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The new yard at Hillhouse is enormous. Presumably track to access it will be laid during the Huddersfield station closure in September.

When was the line through Bicester singled? I vaguely remember going through there in the early 70s with the line still double but a huge gap between the platforms where the through lines had already gone.

My grandmother grew up in Beaconsfield and was a teenager when the GW/GC Joint Line was being built. Her older sister played the harmonium in the navvies’ wooden mission church. From what she used to tell me it sounded as though working methods had hardly changed since the golden age of railway...

How many was that? It certainly had four after the line was quadrupled.

Both true. Also quite a lot of the GN’s London coal traffic went via the GN/LNW Joint Line and thence Northampton. If that could somehow have been shifted onto the GC, the LNW would have lost out. Though south of Woodford Halse the GC hadn’t got the handy connections to other lines the LNW did...

Not sure about that; the main electrification priority was GN suburban. The GC to Woodford Halse thing is a persistent rumour, but makes little sense. If the London end of the GN main line had been wired, surely the next phase would have been to carry on northwards. Grantham seems a reasonable...

I’m absolutely certain it would have done. Just look at what happened with the big accountancy firms in the 80s and 90s. The North London and LTS got absorbed by the LNW and Midland just a few years later, and the GSW was doing its best to get chummy with the latter. It’s not hard to see the...

Again, the GE might have found it easier to raise money for electrification had they been part of a bigger entity. I think your list of the operational changes to passenger services is a realistic one, and goes to show that there wasn’t a great deal of low-hanging fruit. Freight-wise I think...

To me, this is the most interesting of all the big railway what-ifs. It was more than proposed; it was agreed by all three companies but was thwarted by the government/parliament on the grounds that it was “anti-competitive”. Which was daft as post-1900 there was a far greater amount of...

Is the ride on IETs really that bad? I’ve always put it down to the seats. I’ve always felt that are basically good trains that have been spoiled by horrible seats, garish lighting and cheap-looking interior finishes.

Smaller/narrower stations that have been built over (Charing X, Fenchurch St, the east side of Liverpool St) don't seem to have been as badly affected in this regard. There's something particularly oppressive about the Brighton Side of Victoria; it's as bad as Euston. Maybe it's the contrast...

True! I’ll try to contact Picc…

I left my coat on the luggage rack of the middle coach of 2U35 (185148 according to RTT) when I got off at Wakefield Kirkgate at 0914 this morning. Trans Pennine have directed me to LNER as the train terminated at York. That seems to have taken me to missingx.com, which reports that they...

I haven't got any evidence to back this up, but I reckon a lack of enthusiasm from BR killed Picc-Vic. The "lack of money" excuse really doesn't wash give what was available for the two others you mention. Both Merseyrail and T&W enabled BR to divest themselves of pesky non-London suburban...

North of Liverpool is flat and has a mild coastal climate. North of Manchester is hilly and has (had) a harsh Pennine climate. Might the Bury system have been chosen on account of its greater oomph, as well as its ice-resistance? I don’t think the L&Y were at any time considering main line...

A mistake, in my opinion. In order to succeed, GW green needed the highlights provided by those little brass bits. In locos without them it didn’t look anything like as good.

To me :D and a bargain compared to the last 3rd Edition that went for £580, according to your post #36. I’ve still got my green set with the spine of the fatter volume mended with invisible tape. I’ll post on here when I get round to putting it on eBay.

Ah fair enough. Yes the station was just round the bend on the branch. It’s still a hell of a lot of earthworks!

I can understand why the earthworks at Heaton Lodge and Ravensthorpe are huge as they are for either all-new or significantly widened trackbeds. Why the need at Deighton though? It was always four track there. Is it because in the four track days there wasn’t a station on the main line?

They were indeed nippy! The 115s were designed for the “Chiltern” suburban services out of Marylebone; the CLC was a billiard table by comparison and they really shifted. The exhausts made an awesome noise as they got going. Their high-density suburban layout, with doors at every seating bay...