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TRIVIA - Things you saw travelling on BR that you don't see today

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Nicks

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Collectors Corner in London

Posting a letter into a red letter box on the side of the night mail train at Norwich.

in the days before Sony Walkmans passengers playing music from boom boxes!

Before arriving into London the guard collecting (not just checking) all used tickets off passengers

In compartment stock being able to pull down blinds facing the the corridor

Twistable Heat/no heat controls in compartments
 
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Harbornite

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steamybrian said:
A few not mentioned...

When you bought a ticket from A to B you could catch any train. (Today you would be restricted by catching only a certain companies train).
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This probably wasn't mentioned because it's just wrong. Admittedly there are some TOC-specific tickets but I can buy an anytime return from New Street to Wolverhampton and that would let me travel on the trains of four TOCs. There are plenty other examples out there.
 
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Andrewlong

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Class 50s on services from Birmingham New Street to Paddington
Persil tickets
Guards without ticket machines - just a pad and a massive price guide
Sandwiches wrapped in cling film or those plastic packaging
NSE days
No carriage door locking - able to jump onto and off moving trains
No air con especially on summer trains pulled by a no heat freight loco
Having to buy tickets at railway stations or agents
Those big timetable guides you would buy each year
Liverpool Street and St Pancras before being upgraded - dumps
The excitement of travelling on a HST for first time between Bath and Reading in 1981.
 
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MKB

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Getting off trains before they had come to a complete stop.

Opening the door and getting on trains that had already started moving. Back in the 70s when train acceleration was comparatively lower, there were even occasions when staff helped me with this.

When a service was cancelled, the very next train would make additional stops necessary to cover the calls of the cancelled service. Now, that only happens within a TOC. So if an LM service on the WCML is cancelled, Virgin won't do any additional stops to help stranded passengers.
 
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Yabba

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Darandio said:
Not a regular occurence though, surely?
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When ever I visited Crewe with my grandad, bear in mind BR started to end when I was around 8 years old, there was always the odd one or two 55 that would be coming through the station. I think they were probably on freight duties more than passenger duties at the time.


One other thing, the blue colour scheme of regional railways, perfectly suited to a class 158.
 
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Bletchleyite

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Class 158s of course never carried Regional Railways blue. They carried Provincial Express colours which were very different (and didn't have as much blue).

You thinking 156s, which did suit the Regional Railways blue (or even better the NorthWest Express green stripe variant) quite well?
 
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KevinTurvey

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Things I remember, commonplace until the late 80's

- 08's at nearly every busy or terminal station along with absolutely filthy blue GUV's
- Newspaper, mail, oil tanker & Merry go round coal trains
- Loading the mailbags on to passenger trains
- The Mk1 buffet and brake in a shiny Mk3 set
- White DMU's / everything else blue
- DMU's that could out-smoke a deltic
- Relief and special trains
- BR depot and works open days
 
zn1

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Turds in the 4 foot, Brake vans, mail trains, red star parcels, semaphore signals, absolute block. vacuum braking (obselete but was still used until 90s)
 
DarloRich

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Thanks for all the contributions. Some great examples!

Another from me is taxis picking up on the concourse of major stations and royal mail vans racing up the hill from the sorting office in Darlington to the station and backing onto the platform and a man throwing bags off the back. That and being able to post a first class letter directly into a postbox on the side of a TPO quite late in the day and know it would reach its destination by morning.

The old Kings Cross: Grotty and dark with druggies, homeless and prostitutes everywhere.

Perhaps most terrible of all: That tracing/greaseproof paper BR assumed was suitable as a toilet roll. awful

PeterC said:
One thing other thing was being able to buy the next morning's paper at a London terminus before catching a late train home.
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You could also get regional papers at the appropriate terminus. My dads friend lived in London and went to Kings Cross on a Monday morning to get a copy of the Northern Echo so he could read the match reports. He tried for years to get them to order a copy of the Sunderland Echo but they always said they couldn't as there wasn't a direct train at the right time! ( this was, obviously, pre internet!)

Nonsense said:
Ew.

I Remember reading somewhere about that fine spray you sometimes felt when an express train whizzed through the station. I'd hoped that practice was long long gone.
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oh no - the brown cloud is still with us. Speak to anyone working on the track on GWR/MML or ECML ;)
 
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The Crab

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Springs Branch said:
Adhesive paper labels indicating First Class accommodation which had been declassified on loco-hauled trains. The labels were worded along the lines of "For the use of holders of Second Class tickets", diplomatically avoiding any reference to "Second Class passengers".
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At one time I had a small stock of these - handy on a well-loaded train.
 
Harbornite

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Yabba said:
When ever I visited Crewe with my grandad, bear in mind BR started to end when I was around 8 years old, there was always the odd one or two 55 that would be coming through the station. I think they were probably on freight duties more than passenger duties at the time.


One other thing, the blue colour scheme of regional railways, perfectly suited to a class 158.
Click to expand...


You might be getting mixed up with class 37s. 55s weren't really used on freight, did not appear much on the wcml and were all withdrawn by 1982.
 
Harbornite

Harbornite

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zn1 said:
Turds in the 4 foot, Brake vans, mail trains, red star parcels, semaphore signals, absolute block. vacuum braking (obselete but was still used until 90s)
Click to expand...

You can still find semaphores and turds,and two vacuum braked vehicles were in service until about two months ago.
 
BestWestern

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Bletchleyite said:
Class 158s of course never carried Regional Railways blue. They carried Provincial Express colours which were very different (and didn't have as much blue).

You thinking 156s, which did suit the Regional Railways blue (or even better the NorthWest Express green stripe variant) quite well?
Click to expand...

Although the best livery the 156s ever carried was, of course, the '158-alike' scheme with pretend deep cab windows! :D
 
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AY1975

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ChiefPlanner said:
MK1 sleepers which had ...

A hidden potty

Bottled drinking water , small size "Nestle" - so incredibly rare

Padded shelf to put your watch on.

Ashtrays !!!!!
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Add to that list opening windows, an adjustable air vent above the berth, and troughs beneath the track to catch the toilet waste from sleeping car trains at terminal stations. (I think the troughs at London Paddington are still in situ but have now been filled in with ballast. You can still see them if you look carefully, though.)

You sometimes used to get Schweppes drinking water in sleeping cars.
 
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AY1975

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Wookiee said:
The Hampshire 205s still had them right up to withdrawal, IIRC.
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Some of them did (only one compartment per unit), but some of them had three First Class compartments in the DTC, and some had a luggage compartment next to the cab.
 
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westv

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Queuing at designated areas before boarding at London mainline stations.
 
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6Gman

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AY1975 said:
Add to that list opening windows, an adjustable air vent above the berth, and troughs beneath the track to catch the toilet waste from sleeping car trains at terminal stations. (I think the troughs at London Paddington are still in situ but have now been filled in with ballast. You can still see them if you look carefully, though.)

You sometimes used to get Schweppes drinking water in sleeping cars.
Click to expand...

And lovely minibars of Imperial Leather soap.

Whenever I catch the aroma of IL it takes me back to sleepers!
 
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coppercapped

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To BestWestern, goblinuser, theageofthetra, cf111 and others,

thank you all for your kind comments. This was the period of my childhood and all sorts of things remain in one's memory very intensively. The pity is that childhood passes, one cannot go back...

There is something magical about the railway - speaking as a non-railwayman! They developed in the early years of the industrial revolution and were of a size and 'posture' (so to speak!) that fitted the scale of the towns and countryside which they served - like the canals before them.

This, of course, is the converse of the argument about Motorways and, dare it be said, about new railways such as HS1 and HS2. The broad, open, large curves and earthworks do not sit well with the small scale and intimate British landscape with its villages and towns being quite closely spaced. The M6 through the Lune Gorge, the M3 through Twyford Down and the M40 through the scarp slope of the Chilterns are classic examples of modern brutalism.

The crying shame is that the railway did not, or could not, adapt quickly enough at the period at the end of my childhood, that is by the late 1950s, to continue to be relevant in some markets. Yorksrob and I have had debates about this in the Railway History and Nostalgia Forum before, so it's very off-topic to go through these arguments again. I wish, though, it were still possible to take the train through Hampstead Norris or Hook Norton: the heart would love it, but the head says otherwise.

Enough, already...!
 
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Deepgreen

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MKB said:
Getting off trains before they had come to a complete stop.

Opening the door and getting on trains that had already started moving. Back in the 70s when train acceleration was comparatively lower, there were even occasions when staff helped me with this.

When a service was cancelled, the very next train would make additional stops necessary to cover the calls of the cancelled service. Now, that only happens within a TOC. So if an LM service on the WCML is cancelled, Virgin won't do any additional stops to help stranded passengers.
Click to expand...

Indeed, and the occasionally spectacular instant acceleration of a 'SUB' or 'EPB' from 0 - 2mph when the gearing was such that applying the power produced a huge jerk forwards!
 
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Deepgreen

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coppercapped said:
To BestWestern, goblinuser, theageofthetra, cf111 and others,

thank you all for your kind comments. This was the period of my childhood and all sorts of things remain in one's memory very intensively. The pity is that childhood passes, one cannot go back...

There is something magical about the railway - speaking as a non-railwayman! They developed in the early years of the industrial revolution and were of a size and 'posture' (so to speak!) that fitted the scale of the towns and countryside which they served - like the canals before them.

This, of course, is the converse of the argument about Motorways and, dare it be said, about new railways such as HS1 and HS2. The broad, open, large curves and earthworks do not sit well with the small scale and intimate British landscape with its villages and towns being quite closely spaced. The M6 through the Lune Gorge, the M3 through Twyford Down and the M40 through the scarp slope of the Chilterns are classic examples of modern brutalism.

The crying shame is that the railway did not, or could not, adapt quickly enough at the period at the end of my childhood, that is by the late 1950s, to continue to be relevant in some markets. Yorksrob and I have had debates about this in the Railway History and Nostalgia Forum before, so it's very off-topic to go through these arguments again. I wish, though, it were still possible to take the train through Hampstead Norris or Hook Norton: the heart would love it, but the head says otherwise.

Enough, already...!
Click to expand...

Nicely said! Everything was better in the past (we think), but we inevitably taint our memories and obliterate the bad bits! The very definition of "nostalgia".

Talking of modern brutalism, have a look at the new footbridge at Gomshall, (North Downs line) which recently replaced the pedestrian crossing with its gigantic, wheelchair-accessible network of ramps and angles, and which dwarfs the entire rural station with its sprawl. I don't know if anyone in a wheelchair has ever used Gomshall (and of course they should not be denied it), but the solution is incredibly disproportionate.
 
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