Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Feb 10, 2020 18:53:11 GMT
It's not just kids with their headphones glued to their swedes at foot crossings either, passing through certain stations during the rush hour peaks with platforms heaving with commuters id often just as bad, they stand close to the edge despite constant warnings to get back behind the yellow lines and then wonder what it was that nearly dragged them off the platform at 60mph. A lot of them look like well dressed, well educated professional types but seem to forget their common sense when they leave home for the commute into the office...! Time for tiffin! Villain Yes - seen this so often at Doncaster, a bit of Freight passes though either Plat 1, 3 and 4 - and at quite a speed. There are numerous announcements prior to a train passing, still people ignore the warnings and then look surprised when a Train just about clips them or wonder why the Driver is cursing at them.
While at Meadowhall station about 6 years ago - on a busy Saturday. My son (I missed it as I was looking elsewhere) saw a chap throw himself in front of a Class 220 'Voyager' (of the Cross Country variety). That would have been doing about 90mph when it hit him. I was told (apart from the mess it left on the station platform ramp) the rest of him was picked up a various points up the track.
A sad tale for all concerned - the Passengers waiting, those on the train, those who have to clear it up, the chaps family and of course - the poor bugger at the controls of the train. Really gave me some food for thought and gave me more respect for those who do work on the Railway.
On the Photos and what you can post on line... I have the same issue; I have tons of photos of stuff I have worked on. But can't post them on social media/web - or I can fall into serious copyright issues. Hate to think I could be taking on the BBC or ITV (or similar) in court!.
Where I have posted pictures, I have always got permission. You aren't supposed to take photos at all - though can get around it for "technical grounds" (ie if you need to photo a particular set up, setting, room, area etc.)
However - in one building (A school near Nottingham), the Resident Ghost put in an appearance; b***ocks to Copyright - I got a photo- a 1/2 decent one too. Three of us saw it, one got so distressed they had to go home. (Not me)
I used to love the BR Depot Open Days - usually held over a Bank Holiday. We used to go to Derby Works ones quite regularly - where you had access to wander around the entire works, the scrap lines and the Technical Centre would have loads of demos on. Also - loads of guest locos would roll up too.
One of the last ones they did, there was the APT-E (the one now at Crewe), the APT "gas turbine" power car, a couple of 33s, 44s, 45s - a Class 46 (the backup one for the other they Crashed with the Nuclear Flask at Old Dalby) a handful of Steamers, A 58 and (I think) a 'new' Class 59. I think the 158 was "new" also too!
I'll have to dig out the Negatives and get scanning I think. I am sure I have a couple of rolls I shot on 8mm film too.
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Three Litre
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Post by Three Litre on Feb 10, 2020 21:15:00 GMT
While at Meadowhall station about 6 years ago - on a busy Saturday. My son (I missed it as I was looking elsewhere) saw a chap throw himself in front of a Class 220 'Voyager' (of the Cross Country variety). That would have been doing about 90mph when it hit him. I was told (apart from the mess it left on the station platform ramp) the rest of him was picked up a various points up the track.
A sad tale for all concerned - the Passengers waiting, those on the train, those who have to clear it up, the chaps family and of course - the poor bugger at the controls of the train. Really gave me some food for thought and gave me more respect for those who do work on the Railway.
These incidents are awful, I worked at a place where the HR lady saw a chap rush in front of train, considering what she saw she was remarkably calm. Can't imagine what it's like for the drivers.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Feb 11, 2020 7:07:16 GMT
While at Meadowhall station about 6 years ago - on a busy Saturday. My son (I missed it as I was looking elsewhere) saw a chap throw himself in front of a Class 220 'Voyager' (of the Cross Country variety). That would have been doing about 90mph when it hit him. I was told (apart from the mess it left on the station platform ramp) the rest of him was picked up a various points up the track.
A sad tale for all concerned - the Passengers waiting, those on the train, those who have to clear it up, the chaps family and of course - the poor bugger at the controls of the train. Really gave me some food for thought and gave me more respect for those who do work on the Railway.
These incidents are awful, I worked at a place where the HR lady saw a chap rush in front of train, considering what she saw she was remarkably calm. Can't imagine what it's like for the drivers. It'd be the same for London Underground drivers too. Though not nice for anyone concerned.
I wouldn't have thought the Passengers on the train would see much.
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DI Alex Drake
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Post by DI Alex Drake on Mar 1, 2020 21:46:56 GMT
Oh god. That’s awful! A few times when I was commuting it happened around Dawlish and Exeter but I am thankful that I’ve never seen any of it. Poor souls.
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Villain
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Post by Villain on Mar 2, 2020 10:00:19 GMT
I had one just over ten years ago, my brother has been involved in five and I know another driver who's had nine in his long career. Often as not the aftermath is just as bad as the incident itself, the poor souls who have to come and clear up the mess are the ones I also feel sorry for. I won't go into details but the circumstances of mine were slightly unusual in that I didn't see it happen (it was dark and foggy and I heard nothing) and only found out what had happened the following morning. When the British Transport cozzers came round to take my statement a few days later they told me that the young lad's parents were just as concerned about my welfare as they were their son's, which I found astonishing considering what they had to deal with.
Villain.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Mar 2, 2020 11:31:30 GMT
I had one just over ten years ago, my brother has been involved in five and I know another driver who's had nine in his long career. Often as not the aftermath is just as bad as the incident itself, the poor souls who have to come and clear up the mess are the ones I also feel sorry for. I won't go into details but the circumstances of mine were slightly unusual in that I didn't see it happen (it was dark and foggy and I heard nothing) and only found out what had happened the following morning. When the British Transport cozzers came round to take my statement a few days later they told me that the young lad's parents were just as concerned about my welfare as they were their son's, which I found astonishing considering what they had to deal with. Villain. Crikey.
As you say - when the incident happens everything seems to go into slow motion and everyone seems remarkably calm. It's the hours, days, weeks, months and years after, once your head has digested it all that can be worse.
It still makes me think of the late Jack Mills, the driver of the Class 40 involved in the Gt Train Robbery in 1963. He went back to work - though the whole affair must have taumented him for years. It would have me. There is a plaque on Plat 12 at Crewe dedicated to him and his 2nd man David Whitby. I think there's also a Class 90 named after Jack too.
I saw a terminated Class 185 from Manchester Airport at Sheffield on Friday afternoon, which had been put into one of the station sidings. Some monumental bell**d had chucked a brick from a footbridge as it approached and it had trashed the front windscreen and gone through it.
Luckily for the driver, it brick hit the opposite side. I dread to think what would have happened had it been the drivers side.
Beggars belief....
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Villain
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Post by Villain on Mar 2, 2020 13:30:19 GMT
Some years ago a Wembley driver was hospitalised when a thug pushed a large piece of concrete off a bridge which went through the cab window and it landed in his lap, if I remember rightly he was unconscious for at least a week. Luckily he survived and returned to work but I think he's retired now. The thug was eventually caught and given jail time. Jack Mills' and David Whitby's treatment on the night of the train robbery was abysmal - the first members of the gang to accost him were Buster Edwards and Gordon Goody when he stopped the train at the red signal at Sears Crossing at 03.03hrs, one of two signals the gang tampered with in order to bring the train to an unscheduled halt. They were the first to enter the cab of the loco (Edwards had already bundled Whitby down the embankment when he got down from the loco to use the signalpost telephone but the wires had been cut by the gang). As they entered the cab Mills stood up and frightened for his life, he tussled with Edwards then Goody grabbed him and turned him round just as a third (unnamed) member of the gang entered the cab, it was this unnamed man who koshed Mills over the back of the head. Mills buckled and went down to the floor, cracking his head on the edge of the control desk as he fell, blood started pouring out of his wound which Goody tried to stem with his handkerchief, they then bundled Mills into the engine room of the loco and by this time Whitby had been brought back into the cab by another gang member, he too was placed in the engine room and they were handcuffed together. At this point Goody calls out to Ronald Biggs who is waiting on the embankment with the gang's own train driver known as 'Peter'. Jimmy White and Roy James then uncouple the first two high value package coaches from the rest of the train and are nearly hit by a northbound express passing on the adjacent Down Fast line. By now 'Peter' has been put into the driving seat and Goody orders him to start moving the front portion of the train forward towards Bridego Bridge where the contents of the two coaches will be unloaded into the ex-Army truck and a short wheelbase Landrover waiting down below. 'Peter' just sits there for a moment, waiting for the brake pressure to build up before he can move forward. Impatient, Goody pulls 'Peter' out of the chair and fetches Jack Mills from the engine room, then threatens him with the kosh if he doesn't move the train forward. Mills, fearing for his life once more, does as instructed and releases the brake fully before slowly moving forward along the Up Fast line towards Cheddington. The reason that 'Peter' couldn't release the brakes was that Jimmy White hadn't put the brake pipe back on its dummy properly, White had to go back and give it a kick to make sure it stayed put before Mills could release the brakes fully and move the train again. At 03.14hrs the front portion of the train moves forward with Roy James riding on the footstep below the cab door so he can spot the 'marker' beside the track at Bridego Bridge, placed there by Charlie Wilson. As soon as it stops Biggs is told to take 'Peter' and sit in the Landrover out of the way and Jack Mills is taken back into the engine room to be cuffed to David Whitby again. Within seconds the high value coach is pounced on by Goody, Wilson, Edwards, Robert Welch, James Hussey, Tommy Wisbey and two unnamed others, the five Post Office staff aboard the coach try to barricade the large sliding door but are overcome by the gang and soon desist. In less than a minute the first mail bags are being thrown out of the coach and passed down the embankment to the waiting truck and Landrover, meanwhile the gang's leader Bruce Reynolds has arrived in the second Landrover, bringing with him John Daly who 'fixed' the signals further back up the line. While all this is going on, Mills and Whitby (still cuffed together at this point) are taken down the embankment and told to stay still. The chain of robbers shift 120 bags containing 636 high value packets into the vehicles, eight bags are left behind because of time constraints insisted on by Reynolds. At 03.43hrs Reynolds calls time, Mills and Whitby are moved into the high value coach where they're told to lie on the floor with the five petrified Post Office men, Wilson asks then if they want any of the money (which they decline) and shouts ''stay here for half an hour, we shall be back''. The gang then depart in the truck and the two Landrovers, taking the twenty eight mile route across country to Letherslade Farm, near Brill. About half an hour after the gang had fled the guard of the train, Thomas Miller, has reached Bridego Bridge on foot (it's a very long way, I've walked it myself a few times), whereupon he manages to wave down a freight train moving south along the Up Slow line, crewed by Rugby men. The secondman on this train, Bill Green, then drives D326 and its two coaches down to Cheddington station to raise the alarm with the signalman there, at 04.15hrs. At 04.24hrs Scotland Yard receives a call from the Control Office at Euston saying that the signalman at Cheddington is requesting the attendance of the Police and an ambulance, at first Scotland Yard assumes there has been a break in at Cheddington station. The Police arrive at Cheddington at 04.35hrs and Mills and Whitby are taken to the Royal Buckinghamshire Hospital in Aylesbry where Mills is given fourteen stitches to his wounds. Back at Lethersalde Farm it takes the gang three hours to unload their ill gotten gains, the rest as they say is history. Villain
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Mar 2, 2020 14:07:44 GMT
So they uncoupled a portion of the train, and the loco remained with the carriages they wanted to blag - which they moved forward to the bridge to empty?
I assume the other half of the train was just left in the middle of nowhere, until a train passing in the opposite direction saw it, or the signalman noticed something odd on the signal box panel?
Not sure is this is correct - you may be able to correct me.. After this robbery such High Value Mail trains, MOD related trains and even the Royal Train running timetables were only reported to those who needed to know (ie Signal Boxes along the route etc)?
During the last Jubilee, the Queen visited York by the Royal Train (the 67 etc) and the "hardcore" trainspotters spent all hours sat on bridges along the ECML thinking it would go that way.
In actual fact, the route it took came via the Midland Mainline, through Toton & Erewash Valley line, round the old road towards Rotherham and then to York via Swinton. The empty stock came straight back down the ECML from York and was parked in West Yard at Doncaster for a few hours.
They used to run a couple of MOD trains overnight every now and again - and would sometimes pass Swinton.
I bumped into a couple of "hardcore" spotters at Swinton (S Yorks) Station who had been sat on the station all night waiting for this train to pass. It never did pass. It finally ran about 6 days late, and then it was on a totally different route!!!!
Just wondered if they had some security procedure in place for such moves - to prevent people either trying to Rob them, Stop them, or even photograph sensitive MOD equipment.
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Villain
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Post by Villain on Mar 2, 2020 19:38:19 GMT
So they uncoupled a portion of the train, and the loco remained with the carriages they wanted to blag - which they moved forward to the bridge to empty?
I assume the other half of the train was just left in the middle of nowhere, until a train passing in the opposite direction saw it, or the signalman noticed something odd on the signal box panel?
Not sure is this is correct - you may be able to correct me.. After this robbery such High Value Mail trains, MOD related trains and even the Royal Train running timetables were only reported to those who needed to know (ie Signal Boxes along the route etc)?
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Yes that's correct Sparky, when they initially stopped the train at Sears Crossing (a set of crossovers between the fast and slow lines close to where Ledburn Junction is today), they split the loco and first two coaches from the other ten, leaving them stranded there. There were seventy two GPO staff and the train guard aboard this portion at the time who had no idea what was happening for quite some time. As I mentioned in my previous post the first railwaymen on the scene were a Rugby crew working a freight on the up slow line, it was flagged down by the mail train's guard. The gang had cut the telegraph and signalpost telephone wires between Leighton Buzzard and Cheddington stations, when the signalman at Cheddington didn't see the mail train approaching him at the appointed time he rang his colleague at Leighton Buzzard on box circuit line (which the robbers hadn't thought about), asking where it was, only to be told it was somewhere in the section between the two stations. At the time the manual boxes didn't have the full display panels that modern boxes have today, they only had their own section in each box. He didn't raise the alarm (or was unable to) until the gang had already left the scene for Letherslade Farm. You're right about the security changes after the robbery, only those who needed to know would be told in any detail by official railway notices that such workings were running, this very much applies to Royal Train working too. Villain
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Mar 3, 2020 20:18:21 GMT
Yes that's correct Sparky, when they initially stopped the train at Sears Crossing (a set of crossovers between the fast and slow lines close to where Ledburn Junction is today), they split the loco and first two coaches from the other ten, leaving them stranded there. There were seventy two GPO staff and the train guard aboard this portion at the time who had no idea what was happening for quite some time. As I mentioned in my previous post the first railwaymen on the scene were a Rugby crew working a freight on the up slow line, it was flagged down by the mail train's guard. The gang had cut the telegraph and signalpost telephone wires between Leighton Buzzard and Cheddington stations, when the signalman at Cheddington didn't see the mail train approaching him at the appointed time he rang his colleague at Leighton Buzzard on box circuit line (which the robbers hadn't thought about), asking where it was, only to be told it was somewhere in the section between the two stations. At the time the manual boxes didn't have the full display panels that modern boxes have today, they only had their own section in each box. He didn't raise the alarm (or was unable to) until the gang had already left the scene for Letherslade Farm. You're right about the security changes after the robbery, only those who needed to know would be told in any detail by official railway notices that such workings were running, this very much applies to Royal Train working too. Villain Was the name on "Bridego Bridge" changed to "Robbers Bridge" for a while?
I heard a documentary on Radio 4 a few years ago, it was the last interview Bruce Reynolds gave before he passed away. They also included archive interviews with other members of the Robbery Team. Roger Cordry explained how he rigged the signals to stop the train - covering the lamps with a black glove, and then using a battery to illuminate others. Assuming they had AWS back then - it must have been confusing for the driver - the signals telling him one thing, the AWS something else.
It's a stretch of line I have never travelled on. Does much of the infrastructure from back then still in extist?
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