Changing Images

[whole diary]

[kazbear]

On a HST^▸ (High Speed Train) coach F

[devon_metro]

Top one of the three is Weymouth.

The coach F is more specifically LA79, the ex MML^» (Midland Main Line. - about) set that was running around on the system for a while, now refurbished for Cross Country.

[johoare]

Paddington Plt 1

A very old picture maybe? That looks like a Thames Train in platform 1! 

[grahame]

A very old picture maybe? That looks like a Thames Train in platform 1! 

Not as old as you might think, Jo ... the summer before last.  And, yes, the identity of the Midland Main line set is correct too ... and Weymouth.   Just leaves the picture of the 143 at some station or other to be identified, and I thought that would be one of the first to be placed!

[devon_metro]

My hopeless eyesight suggests that it is Kemble 

[grahame]

My hopeless eyesight suggests that it is Kemble 

It is indeed ... and I suspect your eyesight was helped by some image sharpening software and a bit of pixel zooming

Congratulations, all ... all 10 identified. Perhaps I should ask devon_metro if I can add some of his images to correct the Wessex (truely Wessex area, not the old train co.) bias.

[devon_metro]

My hopeless eyesight suggests that it is Kemble 

It is indeed ... and I suspect your eyesight was helped by some image sharpening software and a bit of pixel zooming

Congratulations, all ... all 10 identified. Perhaps I should ask devon_metro if I can add some of his images to correct the Wessex (truely Wessex area, not the old train co.) bias.

I can see no problem in that, and as it happens, I find looking at the picture of Kemble further away helped more than zooming in. No cheating, honest 

[Chris from Nailsea]

Fair play to devon_metro - I did the same, squinting at the screen from a distance, and I was perhaps 90% sure it was Kemble!

A topical tip - there must be some scientific explanation for it, but if you squint at any of those news items with the faces fuzzed out, you can often work out who it is! 

[Btline]

Funnily enough Grahame, I was thinking of New York Grand Central Terminal......

[inspector_blakey]

Grand Central is mostly (if not exclusively) shorter distance commuter traffic: all the long distance Amtrak services use Pennsylvania ("Penn") Station which is a rabbit warren very much in the same mould as New Street, buried beneath Madison Square garden (which to my untutored eye doesn't look much like a garden!). If it's any consolation I made two trips through Penn station a few months ago and didn't recognize it!

Penn used to be a much grander building but was comprehensively butchered in the 1950s and 1960s (again, note the parallels with New Street), prompting Vincent Scully (it says here he was an architectural historian) to comment "one entered the city like a god...now one scuttles in like a rat". It is supposed to be replaced before very much longer with a new (and much grander-looking) station, to be named Moynihan station, in the old post office building just across 8th Avenue.

[Btline]

"one entered the city like a god...now one scuttles in like a rat"

This could be applied to the new St Pancras Thameslink.

What a cramped, dark, dingy, New Streetish station (unlike the spacious, light, and attractive King Cross Thameslink station).

I expect that all the Crossrail stations will be New Street clones.

[grahame]

What a cramped, dark, dingy, New Streetish station (unlike the spacious, light, and attractive King Cross Thameslink station).

The think that has struck me about Penn Central when I've used it is just how narrow the platforms are compared to the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) ones - it seems there's a tiny space between this huge train as it rumbles in, and the pillars holding up whatever is above.   It could just be an optical illusion caused by the size of the train; usually I'm fine but I feel odd at Penn Central - like I used to an the old Angel tube, but that's another story.

[John R]

This could be applied to the new St Pancras Thameslink.

What a cramped, dark, dingy, New Streetish station (unlike the spacious, light, and attractive King Cross Thameslink station).

I've not been to St P Thameslink, but I'm surprised at this comparison. In peak hours you couldn't even get on to the platform at KX Thameslink, to admire the er, spacious, light and attractive station, with passengers 5 deep awaiting their train home, and the next three too.

[Btline]

Well put it like this. In a magazine there were pictures of before and after.

After reading the article, I assumed that the Kings Cross picture was the new station.

I got a bit of a shock when I read the captions!

[John R]

Well St P TL is in a subterranean box, whereas KX Thameslink was in the daylight.  Which maybe why you got that impression.  But I haven't heard any feedback from regular passengers wishing they were still using KX, so I think the space outweighs the lack of daylight.

As an aside, given in due course there will be trains coming down from the Great Northen lines, I did think it would have been better to have had 4 platforms at St Pancras T, to enable trains to be held awaiting arrival/departure from places as far afield as Brighton, Peterborough and Kings Lynn. But I suppose we were lucky that the govt agreed to fit the box out at all, as for a time it looked as though there was going to be a nice big box (built at huge inconvenience to the travelling public) but no station.