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Podcast: Signals to Danger - Railway disasters in the UK

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AntoniC

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Thank you for your last 2 podcasts , they were both excellent (like the others) and your voice sounded great.
I am looking forward to the next one.
 

tpfx89

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Time for my fortnightly post appraising you of the knowledge that a new episode is available!

Covering the 2010 incident where a First TransPennine Express train collided with an icefall in Summit Tunnel in 2010, a little less dramatic than some previous episodes, but allowed me to keep going with a Christmas theme!

StD Summit logo.jpg
 

Cowley

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Time for my fortnightly post appraising you of the knowledge that a new episode is available!

Covering the 2010 incident where a First TransPennine Express train collided with an icefall in Summit Tunnel in 2010, a little less dramatic than some previous episodes, but allowed me to keep going with a Christmas theme!

View attachment 88155

Thanks for posting Dan. Will give it a listen in the morning.
 

bearhugger

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Time for my fortnightly post appraising you of the knowledge that a new episode is available!

Covering the 2010 incident where a First TransPennine Express train collided with an icefall in Summit Tunnel in 2010, a little less dramatic than some previous episodes, but allowed me to keep going with a Christmas theme!

View attachment 88155
Listened last night (and followed you on your social media) and enjoyed the episode. I have travelled on the unit involved and never knew of its nickname which is a good one.
 

tpfx89

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Listened last night (and followed you on your social media) and enjoyed the episode. I have travelled on the unit involved and never knew of its nickname which is a good one.
Happy to hear it, also I think you may hail from my (original) neck of the words, I grew up in Billingham!
 

tpfx89

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It's that time again!

Episode 12 is up, covering the derailment of Western Talisman and her 11 mk1 coaches just to the west of Ealing Broadway station in 1973!

I've also gone back and retrospectively updated the website at www.signalstodanger.com, which frankly I've let slide for a while! Now includes a page for each episode with an embedded map and some other bits.

In any case, enjoy!
 

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Cowley

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Great stuff Dan. Thanks for the reminder. :)
 

bje3400

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Hi Dan, right enjoyed the Ealing episode, nice to cover one on western metals, home turf and all ;)

Used to travel over that section of line on a daily basis with work and was always conscious of the crash whenever I passed by. Having seen a Western up close and personal, I always found it astonishing that the battery box doors were designed that way, was an accident waiting to happen! I can understand how having the door form it's own battery tray during maintenance was quite clever, but failsafe design it most certainly was not.

All the same, they were impressive bit of kit, and it seems incredible that enough force was generated to flip such a massive engine onto her side, but it's a testament to the strength of the MkI's that more people weren't killed.

Anywho, great job as ever! :D

A new batch of my episodes are nearly ready for release now, hope you enjoy them :)

Also, don't know if they've notified you Dan, but Vurbl have created a channel for you.

I notice it's unclaimed, so they may not have told you yet:


Hope that helps! :)
 
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Cowley

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It was an excellent episode Dan. I’ve always found that particular accident very interesting (partly because Westerns are my favourite locos).
Thought you captured the atmosphere really well.
 

tpfx89

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Thanks chaps! Appreciate it. I've always liked Ealing as a case study because it shows how something so seemingly innocuous can cause such disaster.

I shall venture forth to Vurbl and see what the score is over there! Ben, glad to see my listening material has been provided for next week!

Morning all,

Just to let you know that if you can struggle through the closest I've come to losing my voice in a few years, there's a new episode up and running, covering the 1979 rear end collision at Invergowrie on the Firth of Tay.
 
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Peter C

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GWR land
I keep meaning to listen to your podcast @tpfx89 but I keep forgetting! I listened to a couple of the early ones and really enjoyed them, and I started listening to the Ealing one a couple of days ago, so I'll finish that and then go back through and listen to some of your others.

Keep up the good work!

-Peter
 

tpfx89

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I certainly will do, I liek to think the production quality has improved as we've gone on, but then my voice has gone to the dogs at the moment so Invergowrie is a bad example of that!
 

Peter C

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I certainly will do, I liek to think the production quality has improved as we've gone on, but then my voice has gone to the dogs at the moment so Invergowrie is a bad example of that!
The podcasts have definitely improved over time (that's not to say that they weren't good to begin with) - taking feedback is a good sign of someone dedicated to what they're doing!

-Peter
 

bearhugger

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Poorly voice aside, another excellent episode. Quality production and I really enjoyed the music at the end of the episode. Thanks Dan!
 

tpfx89

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Well thank you very much!

And the closing track is Four more weeks by Vans in Japan. Courtesy of the youtube music library!
 

tpfx89

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I have been reading my TOCs social media policy very carefully, and I'm pretty confident I'm on the right side of it, but I'm pretty sure that Ben felt the same.

Long story short I think I'm OK, there's certainly a few people in our senior leadership team, including comms and directors who know I'm doing it, but on the other hand, me and him both work for the same owning group, if not the same TOC, so who knows.

If I'm asked to stop doing it, I'll contest it, strongly, given that I've been doing it for 6 months and not brought the company into disrepute, coupled with the fact it's been pretty important to me this last year, but if i'm given an ultimatum to stop doing it or lose my job? I've got a little girl, I would be crushed but I'd have to close the door on it... Fingers crossed it won't come to that.
 

Bletchleyite

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I hadn't picked up on that, but that's really sad :(

I hope they don't try to get you to stop, particularly given that you're talking about historical matters and not anything related to the TOC or Group. It would be rather like my employer telling me not to do a podcast about historical IT failures (not that that, with a few notable exceptions, would be anywhere near as interesting).

OTOH I can see that it would be reasonable for my employer not to want me to document any IT failures that may have been attributable to them (not that I can think of any off-hand) but that wouldn't mean those by other companies would strike me as an issue.
 

tpfx89

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I hadn't picked up on that, but that's really sad :(

I hope they don't try to get you to stop, particularly given that you're talking about historical matters and not anything related to the TOC or Group. It would be rather like my employer telling me not to do a podcast about historical IT failures (not that that, with a few notable exceptions, would be anywhere near as interesting).

OTOH I can see that it would be reasonable for my employer not to want me to document any IT failures that may have been attributable to them (not that I can think of any off-hand) but that wouldn't mean those by other companies would strike me as an issue.
I had thought about that, but the fact is a few episodes ago I did an episode that covered my own TOC, but I made a conscious decision to use only the information available in the RAIB report, and news articles, etc. Made a conscious decision to not use anything that I could have gained internally.

Like I've said I'm hoping it won't come to that at all. my functional director knows I do it and it hasn't come up as a problem.

If I get a few hundred Patrons sign up I can just sack off the day job! ;p fair to say I'm a little ways off yet though haha

UPDATE 07/02/21

So as of this morning, I've woken up to find out that the podcast has just hit 10k downloads over its total lifetime.

I'm astonished, very humbled, and very happy, and I owe a lot of that to the people within this thread, the interest and feedback I received here has certainly helped to improve the quality no end, so thank you!

I've attached a picture I've been sharing on social media this morning with some extra stats!

10000 episodes.jpg
 
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Inversnecky

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Episode two is in the making, spoiler alert, we'll be covering Potters Bar.

I've also set up www.signalstodanger.com where I'll be adding episode notes, maps, sources and a few photos from the reports to underline some of the points.

Glad to here you enjoyed it!
I subscribed to it when it came out, but only just started listening. Well done indeed, for your skilful and sensitive handling of the subject matter.

Look forward to catching up with the playlist and hearing future episodes.

Just started listening to this as my commute soundtrack, really enjoying them so far, up to halfway through the Nuneaton one which I’d never even heard of, despite having driven through Nuneaton several times during my driving hours, none of my mentors mentioned it..

No constructive comments from me, I’m liking them just as they are!

Not being familiar with, or having forgotten the details of many of these, the narrative works excellently in teasing out the details, from event to piecing together what happened.

One thing I would say, is that if anyone has any suggestions of accidents they might like to see I'd be willing to look at them. Might not get done straight away, still trying to work on pacing the "big" ones.

Will you be covering Colwich?

Opinions on sound quality etc appreciated, trialling a 7 day free trial of Adobe Addition and trying to understand whether it's worth 20 quid a month to keep using.

I'm just three episode in, but would maybe suggest some normalisation to lessen the difference between loud and soft parts of the narration, also, the music can be too loud, and I'm constantly having to turn the volume up and dow.

These could well have been sorted in later episodes, or course.

But a very polished production you should be proud of!

I've also gone back and retrospectively updated the website at www.signalstodanger.com, which frankly I've let slide for a while! Now includes a page for each episode with an embedded map and some other bits.
It's a great little website, and the links, photos and maps are very handy. Also each episode icon links to a page. A few of the later ones need added, but no doubt you're aware of that, and it's on a very long "to do" list!

So as of this morning, I've woken up to find out that the podcast has just hit 10k downloads over its total lifetime.

I'm astonished, very humbled, and very happy, and I owe a lot of that to the people within this thread, the interest and feedback I received here has certainly helped to improve the quality no end, so thank you!
Congratulations - a fabulous effort for a newcommer to podcasts.

I don’t have many references myself, but no doubt Harrow is on your list, the worst peacetime crash, second worst after Gretna 1915:

 

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malc-c

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1 Dec 2017
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990
Just caught up on this thread and it would be sad if the management became involved and these podcasts had to stop. I could completely understand it if information contained in internal memos or directives were published, but when each podcast is reporting factual historical events using information in the public domain then any such intervention would be wrong in my opinion. But with a family to support I could appreciate where your loyalties lay.

I am concerned though, as Dan normally uploads every two weeks, and the last episode (on Spotify) was Invergowire two weeks ago, so the next episode is overdue. Normally Dan keeps this thread updated if there are any production issues so I hope that the cold Dan seemed to be suffering in the last two episodes was nothing else other than just a cold.
 

A Challenge

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I am concerned though, as Dan normally uploads every two weeks, and the last episode (on Spotify) was Invergowire two weeks ago, so the next episode is overdue. Normally Dan keeps this thread updated if there are any production issues so I hope that the cold Dan seemed to be suffering in the last two episodes was nothing else other than just a cold.
I looked last night on the RSS, as the episodes seemed to go up at 2200 Sunday, and it wasn't on there then, and it still isn't in the RSS feed (which I think is the first to update and then the other places get it from there) - and it isn't there either, so it isn't guest a problem with your supplier.
 

tpfx89

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Hello all,

Sorry to keep you all in suspense, don't worry, I am still here, but life has slightly gotten in the way over the last couple of days. I certainly don't want to bore you with the details of that, especially considering what everyone has been going through.

In any case, episode 14 will be coming out this evening, around about 24 hours late, and for that, I am very sorry!

Apologies for keeping you waiting!
 

Bletchleyite

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I very much look forward to it, thank you and I hope whatever has got in the way has been or will be sorted out.

I'm sure those unhappy with this can claim Delay Repay at a rate of 100% of what they paid for it :)
 

malc-c

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1 Dec 2017
Messages
990
Hello all,

Sorry to keep you all in suspense, don't worry, I am still here, but life has slightly gotten in the way over the last couple of days. I certainly don't want to bore you with the details of that, especially considering what everyone has been going through.

In any case, episode 14 will be coming out this evening, around about 24 hours late, and for that, I am very sorry!

Apologies for keeping you waiting!

Hey, no need to apologize...Just glad to hear you are OK

Looking forward to listening to the next episode
 

tpfx89

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I very much look forward to it, thank you and I hope whatever has got in the way has been or will be sorted out.

I'm sure those unhappy with this can claim Delay Repay at a rate of 100% of what they paid for it :)
Don't say that! I've got a couple of patrons now haha. As it stands it's currently uploading to my host so I think I've gotten away with it!

This week we're paying a visit to a Cumbrian field 13 years ago, it's covering Greyrigg.
 

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