TheSignalEngineer

At the time of the 1970 World Cup I was working in Crewe. One evening our usual pub on Nantwich Road was heaving so someone suggested heading for the Albion or the Express on Mill Street. The first was pretty crowded and as we approached the second a bar table crashed through the front window and landed on th pavement in front of us. We continued to a pub a bit further down, may have been called the Globe. After drinking up time I put our glasses on the bar and the landlord said same again? Are you staying to watch the match? We decided to stay. Just as the players were coming onto the field the back door opened and a Police Inspector in this full uniform entered. We thought we were done for but he put his hat and gloves on the bar and the landlord pulled him a pint.

As a young lad on the S&T and being local I used to get a Friday afternoon job of taking the timesheets and post from the power box up to Soho Depot. The area the bus went through was a bit rough to say the least. On afternoon I was sitting at the front of the top deck as we turned up by Hockley goods depot. Two women came rolling out through the door of a pub throwing punches and shouting at each other. They ended up rolling about in the road in front of the bus, putting on a fight that wouldn't disgrace a pair of cage fighters on pay TV.

It took me about 35 years to get mine running freely. I built two in 1981 and later bought another s/h. I had weathered and made loads so wanted to keep them. Eventually I set pinpoint bearings to the correct distance for free running and added new wheels. Three unbuilt kits were replaced by Hornby ones.

I always found the same with point fittings. There are some things that don't show up visually until after you can hear them. Being there with a train passing over them was always a good start to checking them for potential faults.

I saw The Mill a couple of years ago and it looked very good. I was only thinking last week we hadn't heard from Jason recently. He's too good to be in hiding his talents but I well remember trying to fit in modelling with all the other commitments at his age.

InterCity 12.5?

A lot of old cattle wagons carried beer traffic from Burton.

There was at least one other instance when City of Birmingham was exhibited aat New Street for the Centenary celebration in 1954. That was the only one I saw before the D200s came on the WCML expresses and the LMR had a surplus of large express locos.

There was no problem from the Monument Lane end in 1951. 46223 at Birmingham by geoff7918, on Flickr I think it was more because they weren't needed for the traffic. I have something at the back of my mind that there was an instruction that the sidescreens had to be folded in before entering the tunnels. The Up London line was the tightest, I remember my grandad having his cap taken off by a train when working at the Proof House end.

I think it depended largely on the shed and type of loco. I doubt if some of the new locos like 94xx ever got cleaned between building and scrapping. Bushbury usually managed a clean loco for the London trains and the Birmingham -Glasgow would have a nice clean Scot in the late 50s/ early 60s. Things started to really go down as the diesels came in.

I remember many of them being in unlined grot livery in those days. You couldn't tell what colour they were.

Or six and eight track lines. Saltley Junction had six to Saltley Sidings and eight to Duddeston Road. Nearby, Grand Junction had 4 to Proof House, 2 to Curzon Street No.1, 4 to Exchange Sidings and 2 to Landor Street. Proof House Junction had 4 to Grand Junction and 2 each to New Street No.1, New Street No.2, Curzon Street No.1 and Vauxhall.

Old Hill, probably taken from the station footbridge. There was a sawmill on the inside of the curve and the signal is correct.

Not always unfortunately, although I was spared a very cold Sunday on a relaying job where the snow had started to melt and then froze in the ballast. It was supposed to be a deep dig and relay a mechanical turnout for higher speed, therefore all new holes on the ground for cranks. Fortunately the Pway called off early when they started up the crane and found that the hydraulics were frozen. Another bad place was Rugeley Power Station. The flood plain location and cooling towers created a micro climate prone to freezing fog. I went to examine some equipment on a signal that had to be modified and when I climbed it my gloves froze to the ladder.

Reminds me of a house we owned many years ago. It had a phone with and extension and an additional bell in the back porch. Problem was if you picked up both of the phones at the same time the bell in the porch would ring continuously. The GPO telephone engineer who came to fix it said "I wish I could meet the effin idiot who wired this lot" to which I replied "You probably already have, the previous owner did it and he's an instructor at your training school" My daughter and some of her friends are absolute artists at that. During her time at university she was in a club with one of the other girls when two England footballers tried to pick them up. She knew full well who they were but didn't let on, then asked one of them what he did for a living.

And 68 gram King Size Mars Bars

Try this link for drawings of LMS locos. http://www.barrowmoremrg.co.uk/BRBDocuments/Locos/BR_exLMS_Locos_SB_web.pdf There is also a book of BB Standard locos on the Barrowmore site

Very few GWR locos ever visited New Street because of clearance issues. The only one I actually recall was a 94xx from Bromsgrove assisting an ailing Peak. Halls were permitted through some platforms as they had a regular working into Washwood Heath but that was booked via Camp Hill.

A bit of an urban myth. There are plenty of examples of Pacifics in New Street, the LMR didn't use their Staniers until the early 1960s as they were needed on the heavier trains particularly WCML up north. There were trains to Scotland starting out from New Street with a Scot then changing to a Stanier Pacific at Crewe. After all, why use a Class 8 loco when the normal weekday loading on most trains could be managed by a Compound or at most a Black 5.

www.warwickshirerailways.com is a good place to start. This page is the best way into the New Street stuff, showing plenty of infrastructure pictures. https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/bhamnewstreet.htm Also go on to the loco page showing pictures in BR days

No, he was going out on a removal and positioning move to the Funeral Parlour. Had the empty box ready in the back. At the time the daughter of the local undertaker was part of our drinking crowd. It was very useful as she would phone the on-call man from a party and half a dozen of us would get picked up in her dad's big black limo for a lift home.

A friend of mine was booked many years ago for doing 105mph in a hearse on the A45 past Birmingham Airport. His only complaint was he had been overtaken by a member of the Double Zero club. The only qualification for being a full member of that organisation was having travelled at over 100mph on a motor bike on a public road.

There is an East Midlands ECS booked via Marple in the evening, going that way for route knowledge purposes. It takes about the same time between Ardwick Jn and New Mills South Jn as via Hazel Grove with a Stockport stop. The main problem is pathing around the stoppers, the worst part of the line the pinch point between Ashburys East and Ardwick junctiobs which is one of the busiest two-track sections in the Manchester area, having besides the New Mills / Hope Valley services, the Hadfield and Rose Hill locals and some remaining TPE trains plus ECS moves from Longsight, Ardwick and Newton Heath and a few freights. Otherwise the busiest is Marple Wharf Junction to Romiley which has four per hour each way plus occasional stone trains and light engine moves. New Mills Central has a stabling siding where you can lose a turnback train if necessary.

Not holding my breath on this one. Back in 1991 we were planning various projects in the Manchester area culminating in it all going on one control centre by 2008, co-incidentally located at Ashburys. I even had a plan of the building in my archive for many years. I was designated Signal Engineer for even numbered stages, the last of which, Stage 10, was the Hope Valley Line resignalling and route improvements. 30 years after our initial work it still hasn't even got as far as the drawing board yet.

I thought the same of mine, even more so some years after his passing. In 1971 following a government inquiry into the dealings of a former Labour MP in the affairs of a publishing company in the 1960s he told me "Never trust a man who calls himself a Socialist and owns a Rolls Royce." Twenty years later he was proved very right.