Wrong Railway Facts

[zwk500]

I've heard a few times that upon privatisation the Waterloo & City was sold from BR to LT for £1 (allegedly the minimum price of a contract under English law), but have never actually been able to find a source confirming this.

Sort of the minimum price. A contract is an exchange, therefore for it to be valid the 'purchaser' must offer something of value. This is often written as a 'Peppercorn' or 'Nominal sum' but £1 is often used where a monetary value must be placed. In practice the £1 rarely changes hands. Using a defined monetary value also limits the potential risk of legal action at a later date.

Plenty of pieces of infrastructure and rolling stock on preserved railways that are normally considered 'donated' were in fact purchased for £1.

 

[contrex]

Clearly a typo but this months Railway Magazine has the Queen being hauled by Jubilee Alberta in October 1968 ! Has to be 1967 as even I knew steam stopped in August of that year and looking it up, Alberta was already bean tins by then. Of course its an error as most people reading such magazines would know steam stopped following the 15 guinea special in August but had they stated it was, lets say 1965, then its not such an obvious error and I personally would be none the wiser. Of course I expect RM to add this to its error and correction column next month but I think the point is that RM is regarded as a long running professional magazine and used as a research tool on the basis of accuracy but sadly the standard of proof reading seems to have declined.
I should have added the journey was in connection with the Tyne tunnel opening so I would have got that date wrong too in a quiz if I believed RM as the tunnel opened in 1967. Even Wikipedia has the right date for that !

I'm afraid the Railway Magazine degenerated into a spotter's comic years ago. The standard of English is, at times, appalling, and, as you have noticed, howlers occur too often.

 

[pdeaves]

I'm afraid the Railway Magazine degenerated into a spotter's comic years ago. The standard of English is, at time, appalling, and, as you have notice, howlers occur too often.

I suppose part of the problem is that the people writing are too young to have first hand experience of what they write about.

 

[zwk500]

I suppose part of the problem is that the people writing are too young to have first hand experience of what they write about.

First hand knowledge can be a greater problem than advantage! A bigger problem will be the gaps in original record-keeping and the fact that a lot of the railway stories are based off only a few individuals' memoirs, written up many years after the event. Once something gets into the secondary literature, it's very difficult to correct it.

 

[Andy873]

Once something gets into the secondary literature, it's very difficult to correct it.

One of my friends had a job travelling around some of the Greek Island and writing reviews of them. On one occasion he made a mistake and it went to print. When he realised the mistake, he corrected it ready for the next year's publication.

He tells me that every single guide book he has ever picked up has his mistake in it...

Andy.

 

[contrex]

The October issue of Rail has a story about the 1952 Harrow & Wealdstone disaster, in which the issue of passenger vehicle crashworthiness is considered. It mentions the robustness of BR 'Standard' coaches compared to pre-nationalisation stock. It goes on to say how decades later the now-named 'Mark 1' stock came to be seen as less than ideal, and mentions Clapham and Cannon Street, even though the issue in the latter was SR 'Bulleid' type EMU cars. I have seen this error in a number of places. It's like younger people thinking that every rear-platform London bus was a 'Routemaster'.

 

[ian1944]

I can't remember where, but once I saw a statement that (O., presumably) Winston Link was a bit of track in Salford.

 

[D1537]

I've lost count of the number of articles written by supposed rail experts where the two 47s that were experimentally fitted with multiple working in the 1970s (47370 and 47379, aka Pinky and Perky) were confused and/or conflated with the two that were experimentally fitted with remote control for slow speed working (47277 and 47373).