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Diesel loco boilers were prone to a wide range of causes of failure, one of the main reasons for needing a steam loco substitute in early times. Badly scaled boilers shutting down were one of 101 reasons for this. A concept called Automatic Blowdown was meant to remove dissolved particles from...

Of course, the best solution is to get them right in the first place.

It was 24tph. Completely automated from the Mersey Railway resignalling on electrification in 1903 by Westinghouse, it lasted to the 1977 opening of The Loop, whose new signalling could not keep up with the previous service level. We have discussed it here in the past. In my more youthful times...

In the Cannon Street EPB buffer stop collision a number of passengers had actually alighted onto the platform and started walking forward before the collision occurred.

Both can be extremely quick, or not, depending on the procedures. Slam doors can be rapid on suburban stock, because there are so many of them. For power doors, I've been on the Paris Metro late at night with sub-10 second stops (I started timing them) at station after station. I think of these...

Doesn't antipathy to England-based train operators trump that?

Back in the 1980s I went to a restaurant in Los Angeles called Victoria Station, which on approaching it seemed fashioned out of several obviously ex-BR carriages. Only afterwards did I discover they were the stock that went over with Flying Scotsman on its infamous 1970 USA tour. The loco came...

Thank you. And Fiennes was never known for overstatement. My copy of said book is looking down at me from the shelves as I write this. If I look carefully I can see, in that cover photo of him and the Deltic, he seems to be smiling at being quoted. Did you ever meet him? Bill Deedes, MP, after...

Washing out intervals were varied according to local experience, down to both usage and water quality. An extreme was the LT&S from Fenchurch Street to Southend, well known for the worst water quality on BR, which despite various attempts at water treatment was never got to grips with. Did read...

The detail of how the evening slow-to-fast crossover at Bow Junction was useful, and why, and what benefit it gave, was covered in the later 1964 mag article, along with routing non-stop services on the Main through the platform at Stratford, and other operational niceties that all helped...

Do bear in mind that, just as 3 per hour turned off to Cambridge at Bethnal Green, likewise the return services were coming in there, across the Down Main on the flat junction. Yes, you can schedule parallel working, but if you think the 1540 from Kings Lynn, due Liverpool Street 1758, running...

I think you have to accept that the local line on the GEML has, officially, always been called the Electric line, ever since 1949 - when all the lines were electrified from the go, but this pair had the main local electric service, just out to Shenfield. Bit like the GWML has always been Main...

I'm pretty sure the passenger numbers were well above today, maybe not annual but certainly the peak hour. There was no Victoria Line to NE London, so the Chingford/Enfield services took a far heavier load, 9 emu cars on each train. Likewise the GEML took far greater numbers than now - living in...

There was a further full article a few years later, when the same magazine had become Modern Railways, that described it all on the GEML in the evening peak. Notable were the crossings of semi-fast trains from Main to Electric as they got further out, plus some services that started on the...

I've not been to Tijuana and south thereof for some time, but there certainly was then a very substantial bus system in Mexico, far more than in the USA. Very independent, bitty and unpublicised, but is there, both for long distance and local area. The concept of timetables is somewhat lost...

Well that may all be true. But the normal air temperature today is normal weather temperature in the country for summer months. Unless we are to be told there is something special in current day rails or wires, that's how it always has been.

I see today large notices up that services may be delayed/cancelled/do not travel, etc, because of "Hot Weather". At midsummers' day weekend. Who would have thought it. In London today it's maximum ... 23C. Among the nannying excuses were that overhead wires stretch and expand at high...

Not just the 1977 signalling. The pioneer Westinghouse signalling that came with the 1904 electrification (much of which lasted to 1977) was the same, along with its fully automatic reversing siding beyond Liverpool Central station. There were a couple of Repeaters, on the Up line from...

Further use of the line was the haulage to and from Horwich works for overhaul of all the Liverpool-Southport electric stock.

That just seems to be bureaucracy, issuing an "Improvement Notice". Clearly this bit of paper being bandied around (which took the ORR years to write it seems) has served no useful purpose whatsoever. Regarding the stampede when trains are announced, part is to get a seat before they are all...