Other things railways did

[whole diary]

[ray951]

Let's not forget the company health service,I believe that the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) companies medical operation was used as a blueprint for our NHS .

Being a bit pedantic, but wasn't it founded by and paid for by the staff rather than the company?
Although I believe that Gooch did donate £1000 to help kickstart the medical fund and GWR donated the building that became the hospital.

[broadgage]

At least up to the last war, the railway operated clothing factories for the manufacture of uniforms and overalls.
During the war, prisoners of war were used as the labour for this work. Under the Geneva convention, prisoners of war can be put to work, but must not be made to perform work directly related to the war effort.
So making military uniforms is not permitted, but railway uniforms would be OK.

(Some army uniform was made in prisons, but by ordinary criminals, not POWs)

[eightf48544]

It was Billy Smart's circus that over wintered at Winkfield and loaded at Ascot.

SR^▸ (Southern Railway / Southern Region / Scot Rail / Scottish Region (rather confusing - it depends on the context)) had special Elephant vans with strengthened floors and higher roofs.

There were also farm moves where all the equipment and animals would be loaded on a special train/s. There is a BTP^▸ (British Transport Police) film of such a move.

[chuffed]

I thought GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) WERE the other circus in town, with Ringmaster Mark Hopwood in doubtful control. High wire acts from Hitachi and Network Rail and persons trying to be clowns manning the gatelines at Paddington and Temple Meads. Lion tamers used to quell disgruntled passengers and if that doesn't work, try the custard pies. Knockabout fun to be had by studying departure screens, and have the chimps running all over the platforms, causing mayhem, but not actually doing very much.

[Witham Bobby]

The railways did an excellent job of moving parcels.  Most impressive was the Red Star station-to-station service, which offered same-day transit from sending station to receiving station.  Add ons for collection and/or delivery were available.

I would frequently find myself sending an urgent parcel by Red Star from Evesham to (usually) Leeds in the early/mid 1970s.

My dad was very distrustful of the railways and parcels handling, referring always to what he said was eyewatering levels of pilferage in the post WWII^▸ (World War 2 - 1939 to 1945) years.

Companies like Kays of Worcester built their mail-order empires on the back of a great rail parcel delivery network.

Completely separately, the railways were also used to transport (filled) coffins about the country.  Bit of a dead-end, I suppose, for the railway.  I found the instructions for this in a very old WR Regional Appendix that was propping something else up at Moreton in Marsh when I was a signalman there. 

[rower40]

BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) Research:

SSI^▸ (Solid State Interlocking).  First Computer-based signalling interlocking in the world.  Until then, it was all either mechanical (levers) or huge rooms of safety-critical relays.

Also APTIS^▸ (All Purpose Ticket Issuing System) and PORTIS ticket-issuing machines.  CATE - Computer-assisted timetable enquiry.

Birmingham Airport's MAGLEV.

All cutting-edge at the time.  What would the boffins in Derby be doing now if privatisation had plumped for "BR plc"?

[grahame]

All cutting-edge at the time.  What would the boffins in Derby be doing now if privatisation had plumped for "BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) plc"?

Direct Railway Electric At Melksham - DREAM

[ellendune]

BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) Research:

SSI^▸ (Solid State Interlocking).  First Computer-based signalling interlocking in the world.  Until then, it was all either mechanical (levers) or huge rooms of safety-critical relays.

Also APTIS^▸ (All Purpose Ticket Issuing System) and PORTIS ticket-issuing machines.  CATE - Computer-assisted timetable enquiry.

Birmingham Airport's MAGLEV.

All cutting-edge at the time.  What would the boffins in Derby be doing now if privatisation had plumped for "BR plc"?

And:

The first prototype cellular (mobile phone) telephone network built in 1977 operating in the Derby Area and connected to the railway ETD telephone network less than 10 years after the patent. 

Stoneblowing tamping machines (though never built a real one as they had refused to patent then let the staff member who invented it patent it himself - so they did nothing till after the patent had run out).

Vibro-compaction machines for stabilising track after relaying and tamping.

[JayMac]

BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) Research:

SSI^▸ (Solid State Interlocking).  First Computer-based signalling interlocking in the world.  Until then, it was all either mechanical (levers) or huge rooms of safety-critical relays.

Also APTIS^▸ (All Purpose Ticket Issuing System) and PORTIS ticket-issuing machines.  CATE - Computer-assisted timetable enquiry.

Birmingham Airport's MAGLEV.

All cutting-edge at the time.  What would the boffins in Derby be doing now if privatisation had plumped for "BR plc"?

Active tilt technology. Developed by BR Research for the APT^▸ (Advanced Passenger Train) project. The patents were sold to Fiat Ferroviaria in Italy and they combined the BR research with their own experiments with passive tilt to produce a series of 'Pendolino' trains. After FIAT Ferroviaria was acquired by Alstom in 2000, the BR derived tilting technology returned to the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) in the form of the Alstom built Class 390 Pendolinos that now run on the West Coast Main Line.

At the other end of the speed and comfort scale BR Research, in conjunction with British Leyland, gave us the 'Pacer' series of rail buses. Only really welcome because they kept lines open and marginal services running. In all other ways - hideous things!

[eightonedee]

   
Re: Other things railways did
« Reply #19 on: Today at 01:31:08 pm »
Reply with quoteQuote
The railways did an excellent job of moving parcels.  Most impressive was the Red Star station-to-station service, which offered same-day transit from sending station to receiving station.  Add ons for collection and/or delivery were available.

I would frequently find myself sending an urgent parcel by Red Star from Evesham to (usually) Leeds in the early/mid 1970s.

My dad was very distrustful of the railways and parcels handling, referring always to what he said was eyewatering levels of pilferage in the post WWII^▸ (World War 2 - 1939 to 1945) years.

Yes - back in the mid-1980s Red Star was the courier service, and I remember sending important documents around the country.

However WB's dad's mistrust of using rail for parcels and other small loads was well-founded. A friend of mine who is a "name" in the world of show poultry judging, now in his 80s, told me that as a young poultry fancier he sent some of his prize birds to a show in Stratford upon Avon by rail from Earley, only to call there to collect them after the show to find only an empty poultry basket waiting for him......

[JayMac]

Roast chicken with all the trimmings in the Red Star messroom that night.

[IndustryInsider]

I did a stint in Red Star Parcels myself back in the 80s.  A shame to see it go as it was an excellent service and the logistics using early BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) computer systems using a similar framework to the ancient old TOPS^▸ (Total Operations Processing System) machines that clung on until the early 21st century in some places.

I remember well the noise that several crates of live chicks made and the stench from having the weekly fish consignment sitting in the back waiting its allocated train!

[CyclingSid]

I think you might have to qualify

The first prototype cellular (mobile phone) telephone network

as in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom). Considerable work was done by US DoD (DARPA) and UK MoD were working on similar. I worked for one of the contractors who were refining the base station code.

[broadgage]

   
Re: Other things railways did
« Reply #19 on: Today at 01:31:08 pm »
Reply with quoteQuote
The railways did an excellent job of moving parcels.  Most impressive was the Red Star station-to-station service, which offered same-day transit from sending station to receiving station.  Add ons for collection and/or delivery were available.

I would frequently find myself sending an urgent parcel by Red Star from Evesham to (usually) Leeds in the early/mid 1970s.

My dad was very distrustful of the railways and parcels handling, referring always to what he said was eyewatering levels of pilferage in the post WWII^▸ (World War 2 - 1939 to 1945) years.

Yes - back in the mid-1980s Red Star was the courier service, and I remember sending important documents around the country.

However WB's dad's mistrust of using rail for parcels and other small loads was well-founded. A friend of mine who is a "name" in the world of show poultry judging, now in his 80s, told me that as a young poultry fancier he sent some of his prize birds to a show in Stratford upon Avon by rail from Earley, only to call there to collect them after the show to find only an empty poultry basket waiting for him......

Yes, theft of both railway property, and of freight and parcels was regrettably common decades ago, and IMHO^▸ ('in my humble opinion') was so widespread as to contribute to the decline of the railway industry.
As a school kid, I was shocked when visiting the home of a school friend to see the amount of presumably stolen railway property in the house.
A microwave oven, a hugely costly item back then.
Railway light bulbs (SR^▸ (Southern Railway / Southern Region / Scot Rail / Scottish Region (rather confusing - it depends on the context)) type, 75 volt, three in series on the mains)
Toilet paper.
AD28 batteries used to work portable radios.
On the washing line, bed sheets marked "BTH^» (Bath Spa - next trains) property"
And for school metalwork classes, the kid wore an overall coat marked "SR" as did other kids.*.
And that was only what I saw on a brief visit.

One of the advantages of electrification was said to be that the "staff cant steal the traction current, like they do with coal"

I was not blameless, I wore a similar overall but mine was marked "Kingston power station" much better than the railway ones.

[Richard Fairhurst]

And don't I recall them taking over and running canals too?

Yes - by 1947 (i.e. immediately pre-nationalisation), the great majority of the canals were owned by the railway companies.

Some railways were better stewards of the canals than others, and the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) was not one of the kinder ones. (For the GWR's 150th anniversary, Waterways World ran a series of articles headed "No cause for celebration"!) Usually the railway companies bought the canals either to eliminate the competition or to get their hands on the useful land. The Wilts & Berks Canal's most profitable years were when it was used for carrying building materials for the new railway being constructed nearby...

A few canal companies remained independent and profitable right up to 1947, such as the Staffs & Worcs and the Aire & Calder. They, too, were nationalised - but the Rochdale and the Derby (perhaps a couple of others?) were not. When a waterway campaigner quizzed a civil servant about this a few years later, the answer was "oh, that was one we forgot".

(And then there's the Hereford & Gloucester Canal, leased to the GWR in 1862 and partly used for construction of the Gloucester-Ledbury line. The canal is now being restored and the plan is to reuse the old railway alignment around Ledbury, with the water flowing between the station platforms...)