Railways Blog

This review also appears on BlogCritics, here.

After the end of steam in Britain 1968, a great many British railway photographers either hung up their cameras or diverted their attentions abroad, and it was the best part of a decade before a new generation of photographers began recording the current scene again. This leaves the period from 1968 to about 1975 woefully under-recorded, a great pity, because this was a fascinating time for diesel fans, seeing many surviving operating practices from the steam era, and the last years of some of the unsuccessful and short-lived ‘modernisation plan’ locomotives.

This makes this album all the more welcome. Compiled by David Cross from his father Derek’s extensive collection on 35mm transparencies, this album focuses on Scotland from the mid-sixties to the early seventies. It takes in both the highly scenic parts of the highlands and borders, and the cities and industrial parts of the central belt, and features just about every class of locomotive that operated in Scotland during that era.

We have some wonderfully evocative shots of the scenic West Highland line between Glasgow and Mallaig, many featuring the unreliable and short-lived North British class 29s, such as green D6103 in the rocky Spean gorge, and blue D6129 along the shores of Loch Eil. There’s also a couple of great photographs of the more successful BRCW class 26s on the Kyle of Lochalsh branch, with the Isle of Skye in the background.

In contrast, we have one of the classic urban locations, the line through Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh, featuring a pair of class 101 DMUs. We have several views of another short-lived unsuccessful locomotive class, the centre-cabbed Clayton class 17s at work on local freight in the central belt.

The book features all four Anglo-Scottish main lines, including several photos of the now-closed Waverley route which crossed the border hills south of Harwick; the barren sparsely-populated terrain is demonstrated by the shot of two class 17s on a very long train of vans at Steele Road. We also have class 45 “Peaks” on the Dumfries route, plenty of English Electric class 40s and 50s over Beattock, and the obligatory “Deltic” on the East Coast route.

Overall, this is a great book for any enthusiast of diesel locomotives, or of any type of train running through spectacularly beautiful scenery.

Heyday of the Scottish Diesels
David Cross
Hardcover (15 August, 2002)
Ian Allan Publishing; ISBN: 0711028699

And they get special traction too! Haulage by class 67 is rare indeed. Posted by Hugh Dady on the South West Gen mailing list:

67026 pass Dawlish 0900 with 1Z31 CA special 0815 Ply – Pdn. Stock is a smart rake of IC Mk IIs with two blue/grey (Regency?) coaches in the centre. Well worth a photograph because of the rarity of a skip on IC stock. H.D.

And later on the same list, by Brian Garratt:

Green Wellies all heading back home after trudging round the Capital all day screaming and shouting. 67026 Dn Tau 21:05 (Load 13!)

BBC NEWS | Wales | Inquiry into runaway train

An investigation is under way into how a south Wales train with 20 passengers on board rolled out of a railway station.
Valley Lines are investigating the incident on Saturday, which involving a diesel locomotive at Rhymney Station in the Rhymney Valley, heading for Cardiff.

Twenty people were on board the sprinter train

The company confirmed the guard had to run after the train and jump on board to put the handbrake on.

Oops. At least nobody was hurt. The BBC have got one or two facts wrong, though. A Sprinter is not a locomotive.

BBC NEWS | Business | Tide turns for Chunnel rail firm

Channel tunnel rail freight firm EWS, which lost many contracts earlier this year due to the high numbers of illegal immigrants attempting to reach the UK via the tunnel, has won back one of its biggest customers.
The company said at the weekend that Finnish paper giant Stora Enso, which supplies paper for many British newspapers, had decided to resume using the tunnel.

Stora Enso had switched to sea freight last November after high numbers of illegal immigrants hiding in its cargo exposed it to the threat of hefty fines from the UK government.

EWS said Stora Enso’s decision partly reflected improved security at the entrance to the tunnel, which has reduced the flow of illegal migrants.

And about time too. Now I’d like to see more of the traffic thrown away in the 80s and 90s because of the absurdly high Treasury demands on profit margins return to rail.

Yesterday I spend all day at the N Gauge Society‘s 35th anniversary exhibition at Bletchley.

Getting there was a bit of a problem, since Railtrack had kindly closed that section of the West Coast Main Line for engineering work at weekends. Instead I travelled by the Midland Main Line out of St Pancras and then took the Bedford-Bletchley branch. Missing a connection at Bedford by 30 seconds (would any other country in Europe not hold a branch line train for 30 seconds to connect with an express, especially for a dozen passengers?) delayed me by an hour.

The Bedford to Bletchley branch really is a line that time forgot; almost all the route still has mechanical signalling, and at least three hand-worked sets of level crossing gates. Sadly for nostalgia fans it looks like this will soon be swept away; at many places I saw the concrete foundations for new relay rooms, and new signal posts sitting beside the track waiting to be ‘planted’. This bucolic branch line is the surviving section of what had once been a longer cross-country line running from Oxford to Cambridge, what might now be a useful link had Beeching not closed it in the 1960s.

Once I finally got there, the show was excellent, now spread over three halls, the large one used five years ago, and two smaller ones. There was a good mix of layouts, British, Continental, American and Japanese, mostly of a very high quality. For example, “Zurtrummelt” was set in war-damaged Germany in 1945, with British military-operated trains threading through the ruins using a mix of British wartime locomotives and whatever German equipment had survived the bombing. In complete contrast, the very large “Kings Park” was based on the Queens Park area of London in the late 70s, featuring WCML expresses, Euston-Watford D.C. Electrics and Bakerloo line tube trains. One of my favourites was “MOBOV/RMM”, actually two separate layouts by two Belgian clubs, joined end-to-end. These combined together formed a very large end-to-end line seemingly snaking across half the hall. Both parts had some superb scenic modelling, in particular the canal bridge and tramway scene, and the Ardennes mountains section. For British steam era fans there was Andy Cavert’s “Moorcock Junction”, set on the Settle and Carlisle main line in 1957-62. Narrow gauge wasn’t forgotten; there was “A.F.A.N”, French metre-gauge running on Z-gauge track. As well as thirty-five other layouts.

Naturally I spend far too much money – I collected quite a bit of continental stock I had ordered from John Brightwell, including some Arnold Italian Eurofima coaches in the new FS livery, some Roco BLS EWIVs (I have a complete train of these now), and quite a few assorted Swiss freight vehicles. For my British collection, two parcels vehicles (a PCV and a super-BG) from Ian Stoate Models, and worse still, I ordered a 67 from CJM.

BBC NEWS | England | Inquiry after train hits tractor
The accident happened on a occupation crossing with manually-operated gates on each side.
According to the lunchtime news bulletin, the tractor driver opened one gate, the drove the tractor onto the tracks before getting out to open the second gate on the other side.

For once, the media didn’t blame the railway (like they usually do), but speculated on how long a jail term this tractor driver will get.

I find the concept of modular model railway layouts interesting. I find the idea of building a small module which can be joined up with those of others to make a much larger whole appealing. Unfortunately I’ve been disappointed in what I’ve seen at exhibitions; too many layouts have horribly mismatching scenery, and run a mix of British, American, Continental and Japanese trains on the same layout, which completely destroys any concept of realism. I’m sure it’s possible to do better than this.

(At which point those who happily mix British, German, American and Japanese trains on the same layout protest “But it’s fun! You just don’t understand”. Sorry, but to me it’s Hurting Wrong Fun – I don’t accept the idea that the only valid form of ‘fun’ is when you throw realism out of the window; I find doing prototype research and then making up accurate trains from a particular time and place is ‘fun’, but that’s an entirely different rant)

The only widely-accepted standard, the American N-trak, isn’t really appropriate for British outline modelling, largely because of it’s unrealistically-wide track spacing. While this might be appropriate for North American prototypes, it doesn’t look at all right for British layouts. And personally I don’t like the 3-track configuration; whatever the operational benefits it still doesn’t look right to me. Three track mainlines are uncommon in Britain; even if the third track is supposed to be a siding or goods loop.

Various British-outline groups, such as the East Surrey N-Gauge Group, the East Dorset N Gauge Group, the North East Area Group and the Chester Area Group have each been building modular layouts. As far as I can tell, each have rejected Ntrak for at least some of the reasons listed above, and have devised their own standards.

British N needs a modular standard.

I feel the standard should be more of a meta-standard, describing things like baseboard heights and standardised electrical connections, but allow some flexibility on the number and locations of tracks. Individual groups will probably want to choose a more restricted standard track formation for their own modules, and interface modules between the more popular configurations should be encouraged. I would guess that two- and three-track formations will be the most popular.

It should support both “roundy-roundy” formations with four corner sections, and “all-in-a-line” formations with a return loop at each end. “Roundy-roundy” modules need to be fixed length so that the other side of the rectangle joins up; “all-in-a-line” modules don’t have to be.

Track standards (code 80 vs. code 55) should not be part of the standard. Individual groups may decide to standardise on one of the other, but I would not like to see a standard that mandates code 80 and prohibits the more realistic code 55.

The standard should neither mandate nor prohibit scenic breaks or end profiles. This is one of the more awkward problems with modular layouts; it’s hard to get scenery to ‘flow’ between modules, and you either get abrupt transitions, or boring flat baseboards that might be OK for modelling the American prairies but isn’t so good for hillier areas. My preference would be for scenic dividers between the modules, breaking up the layout into separate ‘scenes’, although this only really works for large multi-section modules.

When setting up a modular layout at an exhibition, the organiser should be allowed to (and even encouraged to) insist that all modules and rolling stock are from a particular nation and period, rather than be expected to include every module available just because it’s there, even if it doesn’t fit the theme.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Channel freight back on track
Some better rail news, at last. Freight services through the channel tunnel are getting back to normal after months of disruption due to masses of illegal immigrants stowing away on the trains. For months, rail transport was the loser while the whole issue was kicked back and forth like a political football between the British and French governments.

An EWS spokesman said: “It surely cannot be difficult for the Republic of France to find sufficient resources for 24-hour policing of a freight yard.”

In May several trains arrived at the Dollands Moor freight terminal in Kent with more than 50 asylum seekers on board. Whole carriage-loads of fresh pasta, fruit and vegetables had to be destroyed when they were found inside. EWS estimated the crisis was costing it £500,000 a week.

The British Freight Group estimated that 6,000 extra lorries are using roads around Calais and Folkestone because of the disruption.

Geoff Dossetter, a spokesman for the Freight Transport Association, said: “The one thing you need from freight trains is reliability. The disruption has delivered a compete absence of that. There’s been a major loss of confidence in the product.”

European single market commissioner Frits Bolkestein is pursuing legal action against France for breaching the Treaty of Rome, which requires countries to facilitate free trade. But the case could take two years to reach court.

I accept that the whole issue of immigration and asylum is a highly-charged issue, but the way the rail industry has suffered from a political crisis not of their own making is nothing short of scandalous.

ITV News: Rail strike brings more misery
Northern commuters have suffered a lot in recent months, with strikes by both Arriva Trans-Pennine and First North Western. I don’t know how much of this is due to union militancy and how much is due to the bus companies that run the two franchises trying to treat highly-skilled traincrews like bus drivers.

On thing is sure; while this macho posturing continues, the customer is the loser. Of couse, it may be that the management’s long-term aim is to let their train services go down the toilet and replace them all with buses.

CNN.com – 100 feared dead in Indian rail disaster

As many as 100 people are feared dead after a passenger train derailed in a remote region of northeastern India sending at least one car plunging into a river.

There seem to be a lot of bad rail crashes in India; but this is not so much a reflection of Indian Railways’ poor safety record as a reflection of the huge size of their network and the vast numbers of people that use it.

As far as I know, they don’t have wheel/rail separation in India; there is no Indian equivalent of Railtrack.