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And on Sprinters (and other "modern" units) the guard closes his door before giving the start signal and would probably be unaware of an incident such as the one you saw - on first generation units, the guard would have been standing at his open door when giving the start signal, with a full...

The Guildford mishap was a typical combination of minor events conspiring together to cause a much more serious event.

It was definitely Guildford. The driver openly said he never repeated bell signals - the report is worth a read; the Appendix to it covers the use of the bell codes and their repetition. https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=1146 I'm from SR land, travelled extensively on SR...

Good question! I never worked on the railway but I guess that if the train started when it shouldn't have, the guard should have "dinged" once to signal to the driver to stop. If it was a legitimate start, the guard didn't do anything (at least I never saw one react to an unacknowledged "two...

Some SR drivers acknowledged the guard's signal by repeating it and others simply didn't bother. I'm certain it was supposed to be nationwide practise. There was a derailment during a shunting move at (I think) Guildford many years ago and the accident report drew attention to the fact that...

I don't know what made me think of this but in the days when London Underground trains had guards, the guard closed the doors and gave the driver a single bell signal when it was safe to start. On National Rail trains with a guard, the time honoured starting signal to the driver is two rings...

The New York Subway has got a major problem with "jumpers" who vault over the (lowish) turnstiles there to avoid paying tbeir fare. The Subway has been experimenting with much taller gates which are harder to jump and almost instantly, fare dodgers worked out a way to make the gates open so they...

Some interesting memories there - thanks for posting them! I can't remember where it was now but there was a serious railway accident (I think in the 19th century), where a message was wrapped round a potato and thrown from a train by the guard to alert a signalman that his train was in trouble...

I'm old enough to remember 4SUBs in service - I was looking at photos of some just now, which brought back some memories. I has always struck me as odd, that the right up to the end, they didn't have bells for the guard to signal to the driver but relied on green flags or lamps for the "right"...

Yes, it seems incredible now that the SUBs were flagged away in the 1980s. There was at least one incident of a collision between a 501 and a Bakerloo train. I read somewhere the other day that some 501 drivers were a bit quick away from signals they had been stopped at on the Watford DC line.

Here's the one without the tail lamp (only taken me 40 years to notice). And one showing the tail lamp. The 501s normally ran with the headcode showing at both ends. They definitely had white blank blinds, but I never saw red blanks. If there was only one 501 without an electric tail lamp, I...

Thanks. I'll post the photo (and one showing the marker light for compaison purposes later).

I recently found a photograph of Class 501 unit that I took in September 1983. The unit appears not to have the red electric marker light that other members of the class carried. The unit in the photo is travelling towards the camera so no problem arises, but how would this unit have displayed...

Thanks - hadn't thought of that! It explains why it takes three hours from Euston to Preston on the 31st.

When Hastings-Charing Cross services are diverted to Victoria for weekend engineering works, they stop at Bromley South thus giving a direct service between there and Hastings which does not normally exist.

I'm intending to travel to Blackpool North from Euston on 31 July (a Wednesday). The 1036 direct train (1P91) is not shown on the VT or NRE websites (and does not appear on Real Time Trains) if I do a search for that date. A search for a random earlier date (3 July) does, however, show it as...

Anybody got the link to the GWR Black Friday offer (if it's still going)?

Don't sell them at all. Still, better than the ones at Tonbridge that this morning only offered me a first class day return to a SWR destination.

It appears that the self-service ticket machines at MYB do not sell Super Off-Peak Returns (for instance, to Warwick) and only offer the much more expensive Off-Peak Returns. Very naughty (and surely something that the Office of the Rail Regulator needs to address?).

Anybody know what is happening on the Megatrain front? Bookings for EMT on the Megabus site stop at 5 January.