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I’ve been that way with CrossCountry on a pre-planned engineering works diversion and an ‘in service’ route retention service late one evening.

I've been knocking together some statistics from BR Annual Reports and Transport Statistics UK for selected years from the end of 1947 through to 1994/5. Although a lot of route closed over that time the 'average number of running line km/route km' seems to have remained remarkable constant at...

@mike57 , a good long list but none of them are what I would describe as ‘simple’ or ‘baby steps’!

Stabbing in the dark a bit here but one might assume that 'convenience to passengers' would have encouraged the concentration of passenger activities at the former GWR station whereas the default for any freight customer was usually going too be 'leave me alone'. There was no concept of a...

Ah, yes. Inter-regional gamesmanship for revenue manipulation. Now, what was that in the Transport Act 1947 about the duty to provide an "efficient, adequate, economical and properly integrated system of public inland transport"? Never mind.

Your work might stop at your workstation. I've always thought of journeys starting at the bus station or train station; similarly (in times when I had a 'desk job' with a computer) my work started when I reached my workstation.

Whilst there is a lot of underlying truth in this, it still begs the question of why British Railways/Railway Executive/BTC had presumably been renewing, extending and granting new inflexible leases 'on the nod' ever since 1948. The best option was to come up with a scheme that had benefits for...

Surely not? Did the GWR, LMS and so on really enter into impregnable 'evergreen' contracts with 'one bloke and a horse & cart' coal merchants to provide a service at a particular location for as long as they wanted it? Presumably these hypothetical contracts had been somehow novated to bind...

In Oxford, Rewley Road was retained for goods, albeit only in full truck loads and not things like livestock. Only needed four staff to work the canal swingbridge. I'm prepared to concede that locations like Wolverhampton may still have been 'too busy' for serious rationalisation but plenty of...

The 'loop work' in the scheme was very largely focussed on making it possible to regulate the longest likely freight trains through the Dore triangle. Any westbound freight from the Sheffield direction can be held in Heeley Loop, now 'extended' thanks to signal re-positioning. Any westbound...

(Having been away from my reference books for a few days...) It does seem to have been general attrition of marginal locations rather than any obvious rationalisations within the same town. There had been a few cases - Whitstable Harbour from Canterbury West had gone in the early 1950s as one...

I've now found a photo in the February 1965 Railway Magazine of J94 saddle tank (Hunslet 1944) at Middleton Top on the Cromford and High Peak Railway in August 1963 with the 1829 steam engine house that worked the Middleton Incline in the background. So 115 years between 'main line' steam...

The Middleton Incline on the Cromford & High Peak was worked by an 1829 (stationary) steam engine. Various trials were done with modern diesel shunters on the Middleton Top-Parsley Hay section, so ‘traction’ separated by around 130 years occurred at one location. (Unless someone can tell us that...

There are, of course, three sets of departure boards generally in use, two in the 'middle' and one of the booking office side. As I understand it they can all be re-configured, e.g. to cover maintenance, including the one on the Eversholt Street side if appropriate. I am struggling to...

Some great memories there. I remember an ailing DMU being banked from Stourbridge Junction once.

Right, so you've reached your conclusion already, just a pity that there don't seem to be any actual facts out there. Yeah. Right. I very rarely go to Heathrow (although I am presuming that @Horizon22 is a frequent flier) but happened to be there last Thursday, hence this thread piqued my...

If Paddington is supposedly 'full' can anyone confirm that Network Rail has declared it to be 'Congested Infrastructure"? It doesn't feel that way to me intuitively. Further Fast/Main paths for an open access Carmarthen service have been approved, I believe. During the Nuneham Bridge collapse...

Over the years several London termini have had more organised Underground access. St Pancras immediately springs to mind. Paddington (Hammersmith & City), Liverpool Street after the 1980s rebuild, Victoria, Blackfriars, Cannon Street and London Bridge have also seen significant changes...

(Having just come across this thread) I think that the penny had dropped on older coaches only used at weekends rather earlier. The Reshaping Report in 1963 had highlighted that of 18,500 hauled coaches a mere 5,500 were in 'all year' service and a staggering 10,900 only on summer and high peak...

Thanks for the extra background @Magdalia . Braintree was Shell and Esso by the way but you had the right idea. :smile: Block trains of around 500 tons gross (say, 350 tons of product), together with all the faffing around with brake vans were hardly great shakes (and ironically probably...