Railway anecdotes from bygone days

[whole diary]

[Electric train]

I was in charge of a team working in a large 25kV switching station, 16 track circuit breakers, just outside London.

We were replacing circuit protection relays, quite invasive work which took a day to do per breaker we were doing one circuit breaker at a time.

When working in these buildings, especially just outside a large London terminal station, the passing of trains just blends into the background as such you don't notice them …….. until …….

.

They stop running 


Concerned that we had done something I phoned the ECR

.

The ECR said - there had been a "power surge" in central London   

There suggestion was we make the site safe and go home avoiding central London.

The date - 07-07-2005

(Date corrected)

[TonyK]

My old Linn amplifier used to cut out if we ran it hard at parties,pop it in the freezer for ten minutes and bobs your uncle music again.🙂

That worked for the remote control of my first ever video recorder, too! I was told by my optician a couple of years back, that a spell in the freezer will cure slow reactive lenses that stay dark long after you have entered the restaurant. Take them off first, obviously.

[smokey]

I was in charge of a team working in a large 25kV switching station, 16 track circuit breakers, just outside London.

We were replacing circuit protection relays, quite invasive work which took a day to do per breaker we were doing one circuit breaker at a time.

When working in these buildings, especially just outside a large London terminal station, the passing of trains just blends into the background as such you don't notice them …….. until …….

.

They stop running 


Concerned that we had done something I phoned the ECR

.

The ECR said - there had been a "power surge" in central London   

There suggestion was we make the site safe and go home avoiding central London.

The date - 07-07-2015

Why what happened on that day.

!0 years earlier the London Bombings Occurred! 

seilf emit!

[Electric train]

I was in charge of a team working in a large 25kV switching station, 16 track circuit breakers, just outside London.

We were replacing circuit protection relays, quite invasive work which took a day to do per breaker we were doing one circuit breaker at a time.

When working in these buildings, especially just outside a large London terminal station, the passing of trains just blends into the background as such you don't notice them …….. until …….

.

They stop running 


Concerned that we had done something I phoned the ECR

.

The ECR said - there had been a "power surge" in central London   

There suggestion was we make the site safe and go home avoiding central London.

The date - 07-07-2015

Why what happened on that day.

!0 years earlier the London Bombings Occurred! 

seilf emit!

Typo of the date 

[Robin Summerhill]

As this thread has gone quiet for almost a fortnight and I am sure that there must be other stories out there to tell, I am “bumping” the thread this morning with a tale of a tale that got away.

I got off the 1623 "stopper" from Gloucester to Bristol at Coaley Junction on 19th December 1964, a fortnight before the station closed, and went on south on the next train about an hour later. On asking the Porter whether he had any LMS^▸ (London Midland Scottish - 1923 to 1948) tickets he answered in the affirmative - they were child privilege single blank cards. And as I was a child with an entitlement to privilege tickets, I bought a selection.
 
These were "LMS" tickets so they would have been printed prior to 1948. I was in Coaley Junction in late 1964, nearly 17 years after the LMS had ceased to exist. From the serial numbers on the tickets it is clear that only 16 tickets had been sold from the time that they had been delivered (at the latest in December 1947) and my visit in 1964, and then 6 went within 5 minutes!
 

It was common practice to have the next ticket for issue standing upright in the rack - this also helped when cashing up at the end of the day because if a ticket was still standing in the front of the rack it meant that none of those had been sold. Clearly ticket 17 had been standing at the front of the rack being exposed to light (and tobacco smoke in those days of course) for a long time, hence its discoloration.
 
In conversation with the porter on duty that day, it came to light that he knew my father, as he worked in the Signal & Telegraph department and would have been in Coaley from time to time. He said: "When you get home, ask him about the donkey!" So I did, and I recall a funny story being told that evening in December 1964. The trouble is, I can't remember it now - old age gets to us all in one way or another...!
 
A larger version of the inage can be seen here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/93122458@N08/18304177294/

[Robin Summerhill]

The Great Central – my part in trying to prevent its downfall

The Great Central Railway closed between Aylesbury and Rugby, and from Nottingham to Sheffield, on 5th September 1966. The bit in between followed in 1969. I used it on a number of occasions in the last year of its operation, and two of my tickets have survived, including no. 8417, which was issued on the last day, Sunday 4th September.

In those days, there were two possible ways to travel overnight from Sheffield to Bristol. The Newcastle to Bristol Mail left the Midland station at about 2315 and landed you in Bristol at about 0435. The alternative was the York to Swindon train from Sheffield Victoria just after midnight, via the Great Central, Banbury, Oxford and Didcot West Curve, and this was extended to Bristol on Sunday mornings only, arriving at about 0745. The advantage of using the Great Central route was that, by the time the train got you to Bristol, the buses had started running and that avoided a 4-mile walk home to Stockwood (my only income back then being from newspaper rounds, taxis were out of the question!). The buses were still safely tucked up in their depots and the crews mainly still tucked up in bed at 0435 on a Sunday morning in those days.

It would not be uncharitable to say that passenger loadings on this train left something to be desired. One Sunday morning the train, comprising one coach and a number of parcels vans, pulled up in Chippenham and I saw a bloke selling newspapers from a barrow on the platform. I got out to buy one, and so did the rest of the train’s entire passenger complement. There were four of us, and two of them were footplate staff going home “on the cushions.” I had a free pass. I often wondered if the other bloke on the train was actually paying the railway some money to be there…

On the very last morning of all, 4th September 1966, the train was terminated at Swindon because engineering work had closed the line, and I was rudely awakened by someone telling me that a replacement bus service was awaiting my pleasure outside the station. In fact, as I recall, I was rudely awakened twice, because the first time I went straight back to sleep again (when you had a compartment to yourself in Mk1 stock then the bench seat could be remarkably comfy...)

That bus ran from Swindon to Bristol with only me on it - on a child privilege single from Sheffield Victoria to Bristol TM^‡(resolve) costing 6/11 (that's nearly 35 pence if you want it in new money). A microcosm, perhaps, of why so many railway lines closed in the 1960s.

If any classic bus enthusiasts are reading this, it was a Bristol MW on the rail replacement job...

As I was 14 at the time, it might be worth mentioning that in those days half fare children’s tickets were only available between the ages of 3 and 14. However, children of railway staff had that concession extended to their 15th birthday, hence the “child” tickets.

A final twist to the story came in September 2006, when the new heritage Great Central Railway was commemorating 40 years since the line’s closure. In their Gala for that weekend, they offered a free ride to anybody who could produce a ticket issued for the line on the last day of operation. Suffice to say, ticket 8417 came out of store and returned to Quorn & Woodhouse station, and the resulting complimentary ticket also appears in this collection.

A larger version of that ticket scan appears here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/93122458@N08/19913805372/