Smokey's Picture Quiz (with no pictures!!)

[whole diary]

[rogerpatenall]

These shunting reminiscences remind me of the evening our shunter, Ernie Stockman, lost his favourite pipe, which was rarely out of his mouth. Very upset he was. He had been out shunting the engine run round on the Taunton stopper (at Castle Cary).

Following afternoon he came on, like a bear with a proverbial sore head.  But then, when the stopper was back we heard cheers. His pipe was safely on (and frozen to) the external running board of the coach. It had travelled back to Taunton - still hot, and then had a trip out to Minehead and back in the morning before returning to Cary in the late afternoon. It took some gentle hammering to unfreeze and loosen it, but, it must have been hot initially, so says a lot about the top quality of the road and the careful driving on its trip back to Taunton.

[Gordon the Blue Engine]

Trainspotting up on the bank at the London end of the up platform at Coventry (my home town) station in the late 50’s – maybe with Pete Waterman! – and booing as Polyphemus appeared again on the up express at about 1115.  41902 and 41909 on the Leamington Spa Avenue – Nuneaton shuttles.

Trainspotting on the Lickey Incline when it was still mainly steam, and seeing the Bromford Bridge oil train with a 2-10-0 at the front and a 2-10-0 and 3 panniers banking - I still have the photo from my old box camera.

On holiday, getting in the cab of 6821 Leaton Grange as it waited to take the up sleeper out of Penzance.

[SandTEngineer]

Continuously Welded Rail may give a smoother, quieter journey but I sometimes miss the comforting rhythm made by the old tracks.

Not if you were travelling (i.e. bouncing around) in a PACER or SKIPPER unit, you wouldn't....

It would be the closest I'd get to a fun fair white knuckle ride these days!


BTW^▸ (by the way), had to look that up..... didn't know some Pacers were rebranded as Skippers.

PACERS were once officially known as SKIPPERS in the far Southwest.  Their general descrIption was to be known as NODDING DONKEYS, a very appropriate name......

[chopper1944]

Having just left the train from school at St. Austell aged about 14 , watching a train of empty china clay trucks climbing from Par with three pannier tanks, one at the front, one in the middle and one at the rear. They were working really hard and the approach to St. Austell station was really loud.

[Thatcham Crossing]

Another one from me....

I grew up in Crowthorne (Berks) but went to Military Boarding School in Dover between '75 and '82 (aged 11 to 18 years).

A lot of the time my journeys to and from school were by train. As I often started these journeys with a few others (our fathers all worked at RMA Sandhurst) we would meet at Camberley for a train to Waterloo, cross over using the walkways to Waterloo East, and thence onwards to Dover Priory.

Waterloo was a big meeting point for other inmates going the same way, so plenty of noise, banter and slight misbehavior was often the order of the day on the next part of the journey.

The trains were usually corridored, slam door, 4CEP EMU^▸ (Electric Multiple Unit)'s and the like, and lent themselves to the establishment of teenager-ish dens during the journey.

Usually these return to school journeys were on a Sunday, so mercifully few of the general public had to endure our antics.

[eightf48544]

Continuously Welded Rail may give a smoother, quieter journey but I sometimes miss the comforting rhythm made by the old tracks.

Not if you were travelling (i.e. bouncing around) in a PACER or SKIPPER unit, you wouldn't....

It would be the closest I'd get to a fun fair white knuckle ride these days!


BTW^▸ (by the way), had to look that up..... didn't know some Pacers were rebranded as Skippers.

PACERS were once officially known as SKIPPERS in the far Southwest.  Their general descrIption was to be known as NODDING DONKEYS, a very appropriate name......

A Skipper is the only train I've ever felt sick on. Falmouth to Truro (late 80s,) was I glad we weren't going any further,

[CyclingSid]

I am reminded of going round Longmoor Military Railway (LMR) in/on a Wickham trolley. They also had one of those things beloved of films where you had pump a "see-saw" mechanism, but that was hard work.

[rogerw]

For the spectacular I think it would be hard to beat the Meldon Quarry ballast trains arriving at Exeter Central in the 1960s.  Two locos on the front with a further two banking at the rear.

[GBM]

I am reminded of going round Longmoor Military Railway (LMR) in/on a Wickham trolley. They also had one of those things beloved of films where you had pump a "see-saw" mechanism, but that was hard work.

They were indeed hard work.  I couldn't believe how hard until I tried.
At the end of various military courses at Longmoor, there used to ride all lines excursion behind one of the tanks on open flat wagons. Sheer joy.
Unfortunately long before I had the wherewithall to purchase a video recorder..

[Clan Line]

For the spectacular I think it would be hard to beat the Meldon Quarry ballast trains arriving at Exeter Central in the 1960s.  Two locos on the front with a further two banking at the rear.

Reminds me of a train I saw in Arizona last Nov. I am used to the length of American freight trains but I saw one between Flagstaff and Winslow that was an order of magnitude longer than anything I had ever seen before. It was containers, two high; I really couldn't say how long it was, it just went on, and on , and on.........Two huge diesels at the the front, two at the back and two in the middle...................just amazing.
Later on "I was standing on the corner in Winslow Arizona"..........for real !

[Thatcham Crossing]

I am used to the length of American freight trains but I saw one between Flagstaff and Winslow that was an order of magnitude longer than anything I had ever seen before.

Around 10 years ago I was on holiday campervanning around that part of the US, and stopped for the night at a site near Flagstaff and adjacent to a rail line. Through the night the enormous trains trundled past - horns echoeing around the valleys, so you knew they were coming a long time before they reached you.

I got up to watch one pass us, and it may have only been moving at 15-20mph, but it took 20 minutes to pass me!

The best place I've been to in North America to watch these enormous trains was Kicking Horse Pass on the Alberta/British Columbia border, where the trains negotiate the famous spiral tunnels, very slowly, and cross-over themselves as the front emerges from the top tunnel portal while the rear is still going in the bottom one.

[smokey]

PACERS were once officially known as SKIPPERS in the far Southwest.  Their general descrIption was to be known as NODDING DONKEYS, a very appropriate name......

A Skipper is the only train I've ever felt sick on. Falmouth to Truro (late 80s,) was I glad we weren't going any further,

Back in the 1970's I was on a train from Nottingham to London Euston, yes Euston (line south of Bedford shut for engineering work) on the Bedford to Bletchley section it was jointed track and the MKII I was traveling on started to ride roughly, this is poor track thought Smokey, but the swaying from side to side changed to bouncing up and down which got worse and worse. When it got noisy as well, Smokey thought we had derailed but as I'd been on derailed stock it didn't feel like that.
I moved to the next carriage and you could see the effected coach was bouncing through the corridor connection.
When the train braked the coach quickly settled down,  later, speaking to a carriage & Wagon examiner, he said it was hunting caused by constant train speed, constant rail lengths and an example of Resonant Frequency, the loud noise was the suspension hitting it's stops.
Didn't make Smokey feel sick, more like fresh underwear required. 

[Oxonhutch]

Smokey thought we had derailed but as I'd been on derailed stock it didn't feel like that.

Yes, I've been on two derailed trains - both times more than a mile and a half underground - the 'seats' were 10mm boiler plate and there was no suspension whatsoever. That was quite painful and I felt everyone of those sleepers.