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Railway General Knowledge.

DerekC

DerekC

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The London Underground Circle Line was once called the "Inner Circle". So what was the "Outer Circle", where could you travel on it and who ran it? And for a bonus point, there was once another service sometimes called the "Super Outer Circle". Same questions!
 
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krus_aragon

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DerekC said:
The London Underground Circle Line was once called the "Inner Circle". So what was the "Outer Circle", where could you travel on it and who ran it? And for a bonus point, there was once another service sometimes called the "Super Outer Circle". Same questions!
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This is outside my sphere of knowledge, so I can only give a vague answer.

I suspect the outer circle ran along a route that was somewhat similar to the current orbital of London Overground: west to Gospel Oak, then Willesden, and around to Putney(?) before heading east again. As for the Super-Outer, I believe that never formed a full circle, and mainly existed on an arc north of London.
 
Peter Mugridge

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I will offer:

Inner Circle was the anticlockwise service.

Outer Circle was the clockwise service.



Never heard of the Super Outer Circle!
 
martinsh

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I thought there was a Middle Circle and Outer Circle ? One of them involved going Broad St - Dalston Jcn - Gospel Oak - Willesden Jcn - Kensington O - Earls Court - Mansion House
 
DerekC

DerekC

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krus_aragon said:
This is outside my sphere of knowledge, so I can only give a vague answer.

I suspect the outer circle ran along a route that was somewhat similar to the current orbital of London Overground: west to Gospel Oak, then Willesden, and around to Putney(?) before heading east again. As for the Super-Outer, I believe that never formed a full circle, and mainly existed on an arc north of London.
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Part correct for the Outer Circle - and yes, the Super-Outer was only an arc​

martinsh said:
One of them involved going Broad St - Dalston Jcn - Gospel Oak - Willesden Jcn - Kensington O - Earls Court - Mansion House
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Spot on for the longest lived Outer Circle service - now who operated it? It may help to know that this particular service ran from 1872 to 1908.
 
martinsh

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According to "A History of the Metropolitan Railway" the Outer Circle was operated by the LNWR. It also says the Middle Circle ran Paddington - H & C line - Kensington O - Earls Court - Mansion House and was operated by the GWR.
 
DerekC

DerekC

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martinsh said:
According to "A History of the Metropolitan Railway" the Outer Circle was operated by the LNWR. It also says the Middle Circle ran Paddington - H & C line - Kensington O - Earls Court - Mansion House and was operated by the GWR.
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LNWR is right for the Outer Circle. The name seems to have covered quite a variety of services including (for a short while) Broad Street to Victoria via Addison Road and Battersea.

To complete the original question (including bonus points) the "Super Outer Circle" was a Midland service from St Pancras to Earls Court via Dudding Hill and South Acton. (not even vaguely circular!)

The "Middle Circle" seems to have run from Mansion House all the way to Aldgate at one time. I get the impression that calling yourself "Circle" was thought good for passenger numbers!

Your (circular) floor, @martinsh
 
E

EbbwJunction1

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Which English artist, famous for his book of the possible activities of the Great Western Railway, died today in 1944?
 
C

Calthrop

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EbbwJunction1 said:
Which English artist, famous for his book of the possible activities of the Great Western Railway, died today in 1944?
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W. Heath Robinson. The Great Western connection is, I believe, his 1935 book Railway Ribaldry -- a humorous tribute to the GWR.
 
C

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My thanks. There are in the USA, on a still-active rail route, two locations called Dotsero and Orestod. Please give their whereabouts in said country -- which state and which route? "Bonus points" for some indication of how the names (as will be seen, the same but "in reverse order"), may have come to be -- there's more than one theory about the topic.
 
A

AndrewE

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Calthrop said:
My thanks. There are in the USA, on a still-active rail route, two locations called Dotsero and Orestod. Please give their whereabouts in said country -- which state and which route? "Bonus points" for some indication of how the names (as will be seen, the same but "in reverse order"), may have come to be -- there's more than one theory about the topic.
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Not an answer, but this reminds me of a question
"What links "Ordinary, Boring and Dismal?" I'll tell you when the real question has been answered!
 
C

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AndrewE said:
Not an answer, but this reminds me of a question
"What links "Ordinary, Boring and Dismal?" I'll tell you when the real question has been answered!
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The one-time minor railroad which ran Opelika -- Birmingham -- Decatur, in Alabama? (Not a serious answer :E.)
 
C

Calthrop

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AndrewE said:
Not an answer, but this reminds me of a question
"What links "Ordinary, Boring and Dismal?" I'll tell you when the real question has been answered!
Click to expand...

Or -- seems I'm not very quick on the uptake this morning -- those initials actually could fit the stretch of line which my question is about. Could it be that you know the answer, but for some reason of your own you're refraining from giving it?
 
C

Calthrop

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Pace the quasi-exchange with @AndrewE; I realise the question is pretty abstruse -- I'd have no quarrel with anyone Googling (I've been writing an article about that part of the world, and was just taken with the Dotsero / Orestod names pairing).
 
A

AndrewE

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Calthrop said:
Pace the quasi-exchange with @AndrewE; I realise the question is pretty abstruse -- I'd have no quarrel with anyone Googling (I've been writing an article about that part of the world, and was just taken with the Dotsero / Orestod names pairing).
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OK, I've googled... I did wonder whether the names could have been abbreviations of the stations along a line between the two, or whether they were made up of the initials of the railways that the line linked, but I couldn't make it fit.
Wikipedia says that Dotsero was on the Denver and Rio Grande in Colorado (now the Union Pacific's central corridor.) Dot zero might have been the intial surveying point for a cut-off to meet the Denver and Salt Lake Railroad near a place called Bond, so they called the far-end junction dotsero too - but written from the other end.
My puzzle was simply that all 3 are actually places in the USA. One or more might only be a few houses, but I checked it when I first heard the joke and found them all on Google maps!
 
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Calthrop

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@AndrewE -- we are, basically, in accord. Dotsero and Orestod are the junctions at ends of a 40-mile-odd cut-off line inaugurated in 1934, after the D & RG's having acquired the D & SL -- which never achieved its proclaimed objective "under its own steam" -- just ended up petering out in the middle of nowhere (with all due respect to the town of Craig) a couple of hundred miles west of Denver. The new cut-off shortened immensely, the east-west route between Denver and Salt Lake City.

Name Dotsero: one interpretation -- as per yourself -- is the surveyor's "Dot Zero". Another is, the spot's reputedly having long been called "Dotsero" in the language of the area's Native Americans, the Ute tribe -- meaning, "something new". Centuries ago, there was a volcanic eruption near the spot, after a very long period of volcanic quiescence -- truly, for the Utes, "something new". Orestod, for sure, "Dotsero" backwards -- as you say, a bit of wordplay re the new junctions at beginning and end of the cut-off.

Per the detailed railroad atlas: Bond is not actually on the "new" cut-off line, but a little way along the old line off from the new junction -- kind-of resembling, though the other way around: Settle station, and Settle junction between the "Little North-Western" and the S & C. I'd read your "O B & D" 's "B", as signifying the station of Burns, actually between Orestod and Dotsero.

Anyway, you have it -- your floor. Go stick it to those Limeys with the question from hell <D ...
 
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DerekC

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An aside on the previous question. I am wondering if the Orestod/Dotsero story is the right way round. Orestad is a respectable European place name (in fact I worked at the one in Copenhagen for a while). I wonder if the Orestod end was named first (remembering that an awful lot of US placenames have European origins) and that Dotsero is the reversal.
 
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C

Calthrop

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DerekC said:
An aside on the previous question. I am wondering if the Orestod/Dotsero story is the right way round. Orestad is a respectable European place name (in fact I worked at the one in Copenhagen for a while). I wonder if the Orestod end was named first (remembering that an awful lot of US placenames have European origins) and that Dotsero is the reversal.
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Anything's possible; but, not many Danes in Colorado to the best of my knowledge...
 
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Nothing for nearly a fortnight -- reckoned that if @AndrewE had been going to come back with a question, he would have done so by now.

I feel that my questions tend to be a bit "samey"; but hope that -- in the interests of getting things moving again -- this one may be acceptable.

There are two large countries, neighbours to each other: which each have a large national rail system, of the same -- under 4ft.8-and-a-half-inches -- gauge. One of these two, is physically isolated rail-wise from all other countries. There has been a rail link between the question's two countries; but this obtained for only an exceedingly brief period.

Which are the two countries concerned?
 
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