TheSignalEngineer

Since the market was opened up I have been round most of the main companies. The worst experiences have been with Npower and British Gas. Scottish Power were OK the first time I used them but the second time were useless. Eon were a bit of a disaster. Currently EDF are performing quite well but we'll se what happens in nine months when the present deal ends. My experience at renewal times has been that companies try to get you to extend early at your current rate or higher at a time when wholesale prices are falling.

We had a few round the houses runs in Birmingham in the past, mainly on local services such as Wolverhampton to Walsall. For a main line train in the early 1970s you could do Oxford to Didcot via Banbury, Birmingham, and Worcester. Another oddity was to save reversal and changing locos the Poole - Newcastle train used to run via Solihull into New Street, leaving via Bournville, the Lifford Curve and Camp Hill. It travelled the line between Bordesley Junction and St Andrews Junction twice in the same direction just under an hour apart.

We had a bit of fun putting places onto the Solari boards some years ago.

Looking forward to a trip. Only about a one hour drive over the hills fro home. Just hope the weather is good.

Prior to the AC electrification all track circuits on both the DC Lines and non-electrified lines were 50hz AC with vane relays. When the resignalling for AC electrification was done they were converted to 83 1/3hz operation. The DC Lines job between Primrose Hill and Watford Junction in 1988 used Reed track circuits of certain frequencies not affected by noise put out by BR and LUL stock. The trains used on the Bakerloo from Queens Park to Harrow and Wealdstone at the time could emit an exact Reed frequency used on some parts of BR at that time. The last resignalling saw WCML Track Circuits replaced by Axle Counters.

RTT doesn't always give full details. The train must have spent about 30 minutes in Gloucester NY. The train details imply an engine change there.

I'm not sure how much they dismiss it. Control of electrical interference is not a railway specific matter. The basic requirements are laid down in EN50121. Railway standards are developed to comply with this. My main involvements with immunisation of S&T equipment were Watfors DC Lines, Thameslink and Midland Metro. Traction interference was suspected of causing problems on the SSI system when we were testing on the then-novel system on the DC Lines resignalling in 1988. It was the first application in an area with both AC and DC electrified lines and the longest data cables installed at the time. We set up monitoring equipment on the signalling power supply at Harrow & Wealdstone. Within a couple of hours of watching the scope trace I was able to predict the type of loco or MU approaching before it came into sight by the pattern of the distortion on the 50hz wave form. A very simple bit of bolt-on filtering was enough to reduce the problem to an acceptable level. Modern traction control systems can throw out lots of electrical garbage, to the extent that I believe one recent class required over a ton of onboard equipment to eliminate it. The site work on Thameslink produced some very interesting data on stray DC traction retur n currents which behaved totally differently to our expectations in some areas. Before the DC was extended into Farringdon we took background measurements because of the proximity to LUL lines to give us a baseline. We then made a temporary connection of the rails between Farringdon and Blackfriars. As a worst case scenario in at the time we had the nearest SR substation disconnected and ran an 8-car train of Class 455 stock into Holborn Viaduct station, stopping at Blackfriars and acceleration over the hump in the track at something like 1 in 100 rising gradient with no other trains running on our side of the feeder station that was in use. The split at Farringdon wasn't in the proportions expected, much more going towards Moorgate than we predicted. I set off with an ammeter to find what was flowing through the common rail that way. There was a big current flowing through the third structure bond. When I looked up I saw that the bond was connected to the steelwork holding up Smithfield Market, which I assume had somewhere a bond to an electricity Board earth. In the other direction there was a significant reduction in Kings Cross Tunnel where the OHLE is bonded to the Fleet Sewer. It was still possible to see the traction current signature of the test train at West Hampsted PSB and Silkstream Junction, but the big mystery was that the background level was being depressed. From revised calculations based on the results it appeared that there could actually be a null point in Belsize Tunnels where they crossed the Northern Line. The least said about 'The Italian Job' the better. I'm sure the Wombat will understand.

This thread has reminded me of a pig incident at Rugby in the early 1960s. I was train spotting during the summer holidays when a young pig appeared on the track on the Down side of the station. All trains were stopped and it ran up and down for about 10 minutes defying all efforts of the staff to apprehend it. Finally someone appeared with a net, which was thrown over the animal and it was duly taken away. I don't know how it was transported be we assumed that it had escaped from the cattle pens in the goods yard. That was just across the road from the cattle market.

Never mind the track, although I expect the axle loading on those bogies went up a bit on blast-off. What about the local electricity supply on those concrete posts alongside?

Kim's obviously updating his Triang Hornby battlespace trainset. 4mm version will be announced in the Oxford Rail range next year.

Isn't that a bit of a contradiction, they would never get round to granting chartered status as they would actually have to do something.

Had the same problem with my T9. Turned out to be a distorted Mazak component, replaced FOC by Hornby. Fortunately purchased through one of their long gone concession shops when they were having a sale and the original receipt was still in the box.

This was sourced from B&M in our town recently. No doubt it is also available in other stores, but they already have it marked down 20p below the regular packaging.

Nostalgia isn't what it was either. I'm definitely not a fan of the days of ice inside the bedroom windows or smog so thick you couldn't see your feet let alone where you were going.

There are some Midland and LMS records in the National Archives, available through Ancestry and similar sites. They are a bit hit and miss but a few of my railway relatives have turned up in them. If you send me his name and birth year I will see if it turns up. Occupations were also listed in the 1939 Register so if he was on the railway at the start of the war he could be on there. Eric

I would like to offer Bear an explanation. My late father spent some time on the sub-continent with the Military Police in The Last Days of The Empire. His view of the area to the northwest was that the year has two seasons, Winter and the Fighting Season. The inhabitants actually liked an invasion force as it provided a willing opponent and they didn't have to fight amongst themselves to pass the time during the better weather.

The 317s for BedPan were design checked in the same way by dragging a polystyrene covered mock up through the Widened Lines. Further back in time when the electrification of the Birmingham area was getting underway a train from Euston was to terminate at New Street and go ECS to Kings Norton. Camden and later Willesden had a habit of slipping the biggest available engine on so a Stanier Pacific often appeared. Before the diversion to Kings Norton took place a Duchess was borrowed and ran at walking pace through various lines on the Midland side then over the routes to and from the carriage yard. It apparently didn't hit anything so all were happy, although I never saw one run there myself, just Brits and EE Type 4s on the days when I was spotting.

This was the 1960 WTT page with the Bromsgrove shunting and banking engine details.

Must look out for that one, I haven't done it yet. We were at Elsecar a couple of weeks ago and used the old incline up to Hoyland. Regarding stone blocks, there are still a lot on the Peak Forest Tramway between Bugsworth Basin and Chinley. Interestingly that came into the ownership of the MS&L when it bought the canal and was not lifted until it was in the ownership of the LNER.

Is there any reason for them being upside down?

Something to do with that old colliery wagon by the A628 at Silkstone?

The tramway incline at Elsecar?

Ah! Crewe Alex Reserves in the Northern Floodlit League against Northwich Victoria on a sleeting January night. There were slightly more spectators than participants. The goalkeeper was my lodging mate whose day job was with Vulcan Foundry getting the D400s into service and the St John's Ambulance crew were my drinking mates.

At least last night's tennis made up a little for the lack of the cancelled Test Match visit. That ECB chief must think we came in with the fairies, telling us that the cancellation has nothing to do with the IPL. If so why are IPL teams chartering planes to fly players in as quickly as possible? The quarantine rules are a bit of a jungle depending on the state involves but the toughest in the UAE appear to require a negative PCR test within 48 hours of departure and further negative tests on arrival and day 9 of 10 days quarantine. Had the Test Match gone to five days the worst case scenario would be players missing the first two rounds of games. Nothing to do with the IPL? Jim Royle had a phrase that fits perfectly.

From my Googling around that area I would certainly say so. Some red and some yellow. Some look very pink but they may be red ones not painted for many years. A lot are on street corners in older residential areas, spaced on a roughly 100 yard grid.