Railway Roundabout

'Stainmore 150' web site open

2010-12-20T22:37:00.000-08:00

Due to personal circumstances 'Railway Roundabout' has been 'off air' for three years but I think that the time has come to resurrect this 'blog' - although probably on an occasional rather than a regular basis.

I have become very involved with the 'Stainmore Railway Company' project at Kirkby Stephen East, which will involve re-opening a short section of this coast-to-coast line across the north of England in some beautiful countryside just to the west of the little town of Kirkby Stephen.

2011 is the 150th anniversary of the first passenger trains to operate on the route, and during the year steam trains will be running again in this quiet corner of Cumbria.

I have just published a first version of a large web site that will be used to advertise details of the programme of events during 'Stainmore150'. If you want to read more about the history of the line and the plans for 2011 take a look here!

I Made That....

2007-06-19T09:21:00.001-07:00

Our train at Llangollen pulled into Carrog Station and there in the siding was an old North British Class 03 six wheeled diesel shunter. Many years ago when I worked at Alston Foundry in Cumberland as it then was, I helped make many of the castings that went to make up these locos. We also made replacement bits and pieces for older steam engines from time to time. But what caught my eye was these 32" driving wheels. Each one weighed in at 10 cwt, half a ton, each. The wheel was 6" thick. What is particularly memorable about them was, my job involved cutting off the ingates and risers with an oxy-acetyline torch. Now the riser was on the balance weight where the metal was at its most dense. The riser covered the entire surface of the balancer. The wheel was cast flat. Because the cut was 12" or so deep it needed something like 200psi of oxygen pushed through a 1/8" nozzle. Oh, and a steady hand to hold the burner (cutting torch). There were no profile machines in those days and we measured things in English, not this foreign metric stuff. I got very well paid for doing this because the wheel had to be cut while the metal (cast steel) was still at dull cherry. Warm work to say the least.

We also made the brake shoes and its mechanism which you can also see here.

The connecting rods were not cast but drop forged and not by Alston Foundry.

I can truly say, "I made that," my mark is still on the inside rim. Mind you that was over 30 years ago.

GWR or God's Wonderful Railway

2007-06-17T04:47:00.000-07:00

After a prolonged absence from this site, due mainly to my studios which were beside the West Coast Main Line,having been taken over by developers and so I was perforce removed from access to trains, - I'm back. Went on a coach trip to LLangollen yesterday and took a ride on the Llangollen Railway.
This is a short stretch of standard guage track running a regular steam service. The track is a disconnected fragment of I. K. Brunell's great GWR network. Back in the pre-British Railways days it was dubbed "God's Wonderful Railway. The locos are some real classics. None of the Pacific Giants of my LNER days here. The terrain had no use for them. Instead it was smaller, more compact machinery that was called for; saddle tankers and pannier tankers. The largest loco would have been something like the 2-6-0 that hauled our train shown here.
A view inside the cab. Notice how the regulator is set up for a driver on the right. Old LNER stuff had the regulator on the left. Take a look at "Mallard" of the "Green Arrow" in York to see what I mean.

Here is a shot of her moving down the opposite track enabling a decent look at the Stephenson's Link Motion.

Sayonara '183'

2007-05-31T06:42:00.000-07:00

A real unexpected treat today. After several weeks of 'nose to the grindstone' writing at home I had to make a trip into Tokyo and on the way home I had to change trains at Tsudanuma ...

Just a few moments before our 'kaisoku' showed up this old 183 class drew up for a signal on the opposite platform. It was travelling light somewhere, maybe into Tokyo to handle one of the afternoon expresses standing in for a more modern unit under repair.

I love these '183's - classic Japanese 1970's express EMU developments and in a classic livery too. They handled all the expresses on our line until 255 class took over in December 2005 and I miss them rumbling through our village. Makuhari deport still seem to have at least two kept for emergency stand-by though. Long may it last ...

Surely in a land so full of rail enthusiasts at least one of these sets will be preserved for posterity?

Narita

2007-05-08T05:53:00.000-07:00

If you come to Japan the first railway station you will see - apart from the platform at the Tokyo International Airport air terminal of course - is Narita town station.

It is almost ten years to the day since our Tokyo-bound 'Narita Express' pulled up at Platform 1 (where I'm standing) on our first trip to Japan. I was astonished just how 'English' the place looked, even down to the platform canopies and railings.

Narita is junction. A double track main line comes in from Tokyo here from the south west, and to the north a busy single track route heads towards Choshi. A line diverges west towards the main line for Mito, and of course just north of the station the line to the airport heads off to the east. By Japanese standards it isn't a busy place but you'll see around six trains an hour.

Here's the Tokyo bound Narita Express heading non-stop through Platform 2 and slowing for the crossovers to the south of the station. In fifty minutes the passengers will be getting out at Tokyo central station.

'Miyako'

2007-04-24T07:02:00.000-07:00

I sometimes think that the trains I enjoy most in Japan are those third or fourth 'rankers' that nevertheless offer some immaculate operation. Like this one for example.

This is the 'Miyako' ('Capital') half hourly service form Kyoto down to Nara, two former capitals of ancient Japan. It is a 'kaisoku' (limited stop) service taking about 50 minutes for the thirty mile trip. No great speed - but with most of the route single line and an 'all-stations' service to 'dodge around' in various loops together with six intermediate stops to make and several 'meets' with trains coming the other way - you'll appreciate that it needs to the second timing to make the service work.

These JR West Japan units offer a lovely view to 'gricers' too - you can follow every inch of the way as if you were sitting in the pssenger seat of a car.

High in the Sky

2007-04-15T03:33:00.000-07:00

Kyoto Station is a pretty spectaclar building and I feel a certain sense of affinity with it as it was opened the week we visited the city on my very first trip to Japan in 1997. Ten years ago now almost to the day. In fact somewhere in Lancashire we have a even have a souvenir fan we were presented with as we hurried through the barrier on that day looking for the express to Kanazawa ...

Here is the bit that is far from the trains ... which are down to the right from here. Straight ahead down all those distant and dizzying escalators - this is no place for vertigo sufferers - is the main concourse where you buy your tickets and then underground beneath that a shopping centre and the subway platforms. The building to the right here is a department store, and the other end of the station on the upper floors is a large modern hotel. Contemporary architecture at its most impressive...

Most bigger Japanese stations are modern and exceptionally clean and well run but Kyoto is something special even for here. It is a building that is a pleasure to use even when you aren't down on the platforms gricing.

Ready to Roll

2007-04-10T04:48:00.000-07:00

A busy couple of weeks - my daughter Julia and her friend has been here and we've travelled a lot.But after a trip down to Kansai I left them to travel down to Hiroshima on their own and caught Nozomi Train 26 back up from Kyoto. I fancy putting my feet up for a day or two ...

I'd carefully planned my return time to get a trip on a Series 500 shinkansen at last but with a reservation in Car 13 I should have known better. When the train rolled in at 15:08 it was a substitute 700 series so I still have to fulfil my dearest wish in terms of Japanese train travel.

Here we go ... the train just rolled in frm Okayama and just one minute for passengers to get aboard before the doors close. The platform controller is already blowing his whistle and waving a white gloved finger. In a few minutes we'll be streaking along the south side of Lake Biwa at 180 mph. Nothing like the 'shink' for the sheer experience of noise and speed

Keisei 'buff'

2007-03-19T03:48:00.000-07:00

I see all the 'danger signs' here of me being in the process of becoming a bit of a 'Keisei Railway' buff. Last month I had to make several trips along their main Narita line and enjoyed myself like a kid. Since then I've come across two new books on the Keisei that I just couldn't resist buying.

I've mentioned the Keisei Railway here before - as Keisei Dententsu Kaisha it was one of Tokyo's first private railway systems and their 'main lines' stretch far into Chiba Prefecture. Until about 1960 it was what Americans would consider a classic 'inter-urban' along 'Pacific Electric' lines and I've got some lovely plans of their early cars that would make your mouth water. But unlike PE the system has actually been modernised and extended into a very 'state of the art' railway now although some of the gradients and curves on the Narita line are clearly from the former tramway days.

Here is Keisei's crack express - the 'Skyliner' - that offers the fastest service between Narita Airport and central Tokyo humming along near Yachiyodai.

Watch this space for more on the Keisei Line!

Lonesome Whistle

2007-03-10T02:46:00.000-08:00

I was out doing some fieldwork in Chiba City on the 29th January - a lovely day, real 'shirt sleeves weather' with bright sunshine. Somewhere near the level crossing at Tsuga I heard a lonesome whistle and thought "Wow! That sounds just like a steam locomotive!"

That whistle was blowing far away off and on for nearly thirty minutes. Impossible that it could have been a steam locomotive of course, there hasn't been one in Chiba for thirty years. It had to be a crane down in the JFE steel works somewhere but it was VERY convincing - so convincing that I hung aorund that level crosssing for half and hour.

Two days later - I heard from a student I know that it HAD been a steam locomotive. East Japan Railways preserved D51 498 was down from Tohoku and headed through town to run some special trains around Tateyama over two weekends in February. But it had taken the other route south out of the city. I'd been THAT close to seeing a D51 in steam in Chiba!

Here's D51 498 in more familiar country, on the Joetsu line up in the mountains of Tohoku. Beautiful eh?

Nice to be back here after some very difficult family times and a trip to Europe. I hope I'll be writing here regularly again but probably only around once a week for now

Monorail 'car barn'

2006-12-04T04:05:00.000-08:00

My studies today took me into a part of Chiba that I've meant to visit for a while. Down a small valley near the zoo there's a short branch of the city monorail system. The track leads to the car barn and maintenance depot.

As you can see the cars are docked on two levels with three reception tracks on each. Trains on the lower level are berthed just a couple of feet above the ground.

In the time I've been studying Chiba I've come to really like this extensive monorail system, which is soon to be extended for a further mile. It is a great way to get around the north side of town and fast too - if you haven't had a ride on a monorail yet find one soon!

Some new stock

2006-11-27T04:36:00.000-08:00

The last couple of mornings I've been catching the Keisei Railway out from central Chiba into the south east suburbs where I've been doing my studies. Getting into town just before ten both my trips have coincided with what must be crew training runs on some new stock.

Here's a picture of the new 8800 series. This unit has parked up at Honchiba and is about to set off back towards Ueno. I think they bear more than a passing resemblance to the trains Keisei use on the line north of Tsudanuma. They are smart enough and I'm sure very energy efficient and this one took off like a rocket but I found myself wondering with a sinking heart what old stock would be headed off to the breaker's year. The 3000 series I guess, a really classic 70's design.

I must publish some pictures here before they are just a thing of the past.

Enoden Railway

2006-11-20T02:25:00.000-08:00

At the moment I'm not able to add items here as often as I would like but keep checking back please - I'll make sure that something gets posted regularly. My collaborator Norman is still in Cyprus I think, which has no railways at all, but something deep in my memory suggests that it once had a 3' gauge line. Is that right?

Anyway - last week a trip with visiting friends over to Kamakura to see the daibutsu - the great bronze Buddha statue. Although this is now outdoors it was once housed in a temple that was swept away by a tsunami in 1498. It must have been a heck of a wave as the statue is about half a mile from the sea ...

To get to the daibutsu you take the Enoden Railway three stops from JR Kamakura station to Hase. This line runs around the coast for about 20 miles and is one of the most charming 3'6" gauge tram systems you will ever come across. These little geen and yellow cars clatter along tracks just a few inches from people's back yards. It would make a perfect prototype for anyone interested in modelling Japanese towns ...

Boso View Express

2006-11-05T01:52:00.000-08:00

Normally I only see 255 Units whizzing through our village but on Friday I happened to be changing trains at Sakura when the down afternoon 'Shiosai' came in so I got a good look at one at rest.

Here's 'train-time' for the Choshi bound tokkyu - a quick check along the train and then the guard gets into the rear driving compartment, closes the doors and they are off. To the right, just out of view a battery of four TV monitors to enable him to check the whole length of the train and the button to play the 'hurry up music' to warn passengers that the doors are about to close. Japanese expresses are off within a minute, sometimes even 30 seconds.

Looking at this kind of 'high-tech' hardware I find myself wondering how on earth you would model this stuff in, say, Gauge '0'. I suppose there must be fibre glass techniques if you made a wooden master but how would you even do that convincingly?

Huh! Anyone ever attempted that kind of thing?

One car less

2006-10-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

Getting back to Japan a couple of weeks ago I discovered that changes are being made in our local service on the Sobu Line ...

The 1970's vintage 113 class (left) have been partly replaced by 211 Class (right)and it's causing a lot of trouble too.

The 113's are coupled in sets of four, six and eight cars. The four and eight car versions are still running but the six car sets, which are maybe 50% of the trains during the day, have been replaced by second-hand five car 211 sets which I think have been sent over from Saitama Prefecture to the north of Tokyo.

Hopeless. This means a one coach reduction on many busy trains and commuters are getting restless! Watch this space for further developments

L'isle sur Sorgue

2006-10-24T01:24:00.000-07:00

It really struck me on my recnt trip to France just how much railway routes can get 'sidelined' in the same way as roads do and end up as local links or even just dead ends when the new 'six-laner' goes through.

Not far from our cottage was this station at L'isle sur Sorgue in the Vaucluse We'd been there a couple of days when I realised that actually this was no branch line but the original PLM main line from Paris to Marseilles. But no longer do expresses thunder down this stretch of track south of Avignon. Once you could have seen the cream of the Chapelon steam locomotive fleet racing around this bend, or the heavy SNCF co-co electrics on the 'Blue Train' but that's history now.

Like most of the original PLM route the fast trains now run on the new TGV tracks - here several miles south towards Avignon. L'isle sur Sorgue still has a fine old Paris-Lyon-Mediterraine station building but the only train you will catch from here now is a 'local'

Going for a trip?

2006-09-04T02:28:00.000-07:00

JR East has a number of party trains that are in regular demand for company outings and the like. Most of them are built on the 'mechanics' of 485 EMU tokkyu express units. Here's one of them in delightful honeymoon style pink - at this end trailer 484-3.

Hard to imagine six or eight car EMU trains making a revenue earning living like this anywhere else in the world. But in Japan company and other group outings are popular and you go with colleagues, not you wife or husband. The trains usually are fitted internally with long tables and chairs both sides, and en route revellers are served with bento and beer. Also there are plenty of nice locations that can be reached 'under the wire'

Well, I'm off on a trip myself now, no 'Railway Roundabout' from me for a day or two although I see Norman is back now. My next entries will be from Lancashire. Maybe I'll be gricing Preston or Durham station at the weekend!

Oil Movement

2006-09-03T00:34:00.000-07:00

Japanese railways have a lot of 'block movements' but of course the trains are tiny compared with North America, typically around 20 or 30 vehicles. Oil and fuel distribution in this way is very common.

Here are two class EF64 Co-Co-Co locomotives with a load of fuel for central Japan, I'd guess probably headed for Matsumoto. They are on the Chuo Line at Hachioji, waiting 'in the hole' for a passenger train to pass. If you are a driver working these diagrams I'd guess that patience is definitely a virtue! But I've never noticed a JR driver reading a book in such situations.

This train will have come from Chiba Prefecture - the big refineries along the east side of Tokyo Bay at Ichihara then via the Keio Line to Shin-Koiwa marshalling yard and around the north side of Tokyo. Now the driver can look forward to a pretty run through the mountains to Kofu.

Flight of the Bumble Bee

2006-09-02T00:49:00.000-07:00

Don't know why I should think of that music but maybe because these trains are about the same colour and also make a buzzing bee kind of noise as they lurch by. These Tokyo inner suburban units are all a bit of a blur to me, you need to be a specialist to identify them but I'm pretty sure this is a 201 Class. The yellow colour says 'Chuo Line' and in fact this is a crossing in Hachioji about 30 miles west of Tokyo. If you go to platforms 1 and 2 in Tokyo station there's one leaving about every two minutes

These trains have evolved in design over fifty years and are amazingly robust and reliable. If they aren't speeding up or slowing down they bucket along at 62 mph and in the rush hour each of the ten coaches probably has 350 people aboard. So this is a 'ten Jumbo train' in areonautical terms! An experience worth missing as you might imagine.

Locomotive Archaeology

2006-09-01T04:37:00.000-07:00

Well, almost. I'm not literally digging this one up but I have been digging in my Japanese railway history books the last couple of days and I've discovered that this 4-4-2T I found at Go-i on Wednesday is a pretty interesting beast. I can't wait to get back and take photos and dimensions for a plan of her.

It seems that this B10 class were not originally built in Saitama and Shizuoka in the 1920'a but rebuilt there. They were previously 4-4-0 tender engines! They were built in 1895 for the Nippon Railway - a major private line that ran from Tokyo (Ueno) to the far north of Japan. When the line was nationalised in 1906 they were classified as the 5500 Class by the Imperial Japanese Railways. Later, as the need for elderly 4-4-0 express engines evaporated, they were rebuilt as tank engines for brach line service by tacking a bunker on the back, adding to the frames and adding an extra axle under the coal. Some foind their way latyer to small private railways - including this one to the Kominato line

So everything behind the cab - and the side tanks - in this picture is added around the original 4-4-0 engine 25 years after she was first built!

And now here's the thing that really tickled me. Guess where the Nippon Railway bought these engines from back in 1895. Beyer Peacock in Manchester! Yes - this is a Lancashire built locomotive - isn't that amazing!

Gricing at Goi

2006-08-31T06:39:00.000-07:00

Kominato Railway

2006-08-31T02:02:00.000-07:00

We had to pick up someone from JR Goi station station just south of Chiba yesterday. It's the junction too for the Kominato Railway, an almost ridiculously pittoresque private line that heads west into rural Kazusa and links up with another private line that will take you down in a bumpy railcar to Ohara on the Pacific Coast.

The Kominato workshops are at Goi - untidy old timber buildings full of lathes and the like out of the ark and dedicated to keeping their vintage railcars moving. It all dates back to the 1920's when the line was built - or at least looks like it. An absolute gem, worth a trip to Japan just to ride this one I would say.

And next to the workshop is this wonderful tin shed sheltering three veterans from the rain. I wonder if any of them could be restored to working order now, I'm sure that in the UK someone would leap at the chance. There are two Baldwin 2-6-2T's (Nos. 1 and 2) built in the USA in May 1924 (Works nos. 57776 and 57777)And next to them is a Japanese Imperial Railways B10 4-4-2T (yes - an 'Atlantic' tank!) No. B104.

Does anyone know if the Baldwin drawings from that era are in an archive somewhere? I'd love to build a 7mm model of one of these.

Mytsery Grice

2006-08-29T01:54:00.000-07:00

A mystery grice today. I was in Tsudanuma and walked down the stairs to the platforms and there was this train waiting 'in the hole' in Platform 2 hauled by a Bo-Bo diesel switcher. Unfortunately and as these things always turn out it got a clear road about 15 seconds after I got there so it was off before I could get some good photos.

What is it I wonder? There were three coaches in the set and 0ne was numbered 'ki-ya 192-1' and had a logo that read 'East-i D'.

My guess is that it is a new test train for checking the permanent way quality and the alignment of the catenary. It was absolutely packed out with high-tech electronic gear. A while back there was an article in 'Tetsudo-fan' about the latest shinkansen unit for testing the track - yes, they have a dedicated five car train. It was a similar livery and I think called 'East-i'. So I guess this is the 1070mm gauge counterpart.

Super Azusa

2006-08-28T01:34:00.000-07:00

There are scores of 'named trains' running on Japanese Railways and here's one that I always think is pleasingly 'exotic' because of the 'bubble car' design of the front end of the EMU units. This is the 'Super Azusa'

The 'Azusa' was a train in steam days on this line and I think the name comes from a mythical bow used by Shinto deities. It runs from Tokyo(Shinjuku) to Matsumoto in the central ountains of Honshu, a run of about 150 miles, calling at Chino, Kofu, O-tsuki and Hachioji. The 'Super' version runs I think four times a day and only calls at Kofu.

Nice looking train. This picture was taken at a wayside station on my way back from O-tsuki last week when our local train was waiting 'in the hole' on the platform to the left for the 'pass'. I'd guess there was less than two minutes between us pulling up and the express rolling by, typical of JR's passion for split second timing.

Fuji Railway

2006-08-27T02:15:00.000-07:00

On my trip to the MAGLEV line last week I had to catch a train on the Fuji Railway, one of hundreds of private railways in Japan. I don't have the statistics to hand but I seem to remember that the combined length of private lines is almost as much as the national JR system

If I could find the same book I'm looking for I could also tell you when the line was opened. But it's around 20 miles long and runs from O-tsuki up to the northern slopes of Mount Fuji. If you want to climb the mountain this is the easiest way to reach it. Maybe next year!

Many of the smaller private railways are 3'6" gauge and in fact the Fuji Railway has a junction with JR although I don't think there is any regular through running. Most trains are as you see here - two or four car EMU's.

It all reminds me of Switzerland or Austria a bit. Better service though - about three trains each way an hour.

A few more MAGLEV photos

2006-08-25T02:51:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling lazy today so I thought I'd post three more of my photographs from my trip to Yamanashi yesterday. This first one is of the 'airport-like' access to MAGLEV trains. I can't see this ever catching on with gricers eh? No draughty acres of concrete platform to sit and eat your cheese and onion sandwiches on here ...

And here's the back 'slow end' of the test train - the end first designed for 350 km/h running. So when the train is running west to east that is still the maximum test speed. Just heading out over the points onto the main line ...

And finally here's another shot of an east to west 500 km/h run. It's across this valley in about five seconds, so you can see why I say it's like trying to photograph fighter aircraft. This has to be one of the worlds great train photographing vantage points though.

Back to normal speed tomorrow - on the Fuji line ...

Ultra-speed gricing

2006-08-24T03:10:00.000-07:00

Some ultra-speed gricing to report on today. I’m just back, very hot and tired, after making the trip over to Yamanashi Prefecture for my ride on the ‘Linear Express’ MAGLEV train. The line runs under the mountains a few miles south of JR’s Chuo Line so to get there you take the Tokyo – Kofu train and get off at O-tsuki to catch the small private Fuji line for three stops. Then you walk over the hill to the test centre.

Wow! Was I impressed! It’s much more like a plane than a train I guess, a ‘plane’ of coaches that flies a few inches above the ground. The levitation cuts in and out at about 70 mph.

There are two parallel test tracks, the north and south, but only the north was running today – the other is used to trial ‘passing tests’ with a second unit. Out trip comprised four movements, firstly out onto the main line about for 10 km west, then reverse for a run east for about 25 kilometres at around 200 mph. And then the FAST one – back west again accelerating quickly to 500 kph (312 mph). Finally back to the station.

Lovely ride. The acceleration was just amazing and so smooth, but you could really feel the power there.

After my trip I hung around to watch the next one and caught the train at 300 mph on the next run. There’s a great gricer’s vantage point on the adjacent hill and they even helpfully warn you when it’s going to come out of the tunnel in the opposite hillside but it’s a bit like trying to photograph low-flying fighter aircraft. I don’t suppose I’ll ever grice anything faster than that.

Gricing at Stenkrith

2006-08-22T04:09:00.000-07:00

Here's another picture straight out of my childhood, taken I'd guess around 1954. The vantage point is a bridge on the lane between Kirkby Stephen and Nateby and if you walked up the hill a few hundred yards you would come to my grandfather's house.

In the foreground the train is crossing a bridge over the River Eden which is in a small limestone gorge here. The place is known as Stenkrith and is a well known spot for having picnics, walking the dog and the like.

I'd guess this is the afternoon train for Darlington. It's just left Kirkby Stephen East Station which is beyond the bridge in the distance. The J21 on the point is taking it easy but the engine 'banking' at the back - probably one of the 'Mickey Mouses' I mentioned a couple of days ago - is working hard. As soon as the train is past the camera the 1:60 begins and both engines will be straining against the hill.

Lovely gricing eh? You can't find it like this any more.

Mickey Mouse

2006-08-20T02:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a British Railways Class 2MT 2-6-0. Built from around 1950 these engines were modelled very closely on H.G. Ivatt's equivalent LMS design and they were intended for the lightest routes and branch lines.

This is 78019. You can just about read the '12H' shed plate in the picture which was Kirkby Stephen. In fact I knew one of her her regular drivers, Dick Alderson. He lived just across the village green from our house.

Why they were called 'Mickey Mouses' I don't know but they were a very neat small design and good performers too. She'd make a nice model in 'O' gauge.

Shildon Electrics

2006-08-19T03:08:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting archive photograph. It shows one of the Bo-Bo's designed for the Shildon - Newport electricifcation which I think was energised around 1910 and petered out just before World War Two. The electrification covered parts of the original Stockton and Darlington Railway and Clarence Railway and brought coal down from the West Durham coalfield to the docks at Middlesbrough.

Like most coal-hauling routes it lasted just about as long as the pits it served but in the quarter century that it operated it brought a huge quantity of coal to the coast.

I'd not realised until I started to travel around more just how much the twelve locos ordered by the N.E.R. for this work were modelled on eastern USA prototypes - not surprising as their C.M.E. Wilson Worsdell made a trip to look at Altoona in 1905. They would make an interesting - and rather easy - model.

The train is passing Thornaby station and I have an interesting link with it - this is where my grandfather started working as a porter for the railway in 1912. On the outbreak of the 1914 War he had vivid recollections of helping to throw drunken naval reserves who had collapsed on that platform you can see on the left onto trains bound for Portsmouth.

Coal Road

2006-08-18T03:09:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture that brings a smile to my heart - it is on the cover of Norman Hill's book "Teeside Railways" and it shows a signal box called 'Coal Road' about two miles east of Barnard Castle. Many is the sunny afternoon that I've spent here with my grandad, it was one of his 'regular turns'and one he liked the most. There was a lovely sunny view from here over Teesdale.

It's 23 August 1952, almost exactly 54 years ago to the day eh? Two class 'J25's from Kirkby Stephen shed have just blasted up from Barnard Castle station yard heading for West Aukland with a mineral train. The fireman on the pilot engine is working hard as the safety valves are lifting, and a brisk westerly wind off the fells is carrying the smoke and steam away. I can almost hear those LNER hoppers creaking and clanking and groaning behind the engines struggling up the 1 in 60. The train engine driver is about to take the 'tablet' from the signalman for the single line ahead through Bluestone Grange cutting to Forthburn.

This might indeed be a 'family photograph' - I just can't tell. Is that my grandfather by the signal box passing the tablet to the driver. He certainly wore a waistcoat like that to work and it's his 'haircut'. And I think the motorbike parked next to the road is a Triumph 'Thunderbird'. It's probably him - I like to think so.

At the Junction

2006-08-17T02:27:00.000-07:00

Here's the Japanese version of a scene that might please gricers the world over. It's taken at Sakura, a town about 12 miles away where our single track Sobu Line parts from the line to Narita and heads south. Actually in theory we are the 'main line' as we were built first but since the airport was constructed the Narita line has a half hourly express service and is double tracked.

Class 113 train S66 is waiting at platform two on a hot Sunday evening, air compressors ticking away and aircon units running at full notch with those doors open. It's waiting 'in the hole'. In a moment a 'Narita Express' will roar through on the adjacent platform to the left and then this train will be on it's way as service 465M, all-stations to Choshi via Narita.

This is a station full of interest and activity and it would make a great model in 'N' gauge. Maybe one day!

The Green Shelf

2006-08-16T05:40:00.000-07:00

I seem to remember that there was once a movie called "The Green Mile" but here is part of the contents of "The Green Shelf" in my study.

This is my most regularly read railway book for sure. It's "Locomotives of the LNER" published by the RCTS (Railway Correspondence and Travel Society) over the years. It comes in eighteen volumes and not all are in print but if you watch UK Ebay they often come up there. Each volume is around 150 pages so that's around 3,000 pages packed with photographs of every variation in every class, details of when boilers were superheated, liveries, shed locations and descriptions of main duties. This is indeed a series for rivet counting gricers like me.

A wonderful piece of work by a whole team of writers; I think maybe the greatest railway book in the world but then I'm an LNER afficionado.

But here's a thing. Last year I tracked down one of the out-of-print volumes and thought I had the set. But then I discovered that they had published a volume 10B so I still have that to hunt down. If you ever see it let me know!

Long Toms

2006-08-15T04:15:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite pastimes is rooting around in piles of old railway magazines hunting for technical drawings of locomotives. I have thousands of them. Sometimes you can get drawings in collections - like the Kalmbach "Locomotive Cyclopedia" in the USA or F.J. Roche's "Historic Locomotive Drawings". But the best fun is to root around in back numbers on some dusty shelf.

Here's one such drawing - from a 1975 edition of 'Model Railways' - a magazine of blessed memory now. It was more than a tad eccentric, there were endless detailed special articles and drawings and it the end it went bust and was resurrected to look sadly like every other model train magazine, full of adverts for Hornby trains.

It shows a Stockton and Darlington Bouch 0-6-0 as reboilered by Edward Fletcher - a class that used to be known as the first 'Long Toms' because of the length of their boilers and the way the firebox was stuck behind the rear axle. No 1275 is preserved somewhere in the UK - maybe at Shildon now or the North Road Museum at Darlington.

One day I'll get around to some serious model building with all these drawings - I promise!

2851 "Sunderland"

2006-08-14T04:40:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting story about LNER Class B17/4 that I spotted today on page 112 of "Locomotives of the LNER" Part 2b that will interest Norman as a "Sunderland Boy" himself.

The B17/4 4-6-0's were named after football teams (that's 'soccer' to you Eddie!), a series that included 2851 "Derby County" and 2854 "Sunderland".

In 1937 Sunderland got through to the Cup Final at Wembley and a special train was laid on from the north-east to London for the team and supporters. The LNER, bless them, decided that 'their team' would be pulled by 2851 "Sunderland".

But the problem was that the locomotive was in several pieces in Gorton works for a major overhaul. There was no chance of getting it back together in time so they sneakily took 2854 "Derby County" over to the works and swapped over the name plates! Right name but wrong number ...

It did the trick. Sunderland won the cup that year

I couldn't find a picture of 2851 or 2854 but here's a nice picture of 2871 "Manchester City" at Nottingham Victoria station.

Rain, Steam and Speed ...

2006-08-13T04:06:00.000-07:00

Mentioning the artist William Mallord Turner on my 'other blog' tonight reminded me of this famous painting of his in the National Gallery in London. Its title is "Rain, Steam and Speed ... The Great Western Railway" and it was painted in 1844.

It's an interesting picture and worth a very close look. The location is, I seem to remember, the railway bridge over the Thames at Maidenhead about 20 miles west of London and here is Brunel's railway to Bath and Bristol a few years after it opened. This is the original seven foot gauge line, and the locomotive has a very large 'haystack' copper firebox. Behind the engine is a train of open caoches with passengers huddled on their benches in heavy coats against the weather.

I guess by the early 1840's trains like this must have been working at 40 mph or even faster and it must have been gruelling to sit outside at that speed in rain or snow in the third class 'Parliamentary' carriages. I must see if I can find any contemporary descriptions. What a 'gricer' heaven though eh? I once rode behind the replica of 'Rocket' like this and it was 'ace'! Whirled along at speed in an open truck with a strange array of antediluvian motive power to see at every station! Can you imagine it?

Battle of Britain

2006-08-11T04:08:00.000-07:00

Writing about gricing at Vauxhall yesterday reminded me of the pleasures of watching Bullied's 'Pacifics' working through there - Merchant Navy Class heavy Pacifics headed for Southampton, and the lighter West Country and Battle of Britain Pacifics which could be seen on expresses down to the East Kent coast and Dover.

To us gricers at the time these engines were collectively known as "spam cans" because of the shape of their distinctive streamlining. Later most had this casing removed and they were very elegant engines.

The "Battle of Britain" class all had names related to June 1940 - squadrons, airfields and other fighter aircraft related names. Here is 'Manston' passing Folkstone. Manston was the Spitfire airfield in East Kent. Actually it's still a familiar name to UK radio listeners because it's the name of a weather station used in the daily shipping forecasts too.

Big End Trouble

2006-08-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

Mallard's setting up of the speed record came with a price. About a couple of years or so ago I was in the National Railway Museum in York and as luck would have it, one of the guides was an old engine driver who once drove this famous "streak." Lying besid the loco in the museum on the loco's left side is a conn-rod; the one that was on Mallard at the time of that record breaking run. The big-end bearing on the middle left hand driver had run out. Consequently the crankpin was distorted a little. The poor girl has had big-end problems ever since.
It just goes to show, even machines get arthritis! But she is a beautiful old lady nonetheless. She sits in the museum beside another gracious "Dame of the Iron Road", the V2, Green Arrow. That loco has taken me from Sunderland to Newcastle on many gricing trips during my childhood. Although in those days she was a rather scruffy black arrow.

Norman

Schools

2006-08-10T04:22:00.000-07:00

When I was in my early 'teens I'd often take a trip up to London from Sussex and 'do' the Southern Region terminals in the capital. Actually stations like Victoria, Charing Cross and Waterloo weren't very promising for gricing - there was no clear view of the platforms, but if you hung around on stations in the maze of junctions just south of the Thames - and particularly Vauxhall and Clapham Junction - there was stacks of action.

Mainstay of services then on the Kent Coast expresses were the 'Schools' class - I think Britain's most powerful 4-4-0's. Designed by Richard Maunsell they were mean looking machines with a lot of accelleration.

It never struck me at the time what a strange thing it was to do to name an entire class of railway engines after often minor English Public Schools but I guess it says a lot about the background of the Southern Railway Board of Directors. I never did see "Ifield" or "Marton Road" speeding by!

One of the class - "Repton" - found it's way to the railway museum in Vermont

Matchless Lawns

2006-08-09T02:11:00.000-07:00

I was in Naruto at lunchtime and as we drove over the Togane Line level crossing I couldn't help noticing how matchless lawns - or maybe even meadows! - rolled away on both sides of the road. It's quite a busy line - trains about every half hour - but by August JR East seem to give up entirely on weed control on its more rural lines. The rails had vanished into vegetation.

It reminded me of this postcard I bought a while back down in Boso Hanto - a recollection by a local artist of the trains of his youth in leafy Chiba-ken. Here a smokey 4620 Class 2-6-0 is picking it's way through the meadows on a summer's day back in the 1950's and the track simply isn't to be seen.

I wonder how they handle weed control these days. Over Stainmore in the 1950's they had a herbicide spray train in May and that was enough to see off our feeble northern English weeds. I can't image that it's all so innocent now.

Changing Engines

2006-08-08T04:27:00.000-07:00

Norman has sometimes posted pictures taken at Carlisle Citadel station but here's one taken fifty years ago. It must be just after eleven - the 'up' 'Royal Scot' has just rolled in from Glasgow and the Polmadie shed 'Duchess' is being changed for one of the Carlisle 'Duchesses' to take the train on to London. In a couple of hours the Scottish engine, coaled and watered, will take the 'down' northbound 'Royal Scot' back across the border

Changing engines at intermediate stations on long distance trains became quite common in Briitain in the 1950's to balance crew workings. On the East Coast Main Line the change was usually made at Grantham.

Here on the west coast though it was essential - the tenders just didn't have the capacity to carry enough coal for the two big climbs at Shap and Beattock

3 July 1938

2006-08-07T04:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of interesting old photographs I've shamelessly borrowed from my copy of O.S.Nock's "The Gresley Pacifics" omnibus edition. It's long out of print but you can get a secondhad copy - take a look here.

The photo at the top is Mallard lurking in the 'up' loop at Barkston just north of Grantham on Sunday 3 July 1938 with Nigel Gresley himself aboard. This was supposed to be a routine brake test of new rolling stock comparing air and vacuum brakes but the coach slipped in behind the locomotive suggests all is not what it seems. It's the old N.E.R dynanometer test coach, now in the National Railway Museum at York.

A few minutes later the train pulled out onto the main line towards Peterborough and London. It stormed up to Peascliffe tunnel on full throttle and as it began the descent of Stoke Bank that regulator stayed full open and everyone hung on for dear life. Some miles down the bank at Tallington the train reached the world speed record for steam which still stands today - 126.7 m.p.h

Below is a picture of the crew in charge of this risky enterprise - a bunch of pretty fearless Yorkshiremen eh? From left to right Fireman Bray, Driver Duddington and Inspector Jenkins. I've got a cap like that too.

sss

Those 'German' blinkers

2006-08-06T01:41:00.000-07:00

I'm sure that I've said a million times before that my favourite class of LNER engines was the A3 Pacfics, and I think from various things he said that they were Nigel Gresley's favourites too. The had a kind of 'racehorse' elegance to them that you really only saw in motion. And how fast they could move eh! I was suddenly reminded of it again last night watching a new DVD of film from the 1950's and 1960's. Streak lightning!

One problem that dogged the A3's for much of their operating life was the risk of exhaust smoke drifting down at speed and spoiling the driver's view. Eventually in the late 1950's nearly all of them were fitted with double blastpipes and a Kylchap exhaust arrangement and also a rather 'German' looking pair of 'blinkers' - the smoke deflectors at the sides of the chimney.

Not only did this cure the smoke problem but in the opinion of many it made a beautiful locmotive even more beautiful despite completely changing the appearance

Here's a 1:12 model I saw at Harrogate Show two years ago of 60045 'Lemberg' sporting German 'blinkers' and also a 'Flying Scotsman' headboard. She looks as good as the real thing!

Newcastle and Carlisle

2006-08-05T05:05:00.000-07:00

It's a surprising thought that in some parts of Britain we are edging up towards the bi-centenary of some of our railways. The line between Newcastle and Carlisle is one of them.

The route was actually staked out within a few years on the completion of the Stockton and Darlington Railway and completed in 1838. At that time it was quite separate from the other railway developments in England and has it's own distinctive styles of civil engineering and buildings. It became part of a wider North Eastern Railway system in the 1860's.

The line runs up the rural valley of the Tyne through Hexham, Haydon Bridge and Haltwhistle and then across the gap and down towards the Solway Firth and Carlisle. Not only is it a very pretty route but it's aways been able to handle the largest of locomotives so, although it's not a first league 'main line'it's had some interesting workings over the years. A good modelling project!

Here's a Scotrail 156 unit passing (as most trains do!) Haydon Bridge station headed for Carlisle then over the border and up to Stranraer for the boat to Larne and connecting train to Belfast. Once there was a direct line from Carlisle to the ferry but these days trains have to head almost as far north as Glasgow, cut over to Ayr and then down the Firth of Clyde coast.

91 At Newcastle

2006-08-04T04:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a rare picture - Newcastle on a sunny day! No, only joking of course ...Newcastle is famous for sunshine as everyone knows.

When the East Coast Mail Line was electrified in the 1980's the Class 91's were introduced as the 'top link' electric motive power. The voltage is the same as the West Coast Line - 25kv.AC - but actually I'v never seen a locomotive from either route on the other so that's one bit of standardisation that turned out to be irrelevant - so far.

Perhaps with rising oil prices they could link the two across country with a new electrification through Sheffield. Hey! Even better! They could try designing locomotives that run on coal eh? How would they work? You could have some cylinders at the front and ...

This is 91 107 'Newark of Trent' in 'GNER' livery and about to start for London. It's at the back of the train - these are very high speed 'push-pulls' with a driving trailer at the south end and locomotive at the north end. Why anyone would want to call a locomotive 'Newark' - a small and undistinguished town on the ECML - beats me. But there are odder engine names these days.

The 91's have 'cruise control' and a top speed of 140 mph but they are limited in service to 125 mph. They are 'odd ended' and were built so that at night they could be used on freight trains and driven from either end but on passenger trains they are always wired up like this. Actually I've never seen one either used on a freight train or being driven 'B' end first either. Some more redundant flexibility I guess.

Step along there ...

2006-08-01T02:37:00.000-07:00

Now this really IS a level ('grade') crossing. It's at Tsurumi about 15 miles south of Tokyo and this is what used to be the lane up to Sojiji Temple.

Reading from this side .. two tracks to Yokosuka, two tracks Keihin local, four tracks Tokaido line and two tracks freight to Yokohama. So step along please - you have ten tracks to get across before those barriers come down! Actually all these lines are so busy I guess that the barriers stay down around 80% of the time.

Whizzing by in this picture is a kaisoku semi-fast on the Tokaido Line - it's a 113 Class but a different colour scheme to the Chiba lines - what I like to think of as the 'Irish Flag' orange and green version.

Oh! And that isn't all the gricing to be had here. Just beyond the crossing that low bridge is a private railway down to Yokohama and I'm actually standing under the Tsurumi Line to take this picture - so there are fourteen tracks in total here ...

Japanese Trainspotting in practice

2006-07-31T02:18:00.000-07:00

As a break from the heavy detail that I included about rosters and the like yesterday here is a photograph of one of the trains listed in the short excerpt I included in my entry that might make it all a bit clearer ...

Here's our local station at Hyuuga and a 113 Class is just pulling up on a down train to Choshi. I really like this colour scheme - and indeed the trains. They are early seventies vintage but of course immaculately maintained and they have a bit of character about them. You could write a novel based on these trains and their passengers - commuters to distant Tokyo, farmers and shoppers off up to Chiba and schoolkids. They are always full - usually VERY full.

See that little yellow tag in the top of the nearest front window? That's the crucial one, the train reporting number You can't read in reduced but actually it's train Chiba Makuhari train S71 - as this is the 'Choshi end' you can check on your list from yesterday and see that the first coach here is trailer 111-1129. The yellow panel with the kanji on in the centre reads "Choshi via Yachimata" and the white panel beneath is the service number - JR East Japan Service 1348, the 10:17 Chiba-Choshi 'all stations'

You can't say that you are ever short of information as a gricer in Japan ...

Serious Japanese Gricing

2006-07-30T01:00:00.000-07:00

A while back I warned you that 'gricing' in Japan was a tougher task than in either the UK or America and today I'll let you into a few professional secrets about collecting train numbers here.

It's not for the faint-hearted, believe me. Actually I think I should be charging consultancy rates just for telling you this ...

Japanese roster ('spotters books') come in several volumes and here is the 2004 JR Electrical Multiple Unit edition. Below is part of page 74 which gives information on some of the local units we get through Hyuuga ...

The bigger characters at the top of the page read Chi-ha-ri-5 which is short for the depot name Chiba Makuhari, our local motive power depot. All units have this 'shed code' on the lower left side of the coaches.

Below this is the class designation 113 and then a diagram of the six coaches of these particular units. There is a little lable which tell you which direction the units face (to the left Kamogawa, Choshi, Narita). There are three different kinds of coach in the train - 111 Classs ku-ha trailers, 112 Class pantograph motor coaches and 113 class motor coaches. The black boxes on the roof show the air conditioner types (almost as important in Japan as the tractive effort!)

Then the actual trains are listed on the left the reporting number. So Train Chimari S61 comprises vehicles 111-244, 113-1501,112-1501,113-1504,112-1504 and 111-1448. The date on the right (Heisei 11-10) October 1999 shows when the unit was last modified.

Hard stuff eh? But as long as you spot that yellow reporting number S61 hanging in the cab you can look up the rest at your leisure

Hyuuga

2006-07-29T01:22:00.000-07:00

I’ve not included any pictures of our local station here so far – but here you are! Hyuuga is on the country section of the Sobu Line, a route built from Tokyo out to the port of Choshi at the mouth of the Tone River in the late 1890’s.

Hyuuga must originally have had a goods yard at the south-east side of the station, but it’s long vanished and I’ve never found a plan showing it. The whole place was remodelled when the line was electrified in the 1960’s, although the next station down the line at Naruto still has the original Sobu Railway building.

This photo was taken in June 2004 – an old ‘183’ unit on the down ‘Shiosai’ express for Choshi rumbling through while the up local bound for Chiba waits ‘in the hole’ on platform 2

Just a passing loop here now but a busy one and working it is a bit complex because there is a level crossing at the Chiba (north-west) end of the station just beyond where the trains are passing. Trains can’t be routed into one platform unless the other platform is either clear or the train in the opposite direction is already standing. In other words you can’t have trains coming into both sides of the loop from opposite directions at the same time.

As there are about twenty ‘meets’ of Choshi and Chiba-bound trains here daily there’s often the odd sight of the barriers coming down for the Chiba-bound train and then going up again without a train crossing as it halts in the station and the road is set for the opposite Choshi-bound train. Then about thirty seconds later the barriers come down to let the second train in and stay down while the first train leaves too.

Of course all us ‘locals’ know this and we are pretty nippy across that crossing if the barriers go up! Watch out if you are a pedestrian!

Keihin Railway

2006-07-28T00:50:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before that there are several private railways operating in the Tokyo area, and here is one I haven't featured before. Actually I stll haven't ridden on it either because if I'm travelling in this area I usually already have a JR 'Holiday Pass' for the day that will take me on a parallel route for free.

The Keihin line runs south out of Tokyo more or less parallel with the JR Tokaido Line down to Kawasaki, Tsurumi, Yokohama and out to the commuter towns in the Miura Peninsula of Kanagawa Prefecture. As a lot of the route is cleared for 75 mph running it's one of the fastest private lines in Japan; even this 1000 Series 'all stations' EMU is capable of running at that speed.

The Keihin would make for an interesting model. A bit like Liverpool's old 'Overhead Railway', its natural habitat is the thirty or so miles of docklands along the west side of Tokyo Bay It also sevices Tokyo's Hanada Airport.

Roaming in the Gloaming

2006-07-27T04:32:00.000-07:00

A busy day today with a house full of kids so just a little reminder of summer here, and of a sunny if sticky morning.

Here's my Athearn F7 - what we gricers like to refer to as 'covered wagons' because of the shape (hope I'm right Eddie!). As I'm a Espee buff ('Southern Pacific' Fallen Flag of blessed memory)! mine of course is in the 1960's SP 'Black Widow' livery of black, silver and tuscan red. This is how an F7 of long ago might have looked growling up to Dunsmuir or across the desert to Yuma.

This is the north east curve on my garden line, out amongst the conifers by the lane. This is how garden railways should be - messy, decking a bit warped but full of colour and fresh air and the sounds of clickety-click over rail joints with the birds singing. Who would want a 'pike' in the attic or basement once you have discovered the joys of garden railroading?

West Coast Railway Company

2006-07-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

A Class 47 diesel in West Coast Railway Company livery at Carlisle station. The WCRC run charter trains. That explains the sometimes motley collection of Pullman and standard coaches that trundle past my studio.

Photo by freefoto.com

Norman

News from Carnforth

2006-07-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

The Old "Steamtown" has long been defunct. But when I visited this link all became clear. There are pictures of various diesel shunters in different states of decay. What I did notice on my last trip through Carnforth is the number of coaches being painted in maroon livery and carrying the logo "West Coast". As the train pulled out on its way to Arnside I espied a couple of Deltics receiving a lick of paint as they are being restored to their former glory.

Norman

JR Freight

2006-07-26T02:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture that I meant to post yesterday but the 'Blogger' photo upload seems to be regularly out of action these days. Anyway, it's working now!

Freight is something that you don't often hear mentioned in the context of Japanese railways. Actually the serivce is quite like the UK (and of course very unlike North America!). Here the old-style van load stuff vanished as it did in England in the 1960's leaving the old JNR with some incredibly valuable redundant real estate around Tokyo and other major cities.

It was replaced by a freightliner container operation which is quite busy and now run as a separate JR division, although it suprises me in a country as long and crowded as Japan that there aren't more trains. Of course being Japan the service is run to the second, with trains timetabled between passenger services on some main lines. That is what happens on our side of Tokyo, where the service between Shinkoiwa and the steel town of Kashiwa dovetails with expresses to Narita on the Sobu line.

Here is one of those trains coming through Monoi in charge of the usual EF65. These are interesting engines and I'll post a close up sometime - to get over the low axle load problems they have three bogies - one in the middle! So this is actually a Bo-Bo-Bo!

What the postman brought

2006-07-24T03:51:00.000-07:00

"Take a Lookie here!" as Rev. Mugo would say and see what the postman brought me today. It seems that I've been lucky in the Central Japan Railway ticket draw and I have a ticket for the MAGLEV 'Linear Express' for the 24th August. I'm on the 10:15 train.

I never thought that I stood the slightest chance of winning one of these rides. The public are only invited on three days this year and all the 1500 seats are allocated by lottery. But there you go - I actually got one! So next month I'll be one of the few people around to have travelled at 300 mph by rail, even if it is of a rather unusual kind. That sort of speed even puts Mallard in the shade eh?

The test track is over in Yamanashi Prefecture some miles south of the Chuo Line and about half way between Tokyo and Kofu. Most of it is underground, it only surfaces at a few points as it crosses mountain valleys.

Well, watch this space! Some time towards the end of August yuo can see the photographs on "Railway Roundabout"!

The Duchesses

2006-07-22T02:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was wondering if Norman could guess what my all-time favourite West Coast Main Line motive power would be and of course this is it - the 'Duchess' Pacifics built in the 1930's by Willian Stanier. The West Coast route from London to Scotland used to pose some real operational problems because between Lancaster and Penrith trains had to climb up to Shap summit. This was nothing too impressive by North American standards but it still caused problems for heavy expresses in the days of steam and the weather over the fells could be pretty arctic too.

Stanier's Pacifics were purpose built with this need for extra power in mind - big four cylinder engines with enormous fire-boxes - and in Britain of course hand-fired by a sweating fireman armed with a shovel who might expect to shift five tons of coal between London and the locomotive change at Carlisle.

Though they were designed for power they could be exceedingly fast too. I used to love to grice on the platform at Penrith where expresses coming down the bank with an open throttle would usually pass by up around the 'ton'. For a short time one of the class even held the world speed record - I'll write about that another day.

They had a weird collection of names for such lovely engines - an assortment of royalty, gentry and various cities served by the LMS. WIth my local connections I guess I have to say my favourite was 46243 'City of Lancaster'!

Here's 46242 'City of Glasgow' at Easter 1961 and just how I remember them! She's on an up express at Wreay, near Penrith and building up a fair head of speed and steam for the big bank a few minutes ahead. You would have heard and smelled her a mile away!

The photo is courtesy of the Roundhouse book "LM Pacifics: A Pictorial Tribute". Long out of print but you can find a second-hand copy here

This is more like it

2006-07-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

The Virgin staff don't like Pendolinos all that much either. "Not what they're cracked up to be," they say. Thay are quiet and they do tilt as they go through the Howgills at Tebay. But the ride in them is more akin to Shoestring Airlines than a premiers train.
Now this "Royal Scot" class 4-6-0 is a bit more like it, Iain. Here it is on the Carlisle-Settle Railway where steamers still run on some weekends. Granted, with a back up diesel at the other end.

Pendolino

2006-07-21T03:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture of one of the Virgin 'Pendolino' units taken at Lancaster not so long after the were introduced on the faster servives up to Scotland in 2004. This one was headed for Glasgow, or would have been if they could have got the doors to shut. I seem to remember a lot of cussing and hammering going on further up the train, which I had just got off. Teething troubles eh? But they must have got it fixed somehow because it wasn't still there the next time I went to Lancaster!

They look OK eh? But somehow all these express units these days are variations on a theme - what we gricers like to call "flying bananas".

Being a fully paid up member of the Nostalgia Club I have to say that these Penolino's aren't a patch on the clapped out old Class 87's they replaced for atmosphere on dark rainy Lancashire autumn nights. I'm venerable enough now to remember five generations of 'top link' motive power here on the West Coast Main Line. No prizes for guessing which I liked the best Norman!

Along the Coast

2006-07-20T05:01:00.000-07:00

When Britain pretty well got rid of all it's trams in the 1950's there was one place that had the sense to keep their system, or at least the largest part of it. Yes, let's be fair, we might have a good laugh about Blackpool from time to time but here's one thing that they did right, for sure.

If you aren't British you probably don't know about Blackpool at all. It's a big old seaside resort on the Lancashire coast, a kind of 'Coney Island' but on a grand scale. They have specialised (though they would hate me for saying it now) in offering cheap, cheeerful and usually very alcoholic holidays for us working-class types for more than a century.

The trams were introduced from Fleetwood down along 'the front' and out as far as Starr Gate around 1900. What Americans would call 'inter-urbans'. More than a few of them have been blown over by the sea gales down the years but they still get heavily used to 'see the lights' at Illumination time. They have some wonderful old stock too - as you can see from these 1930's examples passing at Cleveleys Square.

Yep! Go to Blackpool to ride on the trams. You'll love it.

Red For Danger

2006-07-18T02:08:00.000-07:00

Writing about Tyler equipment yesterday reminded me of a book I enjoyed reading when I was younger - "Red For Danger" by L.T.C. Rolt. Good grief! I see on UK Amazon they are looking for twenty five quid for a secondhand copy today, I wonder if I still have mine. I guess I maybe paid thirty pence for it! This growth of rip-off pricing on UK Amazon aimed at relieving 'the collector' of his cash is really something!

Oh! But let's not go there eh? That hobby horse can stay in the stable today! If you can find a copy in a junk shop or in your library this book is very thorough and readable compendium of British railway accidents from 1825 through to the 1980's. Not only does the author give a very well written presentation of some of our most notorious railway accidents but also analyses them into kinds of cause. Is there a North American equivalent of this book I wonder?

I guess in the end though nearly all causes come down to either not knowing or not thinking. Not knowing that cast iron can fracture, that gravity can be stronger than brakes. Not thinking that you didn't hear something right, that someone else might be mistaken.

In the end we only even learn through our mistakes, not everything can be foreseen. I'm sure that's as true now of sophisticated nuclear engineering as it ever was of gas-lit steam trains. In the end you can only predict those risks you have some ability or opportunity to foresee. The rest you learn about the hard way

I loved a little cartoon I once saw that showed a cave man dead on the ground next to a plate of dodgy looking mushrooms. His neighbour was busily carving on a big tablet of stone the reminder "Aminata phalloidies; deadly poisonous"

Tyler Block Apparatus

2006-07-17T04:03:00.000-07:00

During my childhood and early 'teens I had the equivalent of a 'mis-spent youth' hanging around many of the signal boxes worked by my grandad. A perfect 'gricer' upbringing eh?

Of course I didn't just sit there and watch either did I? I worked all those trains as they came and went, 'setting the road' pulling 'off' the signals and handling the telegraph instruments.

So pieces of kit like the Tyler 'Absolute Block' apparatus are very familiar to me. This is the piece of equipment that 'reserves' the track between two signal boxes for a particular train. Basically if it's used correctly it's theoretically impossible for two trains to be on the same line at the same time. Normally the line is considered 'blocked' but when a train needs to move the receiving signal box sets the equipment to 'line clear' and then the dispatching signal box sets it to 'train on line'.

Foolproof. Theoretically, that is.

I first learned something about electric shocks using this bit of gear, or rather the telegraph key that goes with it. When 'offering' a train at Hopetown Junction at Darlington with my left hand on a steel lever ready to pull my right hand slipped off the ebony key and onto the brass contact underneath. It was then I discovered that 90 volts DC packs quite a punch.

Evening Star

2006-07-15T11:18:00.000-07:00

"Evening Star" - the last steam locomotive built for British Rail. Its working career has been very short compared to other workhorses of it's ilk. It now rests in grand retirement at the Railway Museum in York. It was about eight years ago I took my grandson to that museum for the day and he quite fell in love with this particular loco. Not surprising. On close examination you can see it is very well made and beautifully engineered. Something of a rarity these days.The drivers on the 2-10-0 are only 4'-6" diameter so is geared more for power than speed. indeed these, the last of British steam were designed for heavy freight.

Norman

Across the Marshes

2006-07-15T02:27:00.000-07:00

I'd just sat down to write 'Railway Roundabout' today when my friend Rev. Mugo in Canada sent me this link to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway site. Did I know about it? Do I know about it?? "Is the Pope a Catholic?" I ask myself!

Rev. Mugo probably has her own memories of the RHDR as it's not far from her home town of Rye.

The RHDR is a pretty unusual railway as it was essentially built as the fantasy of two very rich men back in the 1920's. You can read all about it on their excellent web site. They wanted to drive quarter-size express trains on 15" gauge and they commissioned one of Britain's best known model engineers - Henry Greenly - to design their locomotives and stock. Back in 1925 the LNER were introducing their A1 (later A3 Class) and the early locomotives in particular look very like Nigel Gresley's handiwork.

Location was a problem to start with but eventually the Romney Marshes in Kent was chosen. The main line extended to 13 miles of double track.

Amazingly and despite some 'touch and go moments' this line has survived and is - as you can see - well worth a visit! I saw it several times in the early 1960's at what I see now was a difficult moment for the RHDR. As a teenager I'd ride the 60 miles or so each way on my Triumph motor bike along deserted country roads with never a policeman in sight to get hauled by a Pacific across the marshland. Lovely! No wonder I grew up to be an insatiable gricer.

By the way ... if anyone has any fantasies about building a railway for fun I know a very pretty and remote valley in Northumberland that I've always thought would be the perfect place for 2'3" narrow gauge steam ...

Thanks to the RHDR site for the picture

Snowdrift at Bleathgill

2006-07-14T03:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a photograph of an old LNER 20 ton plough. It's almost in need of as much maintenance and restoration as me eh?

I put it in today to remind me of the good old days of icy Pennine winds as I'm sweating and sweltering in tropical heat here. Thirty three today - and that's before you get in the car.

Somewhere back in a cardboard box in England I've got a video called "Snowdrift at Bleath Gill" which would be great to watch today. You can read all about it here. Maybe it's even been issued on DVD now - I hope so. It's a real classic and in one scene near Stainmore I recognise my grandfather's wellies and cap!

Bleath Gill was a cutting just on the west side of Stainmore Summit. There was a draughty signal box there that I never remember being in use, but when winter winds howled over the fells it was a great place for snowdrifts. And the winter of 1947 when the film was made was the daddy of them all.

20 ton ploughs like this were used to re-open the line. The practice was rather dodgy - basically you backed off a few hundred yards with the plough and a couple of locos and charged. Then you hung on for dear life as you hit the drift like a stone wall.

Eddie - I once saw some lovely pictures of this kind of ploughing in progress out in rural Michigan somewhere. Have you seen them?

Tyneside Electrics

2006-07-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

The North Eastern Railway - one of Britain's most innovative of railway companies - electrified it's suburban routes between Newcastle and the coast to win back customers from the tramways and this was one of our earliest and most successful electrified networks. A lot of the original 1904 rolling stock intoduced by Charles Mertz had quite an American 'inter-urban' feel to it but sadly most of that first generation was destroyed in a depot fire in 1915.

This picture shows some of the last stock built in 1937. None of the rolling stock has survived - incredibly British Rail tore out the whole electrification during the 1960's - but I'm pleased to say that most of the original routes now operate again under electric power as part of the Tyne and Wear Metro network.

I have very happy memories of these trains. My girlfriend used to live out at Whitley Bay and I'd catch these services every weekend to go and see her. Thinking about it - in retrospect maybe my time would have been better spent on the platforms of Newcastle Central! Or maybe not ...!

2-Bil

2006-07-12T02:14:00.000-07:00

Back in 1959 we moved from the north of England to the south and took up a home in Crawley New Town in Sussex. Even today this might be rather a culture shock but then it was more like moving between two different countries. In fact many kids at my new school couldn't understand a word I said ...

This move brought me in contact for the first time with former Southern Railway electric trains. The trains along the Horsham line were mainly 2-BIL units like the one shown here - Iunderstand that 'BIL' stands for the romantic label 'bi-lavatory'. Did that mean that the trains had two? Dunno ...

I liked these 1930's electric units in their malachite green livery. They had old fashioned 'slam doors' and were like rocking horses once they got over sixty but I can see now that the were trains full of character. I used to catch them up to London regulalrly and down to Bognor on the coast. They ran (as our modern units on these lines still do) on 700 volts DC picked up from that third rail.

Photo courtesy of Southern E-Group site.

Makuharihongo

2006-07-11T03:26:00.000-07:00

When I was a child on Teeside in the north of England we had an area like this between Middlesborough and Thornaby. It was locally known as 'The Wilderness'and was the area where all the coke and ore trains tying up for Dorman Long steelworks were berthed. So I have a soft spot for this kind of panorama which probably isn't shared by many.

These are some of the outer 'parking tracks' at Makuharihongo Depot, the biggest and most important JR site on the east side of Tokyo. The picture is taken from a bridge I often use as a short cut doing my field studies and I could spend hours lurking up here on a nice day. Gricing heaven! On the far left is the Sobu Line 'down' fast for Chiba and away over to the right beyond the trains is the 'up' fast for Tokyo and the slow lines. Also the Keisei Railway tracks, which run parallel to JR here. So there's a heck of a lot of railway around - I think 22 tracks in total running unter this bridge!

Here in a picture taken on a muggy day a year ago is a selection of typical Chiba area power - including three old 183 Class units now of blessed memory.

The pylons to the left may look like any old pylons to you but they follow the line of one of the first long distance power distribution routes in Japan - they appear on a map of this area made in 1918. Needless to say most of the rest of the view would have been fields at the time.

Deltics

2006-07-10T05:13:00.000-07:00

Us ECML (East Coast Main Line) gricers were appalled at the idea of the Gresley Pacifics being scrapped but actually we were pretty lucky with their first generation diesel replacements - the 'Deltics'. There were 35 built as top link diesel traction and they were introduced from 1959.

These engines had a lot of character - for North American readers I should say they were as distinctive as the Alco 'PA's and if anything noisier and smokier! They could also run like the wind; back in the early sixties 100 mph running was commonplace.

The most wonderful thing about Deltics though was the noise they made - so distinctive I could recognise one in my sleep (and often did). Their 3300 hp diesel engines, which they took their name from, were originally devised for fast navy minesweepers.

Here's D9000 - 'Royal Scots Grey' in early 1960's two tone green livery and sporting the familiar 'Flying Scotsman' head board thistle. When I was up at Durham University and didn't have late morning lectures I'd regularly head up to the viaduct to see the up 'Scotsman' speeding through at 11:15 am. Happy days.

Chuo Line

2006-07-09T02:04:00.000-07:00

"Chuo" in Japanese means 'Central' but actually this line serves the west of Tokyo and eventually heads out into the central part of Honshu and Yamanashi Prefecture. It's a curious animal somehow. At Tokyo Station the Chuo Line is platfoms 1 and 2 and they are about 30' higher than the main part of the station. Trains come out down the ramp northwards and run due north for about a mile before curving west to follow the line of what was once the vast moat of Edo Castle for a few miles to Shinjuku.

Along the line of the moat the tracks run beside the Sobu line. This is Ichigaya Station - our Sobu locals stop here but the Chou Line by-passes the station as a fast line.

Most Chuo Line 'locals' are made up of 102 Class trains which handle a lot of the Tokyo commuter traffic. Here's one on a steamy evening last week, the hot dull weather so typical of Manto in July. But occasionally long distance expresses also weave their way between these trains, notably the 'Super Azusa' units headed for Kofu.

This must be one of the busiest stretches of railway in the world. In the rush hour services run here on a three minute headway on each line, so that's a train passing every forty seconds or so!

'Colonial' Gauge

2006-07-08T02:01:00.000-07:00

One thing I've been meaning to do since I landed in Japan is to sit down and make a detailed list of all the three foot six inch gauge (3'6") railway systems in the world.

In Britain this gauge used to be called 'Colonial Gauge' because back in Victorian times we used to build in areas that wouldn't have supported the expense of the heavier engineering required for 'standard gauge' track. It's not just a matter of the width of the track itself of course - the real heavier work comes because with standard gauge you can't turn such tight corners and so have to go through or under hills rather than around them.

3'6" gauge networks grew up in south and east Africa, in Australia and New Zealand and of course in Japan where the gauge is now 1071mm. Here's a picture from the Nairobi Railway Museum of an East African Railways Class 30

It's an interesting size because unlike smaller 'narrow gauge' systems it allows the development of heavy and fast locomotives. In fact it's perhaps the most attractive of all railway 'sizes' when you see it at work.

What other countries used this gauge? I'll have to make that list!

Evening Express

2006-07-06T01:56:00.000-07:00

Walking back from the village a couple of evenings ago I reached our local level crossing at the same time as the 'up' Shiosai. This far south it gets dark early even in midsummer and as you see by six thirty the light is almost gone. But there's a 30 mph speed limit on the tight curve here which is just about enough to 'freeze' the train for a photographer in the twilight

I wonder what the passengers have been doing out in Choshi all day? Business trips or visiting relatives perhaps. But now, on a very hot humid evening they are already half way back to town. The train will be 'tying up' in Tokyo in another fifty minutes after a sprint down the Sobu-honsen fast tracks from Chiba.

Whatever the purpose of their trip I guess those on the train will glad tonight for the powerful air-conditioning on board. I can hear it humming before I can hear the traction motors! I'm not sure that I really like these brash new 255 Class "Boso View Express" units much compared with their lovely old brown and tuscan red 183 Class forbears but they certainly look comfortable through those smoked glass windows ...

Stopping the 'Non-Stop'

2006-07-04T19:55:00.000-07:00

Back in 1935 when the A4's were first introduced and the 'Silver Jubilee' started as a fast 'non-stop' service between Newcastle and London, my grandfather worked as a signalman on the main line at Tollerton - the first station north of York.

The 44 miles between York and Darlington has always been known as the 'race track' on the East Coast Main Line and at Tollerton, where there's four parallel tracks - a fast and a slow line in each direction - the 'flyer' would crank up to around the 100 mph mark. There were special rules to keep it on time. Preceding expresses had to leave an adequate margin and the train was "double blocked" on the telegraph - worked two sections ahead rather than just one to allow time to get all the signals 'off' (clear).

A couple of months after the service started my grandfather 'accepted' the train on the block telegraph one morning and 'set the road' - pulled the necessary levers to set the signals and points for the train. It was a busy day, he had two other trains to deal with at the same time.

The track there is dead straight for miles and after a few minutes he could see th e 'Non-Stop' coming. But something was very wrong. The engine was braking hard and whistling. He watched with interest and concern - "What is that fool of a driver doing?" he wondered.

He looked at his levers and track diagram again and ...!!!!. He had 'set the road' for the wrong line! By mistake he'd pulled off the signals for the slow goods line and not the parallel fast track! Like lightening he cleared the signals for the express and it accellerated away again.

But in those days they were very strict about such things and soon the inevitable forms started to arrive to check why he had slowed the train. After about a week of explanations and apologies he eventually just wrote "I made a mistake!!" and they let it go at that. He was lucky.

ICE

2006-07-04T03:31:00.000-07:00

Back in 2001 my daughter Julia had a year at Giessen University and I got to make two trips over to Germany during the time she was there. On the first visit we took the train up to Koln (where the picture above shows the main station and the cathedral) and on the second visit we toured around a bit by car and I got a good look at the new high speed line between Koln and Frankfurt.

That was some day. I'd identified a good 'gricing' spot on the 1:50,000 map and it really WAS good. The Germans don't hide their hew high speed trains behind big wire fences - incredibly there the track wasn't fenced at all - so you could get some great views of trains running at 150 mph a few feet away.

At this particular site there was a tunnel and the sound of trains approaching through that was extraordinary, almost like an organ playing before they burst into the open.

Here's one of the new ICE Inter-City units I saw on that day. The are pretty smart and the livery is nice too. Another train to get a ride on to somewhere, some day.

Ribblehead Viaduct

2006-07-03T02:16:00.000-07:00

Railways in Northern England are well known for their fine stone-built viaducts. Here in Japan the first good tremor would have one of these turned into a heap of rubble in the bottom of the valley in about ten seconds. But in Britain more stable geology and the availability of good quality cheap limestone for building made this kind of design very popular.

And this I suppose is the daddy of them all - Ribblehead Viaduct. It's on the Settle - Carlisle line anout fifteen miles north of Settle. The bridge was constructed in the early 1870's on the new Midland Railway route from Leeds north to the Scottish border.

It wasn't an easy task. Part of the bridge was built over a bog called Batty Moss and they struggled to get a good foundation for the piers.

In the 1980's this viaduct was so much in need of repair that there was talk of closing the line but thankfully even Margaret Thatcher realised that it was a political non-starter. We take our railway heritage seriously in England! It was repaired at huge cost although now it's been single tracked to conserve the structure.

Back in the 1960's I often caught the train over this viaduct to climb Ingleborough - the mountain hidden in clouds in the background. Here's a double-headed excursion in March 2004 with a 4MT on the 'nose' - if you want to see more of Andrew Naylor's lovely pictures go here

Super Soya

2006-07-02T03:06:00.000-07:00

How far north do you want to go? All the way? Well, this train is the Japanese equivalent of the service from Inverness to Thurso or the journey up to Churchill in Canada.

In Japan they don't go any further north than the Super Soya does. When it reaches the buffers at Wakkanai in the far north of Hokkaido, that's as far as you can go.

Not always though. At one time Japan also included Karafuto just across the Soya Strait - the southern part of the island of Sakhalin which now is a part of Russia. There are more than a few mouldering railway relics up there and maybe one day I'll make it.

I only ever made it to Wakkanai once. It's a heck of a long way - four hours north of Sapporo which is far enough from the rest of Japan. I went one cold day in October 2003, travelled overnight on the night train and then two hours later caught the morning Super Soya south again and on to Abashiri (another story!) Beleive me, in the frozen light of a snowbound dawn two hours there was just enough!

Tokaido Line

2006-07-01T02:58:00.000-07:00

A lot of people have heard of the Tokaido Line but maybe most of them are pretty hazy as to what it is.

The Tokaido was one of the ancient highways of Japan, running between Kyoto and Edo (now Tokyo). The name literally means "Eastern Sea Route" TheTokaido line was Japan's first main line joining those two cities built back in the 1880's and it largely follows the route of the road south and west down to Shizuoka and Nagoya. But then the railway headed up to Lake Biwa and west to Kyoto - the old road crossed the bay by ferry and ran through Mie Prefecture.

In the 1960's the parallel Tokaido Shinkansen ") ("New trunk route")was lbuit. It too follows the old railway for much of the way but of course takes a lot of liberties with tunneling through mountains etc. not possible eighty years before.

You can still travel on the Tokaido line from Tokyo down to Kyoto but not (with a few interesting exceptions I'll mention later) by through express. JR don't compete with themselves on parallel routes. So now most of the very busy Tokaido line traffic is fairly local kaisoku fast trains. From Tokyo you ususally catch them down to Odawara, and then change trains to go further west.

So these Tokaido Line platforms at Tokyo station have come down in the world over the years. No longer do JNR C57 Pacifics pull out with expresses to the west - to get the shinkansen you need to go a few platforms across from here. But when I'm gricing at Tokyo |I still sense the ghosts of expresses long departed from platform 9 here.

Tokyo eki

2006-06-30T04:32:00.000-07:00

If it hadn’t been for the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 Tokyo would never have had a central station. But the disaster caused so much damage to the city that it gave the government an opportunity to make a ‘corridor’ between the Shimbashi terminus on the Tokaido line to the south west and Ueno terminus on the lines to the north of Japan. Half way along this new five mile railway Tokyo’s new main station was built.

Now ten tracks head south from here and twelve to the north and east! There’s also two deeper sets of JR tracks running east in addition to a maze of metro lines headed in various diections under the building.

This is the Maronouchi side of the station – the posh side where the station master’s office is located. It’s also only about 200 yards from the Imperial Palace. When the Emperor takes the Royal Train this is where he comes to board it. The station master greets him on arrival and then leads him along a special private carpeted passage under the station to the Tokaido line tracks at platforms 9 and 10.

Actually this building is special for me too. Around the other side overlooking the Yamanote line platforms is where we had our wedding breakfast! Ideal location for a life-long ‘gricer’ eh? A train arriving every half a minute outside the window …

Caley 123

2006-06-29T04:33:00.000-07:00

It's amazing to think now but back in 1963 I actually saw this engine double-heading a GNSR 4-4-0 an enthusiast's special on the London to Brighton main line fast tracks! It was bringing a train back up from the Bluebell line which in those days was connected to the rest of the UK rail system at Horstead Keynes. And boy were they shifting too - maybe 75 mph! It was a sight for sore eyes ...

Now sadly Caledonian 123 languishes as a static exhibit in the Glasgow Museum of Transport but these engines were built for sprinting. Back in the 1880's when exprss trains were light 'single-wheelers' were in vogue - some time soon I must write about the Anglo-Scottish 'races' of 1888 in which this engine took part.

The 'Caley' main line ran north from the English border at Carlisle to Glasgow with a branch off to Edinburgh at Carstairs. I just love that Caledonian blue livery with red trimmings, perhaps I'll build a model of one of their engines just for the pleasure of watching that brillian blue circling my garden in the sunshine.

500 Series

2006-06-28T01:17:00.000-07:00

One ambition yet to fulfil in Japan is to travel on a 500 Series shinkansen. So far they have eluded me because they are only used on the very fastest 'Nozomi' services between Tokyo and Hakata and this is the one train that you aren't allowed to use with a Japan Rail Pass. But I need to travel down to Kyoto in December so that will be my chance to get to travel on one.

Smart beasts eh? There are nine sets built between 1995 and 1998 and they have a top speed of 200 mph although in service thay are normally run at a maximum of 186 mph. I've seen them running through Shizuoka at that speed - a very impressive sight.

These sixteen car trains are powered on every axle and have a total output of 25,000 HP. Each train cost around GBP £25 million.

CF de Provence

2006-06-27T04:07:00.000-07:00

At the moment we are busy rooting around on the internet for possible gites (cottages) to stay in during an upcoming trip to France. The plan is that we'll spend a few days in Paris in October and then meet up with some friends in Provence.

I've visited France often but never stayed in Provence before. We're looking for something east of Avignon

Maybe this trip I'll get a chance to ride on the Chemins de Fer de Provence - the little metre gauge line that trundles down from Digne to Nice in three hours. They even have occasional steam services in summer but in October I guess the best I can hope for is one of the venerable railcars they have, like this very Gallic looking Reneault.

Amazing that this fragment of French narrow-gauge has hung on like this. Sadly the old terminus at Nice - which I visited about 15 years ago - is no longer in use. The Gard du Sud was an amazing building which hopefully will get restored soon as an art gallery, but now the line stops a few hundred metres away avoiding the city streets. When I was there olive sellers used to bring their produce down from the hills on the morning train

Tennant 2-4-0's

2006-06-26T03:54:00.000-07:00

A lot of my study at the moment relates to passing time and the loss of experiences and information. This really strikes me in relation to 'gricing' too. We have a wealth of railway photography after 1945, and a fair number of pictures for the previous thirty years, but before about 1910 film emulsions couldn't capture moving trains well. Gefore 1880 there are very few railway photographs and they are all of static trains or station scenes.

So we have no idea of what gricing might have been like back in the 1850's or 1860's for example. What would it have been like to stand by the tracks and watch the trains going by 150 years ago? What did they look like? Were they clean or dirty? What noise did they make?

If I was to get a trip in a time machine I'd like to travel back to Darlington in the summer of 1885 - the year Henry Tennant's 2-4-0's were introduced. I know what '1463' here looks like in North Road Museum, but how did she look clattering in on an express of six-wheel coaches at speed? And in the yard there would be Stockton and Darlington Bouch '1001' 0-6-0's shunting coal hoppers and Fletcher '901' class on local passenger trains.

Yes, that might make for a perfect summer afternoon. Where's my fask of tea and sandwiches?

My thanks to Steve Frost for this photo

Freight Train Stopped in Carlisle.

2006-06-24T13:47:00.000-07:00

I was just about to board the Newcastle train when this Freightliner in DRS livery pulled in. The driver nipped out to get a sandwich at the station cafe just opposite. I like the freight trains. At least they have proper locomotives and have a bit more character about them than the soul-less silver cigar tubes that Virgin run. The sharp eyed among you may see this is a container train, flatbed trucks with containers on them. This one had about fifty containers on. Thats fifty less big lorries going down the M6. A good argument for keeping our railways.
The other regular freight carrier is EWS (England-Wales-Scotland). Their trains tend to bit a bit scruffier. But it is bulk haulage they do most of, coal, aggregate, mucky stuff. They use the same type of loco as shown here but painted marron and yellow. I'll try and get a piccy of an EWS sometime.

Norman

Will I get a ticket?

2006-06-24T03:47:00.000-07:00

Here's something a bit mouth-watering. I spotted this poster in Tokyo Station last week.

JR Central Japan are having three open days on their MAGLEV test track. This was built some years ago in the mountains of Yamanashi-ken to try out their prototype high speed trains and it's about 40 miles long. If you draw a line of a map from Tokyo to Nagoya then this track is pretty well on it - the plan is that one day it will be incorporated into a new high speed route. Around 80% of it is tunnels

Only in Japan would engineers be allowed to take that kind of a financial gamble. In Britain it takes us decades to get around to building a couple of miles of new railway.

So 1800 lucky people will get a chance to ride on the route fron 25th to 28th August. There's a lottery for tickets and the lucky winners will get to travel at 300 miles an hour on the MLX-01 experimental MAGLEV train. If you want to learn more look here

Will I be applying for a ticket? What do you think?

White Gloves

2006-06-23T03:34:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago my friend Rev. Mugo commented about the way drivers and guards here wear white gloves, and also something about the fancy hand-work that they use.

In Japan anyone touching or operating machinery wears white gloves - and train and bus drivers always! Well, you wouldn't want to get perspiration and fingermarks on that nicely polished machine eh? And also you don't want any oil or grease on your hands. People are very conscious of cleanliness here.

Also on trains everything is done like a military drill. On the kaisoku into Tokyo yesterday I snuck this picture of the driver as we sped along the fast line to Ichikawa. Around every twenty seconds or so he'd point to the approaching signal and say aloud to himself "aspect green!" It's a safety procedure, it means that he's even less likely to miss a warning signal.

They take procedures like this extremely seriously here, no one would ever let it slip or think it unnecessary. Guards too, when they close the doors at stations have their own checklist to recite, pointing down the train to check that all the 'open door' lights are extinguished and on curves checking the platform camera.

I should have had a 'routine' myself yesterday. I arrived at Chiba with eight minutes to spare to catch this train and settled myself comfortably in the front coach. Departure time came, the warning bell for 'doors closing' sounded and ... the doors didn't close and the signal was still red! Then - the train in the next platform departed - I'd got on the one next door leaving six minutes later! So I'm starting my own hand signal routine now - point to the departure board and say "right train!"

Cross-Country Virgin

2006-06-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

From Exeter to Glasgow via Birmingham New Street. The "cross country" route (or one of them) all of which at some point join the West Coast line. These trains look sleek and fast. By British standards they are fast but in no way compete with the Japanese Shinko. About 120 mph is their speed but are capable of 180 mph but the track in Britain simply isn't up to it. Despite the bad press these trains do run on time give or take a few minutes. The only thing I have against them is the seating; set like economy class aircraft and the seats themselves are not comfortable for long journeys. The most comfortable trains here are the Trans Pennine blue trains. I posted a picture of one coming into Carnforth about a month ago.
These Virgin Voyagers as they are called are diesel multiple units. The other type that Virgin run are the Pendolino which is electric and is a bit more comfortable, but not much. It does the Glasgow-London run.

Norman

Training Train

2006-06-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

I've just got back from a stint wardening a Youth Hostel in Northumberland. I went there by train and bus. The train to newcastle from Lancaster entails a change at Carlisle where I had to wait a half hour for my connection. This diesel loco in VIRGIN livery travels daily from Peston to Carlisle then returns to Preston. It passes my studio each day at 3-00pm and returns at 5-00pm. I have been told it is used by trainee drivers "learning the road", where they familiarise themselves with signals, points, speed limits etc. before driving the passenger trains.
I got this picture at Carlisle as it was prepared for its return journy south. It never seems to haul coaches or trucks. Its always the solo loco.

Norman

Driver's side

2006-06-21T02:54:00.000-07:00

Whizzing by tonight on my way to choir practice but here's a picture of something I think is a bit unusual.

This is the cab of a steam locomotive - actually a JNR C57 Class Pacific number C57 66 which as appeared on this Blog before. It's the driver's side - the steam regulator is just out of the photo but the handles and levers in the centre are the 'reverse' which also acted as a kind of power regulator too and the air brake.

It's looking very neat and almost as if the engine was last in steam yesterday, rather than back in 1964.

But here's the surprise. This engine lives in a public park in Tokyo a couple of minutes walk from Oomori station. And anyone can climb up into the cab and take a look. And yet as far as I can see there's not a single piece of damage to any of the gauges or glasses or electrical equipment. And nothing has been stolen.

That says a lot for Japanese society eh? Where else in the world could you leave a steam locomotive unguarded for forty years and expect it to stay in one piece?

Chiba City Monorail

2006-06-20T02:49:00.000-07:00

Chiba cty has quite an extensive monorail system. The 'main line' runs from the Prefectural offices through the city centre to the main station and then around the north of town in a loop to a terminus out east in Wakaba-ku. A short branch, the first leg of an anticipated extension towards Midori-ku, branches off at the main station and heads down past City Hall to JR Chiba Minato station.

I's a cute system, around 12 miles and about a dozen stations. A lot of people from Inage and further out do use it to commute into the city centre, but I can't belive it's remotely profitable. This kind of project was very popular before the economic balloon burst in 1993, Japanese bureaucrats loved these kind of toys as a 'legacy' to hand down to their long suffering tax payers.

All the trains on the Chiba system are two cars,like the one approaching Tsuga seen here in the picture. In some places they get up to around 40 mph which feels plenty fast enough to me that high up in the air and they give you a curious sense of 'flying by train' when they get moving too. If you are scared of flying here's something to practice with!

Oh! But then you would need to fly to Japan first eh?

'Gricing' with history

2006-06-19T03:38:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice old 'Valentines' postcard of Newcastle Central Station in the 1930's. Actually you can't see the station building - the artist or photographer must have been sitting on the roof to capture this view. But what you can see is the old castle 'keep' which was - and still is - sandwiched so tightly into this juncion that you could look right down the chimney of passing locomotives on both sides from the roof.

Some people must have paid their sixpence to admire Norman military architecture but the rest of us used to head up there for the high quality trainspooting it offered. The line coming in on the left is from Edinburgh and the artist has painted an A4 arriving on an 'up' express from Scotland. Apart from the fact that A4's were green in my day this is how I remember the 'Flying Scotsman' or 'Elizabethan' looking here.

On the far left a Tyneside Electric unit is creeping out, waiting for a clear road through to Manors Junction and on to Whitley Bay and the coast.

The line to the right is to Sunderland over Stephenson's High Level Bridge. Until the new King Edward Bridge was opened, I think in 1905, trains from London would enter the station this way and then reverse out to continue to Scotland.

These crossovers were once 'state of the art' magnesium steel but all that has long gone as the trains are less frequent and much lighter. But I'm happy to say that - as far as I know - you can still climb to the top of that castle 'keep' to watch trains.

Filling Up

2006-06-18T02:52:00.000-07:00

One of the exciting events around running steam express trains in Britain was taking on water. An express locomotive would need to fill up it's tender with water around every hundred miles or so, they were very thirsty machines. This was usually done from a water column beside the track at stations using a large capacity hose, but on longer express passenger routes they would fill up on the move from troughs between the rails. A few other European systems and some North American railroads (where they were called 'pans') used this process too, but in Britain it was very popular and happened at high speed.

The trough between the rails had - for obvious reasons! - to be on completely level track and was about half a mile long. As the locomotve approached at perhaps 80 mph the fireman would quickly lower a scoop under the tender and the speed of the train would transfer perhaps 5000 gallons into the tender in around 20 seconds.

If the fireman left the scoop down even a second too long everything in a wide radius got a shower from a 'tidal wave' as several hundred gallons overflowed. It was all a rather dodgy business, and especially in the dark!

I was looking for a photo of Whiske Moor troughs near Darlington where I often watched engines taking water like this as a child from a safe distance, but this lovely print of a GWR train on Reading troughs by Barry Freeman was the best I could find. You can see other examples of his work here Sadly it's something you can never watch now - I don't think there are working troughs left anywhere in the world.

Neat Parking

2006-06-17T02:30:00.000-07:00

One thing that's amazingly different in Japan compared with England is the way people get on and off trains.

In England we kind of mill around on the platform spread evenly like jam. The train arrives, stops pretty well anywhere, and everyone dives towards the doors.

Here in Japan every platform is carefully marked with the little markers you see here, and if more than one kind of train uses a platform then with several sets of little markers. This one says 'kaisoku' - 'rapid' train. This is where the doors will be when the train arives and this is where you queue in a tidy line to get on. At busy stations in Tokyo there are actually two markers which line up with either side of the door so that you can get on at the sides while people get off in the middle. This is how JR can achieve 'turn arounds' at stations of typically less than 30 seconds.

Drivers here take a pride in stopping their trains at exactly the right place - most of the time I'd guess that they aren't more than 15 cm (6") off the mark. With a heavy fifteen car train on wet rails with maybe 3000 people aboard that is no mean skill

GS-4

2006-06-16T04:20:00.000-07:00

I first started travelling to California around 1990 and instantly liked the 'Espee' - the Southern Pacific Railroad that back then provided most of the state's freigh services. And when I read more about the SP I liked it even more and not least for its wonderful array of steam locomotives over the years.

All Espee fans have a particular 'soft spot' for the GS-4 class of 4-8-4's. Here is one of the class on the 'Argonaut' back in the late 1940's somewhere in the Arizona or southern Californian desert between El Paso and Los Angeles.

Strange to think that in fact these beautiful engines were only operating for about fifteen years. No 4449 for example - the preserved member of the class - was built in 1941 and retired in late 1954. In fact she spent longer rusting away in a park in Portand before being restored for the bicentennial in 1976 than she ever did in steam.

This last generation of American steam superpower all had short lives, which is a shame. But there's some amazing pictures of them in action.

Brighton Belle

2006-06-15T02:38:00.000-07:00

All this football on TV at the moment with the World Cup in progress has reminded me of my student days and that famous World Cup held in England in 1966. It was a hot and rather sticky summer's day and I was doing a 'holiday job' cleaning at Gatwick Airport. The entire world seemed to come to a standstill for the England - Germany final and we clustered around 'trannie radios' to listen to the game where we could (TV's just didn't exist at the airport in those distant days). And of course the whole place was in uproar when we heard that famous line - "They think it's all over - it is now!"

I mention this because almost at that exact moment the 'Brighton Belle' was hurrying past the airport station. So my most vivid memory of football is also of a Pullman train.

The 'Brighton Belle' used to travel I think four times a day from London (Victoria) to Brighton on the south coast. It's only 60 miles and the train took an hour non-stop. It began as a steam service but from 1933 the Brighton line was elecrified at 750 volts third rail and three new EMU trains were built - the '5-Bels' 2051, 2052 and 2053. They were a familiar sight for me as a teenager on this line but I never got to travel on the train itself.

Eventually the train was withdrawn in 1972 but almost all the fifteen 5-Bel coaches have survived in some guise - many are used now on the 'Venice Simplon Orient Express' excusions.

I still rememeber that old electric train speeding through the Sussex countryside in her brown and cream livery - beautiful! The photo is of one of the 'Belle' Pullmans from unit 2052, Doris. Now she is preserved on the Bluebell Railway.

Jubilee

2006-06-14T01:26:00.000-07:00

After his retirement in 1962 my grandfather spent twenty years living near the small town of Kirkby Stephen in Cumbria. From the sink in the kitchen - when you were washing up after tea - you might see trains passing in the distance on the Settle - Carlisle line.

More about that lovely railway another time, but one of my favourite classes along the route back then was the LMS 'Jubilees'. Introduced in the 1930's as a lighter express locomotive they survived right until the end of main line steam in Britain and some still operate on preserved railways.

Here's a picture of 45589 'Gwailor' hurrying down from Blea Moor Tunnel to Ribblehead. It was taken in April 1963 and it looks like an 'all stations' train - maybe I was even aboard as I'd quite often travel to the Ingleborough area using this service. Incredible to think that even as recently as the 1960's this was 'just an ordinary train'.

The LMS designed some very classy 4-6-0's but maybe the Jubilees were the neatest. If you want so see some more pictures take a look at Simon Robinson's excellent site here.

Boilerwork

2006-06-13T03:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture from the rare book on Southern Pacific 'Daylights' by Robert Church that I featured recently. It shows the boiler of a 'GS' class being brazed at the Lima locomotive works in Ohio in 1937. The boiler is on it's side and the men are working in the firebox. Most of the structural strength comes from the heavy duty riveting.

That's a heck of a firebox eh? The grate area must be about 100 square feet. Like almost all other Southern Pacific engines this one will be oil fired when complete. That's a mainly American technology I never had much experience with but I guess the burner was attached outside the fire door and made a huge flame into the firebox. Engines like this could use 6000 gallons of fuel in a day in service.

In Britain most of our engines were coal fired by hand. Absolutely no chance of even an Olympic weightlifter hand firing this GS boiler with a shovel!

I've actually made model locomotive boilers with brazing and rivets and it's really fun to flange copper plates.

In the full size boiler shops like this one the noise was incredible. In those days no-one thought much about occupational injuries and all boilermakers were completely deaf. I once went into the boiler shop at Swindon when new boilers were still being made and I'll never forget how the din of all those pheumatic riveting hammers almost knocked you over as you walked through the door.

Tralee to Dingle

2006-06-12T02:40:00.000-07:00

I mentioned the Irish narrow gauge a few days ago, but here's a picture of maybe my favourite Irish line. About 30 years ago I finally made it down that long peninsula to Dingle and saw for myself some of the remnants of the old T&D although most of the track had been 'lifted' twenty years before and all the locomotives and stock were long gone.

Dingle was the furthest west point in the whole of Europe ever reached by rails!

The thing that really struck me then was how fearsome the gradients on this line used to be. I suspect that more smoke came off the engine's brake shoes than out of the chimney.

So it was was something amazing about ten years ago to travel on the Tralee and Dingle once more. Only about 2 miles across the marshes from Tralee to Blennerville have been relaid again but the truly remarkable thing was that after a fifty year absence - much of it spent as a static exhibit in Steamtown in the USA - T&D number 5T is back home again and in steam. Beautiful.

If you are in the west of Ireland a visit to Blennerville is a 'must'. Take a look here for details ...

Night Trains

2006-06-11T02:26:00.000-07:00

I bought this book in a 'remainder' book store in Albuquerque the night before flying back to the UK some time in the mid-1990's so I don't know if it is even still in print. But's it's a favourite to take off the shelf to admire the night photographs.

There's inevitably a touch of romance about passenger trains that run through the night. In Britain there are very few (if any?) left and I guess in North America now it's limited to the Amtrak long distance runs. In Japan we've also lost a lot in the last few years. Here the spread of fast daytime shinkansen services makes night travel a convenience rather than a necessity and on some routes if they can't replace and repair track during the night there's never any other chance.

In the first half of the twentieth century there was an amazing network of overnight Pullman sleeper services to every part of the United States before it evaporated with the spread of air travel in the 1950's. This book details those trains state by state. So if you are a sad person like me who loves details and tables of numbers and has to know were each train was at midnight (35 miles west of Cheyenne!) it's the book for you.

But there's also a wonderful nostalgia here too. All those long vanished trains like the 'Dixie Flagler' and 'Olympian Hiawatha' and 'Paul Revere' that rode off into the night sometime durng the 1950's never to return are described and illustrated with fine black and white photographs. Yes, a book worth exploring ...

Red Letter Day

2006-06-10T02:41:00.000-07:00

Well, here's something! I really love the Southern Pacific 'GS' classes and ever since I first visited the California Railroad Museum in Sacramento for the first time in 1990 I've been watching for a copy of this book! It's Robert Church's "Those Daylight 4-8-4's" published by Kratsville in 1976 around the time that GS4 no 4449 was restored to pull the bicentennial 'Freedom Train'. I saw a copy in the museum library there and photocopied one of the general arrangement drawings in the appendix. The librarian commented to me "You'll be lucky if you can ever find a copy of this!"

Now 16 years later I have one at last. I've seen two copies for sale down the years but both at around the $175 mark. This one was less than half that so a real 'snip'

I spotted it on the American 'Amazon' site. The miserable shop owner wouldn't mail to me abroad but thankfully my friend Dave in New York agreed to forward it for me.

It's one of the best loco class books I've ever seen and full of photographs of the constuction of the engines at Lima Locomotive Company. Maybe in the coming weeks I'll include a few photographs here

J21

2006-06-09T03:13:00.000-07:00

I was pleased to see on the internet recently that one of my favourite engines is about to be restored (again!). For several years it has been up at Beamish Open Air Museum on the silly little length of track they have there but it looks likely that she will get some longer runs soon after more than forty years. If you want to find out more about the project see here

0-6-0 locomotive designs like this were the backbone of traffic operation on most of our secondary lines for nearly a century. There must have been several hundred designs around the same theme and thousands of locomotives.

'65033' is an LNER 'J21' and before that a North Eastern Railway Class 'C'. Designed by T.W.Worsdell she 'entered traffic'in March 1889 and ran until April 1962 - 73 years of service! She was one of the last of the 201 engines in the class in steam and piloted many passenger excursions in her time.

After withdrawal from service she led a charmed life at the back of the Darlington scrapyard and miraculously survived to make it up to Beamish in the early 1970's as part of their collection. I saw her being restored there (the first time!) around 1975.

I have a particular soft spot for '65033' because one snowy day in the 1950's I rode in her cab between Barnard Castle and Bowes when she was on snow ploughing duties. Those big cabs were pretty chilly in winter if the wind was from the other direction!

'Acts of God'

2006-06-08T02:59:00.000-07:00

As I understand it lawyers define 'Acts of God' as something so impossible to foresee that no-one could be blamed for not thinking about it.

One of the more remarkable 'Acts of God' in railway history was the Owencarrow Viaduct accident of 1925. The Owencarrow River is in northern County Donegal in Ireland, just a couple of miles from the ocean and in winter it gets pretty windy up there. Some years ago I camped a little along the coast from this spot and it was breezy enough in mid-summer.

One dark January night a train was actually blown off Owencarrow viaduct, right over the edge. The driver had realised that the weather was very bad and slowed down to walking pace but the hurricane took the whole train over the parapet. I wonder if it has ever happened elsewhere in railway history.

The viaduct was on the Londonderry and Lough Swilly's 'Burtonport Extension' - an Irish 3' gauge line out to the far west. There are still plenty of relics of the route left although it closed in the 1940's, but sadly not this viaduct.

I came across this picture of the bridge on the internet tonight here. Actually it gave me a smile - the viaduct is a good likeness but the train in the picture looks like Irish 5'3" gauge - the locomotive might be a Great Northern of Ireland 4-4-0. I'd guess it's by a local artist who worked from postcards