[Six-and-a-half hours from London to Edinburgh was pretty good going for 1954 - I don't know how long it takes by train these days (somewhat less, I daresay), or how it compares with road, now that there are motorways.
The fastest is 4 hours with one stop.
On traditional train meals, I recall a very substantial breakfast (kippers) on the morning train from Glasgow to Oban in November 1973, and a very good dinner on an HST from London to Plymouth in April 1978.
Motorail to Scotland, c.1990, served very good meals, included in the (expensive) fare.
There are still good meals to be had - at price! - on certain trains between London and Plymouth/Penzance and between Cardiff and Manchester/Holyhead (https://tinyurl.com/2hyyh6wb). The snag with the Welsh option is the stock allocation: these trains should have Mk4 loco-hauled stock but that isn't always what happens!
O well - 4 hours London to Embra is also very good going, and I doubt if it can be improved by road travel! I may be wrong, of course...
Glad to hear that good meals are still to be had on some trains, although I think dining on a train has never been a particularly cheap option.
Very civilised, though.
[I think dining on a train has never been a particularly cheap option.
The Welsh menu is reasonably priced but you have to pay the First Class fare! Standard Class passengers can eat on GW trains but can't reserve in advance.
We've gone a long way from the steward coming down the corridor and saying, "First sitting for lunch"!
Proper Meals were available on London-Norwich trains until about 15 years ago. My mother moved to Norfolk in 1986 and I had lunch on the train after I'd helped to move her in.
You can only do the Edinburgh-London trip, once per day, in 4 hours. And you have to be on the train by 05h40! The fastest northbound train is a few minutes slower.
But, compared to the alleged "good old days", there are lots of trains (about 30 each way!)
Back in the late 70s and early 80s when I used to visit my sisters in Bristol or Bath respectively, the early train on a Monday morning to get back into London in time for work had the option of breakfast.
For quite a reasonable price you could have breakfast in the comfort of the restaurant car, and provided you were still eating breakfast when the train passed Reading (the last stop before London), then you would not be moved, and the waiter would continue to supply with coffee and toast ad lib until it was time to “shut up shop”. I can remember it seemed very good value for money a decent breakfast at a reasonable price and effectively a free upgrade to 1st class comfort.
Diving down another obscure rabbit hole, this time regarding peculiar names given to locomotives in the earlier days of railways, I came across the unsuccessful No.5 of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (Nos.1-4 were the famous Locomotion, and three similar machines).
No.5 was unofficially nicknamed Chittaprat, owing to her rapid exhaust beat...
Closer to home, the South Eastern Railway had a pair of Bury 0-4-0s (rather like the preserved Furness Railway 0-4-0) named Gog and Magog (from the prophecy of Ezekiel), and the neighbouring London Chatham & Dover Railway had a pair of ballast engines named Huz and Buz - another Biblical reference (Genesis 22).
I'm sure some of you can come up with even odder names - the Great Western was rather good at peculiar nomenclature, especially in broad-gauge days...
Indeed it was (just look at the list of "Firefly" names), as was the London & North Western.
The Kent & East Sussex had "Hecate" and "Hesperus".
We used to live in west London, and I was always annoyed by the sign of the "North Star" pub near the station - it showed a constellation rather than a railway locomotive!
I used to travel by train to school on the Midland mainline; apart from DMUs the motive power was largely "Peaks" and Sulzer Type 2s. I was amused to note that all the peaks commemorated on the locomotives were in Midland Region territory!
On the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch, Captain Howey temporarily renamed "Hurricane" as "Bluebottle", allegedly as a punishment for some misdeed!
So he did - something to do, it is said, with the valve gear tying itself in knots one busy summer day...
Colonel Stephens was something of a classicist, and several of his engines bore appropriate names. Dido on the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire line was not, AFAIK, accompanied by Aeneas.
I was wondering if perhaps there are more names related to possibly obscure Biblical characters, other than the two pairs I've mentioned already.
Thinking of nicknames, the experimental North British Type 1 diesel 10800 was called "The Wonder Engine" - as in "I wonder if it will go this morning?"
Of course the Great Western had about twenty "Saints", sadly none of them seem to be named after the rare and wonderful Welsh or Cornish saints, which shows a lack of imagination at Paddington (or Swindon).
In the same class were "Ladies" - one hopes that no. 2904 was used on services that passed through Coventry. Hopefully it retained its boiler cladding ....
Indeed - I forgot about poor James. He had a nasty accident with some Tar Tanks once, IIRC, or was that the same occasion? He probably felt as though he was being Martyred.
Re nicknames, it seems that the former Kent & East Sussex 0-8-0T Hecate, when acting as yard shunter at Nine Elms, was affectionately known by her regular crews as Old Hiccups, on account of her rather faltering exhaust beat.
Syndola of the aforementioned Sand Hutton Railway still survives at Ravenglass. For many years it worked at Belle Vue, Manchester, and I must have ridden behind it as a child, but of course had no idea of its history. Sir Robert divorced his first wife which was quite unusual in those days.
I was recently tempted by a 16mm scale model of the Sand Hutton coach. So far, I have put Satan behind me as I have so many projects on hand and so little time, but the kit was of wooden construction and looked excellent. Mind you, it was 100 notes! Still, what's money these days?
I am glad you got the Heywood book @Bishops Finger. I think its a wonderful publication.
She appears, with Sir Robert, in a hand-annotated photo of the opening of the Derwent Valley Light Railway (near York) in July 1913, when they were both in their early 20s...
@Sighthound - go on, buy that SHLR coach kit...you know you want to...
Yes, I think so, although I've never heard one. However Growler was also the nickname of a type of house-drawn taxi; there probably weren't any left on the streets of London by the time these locos entered service but is there a connection?
I daresay there are many more types or classes of locomotives which have nicknames - why are Class 08 shunters known as Gronks ? - but I was hoping we might come up with nicknames for individual locomotives.
Ashburton branch line trains were referred to as Bulliver (regardless of locomotive)
From preservation:
6960 Raveningham Hall - Ratbag
46443 - the People’s Engine
Bahamas - Bananas
43106 - Flying Pig (ok that was the class as a whole but that’s the sole survivor)
When I was a young spotter we saw Bahamas so often it was referred to as 'Barmy Bahamas.'
We were an ungrateful crew. Any loco that was seen regularly was despised. Everyone wanted to see something unusual or at least different.
There was a 4F at Edgeley - I think it was 44444 - which the crews referred to as 'City of Adswood', I think the 'name' was chalked on it. (There was quite a fashion for chalked names. One, I think a Black 5, was unofficially 'Telstar.'
Just ducking in (before I start a sub-thread on it next month!) to say what an absolutely wonderful book The Railways of Sir Arthur Percival Heywood is - worth every penny of the £50+.
I know I'm fortunate to have been able to spend that on a whim, but it was worth it.
by the way, I've got no idea (or desire to know) any physical limitations on your part, or if you're joking or not, but as a relatively fit 40 something I'm in the same boat - it's a monster of weight and awkward size.
by the way, I've got no idea (or desire to know) any physical limitations on your part, or if you're joking or not, but as a relatively fit 40 something I'm in the same boat - it's a monster of weight and awkward size.
No, I'm not joking - my arms and wrists are relatively strong for a man of 73, but I find I need to rest this Big Bertha of Railway Tomes on my table...hence the need for a bookstand, to obviate the tendency to stoop over the pages!
Speaking of boats, and in diesel power comparable to the Warship class:
Here's a new and rather big loco for the UK, Stadler's Swiss-designed and Spanish-made (with some Swiss parts, such as the electric traction motors), bimodal Class 99.
And while we wait for videos of Class 99 in action, here's one from the US with rebuilt Freighliner 70012, which famously fell off a crane upon delivery, was rebuilt by GE, and is now being used for testing on the other side of the pond.
The difference betweeen US und UK loading gauges is spectacular! Link.
Actually, the class 99 is an impressive beast, and would look good in Southern Railway Malachite Green, with Sunshine Yellow lining, numerals, and lettering.
I went from Newhaven to Dieppe on the Brighton in 1965 (school trip to Paris). I think she was similar to Invicta, but certainly felt like a proper ship IYSWIM. The black hull, white upperworks, and red funnel, were traditional colours (or did the SR paint the funnels cream ?), but the modern-image double-arrow just looked silly.
It was a rough crossing. Sometimes, it was only the Captain and I who weren't being sick, and sometimes it was just me.
(Apologies to Jerome K Jerome)
Travel by rail from Dieppe to Paris and back (a week later) was notable for being very steamy...and the engines were at least green...
BTW, apropos the new Class 99 locomotive, I see that it is, in fact, a hybrid, and can run (according to GBRF) on electricity, diesel, or sustainable fuels (sunflower oil? birch logs from Latvia? ), which is indeed impressive.
I hope they run as well as they look, and succeed in quickly increasing rail freight traffic in this country.
Especially on the Paddle Steamer Ryde (which I saw but never went on).
Of course, the double arrow was reversed on the other side of the funnel. (They tried that on locos with the first BR logo, so it always faced forward, but the College of Arms objected).
I'm afraid I wasn't impressed with the *modern image* corporate Stuff. The so-called blue and grey (which always looked to me like two shades of grey!) was horrible, and the all-over blue was even worse. It was said that the double arrow simply proved that BR weren't sure which way they were supposed to be going...
Even our local Southern Region BR-built EMUs, about the most boring trains imaginable, looked better in green, though the yellow ends they later sported did at least add a splash of colour.
It was said that the double arrow simply proved that BR weren't sure which way they were supposed to be going...
AKA "The Arrows of Indecision".
I knew nothing about the new livery until I was going to school on a very foggy day in 1966 or 67. Services were very disrupted and we had a long wait for our local DMU. However, suddenly out of the mist on the down fast appeared an EE Type 4 diesel, D384 - the only time I ever saw one on the Midland main line - hauling a train which included one blue/grey carriage. "What was that?", we cried - we'd never seen anything like it all. Soon of course they became commonplace.
I'm afraid I wasn't impressed with the *modern image* corporate Stuff. The so-called blue and grey (which always looked to me like two shades of grey!) was horrible, and the all-over blue was even worse. It was said that the double arrow simply proved that BR weren't sure which way they were supposed to be going...
Even our local Southern Region BR-built EMUs, about the most boring trains imaginable, looked better in green, though the yellow ends they later sported did at least add a splash of colour.
But they spent loads of money and many very fine minds on it to make the railways the railway of the future.
May I commend at this point the absolutely magisterial
There was more to it than the ubiquitous blue-and-grey, of course, but I realise that some people actually liked those colours...if you can call them that...
I remember dear old Cyril Freezer, Editor of the Railway Modeller for about 100 years, trying very hard to get everyone interested in Modern Image around about 1964. I think it fell on stony ground at the time, but I'm sure CJF would be delighted if he attended a typical 2024 model railway exhibition.
I remember a lot of propaganda about BR steam being filthy, which then expanded into saying the Big Four were filthy too. It's quite interesting that many modellers delight in reproducing this era of filth and rust, even though a lot of them are too young to remember it. I have even seen laments that locos on preserved railways are too clean!
These arguments caused me to turn to the pre-grouping era. My grandfather told me that when he started as a cleaner in the early 1900s, there was a chap who would come around wearing white gloves and check you had cleaned the rear of the loco spokes and other hidden areas. (Whether this was just for passenger engines or all engines I don't know.) It all went a bit pear-shaped during WW1 when labour was scarce, as photographs show.
However, one of my favourite GCR photos is of a Director class at Marylebone, at the head of a down express. There is a woman in railway uniform talking to the driver, so it has to be during the war. Even so, that loco is absolutely sparkling.
Comments
O well - 4 hours London to Embra is also very good going, and I doubt if it can be improved by road travel! I may be wrong, of course...
Glad to hear that good meals are still to be had on some trains, although I think dining on a train has never been a particularly cheap option.
Very civilised, though.
We've gone a long way from the steward coming down the corridor and saying, "First sitting for lunch"!
Proper Meals were available on London-Norwich trains until about 15 years ago. My mother moved to Norfolk in 1986 and I had lunch on the train after I'd helped to move her in.
But, compared to the alleged "good old days", there are lots of trains (about 30 each way!)
For quite a reasonable price you could have breakfast in the comfort of the restaurant car, and provided you were still eating breakfast when the train passed Reading (the last stop before London), then you would not be moved, and the waiter would continue to supply with coffee and toast ad lib until it was time to “shut up shop”. I can remember it seemed very good value for money a decent breakfast at a reasonable price and effectively a free upgrade to 1st class comfort.
No.5 was unofficially nicknamed Chittaprat, owing to her rapid exhaust beat...
Closer to home, the South Eastern Railway had a pair of Bury 0-4-0s (rather like the preserved Furness Railway 0-4-0) named Gog and Magog (from the prophecy of Ezekiel), and the neighbouring London Chatham & Dover Railway had a pair of ballast engines named Huz and Buz - another Biblical reference (Genesis 22).
I'm sure some of you can come up with even odder names - the Great Western was rather good at peculiar nomenclature, especially in broad-gauge days...
The Kent & East Sussex had "Hecate" and "Hesperus".
We used to live in west London, and I was always annoyed by the sign of the "North Star" pub near the station - it showed a constellation rather than a railway locomotive!
I used to travel by train to school on the Midland mainline; apart from DMUs the motive power was largely "Peaks" and Sulzer Type 2s. I was amused to note that all the peaks commemorated on the locomotives were in Midland Region territory!
So he did - something to do, it is said, with the valve gear tying itself in knots one busy summer day...
Colonel Stephens was something of a classicist, and several of his engines bore appropriate names. Dido on the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire line was not, AFAIK, accompanied by Aeneas.
I was wondering if perhaps there are more names related to possibly obscure Biblical characters, other than the two pairs I've mentioned already.
The Great Western broad gauge also had a "Hesperus" and a "Hecate", also a "Warlock". Nothing Biblical that I can see though!
There was an A3 Pacific called "Manna" though, also one called "Hermit" which, one imagines, must have been hard to entice out of its shed.
Magi
Caesar (admittedly pushing it but I suppose it is Biblical)
Lucifer
Goliath
Sampson
Behemoth
In the same class were "Ladies" - one hopes that no. 2904 was used on services that passed through Coventry. Hopefully it retained its boiler cladding ....
Re nicknames, it seems that the former Kent & East Sussex 0-8-0T Hecate, when acting as yard shunter at Nine Elms, was affectionately known by her regular crews as Old Hiccups, on account of her rather faltering exhaust beat.
I was recently tempted by a 16mm scale model of the Sand Hutton coach. So far, I have put Satan behind me as I have so many projects on hand and so little time, but the kit was of wooden construction and looked excellent. Mind you, it was 100 notes! Still, what's money these days?
I am glad you got the Heywood book @Bishops Finger. I think its a wonderful publication.
@Sighthound - go on, buy that SHLR coach kit...you know you want to...
IIRC, the Metropolitan/LT electric locomotives are known as Growlers - is that right?
Here's Sarah Siddons* to demonstrate, although some of the noise might be from the rather splendid LT-liveried Class 20 diseasel at the rear:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x_hjsOFlu0
*(Nicknamed Aunt Sally, I'm told
The BR Class 37 locomotives are also nicknamed Growlers...
http://thegrowlergroup.org.uk/?page_id=18
I daresay there are many more types or classes of locomotives which have nicknames - why are Class 08 shunters known as Gronks ? - but I was hoping we might come up with nicknames for individual locomotives.
What a sad wombat I am. I must get out more...
From preservation:
6960 Raveningham Hall - Ratbag
46443 - the People’s Engine
Bahamas - Bananas
43106 - Flying Pig (ok that was the class as a whole but that’s the sole survivor)
We were an ungrateful crew. Any loco that was seen regularly was despised. Everyone wanted to see something unusual or at least different.
There was a 4F at Edgeley - I think it was 44444 - which the crews referred to as 'City of Adswood', I think the 'name' was chalked on it. (There was quite a fashion for chalked names. One, I think a Black 5, was unofficially 'Telstar.'
I know I'm fortunate to have been able to spend that on a whim, but it was worth it.
I now await delivery of a portable book-stand for my table. The book itself is far too heavy for me to hold unaided!
you bought one of the ones I'd seen
No, I'm not joking - my arms and wrists are relatively strong for a man of 73, but I find I need to rest this Big Bertha of Railway Tomes on my table...hence the need for a bookstand, to obviate the tendency to stoop over the pages!
Here's a new and rather big loco for the UK, Stadler's Swiss-designed and Spanish-made (with some Swiss parts, such as the electric traction motors), bimodal Class 99.
The difference betweeen US und UK loading gauges is spectacular! Link.
Actually, the class 99 is an impressive beast, and would look good in Southern Railway Malachite Green, with Sunshine Yellow lining, numerals, and lettering.
Sadly, although built by the Southern Railway, I doubt if it was ever painted in malachite (or any other shade of) green.
I travelled on her in, I think, 1967 and was not impressed. She felt old although she had about another five years to go.
It was a rough crossing. Sometimes, it was only the Captain and I who weren't being sick, and sometimes it was just me.
(Apologies to Jerome K Jerome)
Travel by rail from Dieppe to Paris and back (a week later) was notable for being very steamy...and the engines were at least green...
I hope they run as well as they look, and succeed in quickly increasing rail freight traffic in this country.
Of course, the double arrow was reversed on the other side of the funnel. (They tried that on locos with the first BR logo, so it always faced forward, but the College of Arms objected).
Even our local Southern Region BR-built EMUs, about the most boring trains imaginable, looked better in green, though the yellow ends they later sported did at least add a splash of colour.
I knew nothing about the new livery until I was going to school on a very foggy day in 1966 or 67. Services were very disrupted and we had a long wait for our local DMU. However, suddenly out of the mist on the down fast appeared an EE Type 4 diesel, D384 - the only time I ever saw one on the Midland main line - hauling a train which included one blue/grey carriage. "What was that?", we cried - we'd never seen anything like it all. Soon of course they became commonplace.
But they spent loads of money and many very fine minds on it to make the railways the railway of the future.
May I commend at this point the absolutely magisterial
British Rail Designed 1948-97 by David Lawrence?
It even gets into buttons and women’s hats.
There was more to it than the ubiquitous blue-and-grey, of course, but I realise that some people actually liked those colours...if you can call them that...
Indeed it was.
I remember a lot of propaganda about BR steam being filthy, which then expanded into saying the Big Four were filthy too. It's quite interesting that many modellers delight in reproducing this era of filth and rust, even though a lot of them are too young to remember it. I have even seen laments that locos on preserved railways are too clean!
These arguments caused me to turn to the pre-grouping era. My grandfather told me that when he started as a cleaner in the early 1900s, there was a chap who would come around wearing white gloves and check you had cleaned the rear of the loco spokes and other hidden areas. (Whether this was just for passenger engines or all engines I don't know.) It all went a bit pear-shaped during WW1 when labour was scarce, as photographs show.
However, one of my favourite GCR photos is of a Director class at Marylebone, at the head of a down express. There is a woman in railway uniform talking to the driver, so it has to be during the war. Even so, that loco is absolutely sparkling.