Things we don't see at stations these days

[Western 52]

Following on from

Things you don't see in trains any longer

Just for a bit of nostalgia really, but what items are no longer seen in UK trains (other than preserved trains of course)? A few things that come to mind:- Bars of soap and roller towels in washrooms. Tungsten light bulbs. Compartments. Paper destination labels. Round red no smoking...

www.railforums.co.uk

- what things don't we see at stations these days (apart from on preserved lines)?

Some initial thoughts:-

Platform ticket machines.
BRUTE trolleys.
Parcel offices.
Waiting rooms with real fire places or stoves.
Moving flap train destination indicators.
Staff employed solely as porters
Mail bags.
Clouds of steam from steam heating leaks.

There'll be plenty more - over to you!

 

[delt1c]

Travellers Fare

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Red Star Parcels offices.

 

[Rescars]

Senior management wearing bowler hats.

 

[RPI]

Quickfare machines

 

[Matey]

Three or more red fire buckets, often hung either on the wall or a wooden bracket under the platform footbridge to keep the contents of the sand filled bucket dry.

 

[Western 52]

Lamp rooms.
Milk churns.

 

[D6130]

Staff.

Finger board train indicators.

Chocolate machines.

Weighing machines (for people)

Weighing machines (for parcels)

Ticket collectors (and their boxes)

Barrow crossings

Staff crossings.

 

[Western 52]

Gas lights.
Red paraffin lamps on buffer stops.

 

[D6130]

Spotters wearing shorts, blazers and school caps.

 

[Railsigns]

Enamel advertising signs.

 

[Harold Hill]

Tracks covered in litter and weeds

 

[Western 52]

Electric tow trucks on platforms for pulling coupled trollies.

 

[Harvester]

Crates of live poultry unattended on platforms.

 

[Bevan Price]

Toilets at almost every station, including a lot of unstaffed halts.

 

[Western 52]

Wheel tappers.

 

[erk]

Machines that could print your name (or anything else) in raised letters on a strip of aluminium.

 

[Rescars]

Guards waving green flags

 

[Merthyr Imp]

Refreshment rooms with china cups and saucers.

And ashtrays.

 

[Western 52]

Metal luggage trunks.

 

[D6130]

Guards waving green flags

You still see that in Italy!

 

[Western 52]

Roller signs with train departure lists. I remember these at Crewe in the 1980s. Some sort of clock mechanism drove them so the list kept time.

 

[AY1975]

Weighing machines (for people)

London Marylebone still has one, and Cardiff Central still had one last time I was there two years ago. The one at Cardiff rather underestimated my weight, though.

I believe that back in the 1950s and '60s there was a "speak your weight" machine at London Waterloo, which spoke your weight. My dad remembers seeing someone trying to weigh a parcel on it but its weight wasn't within the machine's weight range so the recorded voice said "No weight", but this man wouldn't take no for an answer so he kept inserting another coin and saying "Of course there is weight".

A few years ago there was a long-running thread on here on things you saw travelling on BR that you don't see today.

 

[Ken H]

Roller signs with train departure lists. I remember these at Crewe in the 1980s. Some sort of clock mechanism drove them so the list kept time.

The one at leeds had a bloke come and wind it on a bit every so often it had an electric motor but a hole for a handle too. There were slots on the right so he could hang a number for platform alterations
Leeds also had an early PIS. There were tv screens labelled 'Inter city departures', fed from a camera trained on a backlit frame with holders with the time, destination and platform. You would see a hand remove the top one and add new ones at the bottom. Newscastle and Liverpool were 'Inter City'
PIS at the platforms were boards about 2ft x 3ft with the stations it called at. Think the times were separate so the same large board could do many trains. Think there was an emergency chalk board for odd workings.

Other stuff:-
Odd sleeper coaches sat in a bay.

Anyone remember the exhibition train? 1960's

Station pilots with a bloke to go between the buffers to connnect stuff.

Big brown envelopes for reservation paperwork. Think 1 envelope for a train on 1 day.

THe ticket collector just saying a platform number when you went through the barrier. They got a tv screen with departures and a portis machine later. Bet they had a heater.

Small bits of ticket on the floor from when the collector had clipped it.

Leeds had a special ticket office where people who had started their journey on a paytrain could excess their gaurd issued ticket (from an Almex machine).

Stafford had a buffet that was split in two. Part for the train side of the barrier and part for the town side. One long counter though.

2 wheeled wooden porters trolleys

And the oddest one- Leeds Station had a coin operated chip machine. Put yiur money in and it would actually cook yiu chips in hot fat.

 

[LowLevel]

You still see that in Italy!

You still see it here. Various stations on the network require either the guard or the platform staff to wave a green flag. It's quite funny to leave platform 13 at Manchester Piccadilly with a platform full of tourists for the following Airport train with them looking quizzically onwards as you wave your green flag.

Regarding porters, they still exist, albeit perhaps with a different name. Network Rail managed stations and indeed places like EMR at Nottingham have teams of staff dedicated solely to carrying luggage around and otherwise providing passenger assistance - the very definition of portering.

 

[gg1]

Bog roll and brown puddles on the tracks.

 

[Matey]

"Station Masters" in uniform, ganger's huts near branch stations complete with grinding stone and upturned wheel barrow/trolley. Water cranes.
Tilly lamps at some remote stations.

 

[weepingwillowb]

Baskets of homing pigeons

 

[Intercity110]

At unstaffed stations, PERTS (Permit To Travel Machines).

 

[John Luxton]

The significant change in the overall appearance of enthusiasts. Someone above mentioned school blazers - well lets look in a bit more detail:

Gricers with gaberdine rain macs, NHS specs and perhaps berets! I seem to recall that being mentioned in a railway magazine 20 to 30 years ago on how the appearance of railway enthusiasts had changed.

Also considering the enthusiast element - the photographer with usually German made camera nearly always in a brown leather ever ready case!!! Once very common.

Whilst German cameras are not quite extinct they are no longer mass market and most that still use them such as myself use the now fairly common Billingham bag as with all the pockets they make great trip bags, but could contain any type of camera.

On the subject of bags - platform end enthusiasts with airline travel bags to keep their gear in again replaced by the likes of Billingham, Lowepro etc.

Electric tow trucks on platforms for pulling coupled trollies.

There are one or two about - I have definitely seen one or two in the past year but now used for pulling servicing / cleaning trollies. I am sure I saw one at Liverpool Lime Street.