other for work and duplicating old BR structures. It is little wonder that costs in infrastructure projects have gone through the roof and timescales stretched massively. We used to call it the Magic Roundabout as staff were continually on the move to whoever offered them the most. Meanwhile the staff who knew what the job was about were all retiring and not being replaced. Several people I was involved in training for BR are still active in Australia, the Far East, Middle East, continental Europe and North America, all lost to our own system. When my own office was split off from BR and became part of an industrial conglomorate the last BR Management Grades vacancy list I received had about 40 jobs in the old BR Grades MS2 and above. Three were for people who knew how to build and run a railway, the rest were for accountants and contract lawyers. Why am I not surprised at the current state of the railway industry.

Evening all. Reminds me of the early days of Railtrack on a project that wasn't going well. The new project manager was getting on my ***$ at a crisis meeting so I just said "my bank balance is as big as my mortgage and an early pension would be enough to live on. I only come to work because I like the job. When that changes I won't come any longer". He had been replaced before the project finished but I was still there at the end.

As previously said I'm out of the loop now, but when I was Signalling Project Engineer in BR I would receive every two months IIRC a brief of forthcoming updates due out in the next standards catalogue two months hence and longer-term changes that were in the pipeline and about to go public. One of my jobs was to go through my live projects for anything affected by mandatory changes and flag up the time delay and cost they would cause. I also had to say if it was possible to incorporate other changes without affecting work already designed. I also had to decide a point of no return where mandatory changes would delay the project and request a short-term derrogation where the alteration would be incorporated as part of the post-commissioning tidy up. For projects still in development I had to flag up any changes which may have an effect on yhe scheme. As I morphed from being the client's project engineer to the contractor's responsible engineer during privatisation the role changed. The standards for the bid were specified in the Tender documents. Mandatory changes were notified by the Client and priced into the submission if there was time and either an extension requested or provisional sum subject to further negotiation was included. Following signing of the Contract any changes insisted on by the Client during detailed design and construction were subject to timescale and price variations. I don't think we were ever asked to tender a firm price before the necessary Statutory approvals were in place other than HMRI approvals which needed detailed design and construction to take place before the final sign-off. On one occasion the Inspector was walking down the platform to join us whilst I was sitting at the table of an engineer's saloon still signing off the testing logs and completion certification for the signalling on a new line.

I see that the name given so far is Northern Trains Ltd. Perhaps they got too much stick over calling the ECML organisation LNER, otherwise they could have split it into divisions called Lancashire & Yorkshire Raliway, North Eastern Railway or even LD&EC for Manchester - Sheffield - Cleethorpes

There was also the issue of getting BR off the National Debt.

I didn't know any were fitted with gangways.

Performance in the railway industry is a blame game. In the early days of privatisation I was bid manager for the signalling part of a consortium bidding for maintenance contracts. The contract specified penalties for delays to trains due to infrastructure issues, responsibility for which now lies back with NR. I calculated how much the penalty would be based on the performance of the incumbent contractor and worked out that if we could argue that 10% were not our fault then I could pay four delay clerks to actually do the work of fighting claims and still make a handsome profit on it. If I were arguing on the point of delays to rolling stock procurement my first impression would be that it is largely caused by meddling by the DfT in trying to specify things which they know little about and then changing their minds half way through.

@Guy Rixon I've done a couple of test fixings. Will PM you.