Trivia: Things that are used on the railway that have found their way to other completely unrelated industries.

[Springs Branch]

There are railway style semaphore signals on the Redcliffe Bascule Bridge in Bristol.

In Port Adelaide, South Australia, the Birkenhead Bridge is a bascule road bridge dividing two parts of the navigable harbour.

On top of two elevated control cabins which control the raising of the bridge are two railway-style upper-quadrant semaphore signals. This pair of semaphores - one applying to each direction of travel - signal stop or go to river craft needing to pass through the bridge.

The signals are actually three-position American-style semaphores (which were the type in use on South Australian Railways at the time the bridge was completed in 1940).

Those signals do have a "yellow" spectacle lens, but I'm not sure whether they are capable of displaying a 45° indication, or just horizontal (stop) and vertical (go).

Source: Wikimedia Commons, by Peripitus. Reproduced under Creative Commons licence CC BY-SA 4.0

 

[philthetube]

Retired wooden sleepers have found their way into many bits of ad-hoc construction.
I've seen lengths of old rail used in the same way.
Old carriages turned into sheds, or holiday homes.
Station buildings turned into homes.
Diesel power units find their way onto ships.

Where would public footpaths be without railway sleepers to bridge the streams.

 

[Dr Hoo]

There are railway style semaphore signals on the Redcliffe Bascule Bridge in Bristol.

I thought that railways actually copied the idea of semaphore signals for traffic control from the canals.
What was in many ways the first proper canal in Britain - the Bridgewater - had semaphores to control the passage of wide Mersey ‘flats’ across Barton Aqueduct. (The narrow ‘starvationer’ coal boats used in the Worsley mines could pass on the aqueduct.)
Semaphores for general communication definitely existed pre-railway anyway.

 

[Andrew*Debbie]

The iconic Swiss Railway clock is available as a wrist watch. Some of the watches emulate the 58.5 second sweep + pause of the original clock's second hand.

Swiss railway clock - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Bletchleyite]

When they refurbished Preston Bus Station they changed all the signs back to Rail Alphabet.

I suspect this was deliberate to give a 1980s feel to it - the refurb was as much about preserving the building as providing a practical bus station.

 

[Rescars]

The "national speed limit applies" sign on country roads throughout the UK looks very much like a Sykes Banner Repeater showing "clear".

The iconic Swiss Railway clock is available as a wrist watch. Some of the watches emulate the 58.5 second sweep + pause of the original clock's second hand.

Swiss railway clock - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You can get this as a phone app too.

 

[norbitonflyer]

Long ago in one of the railway magazines I saw a photo of a boat whose wheelhouse was quite clearly the cab from a class 03 shunter

 

[Joe Paxton]

Greenwich Mean Time.

This, or more specifically the railways' collective influence on the introduction of standard time zones - for more info, see:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_time

Railway time was the standardised time arrangement first applied by the Great Western Railway in England in November 1840, the first recorded occasion when different local mean times were synchronised and a single standard time applied. The key goals behind introducing railway time were to overcome the confusion caused by having non-uniform local times in each town and station stop along the expanding railway network[1] and to reduce the incidence of accidents and near misses, which were becoming more frequent as the number of train journeys increased.

Railway time was progressively taken up by all railway companies in Great Britain over the following seven years. The schedules by which trains were organised and the time station clocks displayed were brought in line with the local mean time for London or "London Time", the time set at Greenwich by the Royal Observatory, which was already widely known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
[...]

 

[paul1609]

HMS Warrior Britain's first Iron Clad warship in Portsmouth Harbour has a large number of GWR Broad gauge chairs in her fore peak as ballast

 

[kermit]

Many years ago I was given a tour of one of the first experimental wind turbines, climbing up the ladder in the middle (with hatches every 10 metres or so so if you did fall, despite the safety harness, you only went....well, actually, still a lethal distance!). At the top, we could open the nacelle for an amazing view, and inspect the gearbox and generator. The guide told me that the enormous disc brake, used to stop the blades if needed, was a straight lift of parts that otherwise would have been destined for a heavy diesel freight locomotive. It didn't say "BREL" on it or anything that obvious, but I believed him!

 

[Oxfordblues]

Commuting. Passengers originally turned-up at booking offices and asked for the same day-return ticket every morning, often forming a queue. One imaginative clerk suggested to his manager that they could reduce the workload, and therefore costs, by issuing a ticket that would be valid for a week, month or quarter, termed a "season". The charge would be a multiple of the daily fare, minus a discount. It would therefore be a commuted charge. This is why season-ticket holders came to be know as "commuters" and the term came to include anyone travelling to work by rail or any other means.

 

[snowball]

I'm not so sure. I recently tried to find out when wig-wag lights were introduced, but failed. I did get the impression they were intended for all those uses from the outset.

(The closest I got was that wig-wags must have arrived before 1964, because that is when advance warning signs were added.)

After reading the above I asked the question on the roads forum SABRE. I got a few replies, one of which referenced the Railsigns site, which I should have thought of myself. The thread is here:

Wig-wag lights - SABRE

www.sabre-roads.org.uk

 

[Halish Railway]

How many links are there between the railways and Rollercoasters? The name ‘Scenic Railway’, block section signalling, the terms train and station, as well as using multiple staff to dispatch trains?

Whilst we’re at it, BR had a hand in finishing off the building of the Ultimate at Lightwater Valley after the original manufacturer went bankrupt. On a similar theme, I read that Taziker, one of the largest manufacturers of railway bridges manufactured the track pieces for the Big One’s track replacements.

 

[etr221]

Something not mentioned before, but something I believe first used in railway refreshment facilities - before spreading everywhere - is the long bar counter: to cater for hordes of people wanting service in a short time.

On the the subject of semaphores: I think the first use was in the 'optical' telegraphs developed in the late 1700s...

 

[Deepgreen]

"We are now arriving into xxxxx..." - first used on the railway and now to be heard on other modes too!

In Port Adelaide, South Australia, the Birkenhead Bridge is a bascule road bridge dividing two parts of the navigable harbour.

On top of two elevated control cabins which control the raising of the bridge are two railway-style upper-quadrant semaphore signals. This pair of semaphores - one applying to each direction of travel - signal stop or go to river craft needing to pass through the bridge.

The signals are actually three-position American-style semaphores (which were the type in use on South Australian Railways at the time the bridge was completed in 1940).

Those signals do have a "yellow" spectacle lens, but I'm not sure whether they are capable of displaying a 45° indication, or just horizontal (stop) and vertical (go).

Source: Wikimedia Commons, by Peripitus. Reproduced under Creative Commons licence CC BY-SA 4.0

Perhaps the yellow lens indicates that the boat should be prepared to stop at the next bridge!

 

[Neo9320]

Perhaps the yellow lens indicates that the boat should be prepared to stop at the next bridge!

This made me laugh far more than it should have….

 

[Ediswan]

After reading the above I asked the question on the roads forum SABRE. I got a few replies, one of which referenced the Railsigns site, which I should have thought of myself. The thread is here:

Wig-wag lights - SABRE

www.sabre-roads.org.uk

Thanks for doing that. It looks like, after experimental use, wig-wags started to be added to UK level crossings around 1954. That probably does pre-date other uses. It would still be nice to track down the original legislation authorising their use as road signs.

 

[Western 52]

The Post Office used BRUTE trollies in sorting offices when I worked there in the 1980s. They were red to show they'd bought them from BR but the odd blue one appeared too.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

British Rail's research department investigated which colours were most noticeable to the human eye from a distance. Yellow was found to be significantly more perceptible and it became the colour on the front of locomotives, DMUs and EMUs. It also became the colour of work clothes worn by staff working on the track. Now, yellow is the colour worn by people in many services where being seen easily from a distance is an important safety consideration.

Ironically though, track workers on the GB National network nowadays wear orange rather than yellow hi-viz, presumably because the fronts of the trains themselves are (usually) yellow. Apparently some worksites during the construction of HS1 required reversible hi-viz with orange on one way (when inside the railway boundary) and yellow on the other (if working inside the boundary of the M20 motorway).

 

[Neo9320]

Ironically though, track workers on the GB National network nowadays wear orange rather than yellow hi-viz, presumably because the fronts of the trains themselves are (usually) yellow. Apparently some worksites during the construction of HS1 required reversible hi-viz with orange on one way (when inside the railway boundary) and yellow on the other (if working inside the boundary of the M20 motorway).

Although more and more companies that operate on highways are turning to orange. I used to work for a subcontractor to national grid (or whatever they’re calling themselves these days) and was given orange PPE….on more than one occasion when walking in to my local in work gear I was asked ‘when did you start working for the railway?’

 

[TSG]

An obscure one - standard BR930 series railway relays are also used on the control systems of Rolls Royce pressurised water nuclear reactors on board Royal Navy submarines.

Makes sense as they are built like the proverbial sturdy convenience. In similar vein, although I'm not sure which came first, ML Engineering in Plymouth (part of Alstom now) made a remote control and indication system (TEML41) that's been used a lot on the railway for panel multiplexers, TDM, train describers, etc. I'm told it was also used on the Royal Navy's type 42 destroyers

 

[6Gman]

The central heating boiler serving an annexe of our local FE College was reputedly a former locomotive boiler. I never got to see it sadly but since the building started life as a railway-linked Technical School and was literally the other side of a fence from Crewe Works it seems possible.

 

[AY1975]

Not sure whether these were first used on the railway, but clickers used to count the number of passengers on trains are also used in other settings where people need to be counted, such as to count the number of people entering or leaving an entertainment, hospitality or sporting venue.

I've also seen railway/metro style ticket gates used to control access to some visitor attractions. For example I seem to recall that in the 1980s and '90s the now closed Museum of the Moving Image on the South Bank of the Thames near Waterloo station had Paris metro style access gates where you had to insert your entry ticket to gain access.

Entrance gates or turnstiles released by presenting a key fob or smartcard are also used to control access to many office buildings and other workplaces.

 

[Sm5]

The Post Office used BRUTE trollies in sorting offices when I worked there in the 1980s. They were red to show they'd bought them from BR but the odd blue one appeared too.

Gatwick Airport still does use Brutes.


Butlins Minehead has what looks suspiciously like signal gantries, for lighting rigs, including steps, and protection rails In one of their entertainment venues.

 

[Rescars]

Wikipedia claims that road traffic lights are derived from railway signals. Early on, the GWR changed the all clear signal from a white to a green light to avoid confusion with other lighting.

As a follow-on, presumably we have traffic lights to thank for the "red, amber, green" performance rating system used pretty universally by managers worldwide.

 

[Sm5]

Another remote one, was Rock City in Nottingham used to have two panels of track, mounted as a hand rail to manage the queue lines at the turnstile as you went in.

 

[Randomer]

I think I've mentioned on somewhere here before but a lot of theatres built or more commonly refurbished in the late 1970's and early 1980's used BR standard T key locks and the more modern T key with central post for areas that were not meant to be easily accessible to the public but didn't need to be locked securely like lighting boxes or removable panels. All specified by one company of theatre architects who must have thought it was a reasonable idea.

 

[Irascible]

I thought that railways actually copied the idea of semaphore signals for traffic control from the canals.
What was in many ways the first proper canal in Britain - the Bridgewater - had semaphores to control the passage of wide Mersey ‘flats’ across Barton Aqueduct. (The narrow ‘starvationer’ coal boats used in the Worsley mines could pass on the aqueduct.)
Semaphores for general communication definitely existed pre-railway anyway.

I always thought they grew out of flag signals, which are a very old idea - wiki says the idea of using arms dates from 1792 though.

 

[mrcheek]

Wikipedia claims that road traffic lights are derived from railway signals. Early on, the GWR changed the all clear signal from a white to a green light to avoid confusion with other lighting.

As a follow-on, presumably we have traffic lights to thank for the "red, amber, green" performance rating system used pretty universally by managers worldwide.

(road) traffic lights also inspired the idea of red and yellow cards in football, which has since spread to many other sports

 

[Fawkes Cat]

I can't remember where I got this from, but I think that I've seen it argued that the joint stock company and limited liability were created to allow railway companies to exist (organisations too big to be funded by one person, however wealthy, and too risky to allow all the investors to lose everything should it fail). Limited companies seem to have taken on at least a little bit of use outside the railway industry.