British Railway Operations

[John Bakeer]

Tulyar,
That's what is wrong with British justice! The PC Brigades rush in to see that the wrong doers human rights are protected, but to hell with the rest of us. I once had to restrain a big boy from beating my 9yo daughter and was threatened with prosecution by the plod.
I think I'll buy a big gun, the baddies over here seem to have no difficulty in getting them despite Mr Blair making ownership illegal.
Just had a run from Aberistwyth to Pwehelli in the driving seat of a Cravens DMU per Microsoft. Going to do it for real later this summer (I hope?), as a passenger, I just can't get the hang of vacuum brakes. Hence I have a shed full of steamers in mint condition, metaphorically that is.
John B.

[Tulyar15]

QUOTE: Originally posted by John Bakeer

Tulyar,
That's what is wrong with British justice! The PC Brigades rush in to see that the wrong doers human rights are protected, but to hell with the rest of us. I once had to restrain a big boy from beating my 9yo daughter and was threatened with prosecution by the plod.
I think I'll buy a big gun, the baddies over here seem to have no difficulty in getting them despite Mr Blair making ownership illegal.

Agreed! In the case I described the Judge admitted he had some sympathy for the lads but did not want to be condoning violence. They got let out early for good behaviour so they did not serve their whole sentence.

I knew an officious policeman once who was even detested by his fellow bobbies. He was obsessed with catching drinking drivers to the exclusion of all other crimes. But he made the mistake of pulling over a car load of SAS soliders who'd been camping out at a rural pub. They beat him up and left him lying in the gutter

QUOTE: Originally posted by John Bakeer
Just had a run from Aberistwyth to Pwehelli in the driving seat of a Cravens DMU per Microsoft. Going to do it for real later this summer (I hope?), as a passenger, I just can't get the hang of vacuum brakes. Hence I have a shed full of steamers in mint condition, metaphorically that is.
John B.

Ah memories! I went on the Cambrian steam specials last year. If they use a different loco I might do again this year. As it is I think I will have a ride with "Green Arrow" down to Cornwall in October. She's working a Pathfinder Tour which actually picks up at Chippenham (Wilts). A Gresley V2 2-6-2 in the West Country is not as outlandish as you might think. In Post WW2 years they regularly worked the Newcastle - Barry "Port to Port Express" as far as Swindon, whilst in the 1950s when the entire fleet of Bulleid Pacifics were grounded due to metal fatigue, some V2's were loaned to the SW Division of the Southern Region and used on Waterloo - Weymouth and Exeter expresses including the "Bournemouth Belle" Pullman train and the "Atlantic Coast Express".

To answer Murphy's question, my brother travels a fair bit in his job and sometimes takes his camera with him, particularly if he knows there are rail locations of interest where he's going. He's been taking photographs since 1970. In the summer of that year, when he was 14, our Mum bought him a week long rail rover ticket for the English Midlands and some film for his camera and he found much of interest in that week. He was already interested in signalling, have been taken to watch the trains at Malvern Link station from a very early age (as was I!).

Next month we're having a week long stay in Carlisle to photograph (and film, I now have a camcorder) the railways around there as there's still a lot of interest in that area.

[John Bakeer]

Tulyar,
Don't miss out on a DMU trip over the S&C while your up there.
Sorry to say I'm a bit of a Luddite (I am a Yorkshireman) and have just not got round to a camcorder yet, I'm waiting for a pocket sized version!
I can commend Train Sim, with it you can take anything from a J94 to a Southern Pacific Cab Foreward over the Cambrian. The CB runs wrong line and the clearances are a bit tight though!
John B.

[daveklepper]

I gather "wrong line" means right-handed running as is usual in North America?

[Simon Reed]

Dave - correct. Wrong line is essentially running contrary to the route signalling.

On the subject of which - I'm sure I'm telling Tulyar and brother of Tulyar stuff they already know but most of the Cumbrian Coast route is still semaphore signalled, with some very interesting signalbox architecture.

Heading South from Carlisle boxes that spring to mind as being a bit special are St. Bees, Askam, Barrow North (which still uses it's original 1907 frame) and Arnside.

Maryport used to be a bit good, and very interestingly signalled, but I'm not sure if it has'nt now been incorporated into Carlisle PSB.

Enjoy - I look forward to the photos.

(13 minutes to England v Sweden and I'm still at work. Grrr!)

[John Bakeer]

Simon.
60 million Brits. and they can't beet a nation with the population of Yorkshire.
John B.

[Tulyar15]

Thanks for the info Simon, I'm sure we'll do that line as its pretty high on my brother's "To Do" List. He's got most of the week mapped out already.

[Murphy Siding]

I'm looking at a picture of an oil painting. It is by Robert Bailey, depicting German ME 109's during the Battle of Britain ,dropping 250kg bombs on trains and tracks "near London....along the busy waterfront". A signal building and ocean freighters are also in the background. Trains, WW I & WW II history, and propellor-driven warplanes are 3 things that I read a lot about. I don't recall reading much about this type of occurance. Is this fact, or fiction?

[beaulieu]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

I'm looking at a picture of an oil painting. It is by Robert Bailey, depicting German ME 109's during the Battle of Britain ,dropping 250kg bombs on trains and tracks "near London....along the busy waterfront". A signal building and ocean freighters are also in the background. Trains, WW I & WW II history, and propellor-driven warplanes are 3 things that I read a lot about. I don't recall reading much about this type of occurance. Is this fact, or fiction?

Ju-87 Stukas dropping bombs maybe, Me-109s not possible. not enough range.
I don't think the Stukas made it over London either, they did attack the Channel Ports however.

[Murphy Siding]

QUOTE: Originally posted by beaulieu

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

I'm looking at a picture of an oil painting. It is by Robert Bailey, depicting German ME 109's during the Battle of Britain ,dropping 250kg bombs on trains and tracks "near London....along the busy waterfront". A signal building and ocean freighters are also in the background. Trains, WW I & WW II history, and propellor-driven warplanes are 3 things that I read a lot about. I don't recall reading much about this type of occurance. Is this fact, or fiction?

Ju-87 Stukas dropping bombs maybe, Me-109s not possible. not enough range.
I don't think the Stukas made it over London either, they did attack the Channel Ports however.

Better yet, the text says the ME-109's dropped their 250kg bombs, then went upstairs to challenge the Hurricanes and Spitfires, on what? fumes? The only thing I've ever read about stukas in the Battle of Britain had to do with them being sitting ducks to British fighters.

[daveklepper]

There were bombs dropped on railway targets in the London area during WWII. A noise control expert names Martin Hirshorn is about to have his book "Is Anybody Listening" published, and I was asked to contribute to the dust jacket, and so I read the draft. Thanks to a fairly well-off American aunt, he was able to escape the *** and worked in London duriing WWII at a war-products chemical factory and he describes the bombing rades. My own memory suggests the German bombers were "Stukas" or some similar name.

[Tulyar15]

I'm afraid I 'm not qualified to answer your question Murphy. I read somewhere that Glasgow was the only major city in Britain that escaped bombing because it was out of range of German bombers, even after they'd occuppied Norway. But given that they bombed Belfast (and also Dublin, alleged by mistake) I'd have thought they could have bombed Glasgow.

To the north of Worcester, at Stourport-on-Severn, until recently there was coal fired power station. Apparrently it escaped the attention of the Luftwaffe because they used it as a landmark! Basically they would follow the River Severn inland until they saw Stourport power station, then they knew it was time to turn right for Birmingham and bombing!

[John Bakeer]

The German long range bombers were Heinkels, Mescherschmidts and Junkers with twin piston engines. The Stuka was specifically a ground support aircraft and on a few raids against south coast radar were slaughtered as the fighter escorts had only about 15 minutes fuel available after they had crossed the channel, the Stuka had some success against allied coastal shipping in the early days, but better escorts, barrage balloons and british fighters soon saw them off.
Barnsley town hall is built of white (Portland?) stone and stands on a low hill 16 miles north of Sheffield. It was used as the land mark by the bombers as it is the highest point inland from the North Sea short of the Pennines, it was just 'turn left for Sheffield and the yards at Tinsley'.
Only in the later stages of the war were german fighters used as light bombers but the 250kg max. bomb ruined the handling making them vulnerable to ground fire.
I have some photo's of damaged railway infrastructure York Shed, Paddington and a lot of areas around London etc. they were always back in action within a couple of days. A credit to the British railwaymen and women of the day.
I had family in Manchester living near the large Ardwick goods depot, to the best of my knowledge although the Luftwaffe did their best to wreck it they hit everything around and left it virtually unscathed.
John B.

[Isambard]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Tulyar15

I'm afraid I 'm not qualified to answer your question Murphy. I read somewhere that Glasgow was the only major city in Britain that escaped bombing because it was out of range of German bombers, even after they'd occuppied Norway. But given that they bombed Belfast (and also Dublin, alleged by mistake) I'd have thought they could have bombed Glasgow.

To the north of Worcester, at Stourport-on-Severn, until recently there was coal fired power station. Apparrently it escaped the attention of the Luftwaffe because they used it as a landmark! Basically they would follow the River Severn inland until they saw Stourport power station, then they knew it was time to turn right for Birmingham and bombing!

Glasgow, a major industrial city, was indeed heavily bombed. In 1956 while visiting relatives there I saw large areas that had been flattened, including where my relatives lived at the time.

[Anonymous]

Isambard..Are you sure it wasn't flattened after the Orangemen took a wrong turn into Parkhead?

Most of the major cities were bombed if not by the Germans then by the planners after the war. Plymouth is a prime example. Did sod all though. Rather like Hamburg, Cologne and Dresden did sod all at the end of the war in terms of making the war end quicker.

Gerry Fiennes' book "I Tried to run a Railway" which incidentally is an utter classic, is good reading on this subject.

[Isambard]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cogload

Isambard..Are you sure it wasn't flattened after the Orangemen took a wrong turn into Parkhead?

Most of the major cities were bombed if not by the Germans then by the planners after the war. Plymouth is a prime example. Did sod all though. Rather like Hamburg, Cologne and Dresden did sod all at the end of the war in terms of making the war end quicker.

Gerry Fiennes' book "I Tried to run a Railway" which incidentally is an utter classic, is good reading on this subject.

Orangemen, Parkhead? Must be a soccer reference (Celtic Stadium?)

City planners could have done better by Southampton too, where one of my sons and his wife live.

Must try to get hold of Fiennes book. Is he one of the acting and explorer family Fiennes?

[:)]

[beaulieu]

QUOTE: Originally posted by John Bakeer

The German long range bombers were Heinkels, Mescherschmidts and Junkers with twin piston engines. The Stuka was specifically a ground support aircraft and on a few raids against south coast radar were slaughtered as the fighter escorts had only about 15 minutes fuel available after they had crossed the channel, the Stuka had some success against allied coastal shipping in the early days, but better escorts, barrage balloons and british fighters soon saw them off.
Barnsley town hall is built of white (Portland?) stone and stands on a low hill 16 miles north of Sheffield. It was used as the land mark by the bombers as it is the highest point inland from the North Sea short of the Pennines, it was just 'turn left for Sheffield and the yards at Tinsley'.
Only in the later stages of the war were german fighters used as light bombers but the 250kg max. bomb ruined the handling making them vulnerable to ground fire.
I have some photo's of damaged railway infrastructure York Shed, Paddington and a lot of areas around London etc. they were always back in action within a couple of days. A credit to the British railwaymen and women of the day.
I had family in Manchester living near the large Ardwick goods depot, to the best of my knowledge although the Luftwaffe did their best to wreck it they hit everything around and left it virtually unscathed.
John B.

Close, John but no Messerschmidt bombers, the third manufacturer of German twin engine bombers was Dornier. If Glasgow was never hit it was for one of two reasons, either it was a difficult night target or it was a target but bad weather prevented it. The German 5th Air Force based in Norway was very roughly handled by the RAF's Northern Fighter Group even though at the start it had the oldest fighter aircraft including Defiants, and the last Gladiator Sqd.

[Simon Reed]

I'm not sure about Gerald Fiennes family tree although it's not a common surname so there may be some acting/exploring links.

He was the GM of BR's Eastern Region in the 50's and 60's - as Cogload suggests it's fascinating and, at times, mind-boggling reading.

I'm no war historian but I seem to recall a tale that the Germans set out to bomb Crewe Works one night. On the same night some local youths accidentally set fire to a hay barn about five miles South of Crewe. The German bomb aimers, upon seeing fire on the horizon during a blackout, assumed that they'd spotted the foundries and bombed a lot of agriculural land around Madeley.

Off railway topic but one of my other passions is trolleybuses. The big trolleybus museum in the UK is at Sandtoft, which is in the corner of a huge WWII RAF airfield. Sandtoft was a crash landing field. It had very long runways and was easy to find without navigational aids.

The Germans had something similar at Vegesack, near Bremen. There was a sort of gentlemans agreement that neither field would ever be bombed, which was honoured by the USAAFalso.

We can't fight wars these days unless they're internecine and collusive. The UK should'nt - and does not need to - get involved in any wars.

Excuse my justified despair. I've been watching the news and wondering why I pay tax to kill innocent people.

[Isambard]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Simon Reed

I'm not sure about Gerald Fiennes family tree although it's not a common surname so there may be some acting/exploring links.

He was the GM of BR's Eastern Region in the 50's and 60's - as Cogload suggests it's fascinating and, at times, mind-boggling reading.

I've since found him via Google and Wikapedia and yes he is/was a member of the famous clan.

[John Bakeer]

Oops!
Dornier 'Flying Pencil' vs ME109.
Trolley buses, the last town/city to run them I recollect were Bradford and Swinton in Yorkshire. The local name for them was 'Trackless'. I used the last Bradford route from the city centre to The Royal Infirmary, They retained a short length of overhead in one of the depots for a number of years and periodically would turn out No 73(?) for enthusiasts.
Cogload,
How right you are! I have been in construction most of my working life and in the 60's worked on some bloody awful buildings including high rise housing, far too many of which are still standing.
Fiennes was done the dirty by the then whitehall administration, I seem to recollect that he was totally apposed to the Beeching plan 'like amputating the arms of a starving man'.
John B.

[Anonymous]

Isambard.

Try and get hold of a copy, I purchased mine (paperback, well thumbed) at the Castle Bookshop in Hay on Wye, anybody who knows that town will of course know that it is full of 2nd hand book shops. Nothing else there mind.

It is a fascinating and at times poignant read, as well as being very funny in places.

[Isambard]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cogload

Isambard.

Try and get hold of a copy, I purchased mine (paperback, well thumbed) at the Castle Bookshop in Hay on Wye, anybody who knows that town will of course know that it is full of 2nd hand book shops. Nothing else there mind.

It is a fascinating and at times poignant read, as well as being very funny in places.

Cogload:

Looks as if it may be difficult to find over here. Amazon.com only lists "Fiennes on Rails: Fifty Years of Railways As Seen by Gerald Fiennes" at $84 plus Cdn (ouch!). Must see if our library system can rustle up a copy by interloan. It must have been read by those who helped de-nationalize Canadian National, now one of North America's most profitatble railways.

[:)]

[Tulyar15]

I have a buddy who goes to Hay-on-Wye every year for the annual festival. It's been and gone for this year but I dare say if people wanted help finding a book he might be willing to have a look round the book shops.

I also have a couple of friends in the nearby town of Kington who run a B & B guesthouse for anyone wanting to stay in the area.

[martin.knoepfel]

Glasgow was far too distant from Norway for German fighters. So bomb-attacks on Glasgow must have resulted in horrible casualties, if carried out during the day, or they must have been night-attacks. These were by there very nature less precise. That is true for the Allied forces attacking Germany, too.

ME109 were indeed used as ground-attack-airplanes, because the Me110 and the Ju87 were like sitting ducks, easy targets even for the Hurricanes, not to talk of the mighty Spitfires

[Isambard]

From bbc.co.uk , WW2 Peoples War:

The Clydeside Blitz
With Prestwick and the Clyde turning into key strategic points for the war effort, they quickly attracted the attention of the Luftwaffe. On 13 March 1941 the sirens declared the imminent arrival of the Heinkel 111 and Junker 88 aircraft and the start of the Clydeside Blitz. Up until 1941 most of the German bombing raids had been against Coventry, Liverpool and London. But better weather and extended range now threatened targets in Scotland too.

The term Blitz derives from the German word blitzkrieg, meaning 'lightning war' - but what had become clear from London's experience was that the bombing war would be a long, drawn-out affair.

The air raid began at about 9.30pm on 13 March 1941. The bombing went on for eight hours, with over 1,000 bombs dropped in addition to parachute mines and incendiary bombs. It was the worst bombing raid suffered by Scotland, killing 528 'Bankies' and injuring over 600.

Of some 12,000 homes in Clydebank, no more than a dozen were completely untouched. Over 4,000 homes were completely destroyed or damaged beyond repair.

Domestic counter-measures against the bombing threat eventually came through. Dummy towns near Dumbarton, codenamed 'Starfish', were created on either side of the Clyde and blackouts were enforced in a bid to foil the bombers.

Balloon defences were also used as defence, with squadrons at Glasgow, Renfrew, Ardrossan and Greenock. From 1941, Fighter Command were instructed to treat the Clyde, the Mersey and the Bristol Channel as the main priority for defence.

[John Bakeer]

Try 'Thje British Library' accessible through your local authority lending library.
I have BORROWED a lot of railroad books via this source, but be patient turn round tmes are quite slow. Sorry UK only.
John B.

[Tulyar15]

QUOTE: Originally posted by John Bakeer

Oops!
Dornier 'Flying Pencil' vs ME109.
Trolley buses, the last town/city to run them I recollect were Bradford and Swinton in Yorkshire. The local name for them was 'Trackless'. I used the last Bradford route from the city centre to The Royal Infirmary, They retained a short length of overhead in one of the depots for a number of years and periodically would turn out No 73(?) for enthusiasts.
John B.

Weren't they thinking of bringing back trolley buses in Doncaster fairly recently? I seem to remember driving thru there in the late 1980's and seeing trolley bus wires in place.

In addition to the places all ready mentioned, they have working trolley buses and trams at the Black Country museum in Dudley.

[John Bakeer]

Tulyar,
South Yorkshire PTE experimented with a hybrid vehicle at the Leger Way depot in Doncaster. It was a deisel bus with stiffened roof to take the power collection equipment with electric motors in the power train, the notion was to use electrical power in towns/cities and switch to deisel traction on lighter trafficked routes. Work on it was discontinued at privatisation.
I wasn't aware of the Dudley museum and will try to fit a trip there in the future.
The National Tramway Museum at Crich in Derbyshire has an operating syatem with beautifully restored trams and fares charged in old pre-decimal coinage.
John B.

[Anonymous]

Off topic: Kington is a rather nice little border town not far from Cogload Parent's ex Country of New Radnor. Before they emigrated to rather warmer climes of the East Med.

On topic: It seems that there will be a big announcement on EWS (42% owned by CN) early in July. Expect job losses sadly.

[BR60103]

Diverging track: Briti***ramcars and Trolley buses didn't have retriever ropes. North American ones had a rope from the end of the trolley pole to a little button shaped devive (8" to a foot across) and when the pole came off the wire, this would wind the rope in and pull the pole down, like a spring blind. It also kept the rope tidy. In Toronto the device was mounted below the back window; in Pittsburg it was mounted above the back window.
British poles had a loop at the end of the pole and the cars were provided with a stick with a hook on the end to manipulate the pole.
The chairman of our model rly club worked as a trolley bus conductor when a student. He said it was the conductor's responsibility to have the ploe on board. One Sunday they dewired at the outer loop and had to wait ages for the next bus because he had forgotten the hook.
Now back on topic.