TheSignalEngineer

I've checked out the Realtime site and it looks as if there is an early morning path from Barton under Needwood to New Street No1 Siding. It appears that it can run via Alrewas and Rugeley to Stafford then Wolverhampton, Bescot and Soho to New Street. It the continues from New Street to Birmingham International via Soho, Perry Barr, Aston and Stechford then returns to New Street direct. There is an evening path from New Street No.1 Siding reverse of the morning route to Barton under Needwood. The alternative route for the return is Aston, Perry Barr, Soho and Dudley Port to Wolverhampton. Both seems to be booked differently on different days of the week and can change at short notice or be cancelled and replaced by a STP path to another station if they are short of a set. Routing of the ECS between Barton under Needwood and New Street is arranged to maintain diversionary route knowledge as in addition to the multiple options for the spare set some run via Aston and Lichfield City, some via Whitacre, and some come into New Street via the Lifford Curve.

They used to keep a set in the siding between platforms 5 and 6. Crews normally changed at Birmingham, some workings that included the buffet staff and additional supplies. More than once I have been waiting for a late runner to Manchester when the driver has gone over to shunt the spare to the platform and we have gone out more or less RT. The passengers for beyond Birmingham on the late runner have been decanted onto the service following 30 minutes behind and if the unit was the problem it would return to depot from New Street when a spare driver arrived. I haven't been on the route for a while so I don't know if this still applies.

We used to have Nuneaton Drags when the wires were down or other blockages between Birmingham and Rugby. These were often arranged at short notice but to run the full service would need about six crewed up big locos. These were usually borrowed of freight depots. How many Euston drivers signed 56s or 58s I wonder?

I had a similar experience a few years ago. Parcel coming via a firm whose local delivery man was based in Hadfield. Due delivery day passes with no parcel, so I checked the tracking information. It had gone from Bristol to Birmingham then on to Manchester. It had then gone to Hatfield. The following day it went from Hatfield via Sheffield to Manchester, passing my house, before finally arriving.

Travelling Birmingham to York one morning in the 1980s. First HST north from Bristol to Newcastle had failed at Cheltenham and was awaiting assisting engine. Birmingham Control normally had a spare DMU, on this day a Class 116, sitting in No2 Siding at New Street. Spare crew collared from the staff canteen took it to Derby where they hitched it up to the back of a Class 120, then they returned back passenger to resume the domino game. A spare Derby crew took it forward and we made it to York in time for onward connections to be made without much delay for the passengers from Birmingham to Sheffield. Meanwhile Newcastle had rustled up a Class 47 and loco hauled set to work to Bristol in the return path of the failed HST. That's only the first half of the story. Sets and crews had to be returned empty to their places of origin and another set provided by Tyseley or Soho for the New Street standby after the morning peak had finished. Try doing all of that in the Privatised, Franchised railway and the TOCs would spend three days arguing the toss over who was paying how much for what before someone acted. Booked XC driver not passed out on local TOC stock, local TOC driver doesn't sign the road past 'X', substitute stock available but not cleared for working booked route of failed train beyond 'Y', XC driver doesn't sign available alternative route from 'Y' to destination via 'Z'........ How many lawyers and accountants does it take to move a train? The last internal BR Management vacancy list I received before my office was sold off had 41 posts, 3 of which were for people who new how to build and run a railway, the other 38 asked for qualifications in management accounting and contract law. No wonder the fares are so high. Glad I got out of it whilst I still had my marbles, as it was getting like Catch 22. You can only get out by being declared insane, but if you can understand how bad the situation is you can't be insane.

Not that easy nowadays. Bus companies are there to run at a profit. That means either running what you can make money on or tendering for council supported work and school runs. Getting a replacement bus at short notice is almost impossible in most places, as is actually getting a bus full stop. Try getting a taxi at short notice during the afternoon school run. Last time I tried I was told 90 minutes wait. Best chance you have is if the bus companies are obliged to take rail passengers in the event of disruption where they are effectively still at the behest of PTEs/Councils. I assume it is still like that in the Peoples Republic of West Yorkshire, etc.

The TOCs do what they consider they are contractually obliged to provide. It is cheaper to pay the penalties than to provide spare trains and crews. FOCs are a bit different as they are a commercial operation as with any haulage company in the UK. They should price according to what they think the risks of non-delivery due to their own failings are under their contract with the customer.

SR email group has some files with engine workings in 1962. No. 562 is a 700 class on freight from Exmouth Jn to Barnstaple and back, taking about 12 hours for the round trip. Rail online has a picture of 30315 at Barnstaple in 1956. There is also a picture of 30317 at Barnstaple in 1961 on the web. Eric

I live in a small town which fortunately is on a rail branch with a 7-day half hourly service to a big city station, journey time 30 minutes approx. My remaining Sunday bus service is about to be cut by another 50% next week, to about a quarter of what it was two years ago. Another route which goes to my daughter's town 8 miles away used to run hourly approx 7am to 7pm, 7 days a week with a late night trip but since the last round of cuts it is six times a day, Monday to Friday only. Totally useless for me to use getting there and back so I now have to use the car instead of the bus. I can't use public transport to get to the big city to the east because there isn't any other than starting by travelling 15 miles west then 5 miles south, passing about 4 miles from my house after 30 miles travel. Drive time direct is about half an hour. Most shopping other than daily needs has to be done by car or mail order. Fortunately I am retired so don't have to commute to work. With the present state of public transport outside a small number of big cities and a free market economy driven by the financial greed of a few (enabled by their politician puppets) rather than the needs of the many there is no way that maintaining the current system and abolishing private cars. (Rant over, my turn to get thrashed at snooker by a 7-year-old.)

Around the time it killed off I was looking at various capacity and speed improvements E-W across the North. Central Railway figures seemed to have misplaced a decimal point compared with some figures from within the rail projects industry.

A few still appeared in revenue service in the early 1960s. Engineers use and internal users continued at least to the early 1980s. There was an Iron Mink parked on the Down side at Banbury station until at least 1978. Eric

Nice bit of Pennine sky on the first Ribblehead shot. Brought back memories of my first visit on a school trip in 1960. We walked from Stainforth to Ingleton via Ingleborough then the following day climbed over Whernside where we sat overlooking the viaduct to eat our sandwiches. Lots of steam struggling uphill in a westerly gale and horizontal rain showers.

I never got one because they already knew my views. I had made up my mind some years before of the approximate leaving date and had been tracking the pension estimate at regular intervals for three years to pick the optimum time then put the letter in giving them my official finish date and last day in the office. My planning to go came as a result of the increasing pressures due to rail privatisation and my view that safety-critical things were slipping through the cracks in the system. It came to a head when I had a disagreement in a meeting with some senior managers. I told them that my savings were bigger than my mortage, my prospective pension was bigger than my outgoings, I came to work not because of need but that I liked doing the job and when I stopped liking it there was nothing they could do to prevent me from giving them the contractually required notice and claiming my pension. Suddenly my life at the office became quite a lot easier. My Project Director even got me signed up with an agency they used so the when I left they could offer me packages of work to review and advise on input to projects, resulting in me making more money in the five years after I left than I had previously for 25% of the effort and 10% of the hassle.

Derek Lawrence was a model builder, later stuff carried a Lawrence Scale Models label. He died c2003 IIRC. Larry Goddard is a model builder and primarily a high quality painter. He is still actively modelling.

I think that the northbound case is determined by the platform arrangements for dealing with the train at Carlisle. It uses platform 3 which can be occupied by TP trains until 6 minutes before it arrives so it has to be held somewhere. At Leeds it used platform 11 on its last run. The Skipton local it followed after being looped leaves Leeds at 1026, a train from Sheffield is due in platform 11 at 1030. I've got a feeling that the 1028 departure to Knottingly and the Sheffield arrival preclude it from departing after the Skipton train.

In the Birmingham area the local services paid for by WMPTE through the Section 20 arrangements got priority over Class 1 expresses. Because of this it was quite common for an XC Manchester express to be 5 minutes late at Coventry, have a stopper let out 1 minute in front of it. This would make it 25 minutes late at Wolverhampton, then missing its path at Macclesfield and ending up over 30 minutes late at Piccadilly.

Back around 1974 I regularly experienced such a situation on the Birmingham - Coventry line. I used to catch a local from New Street to Lea Hall. In those days there was no Birminham International so no loop before Coventry. We were often held in the platform at Stechford while a Bescot - Banbury unfitted freight passed us off the Up Aston line. It was not a problem to the local as it averaged 30mph including stops. The freight was permitted 35mph. By the time the local left Lea Hall it was already on a double yellow and after Marston Green it was on a clear road all the way to Coventry, so would regularly reach there on time.

We go up to that area quite a lot as the riding is good. We have a regular place where we stay in Pickering a couple of times a year which gives us the chance to have a rest days on the NYMR and bus to Scarborough or Whitby.

Well frazzled after 3 hours in the sun at Old Trafford. Weather brought out a record crowd for a non-Roses T20 Blast game there, 14,752. Unfortunately the result didn't go the way the lads wanted, too many singles on the middle of the innings and Lightning ended up 12 runs short.

T20 today may seem a bit of an anticlimax after yesterday's heroics. My 9-year-old pundit will fill me in with the details, batting, bowling and fielding stats, and odds of the final result as we go along.

I recon that a full circuit of the one at Ashton is about 10000 metres. It's OK if you know the secret doors between sections as if you know what you are looking for you can cut it by about half, until of course they trick you like last time by moving things around. I did the best part of two circuits to find what I went in for

Away from the BR Machine, I spotted this early 1990s map today in a Buffet Car on the East Lancs Railway. Has Waterloo to the Channel Tunnel as a dotted line for a proposed service. Sorry about the quality as it had a bit of a rock on at the time

Possibly because the LMS built about 3000 TK / TO between 1930 and nationalisation. Porthole TKs were probably to replace the remaining pre-grouping stock which had soldiered on due to WW2.

About 15 years ago my wife became the paid secretary/co-ordinator to an annual event which had been running since 1945. She had some great ideas about moving it forward, getting an improved venue and trade sponsorship to keep finances healthy. At every turn she got opposition and negativity from the committee, to the extent that at a meeting one of them said "If it dies with us it doesn't really matter because we won't be here". Shortly after she threw the towel in, two years later due to bad weather the annual show was a disaster and that was the end of the event for ever.

I like Llandegla Red because it's one I am still physically able to ride right round, except for the Double Steep Climb and "Get the Cakes In" climb. I feel a lot better about them having just watched a Youtube video where the rider failed on both. The Blue is a lot easier but a great blast. I can do the ride down non-stop in about 35 minutes.