Great Western Coffee Shop

Someone will know the answer to this.

What predated the blue/ yellow computer screens and chunky CRT monitors painted orange ? I travelled up and down to Worcester from TM in the early mid 70s and have no memory of a large clickety clack or silent departure board !
I do however remember the paper rolls above the curved booking office above Glasgow Central. It was absolutely fascinating to watch. Wonder when that was swept away in the name of progress ? I have searched Google images for pictures of the Bristol board  (if there was one) and the Glasgow operation without success.

In the 50s it looks like it would be preprinted wooden boards slotted in to place.  This photo (http://www.flickriver.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/sets/72157615301224674/) of platform 9 (now 3) shows a finger post departure board with a load of destinations stored beneath.

Birmingham Snow Hill had the same style boards - many of the Snow Hill ones were saved and they quite often come up in railwayana auctions.

Hi chuffed.

I don't think BRI ever had a large departure board with the clunky wooden slats. There was one at BATH GREEN PARK in the entrance hall which whenever I used that station was always out of action. I was amazed when I first saw that one that one could once get a train from Bath Green Park to Avonmouth Docks. My first encounter in anger with one of these clunky departure boards was at London Victoria when I went on a school skiing holiday. Leaving school my next encounter with one of these boards was at Reading South while I was at college in Slough and I went to a Farnborough Air Show. On one occasion I went to London there was an incident which closed the line back to Slough and I was directed to go to Waterloo and get a train from there to Windsor and Eton Riverside and then walk to Windsor and Eton Central and train back to Slough. The Waterloo one was huge.

At Paddington there was a walkway at above buffer height  behind the buffers of two adjacent platforms. This had a box for each of the two platforms which had square rods poking out of the side to which a member of platform staff would attache a handle and wind until the time of the next train was displayed then search in a bin for a hefty printed card (must have been 1/4 inch think cardboard) and slot this card into a frame to display the calling stations and destination of the next service from that platform.

As for BRI there were finger boards which slotted into rectangular sectional tubes stating things like 'all stations to Swindon'; 'Principle stations to Plymouth'; 'Gloucester Eastgate, Cheltenham Lansdown, Birminham New Street, Derby, Sheffield Midland, Leeds Central'. If you wanted to know what time trains were to a specific destination you had to go to the departures board which had the departures in chronological order from 00.01am - (12.00am/01pm) - 12:00pm. There was no 24 hour clock in them days. Then you had to look for the destination you wanted and note the time of the train. Initially they didn't even put the arrival times at the stations but at some point introduced the arrival times in brackets after the station name. If you didn't find your destination on the departures board but you knew where to change you were OK but other than that it was usually a trip to and wait in a queue at the travel enquiry office.

I don't think the original GWR and subsequently Western Region ever used these clunky departure contraptions.

Most regular users of rail at that time would buy, yes buy, a timetable priced at 1/- (one shilling - 5p in todays money) for the Western Region or 3d (three pence - 2 1/2p in todays money) for Thames Valley services which unless my memory is too rusty to remember included the High Wycombe line as Marylebone was all but classed as a Western Region station which under Beeching was proposed for closure with local services transferred to the underground terminating at Baker Street and longer distance services to Paddington.

ONE PLACE that I do know of that STILL uses the finger boards is on the West Somerset Railway at Minehead, they might still use them at Bishops Lydeard but I cant say I've noticed them at BL.

Reminds me of one of the most dispiriting experiences in my life... I had turned up at a major London Terminal just after midnight and just slightly later than I had intended, rather on spec and possibly having had a beer or two, and looked up at the split-flap departure board (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-flap_display). As I scanned across the four or five trains indicated on it, it made that preliminary clicking noise that told you it was about to update - and then I watched as every single character on it went to black. That's yer lot, mate.

It was a long cold night, and I arrived in Folkestone the next morning with the newspapers... 

Having got yourself over to Victoria station....

They wouldn't demean themselves.  They invented the term 'not invented here', didn't they?

Paul

I'd forgotten you were there! Where were we before then? I thought I was in Victoria to begin with...

I didn't think my post would generate such interest but having got over to Victoria station the school party boarded a steam hauled train to Folkstone Marine from where we boarded a cross channel ferry to Calais. An overnight journey, again behind steam, took us to Basel where we had a two hour breakfast break before boarding a Swiss Railways Electric locomotive hauled service to Lucerne. From there it was a short walk across the road to the pier for the ferry across the Lake Lucerne to Stansstad and then and end to end journey on this railway to its terminus at Engleberg which included a section of track which necessitated the train being split into single coaches for a rack and pinion push up a steep incline and then reassembled to complete the journey to Engleberg.