Mike, I can identify with your scanning tribulations. The two of us have a collection of thousands of slides and negatives dating back to the early 1970s and it is a right pain finding time to do any scanning at all at present, bearing in mind that we are still (very) actively taking digital. Even by only scanning the best / most interesting ones I doubt whether the job will ever be finished.
Sounds like you have a Coolscan, fantastic piece of kit, but scanning takes so long with the "scratch and dust removal" facility activated; it is pretty essential though as it saves hours trying to clone marks out in Photoshop later.
Regarding colour correcting slides, apparently that is always necessary as they are intended to be viewed through a projector whose light source is a different colour temperature to that produced by a computer screen. Different makes of slide have different charateristics, but they most often have a magenta hue to them. My personal favourite slide film was Fuji Provia which is normally not far out in the colour stakes when scanned.
Our biggest problem is grain as we tended to use higher ISOs due to always having a camera handy to record anything we might see in our travels. 64 or even 100 was all very nice if specifically going out to take photos on a nice sunny day but not much use if the light was bad; for me, that is the one major advantage of digital.
Your collections are most interesting, the
47 at Old Oak is on my old stamping ground, if it was five yeras later I could say that was 4O71 Willesden FLT to Southampton with confidence
I am also intrigued by the
73/33 combo on the GWML; bet the ED was a bit hot and bothered by the time it reached it's destination