• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Recent content by Dr_Paul

  1. Dr_Paul

    Former British car marque revivals.

    I agree with a lot of previous comments. It would be a pretty meaningless gesture for most people, for whom the old names are something from the distant past, if they mean anything at all. One has to be getting on a bit to recall Austin, Morris, Singer, Hillman, etc, etc. And even those names...
  2. Dr_Paul

    Garage use?

    The 1930s privately-built housing estates were often built with back alleys wide enough to take a motor and a garage at the bottom of the garden, or with a garage on the side of the house as a single-storey addition. But they were pretty tight even back then, and, as others above have noted...
  3. Dr_Paul

    Strawberry Hill — New Fencing Replaced

    Some ten months back I posted the following: Travelling through Strawberry Hill station the other week, I noticed that brackets had been attached to the fencing posts on the up (towards Twickenham) platform; travelling through this week, I noticed that a solid fence of fairly substantial timber...
  4. Dr_Paul

    Worst examples of BR era "vandalism"?

    I agree. Broad Street really was a sorry wreck by the 1980s; even had the North London Line retained a City station, it would have required but a small sliver of the extensive Broad Street site. As for Liverpool Street, I was impressed by the rebuilding, with a full-width, spacious and...
  5. Dr_Paul

    Are Stansted, Gatwick etc. "London airports"?

    I imagine that a high-speed railway link to central London would have been envisaged as part of the project. It's not so much distance as travelling time and convenience that is the major criterion here. Until the Piccadilly Line extension was built from Hounslow West I reckon that Heathrow was...
  6. Dr_Paul

    Worst examples of BR era "vandalism"?

    The old buildings at Highbury and Islington have always appeared to me as rather excessive even by Victorian standards, along with some of the others on the North London Line, such as Bow. More generally, I imagine that the changing nature of railway traffic in the postwar period (no more...
  7. Dr_Paul

    So many announcements, so few people taking them on board

    I had a similar experience yesterday evening. The Kingston loop service was at Hampton Wick, but the train's tannoy announced that the train was at Kingston, the next stop. The guard didn't correct this erroneous announcement. A blind or poorly-sighted passenger who alighted on the strength of...
  8. Dr_Paul

    What are the piles of soil next to Woking Station?

    Perhaps it's building material for Woking Council's skyscraper-building scheme, which has been such a wonderful money-making venture for the council and council-tax-payers alike?
  9. Dr_Paul

    [Trivia] How many stations? And when does one station become two?

    To what degree, if any, is Victoria run these days as two stations? Even after the formation of the Southern Railway, the two halves were fairly autonomous, but is this still the case?
  10. Dr_Paul

    Preacher on SWR

    Years back, a young work colleague came into work with a big grin on his face. He told us that coming up from Gillingham, where he lived, he and a pal rode in a vacant guard's compartment that had been left open. The train had been held up several times on the journey, and as they approached...
  11. Dr_Paul

    Sitting with a person when a train is empty

    My dad and I had front seats on the DLR some years back, and a little kid came up to the front, and I said, 'Do you want to drive it?', he said 'Yes', so my dad and I moved to another pair of seats, and let the littl'un and his mum sit there.
  12. Dr_Paul

    Sitting with a person when a train is empty

    I don't accept your argument here. As it is, I do like to sit in a front upstairs seat on a bus, but I would not sit next to someone on a front seat if there were unoccupied twin seats available on the bus. And when I do sit next to someone, I try not to barge into him or her, and wouldn't start...
  13. Dr_Paul

    London Overground line names announced

    Taking the Tories' likely candidate for London Mayor into consideration, should she by some awful chance win the next mayoral election, I'd fully expect her to rename one of the Overground lines after her heroine, and rename the others after things that would appeal to her part of the...
  14. Dr_Paul

    Sitting with a person when a train is empty

    I had a similar experience on a bus one afternoon. I was at the front, upstairs, travelling along Piccadilly, when a bloke plonked himself next to me, pushing me a bit to the side (he was a bit portly), then whipped out a smelly meat pie which he ate, scattering crumbs all over the place. And...

Top