Wrong Railway Facts

[Taunton]

VoR No 9 is an original D&M locomotive rebuilt by the GWR.

There are a number of similar fictions in loco building, elsewhere on but not confined to, the GWR. It was all down to a government-imposed formula on accounting depreciation and calculation of profits, specifically for railways, long forgotten but in place a century ago, which led to various subterfuges of new locomotives being regarded as rebuilds, and vice-versa, depending on how the accounts were going that year. Batches of new locos with numbers scattered all over the place was part of this.

As locos were commonly, at major overhaul, completely taken to pieces, worn items replaced, improvements incorporated, and then put back together from the parts bin, there's not a lot to choose between the two approaches. Rather like the labourer who for the last twenty years has had the same shovel - just with three new blades and four new handles.

 

[Cheshire Scot]

A good number of years ago a local paper published an article celebrating a milestone date (125 years?) for one of the local stations - but they got the year wrong. Not only that they posed the question does anyone know what happened to 'G***' who was 'stationmaster' there for many years?

I wrote in to correct their calendar error and to point out if they had researched it properly they would know that G*** was at that time still in situ working at the station.

When I received a snotty response I responded further stating their poorly researched article was unprofessional - it seemed this truth really upset them!

 

[LowLevel]

"The Great Central London Extension was built to Berne gauge".

It predates it (agreed 1912, enacted 1914) and it wasn't particularly generous, either.

 

[pdeaves]

Too many believe that if it has been written by Colin Marsden, it must be true…

As a little aside, my personal favourite. I have a Marsden book with an illustration of a scrap 08 in some dead-end siding somewhere round the back of Old Oak Common loco depot, probably 1980s. The picture clearly shows buffer stops and that the loco has only two wheel sets in (the middle set, plus connecting rods, removed). It's in a very sorry state. Mr M's caption describes it as loco number 08-something 'rattles past'. Well, if it could move it probably would rattle, but there are at least two reasons why it wasn't going anywhere. One is left wondering if he even looked at the picture other than to read the loco number!

 

[Gloster]

As a little aside, my personal favourite. I have a Marsden book with an illustration of a scrap 08 in some dead-end siding somewhere round the back of Old Oak Common loco depot, probably 1980s. The picture clearly shows buffer stops and that the loco has only two wheel sets in (the middle set, plus connecting rods, removed). It's in a very sorry state. Mr M's caption describes it as loco number 08-something 'rattles past'. Well, if it could move it probably would rattle, but there are at least two reasons why it wasn't going anywhere. One is left wondering if he even looked at the picture other than to read the loco number!

Without knowing the book, this could be a case of the author having chosen a photo and written a caption to it, and then a picture editor changes the photo at a late date, or just mixes them up. When a friend was very a junior employee in a well-known publishing company he just avoided what would have been a very embarrassing mistake when he spotted that photos of General Eisenhower and Hermann Goering had been transposed.

 

[tomuk]

Various publications have said that the first Solid State Interlocking was at Leamington Spa in 1985, ignoring the one at Dingwall in 1984.

Well 1985 would be correct than for a 'mainline' interlocking as opposed to one controlling an RETB installation which would be seen as a specialist or even experimental usage.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

You do have to be careful, however, when researching history via Ordnance Survey maps, as the 'surveyed' and 'published' dates are not always as it seems. If a reprint was required between editions, they would sometimes make minor changes without revising the whole map. In the age of rapid railway expansion this was quite common - just new lines / alterations were added - much like they do with major new roads today. On later OS maps there is a code to indicate the 'version', but not on this series. Sometimes 'projected lines' were added - which never subsequently happened!

"Trap Streets" are the Cartographer's 'Ace up the sleeve' to prevent unauthorised copying of their work. I wonder if any have ever used a "Trap Station" or "Trap Railway" instead?

A couple that spring to mind with insomnia: I recall reading a small book about the Penistone line as a young-ish child, which described the various branches that came off this line. On the Clayton West branch it suggested that the entire formation was built for two tracks (in anticipation of extending to Barnsley) but only one track was ever installed. However since then I've walked the area frequently and not only are the majority of bridges only wide enough for one standard gauge track, but large sections of embankment appear to only be wide enough for one track. Admittedly this is using the standard human eyeball, plus the potential for the now miniature tracks to create an optical illusion, but I've never found a second source for this information. Nor have I found any photos that clearly show space for a second track.

Another one would be the old "Pacers being banned from 3rd rail routes" myth. They just happened to never work anywhere near where the majority of 3rd rail is. Though they did run through Hunts Cross pretty much every day for decades, as well as occasional use of the shared platform at Southport and the DC platform at Chester.

 

[Springs Branch]

What mistakes have you found over the years? I'm guessing they are sadly very common?

My pet Wrong Railway Fact is the date when the Merseyrail electric services started on the Kirkby branch and the Wigan Wallgate-Liverpool line was severed at Kirkby.

Many publications say this happened on the same day the Liverpool Link opened and Northern Line trains began to run into Liverpool Central (2 May 1977). While this was undoubtedly the original plan, some sort of delay meant the third rail infrastructure to Kirkby was not ready for the Link opening.

DMUs from the Wigan direction continued to run as far as Sandhills for a number of months after Liverpool Central re-opened, turning back in the reversing siding there. (I have memories of waiting in the cold and dark at Sandhills for a connection towards Wigan, having left Central not long after 5pm - making it autumn or winter of 1977).

A few sources do acknowledge the Kirkby electrification didn't open on schedule in May 1977, stating that it started in January 1978 to coincide with the Liverpool Central - Garston line re-opening (the Garston trains ran through to Kirkby and vice versa in the timetable back then).

Again, I don't think this is 100% accurate. On personal experience (with no hard evidence to back up my memories) I recall changing into Class 502 EMUs with destination Liverpool Central when the Kirkby "split" first came into effect. And in the reverse direction, boarding an empty train which was starting its journey from Central.

After making several of these trips, my connecting EMU at Kirkby suddenly began to show destination Garston. So I suspect the Kirkby electrics actually started sometime late 1977, a little before the Garston line re-opened. I can find nothing to confirm this in print or on the internet. If anyone knows the truth, can you let me know? (The BR Signalling Notice for splitting the line at Kirkby would be pretty definitive) .

Books are always well researched, right?

When it comes to Railway History, there are books . . . . and there are books!

Books written "Back in the Day" (say, the heyday of Ian Allan and David & Charles), I'd say are generally quite reliable (not always - I do take some of O.S. Nock's prolific offerings with a pinch of salt). But I think from the 1990s onwards, when the volume of railway nostalgia books ballooned, things could become quite dodgy.

I'm assuming the increase in titles and publishers was due to the appearance of easy/cheap desktop publishing, plus (forced early retirement / redundancy being rife at the time) a surplus of active late-middle aged blokes with a bit of time on their hands, access to collections of unpublished photos and an urge to knock out a book or two. And another cohort of geezers (like me) eager to buy them, usually on-line, even if some of these were badly formatted and laid out, with proof-reading and editing errors scattered through the text.

A good fraction of these books were based on a collection of photos of (usually historic) railway scenes, each accompanied by a sometimes lengthy caption. I won't mention any names to protect the guilty, but some of the books which cover my own area of interest contain some real bloopers. To the extent I think - if he got all this wrong in the areas I know about, why should I believe anything he says about somewhere I'm not too familiar with?

So, to the OP's original point - there's no shortage of Wrong Railway Facts to be found in books, and you need to be careful in choosing your authoritative sources.

 

[Railsigns]

(The BR Signalling Notice for splitting the line at Kirkby would be pretty definitive) .

The split at Kirkby occurred on 1 May 1977, the same day that the Liverpool Link Line opened (information obtained from Section C of Weekly Operating Notice NE-No.18 (1977)).

Well 1985 would be correct than for a 'mainline' interlocking as opposed to one controlling an RETB installation which would be seen as a specialist or even experimental usage.

See my response in post #25.

Leamington Spa was itself an experimental SSI installation. The first 'production' SSI scheme was at Inverness in 1987.

 

[Magdalia]

A good fraction of these books were based on a collection of photos of (usually historic) railway scenes, each accompanied by a sometimes lengthy caption. I won't mention any names to protect the guilty, but some of the books which cover my own area of interest contain some real bloopers. To the extent I think - if he got all this wrong in the areas I know about, why should I believe anything he says about somewhere I'm not too familiar with?

This reminds me of a story from that era. At the time I had a friend who was a good railway photographer, they occasionally had pictures published in magazines. When lineside they got to know some of the most prolific and esteemed of the railway photographers of the era. There was an occasion when my friend met an esteemed photographer who had recently published a book. My friend and I had a running joke about the quality of captions in such books, so they asked the esteemed photographer about the captions. The esteemed photographer boasted that it was a book containing no caption errors. The subject matter was something I knew a bit about, so I got a copy, and quickly identified more than 20 errors, nearly 10 per cent of the total number of photographs in the book.

 

[rototunablack5]

I was looking the other day at Huncoat station on the East Lancashire line and came across something I've seen before - wrong "facts".

Looking on the Internet it says the station was "re-located in 1902", but if you look at this map (published in 1895, surveyed 1890-92) you can clearly see the station at its present location (the 1848 map shows the original location).

That means the re-location date of 1902 is clearly wrong?

It's not the first time I've come across such things while researching my old branch line (not this one).

What mistakes have you found over the years? I'm guessing they are sadly very common?

Thanks,
Andy.

This is very interesting. According to the map here from 1848 the original “Huncoat Station” is marked on what is now Altham Lane about 1/2 mile north of the present station. This is approximately the 37 chains reported by Quicks Chronology to which point the station was relocated

Looking at the 1893 map the main station buildings appear to be on the Up side south of the level crossing with what appears to be a smaller building on the north side of the level crossing on the Down side with a staggered arrangement. Presumably this was to allow access to Huncoat Colliery.

According to Chris Littlewood’s “Signal Boxes on Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Lines” new loops were laid in 1902 between Huncoat Station and Huncoat Brick Sidings 1015 yards in the direction of Accrington. This probably necessitated the Up platform being moved to its present position which appears to be confirmed by the Burnley Express news article.

A new, tall signal box was built which controlled two sets of gates, one across the main line and one accessing the colliery sidings and those to Whinney Hill Brick Works

 

[Taunton]

Well I suppose we could embarrass Mr Editor at Modern Railways, by pointing out the issue which coincided with the chaotic full opening of Thameslink in 2018, which shambles the mainstream media focused on for some weeks, was nicely prepared in advance with the excited cover headline "Thameslink Triumph". Future generations of archivists may well be misled.

Notably when Crossrail Core opened it was wisely decided to wait and see first ...

 

[jfollows]

Yes, I'm very happy with Modern Railways and even though I wouldn't automatically treat it as authoritative, it's the next best thing. I've written in to correct a minor, trivial error once and my letter was published. More recently I wrote to query some point and my letter and the reply from the author (as to why I was wrong and he was right, nicely) were also published. I think its editor probably takes the job seriously and ensures that its articles are checked and verified prior to publication.

 

[4069]

Going back a bit, I seem to remember a lot of fuss about The Penguin Guide to the Railways of Britain when it was published in 1981. People were writing to magazines with pages and pages of corrections to errors they had spotted.

Taking heed of this, I never bought a copy, so I now have no evidence of how bad it actually was...

 

[edwin_m]

Any general statement that companies started their mileposts at their headquarters. Of the non-London companies it's true of the L&Y but not of the Midland or NER.

 

[Calthrop]

This reminds me of a story from that era. At the time I had a friend who was a good railway photographer, they occasionally had pictures published in magazines. When lineside they got to know some of the most prolific and esteemed of the railway photographers of the era. There was an occasion when my friend met an esteemed photographer who had recently published a book. My friend and I had a running joke about the quality of captions in such books, so they asked the esteemed photographer about the captions. The esteemed photographer boasted that it was a book containing no caption errors. The subject matter was something I knew a bit about, so I got a copy, and quickly identified more than 20 errors, nearly 10 per cent of the total number of photographs in the book.

Where books of photographs with caption -- and other -- errors are concerned: there is one in my possession (not, I infer, the one told of in the above-quoted) which I feel must qualify for some kind of booby-prize for "most-inaccuracy-riddled work". I've posted about it before on these Forums -- in "Memorabilia, Media and Publications", post on 12 / 9 / 2019: the book is The Light Railways of Great Britain and Ireland by Anthony Burton and John Scott-Morgan. First published 1985; amplified fresh addition, 2015. Many fascinating photographs, by many different photographers in various eras; but as regards the printed word -- oh, dear: swarms of mis-spellings ("gold awards" probably go to the Talyllyn's No.3 Sir "Haydon"; and the Ffestiniog's "Moeyn" Tunnel); and no small number of mistaken "facts" -- Abergynolwyn supposedly always the upper limit of steam working on the Talyllyn (what about the further mile to the Nant Gwernol incline-foot?); and an attempted outline date-wise, of the decline and eventual death of the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway, which is way "off-beam".

There is -- one supposes -- a possibility for the likes of us, who are aware of the true data; just to relish the pictures, and to find comedy rather than annoyance in the nonsense spouted in the text -- but in my eyes, there is an opposing opinion which deserves a hearing: that anyone who embarks on a non-fiction written work of any kind, should do their utmost to make sure that all info contained in it is as accurate as possible ...

 

[341o2]

The Bournemouth Daily Echo ran an article on lines and stations closed in Dorset and included a picture of a New Zealand steam railtour. I suppose the photograph was taken at Christchurch.
Haven't studied the picture, but apparently, an article on Yellow Buses through the years includes a picture taken in Bristol

 

[contrex]

Yes, I used to think OS maps were absolutely and always correct, something that I have also found not to be true either.

I had two 'gap years' 1972 and 1973, and I spent them working for the OS as a 'Surveyor's Assistant' We were engaged in a resurvey of the ST square (100 km x 100 km), one kilometre square at a time. Sometimes we found that detail on the edge of one kilometre square didn't quite marry up with that on the adjoining one. 'Oh', said a surveyor, 'we just sketch it in'. This filled me with glee because it meant that some of my hippy friends' ideas about 'ley lines' were based on a false assumption. In an account I read of the surveying for the building of the M1 motorway, it seemed that a number of such errors were discovered, and a retired senior OS person was quite amusing about it.

 

[Harvester]

Regarding captions, one of the worst I have come across is that describing the location of a Q6 0-8-0 in a Railways of the North East publication. The loco was photographed passing through the wide open expance of West Hartlepool station, while the caption stated it was rumbling through Sunderland station. The latter location being murky, cramped and below ground level; - seems no proof reading was done before publication.

 

[Dr_Paul]

When a friend was very a junior employee in a well-known publishing company he just avoided what would have been a very embarrassing mistake when he spotted that photos of General Eisenhower and Hermann Goering had been transposed.

When I was on the production team of a small left-wing paper back in the early 1980s, I managed to get a picture of the scuttled German fleet at Scapa Flow as the illustration in an article on the Britain/Argentina War. I did it for a laugh, to see if anyone might notice: nobody did.

"The Great Central London Extension was built to Berne gauge". It predates it (agreed 1912, enacted 1914) and it wasn't particularly generous, either.

It's rather fitting to see this canard repeated in Adrian Vaughan's Railway Blunders.

 

[Springs Branch]

(The BR Signalling Notice for splitting the line at Kirkby would be pretty definitive) .

The split at Kirkby occurred on 1 May 1977, the same day that the Liverpool Link Line opened (information obtained from Section C of Weekly Operating Notice NE-No.18 (1977)).

Well that blows my theory out of the water about BR Notices providing definitive evidence, because the line certainly was not severed at Kirkby on that weekend in May, and the hourly DMUs soldiered on to Sandhills for some months afterwards.

Weekly Operating Notices, you would expect, would be printed & distributed at the latest possible moment, so the decision to delay the start of electric services to Kirkby and not truncate the Wigan DMUs must have been taken at the very last minute.

 

[Railsigns]

Well that blows my theory out of the water about BR Notices providing definitive evidence, because the line certainly was not severed at Kirkby on that weekend in May, and the hourly DMUs soldiered on to Sandhills for some months afterwards.

Weekly Operating Notices, you would expect, would be printed & distributed at the latest possible moment, so the decision to delay the start of electric services to Kirkby and not truncate the Wigan DMUs must have been taken at the very last minute.

It's possible that the work to sever the line at Kirkby on 1 May 1977 was cancelled at short notice and republished in the Weekly Operating Notice (WON) at a later date. Unfortunately, I've seen very few "NE" WONs from 1977, so I'm unable to check this.

An item in the "WE2" WON for week 19 (7-13 May 1977) and repeated in week 20 mentions the proposed routeing of Wirral Line electric services via the Liverpool Loop line being postponed from 2 May 1977 until 9 May 1977. It also says that electric services from Southport, Ormskirk and Kirkby commenced running over the Link Line from 2 May 1997.

 

[Kingston Dan]

"The Great Central London Extension was built to Berne gauge".

It predates it (agreed 1912, enacted 1914) and it wasn't particularly generous, either.

The current version being HS2 is a waste because it just gets you to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker.

 

[Dr_Paul]

The current version being HS2 is a waste because it just gets you to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker.

The 'Handy Hints' column in Viz magazine reckoned that the HS2 would have been unnecessary were people to start their meetings 20 minutes earlier in the day.

 

[prod_pep]

"Merseyrail is vertically integrated."

Wrongly claimed, repeatedly, by Video125 in its 'Wirral Line' cab ride and umpteen enthusiasts on various forums and groups down the years. I think the Merseyrail Wikipedia article was edited as such at one stage.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

"Merseyrail is vertically integrated."

If that's not / no longer actually the case, what should it say?

 

[prod_pep]

If that's not / no longer actually the case, what should it say?

It is not vertically integrated; simple as that.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

It is not vertically integrated; simple as that.

Ta. Wonder why the duff information still gets trotted out? The normally totally reliable Wackipedia can't ever be wrong??!

 

[prod_pep]

Ta. Wonder why the duff information still gets trotted out? The normally totally reliable Wackipedia can't ever be wrong??!

Yes, it's fair to say the railways corner of Wikipedia is particularly bad for duff information.

 

[edwin_m]

Ta. Wonder why the duff information still gets trotted out? The normally totally reliable Wackipedia can't ever be wrong??!

There was an idea for Merseyrail to take over its own infrastructure management a few years ago on the model of London Underground or the Isle of Wight. However it was abandoned, possibly because if there was a major problem then the local authority would have been landed with the bill, whereas Network Rail could just absorb it in its much larger turnover and any resulting loss would ultimately be charged to central government.