Trivia: Common railway related fallacies

[Sunset route]

Train descriptions are the four character alpha numbers found in train describer berths identifying the trains WTT train identification on Signalling diagrams and headcode were the two character codes most often found on the front of BR (SR) Multiple units and class 33, 71, 73 & 74 engines identifying the trains route and stopping pattern, but since the end of slam door stock the two have become interchangeable.

 

[philthetube]

The Midland Mainline terminus is named after an organ

Best comment on here.

 

[Ianno87]

By being able to quote 4 character alphanumeric train headcodes you are supreme commander and leader of all train enthusiasts, and everybody else should bow before you.

 

[Dai Corner]

By being able to quote 4 character alphanumeric train headcodes you are supreme commander and leader of all train enthusiasts, and everybody else should bow before you.

Saying 'Alpha three four' rather than 'One A Thirty Four' , of course.

 

[PTR 444]

That you have to buy separate tickets for each train you’re travelling on.

 

[LUYMun]

I once overheard my teacher refer Manchester Piccadilly as a train operating company.

 

[pdeaves]

By being able to quote 4 character alphanumeric train headcodes you are supreme commander and leader of all train enthusiasts, and everybody else should bow before you.

'Headcodes' are unique identifiers.

 

[6Gman]

Wrexham Central isnt the busiest nor the main station in Wrexham.
(With a 3 train a day service currently, and less than a 5 minute walk from General, I dont know why this station even exists, especially as its a modern substantial structure unlike the decrepit General station).

Not sure what the fallacy is here.

Central scores by being more centrally situated. I did look at a scheme to shut Central many years ago; it didn't add up.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Doesn't Wrexham General have annual passenger useage stats of c. 500,000, whereas Wrexham Central is maybe just 80,000?

 

[Ianno87]

-"We need to encourage more leisure travel by rail!" (No, the industry has leisure travel practically coming out of its ears at present)

-"The Thameslink timetable performs badly" (no, it performs much better than the pre-May 2018 timetable)

 

[Alanko]

Re-Nationalisation would result in fares slashed to penny sums to travel the length of the country. This is usually combined with the belief that mainland Europe is a utopia of low-cost and ultra efficient and reliable rail travel as well.

 

[Merseysider]

That “advanced” is the name of a ticket type.

 

[Ianno87]

The fact your Saturday mid-morning train to your nearest big city centre is full and standing (with photo to prove it) does not completely demonstrate that "passengers are coming back to the railway". There is still alot of mid-week and late evening fresh air to fill.

 

[43096]

Train descriptions are the four character alpha numbers found in train describer berths identifying the trains WTT train identification on Signalling diagrams and headcode were the two character codes most often found on the front of BR (SR) Multiple units and class 33, 71, 73 & 74 engines identifying the trains route and stopping pattern, but since the end of slam door stock the two have become interchangeable.

That the diesel or electric motive power unit that heads a train is an engine. It's a locomotive. The engine is the prime mover inside a diesel locomotive (or on or under a DMU car).

 

[ComUtoR]

The fact your Saturday mid-morning train to your nearest big city centre is full and standing (with photo to prove it) does not completely demonstrate that "passengers are coming back to the railway". There is still alot of mid-week and late evening fresh air to fill.

Slightly off topic but I find that people use different barometers for how busy the railway is or if passenger numbers are up or down. My personal one is how many Metros are left in the hopper. During the financial crisis as commuter numbers dropped you would see less Metros left on a train and more left in the hopper at the station.

My other barometers are a Thursday night, any 0930 service during the week, and late night Saturday (excluding football days)

 

[LUYMun]

The Woodhead line should be reopened.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

One I actually heard another passenger allude to earlier:

On a single track railway, a train should simply set off, and the driver of said train can intimidate the driver of any other trains they encounter coming the other way.

Related: The driver is going slowly to spite you- not because they value their job, their life and the lives of their passengers.

Also related: "Leaves on the line" is an urban myth.

 

[37201xoIM]

The Woodhead line should be reopened.

That a fallacy is the same as an opinion that the speaker doesn't share. Disagreeing that the Woodhead line should reopen (personally, and having worked on NPR, I'm neutral and would be guided by evidence!) is a legitimate opinion, but it is not identifying a fallacy.

 

[6Gman]

That the diesel or electric motive power unit that heads a train is an engine. It's a locomotive. The engine is the prime mover inside a diesel locomotive (or on or under a DMU car).

To be fair the use of "engine" to describe a locomotive is of long standing.

'Light engine' for example.

 

[bussnapperwm]

The Midland Mainline terminus is named after an organ

Or a food item eaten on Shrove Tuesday

 

[BeijingDave]

That if Standard Class is full, you can sit in First Class for no extra charge.

To be fair, this is something people may have got from airlines.

As it's not unusual for economy to be overbooked and to get bumped up to business class FOC (it's happened to me a number of times).

And, arguably, from a consumer's perspective (knowing little about how railways work) railway operators should do the same.

As a very young enthusiast, I could not get my head around the idea that a named train did not have the same named engine.

For example, travelling on 'The Master Cutler' and 'The Clansman', which were hauled by engines with different names.

I presume many people probably think this when they hear of 'The Flying Scotsman'.

That the diesel or electric motive power unit that heads a train is an engine. It's a locomotive. The engine is the prime mover inside a diesel locomotive (or on or under a DMU car).

Yet many do use engine instead of locomotive, in my case probably through laziness at not wanting to use extra syllables.

In economics/business, many people similarly use 'market' rather than industry, when sometimes an industry does not have competitive demand and supply (and therefore is not really a 'market'). And again, some of this is just laziness by people who actually know better.

 

[pdeaves]

It's easy to plonk a new station in, just build it, it's a no-brainer (with no realisation of timetable implications or a whole host of other related and often far reaching influences)

 

[Meerkat]

That GBR will be like BR and the end of franchises and stock leasing.

 

[Western Sunset]

That all staff dealing with passengers value their custom.

 

[Pigeon]

That the diesel or electric motive power unit that heads a train is an engine. It's a locomotive. The engine is the prime mover inside a diesel locomotive (or on or under a DMU car).

There is no such thing as "a locomotive" - just as there is no such thing as "a big". The thing on the front of a train is a locomotive engine, ie. an ingenious device for moving things about. The big noisy smelly thing inside it is an ingenious device of a type invented by Herr Diesel. And when the driver comes off shift he can go down the pub and drink something that comes out of an ingenious device for pumping beer.

 

[norbitonflyer]

Yet many do use engine instead of locomotive, in my case probably through laziness at not wanting to use extra syllables.

If people have a preference, they say they prefer travelling "with their back to the engine" - whether or not there is actually a locomotive at the front (or indeed at all)

A "locomotive engine" means an engine that can move itself. The full term is sometimes on old road signs, (referring of course to steam traction engines) usually prohibiting them from using weak bridges.

I have seen it argued that an electric "locomotive" is misnamed because it has no engine but takes its power from an external source. Conversely a DMU would be "locomotive".

 

[Ken H]

That a diesel electric loco (or engine ) is a bimode. came across that in a novel about the run-up and aftermath of a train crash on the GE main line. 'Driver Denning changed from electric power to diesel. before Norwich electrification obvs.
Book had it all. a drunken brothel owner, and escaped mental patient with a gun, defrocked vicar.

 

[Pigeon]

I have seen it argued that an electric "locomotive" is misnamed because it has no engine but takes its power from an external source.

That's really messed up! There is no reason at all to take "locomotive" to signify "contains a device for converting chemical energy to mechanical energy" or even "carries its own energy store". Neither of those has got anything to do with it. It simply means "for moving stuff from one location to another". So your legs are the locomotive apparatus for your body, and that is equally true both for having natural legs and for having robot legs that have to be plugged into the mains to work. In the same way a leccy is just as much a locomotive apparatus for trains as a diesel is.

"Engine" does not have to mean "device for converting chemical energy to mechanical energy" either. An engine is simply something which is ingenious. So a locomotive engine is an ingenious thing for moving stuff about, and Google is an ingenious thing for searching the internet.

 

[leytongabriel]

There's a guard's van for your stuff

 

[norbitonflyer]

As a very young enthusiast, I could not get my head around the idea that a named train did not have the same named engine.

For example, travelling on 'The Master Cutler' and 'The Clansman', which were hauled by engines with different names.

I presume many people probably think this when they hear of 'The Flying Scotsman'.

That causes all sorts of confusion. I was given a model kit of a certain A3 Pacific recently. The booklet that came with it included a photograph of a Gresley streamliner ("W1" class No 10000 in its post-1937 A4-lookalike form) that happened to be sporting a headboard proclaiming it was hauling "The Flying Scotsman"

In Colin Dexter's "Inspector Morse" novel "The Jewel That Was Ours" one of the American tourists is suspiciously absent from a scheduled guided tour of Oxford at a time when one of his fellow tourists dies. His alibi turns out to be that he is a steam buff and absconded to Didcot because he has heard that "The Cornish Riviera" will be passing through. Fortunately for him Morse swallowed this pathetically weak alibi (clearly the suspect was not a true gricer if he thought the "Riviera" was a locomotive rather than a service). Whilst it would indeed be unusual for the regular 10:30 from Paddington to Penzance to go via Didcot, it's hardly worth making a special trip for - one !C125 was very like another)

(The error did not occur in the corresponding TV episode "The Wolvercote Tongue" but was introduced in the novel which, unusually for Dexter, was written later - in that the character visited the Railway Centre)