ryan125hst
Established Member
I've recently enjoyed looking at photographs on Flickr of British Rail in the 1970's and 1980's. Things were so different then compared to the railway that I've grown up seeing and I'm sad I'm not old enough to remember this era.
Living near the East Coast Main Line, I was pleased when I found the website "The Chronicles of Napier" (http://www.napier-chronicles.co.uk/) which gives various information about the Deltics including diagrams from a few years as well as the timetable of services leaving and arriving at Kings Cross from 1960 until 1981. This doesn't include calling points however, just headcode; departure time; departure station and arrival station.
I was then interested in the formations of such trains and yesterday I became a member of the British Railways Coaching Stock Yahoo group. It's got loads of carriage working books from the 1950's to 1980's of each of the British Rail regions and I found it fascinating to see how the formations of trains and indeed the stock evolved over the years- from compartment carriages to open stock; from vacuum brakes to air brakes; from steam heating to electric heating and even air conditioning, it's all mentioned in the books as well as the formation of each service of course. I've even found some old Sectional Appendix's (thanks to the Limit of Shunt website).
One thing that is missing however is the actual timetable as even the carriage working books only give departure and arrival stations and other stations are mentioned if the train divides with one or more carriages going to a different destination. So far, I have been unable to find any historic timetables online in PDF form, either public or, better still, working timetables. The only places they seem to appear is on Ebay or on one or two other sites where you have to pay a fair amount of money for a (no doubt rare) paper copy.
So is there any website or Yahoo group which has a good collection of historic British Railways public or working timetables available to view in PDF form for free? I start at the 1950's in the thread title as that is the dates that the oldest carriage working books are from, and timetables from beyond the 90's are often available on the TOC's websites by using the Wayback Machine.
Additionally, are there any similar places where loco diagrams can be found as there seems to be plenty of carriage working information but no loco diagrams other than the Deltic ones so far.
Many thanks
Ryan
Living near the East Coast Main Line, I was pleased when I found the website "The Chronicles of Napier" (http://www.napier-chronicles.co.uk/) which gives various information about the Deltics including diagrams from a few years as well as the timetable of services leaving and arriving at Kings Cross from 1960 until 1981. This doesn't include calling points however, just headcode; departure time; departure station and arrival station.
I was then interested in the formations of such trains and yesterday I became a member of the British Railways Coaching Stock Yahoo group. It's got loads of carriage working books from the 1950's to 1980's of each of the British Rail regions and I found it fascinating to see how the formations of trains and indeed the stock evolved over the years- from compartment carriages to open stock; from vacuum brakes to air brakes; from steam heating to electric heating and even air conditioning, it's all mentioned in the books as well as the formation of each service of course. I've even found some old Sectional Appendix's (thanks to the Limit of Shunt website).
One thing that is missing however is the actual timetable as even the carriage working books only give departure and arrival stations and other stations are mentioned if the train divides with one or more carriages going to a different destination. So far, I have been unable to find any historic timetables online in PDF form, either public or, better still, working timetables. The only places they seem to appear is on Ebay or on one or two other sites where you have to pay a fair amount of money for a (no doubt rare) paper copy.
So is there any website or Yahoo group which has a good collection of historic British Railways public or working timetables available to view in PDF form for free? I start at the 1950's in the thread title as that is the dates that the oldest carriage working books are from, and timetables from beyond the 90's are often available on the TOC's websites by using the Wayback Machine.
Additionally, are there any similar places where loco diagrams can be found as there seems to be plenty of carriage working information but no loco diagrams other than the Deltic ones so far.
Many thanks
Ryan
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