Out of Office quiz - September 2019

[whole diary]

[grahame]

For 2nd September ... what can you tell me about this picture / places / event ...

[martyjon]

For 2nd September ... what can you tell me about this picture / places / event ...

Looks like Taunton on the occasion of the running of 2019's GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) Charity Event which was supposed to go to Minehead but didn't due to gauging issues on the WSR.

[Western Pathfinder]

It is Taunton but after the Coffees shops AGM^▸ (Annual General Meeting).

[martyjon]

It is Taunton but after the Coffees shops AGM^▸ (Annual General Meeting).

That was one of my other two straws, the first being my guess, the third .... well I'll unveil that later.

[grahame]

Indeed yes - Taunton.

It's become a bit (lot!) of a joke that Taunton appears in every quiz.  But from so much of the community / campaigning stuff across the South West, it's the natural choice of a meeting point.   TravelWatch SouthWest usually meets there (occasionally a little further west in Exeter, one occasion up in Wiltshire) and it was the natural choice too for the Coffee Shop's first - and selected for the second - AGM^▸ (Annual General Meeting).    Add to that visits such as mine to a RailFuture booth at Norton Fitzwarren a few weeks bak, and to Minehead a while back - looking at the emotive and difficult issues that relate to rail, and commuter / regular business use all year of the track that's there and in seasonal heritage use.

[martyjon]

It is Taunton but after the Coffees shops AGM^▸ (Annual General Meeting).

That was one of my other two straws, the first being my guess, the third .... well I'll unveil that later.

My third straw was ;-

The HST^▸ (High Speed Train) Farewell Railtour.

[grahame]

Having cleared the well-known and expected "Melksham" and "Taunton" which every good quiz includes, let's see what we have for day 3 ...

[lympstone_commuter]

Knaresborough?

[martyjon]

Well it ain't for sure anywhere in GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) land with the upper quadrant semaphore signal although after the replacements of the lower quadrant signals at Yeovil Pen Mill with upper quadrant ones a few years back is an exception, but it ain't there.

[rogerw]

I also guess at Knaresborough having spent about 15 minutes there some years ago when lightning had killed the signalling at Harrogate

[grahame]

Yes, it is indeed Knaresborough - visited at the start of June when I was in York for my first Railfuture Board meeting and extended the stay with a North East Rover.  I had a long day of visiting interesting lines, with a late afternoon highlight being the Leeds to Goole train taking in the great metropolis of Snaith and other stations. On line reading prior to the trip had warned my that Northern have been having some service reliability issues, so the day was defensively scheduled and risk assessed, but coming in to Knaresborough from York I was well ahead and decided to take a look at this station where alternate trains from Leeds terminate.  And very worthwhile it was too.  But I did note an inefficient shunt manoeuvre of the terminating train and thought "yes, they have very similar issues to we have in places".

The trains at Knaresborough were nice ones - 170s and 158s as I recall ... the oldest trains of the day were either the pacer from Leeds to Goole (which went from stuffed to carrying fresh air on the journey) or the HST^▸ (High Speed Train) from Doncaster during the evening back up to my digs in Darlington.

[grahame]

Been a doozie of a night .... better late than never, here's today's picture

[martyjon]

Been a doozie of a night .... better late than never, here's today's picture

Haven't got a clue really but looks like a presentation of some sort so I'll have a guess for a bit of fun and say its the night of the presenting of The Coffee Shop Oscars of which one of the recipients was someone named bob ?

[bobm]

Well I'm flattered - but no.

[martyjon]

Am I the only one who commented on yesterdays quiz picture ?