For July 2020 we find the Diner in the United Kingdom.
We will be visiting the environs around London and the rest of England proper along with visiting nearby Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales
For those new to this place, Jeffrey´s Trackside Diner is the place for you to go to relax and talk off topic about most anything - as long as you stay within the forum rules, which means certain hot button topics are excluded. Please refer to Steven Otte´s post on Forum Policies. Everybody is welcome to participate in the Diner !
The staff - that´s Zoe, Chloe, Flo, Janie, and Brunhilda — is very friendly and will serve up plenty of virtual diner fare with a smile. Just don´t forget to leave a generous tip! Now and then, our host Steven Otte chips in and brings along some goodies for us to try - which is always heartily welcomed!
Come in and sit for a while, ALL are welcome.
As always, in rememberance of our fallen but not forgotten comrades, here is the RIP Track:
Thanks, Ed, for the smooth flight over the Big Pond, the soft landing and the welcome on the British Isles! What a treasure trough for a train buff to visit. Britain was not only the cradle of railroading, but has a preservation scene unmatched elsewhere! Aside from quirky little narrow gauge lines running on 15" track, like the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Rlwy. or the Ravenglass & Eskdale Rlwy, there are a number of “real” NG lines to visit, including a rack line up Britain´s highest mountain - and no, it´s not the Mt. Everest [swg]. When Dr. Beeching took the axe to Britain´s branchlines, a number of preservation groups sprang up, resulting in a larger number of preservation lines in some of Britain´s most beautiful areas. I bet we will visit some of them this month!
I´ll be off to my eye doctor in an hour, just to have a check up on the outcome of the recent surgery. I still see those gnats dancing before my eye, but that is supposed to be normal. We will see [(-D]!
Great to see you here, Ulrich! I wish you well at your checkup. I’m actually scheduled for a CT scan later today to look for a few kidney stones that I believe I passed just last night [:S] Old age is sure a challenge!
Let’s take a look around the loco sheds and see what’s going on. There’s a new chap starting out:
“Better get on the chimney, young Harry” Right “Outside and inside, mind”
Happy Canada Day to our friends in the Provinces and Territories!
I have a feeble minded Internet connection today, which is quitre annoying!
There are a number of interesting videos made by British Transport Films available on Youtube, showing British trains in the 1950s and 1960s, and even later. BTF was closed when BR was dismantled in the 1980s. Up until today, a cornucopia of information for the aficionado.
I see the diner has arrived, let me go supervise its unloading. HMMM…All of a sudden I am out of retirement, oh well at least I won’t let them drop it.
Thanks for the Canada Day acknowledgement Ed. I am not sure how much celebrating will be going on though, in B.C. today we had 12 new cases with a total of 18 in hospital including 3 in the ICU. Were getting there.
I sure hit a wall of exhaustion yesterday, I have too much going on and I still think I am eighteen. Oh well I took it easy today and worked on the worlds longest bathroom remodel. Got the wedi board up.[<:o)] That took ten minutes and then the phone rang with another vulture wanting a piece of the Estate I am looking after. They will not be phoning back.[(-D]
It is good to be back in jolly old England again, my wife has to sometimes remind me places I have been. I once told someone I had not been to a certain small town in South America and my wife promptly got a photo off the wall of the two of us standing in the town square.[:-^] So if you ask me if I have been somewere, I now answer, ya maybe.[(-D] I do tend to remember scuba diving, sailing and river rafting and backpacking trips as I really loved those, but being a tourist wandering around the usual tourist trap locals, well they tend to all run together. I have seen a lot of castles in England but to much time has passed to tell you off hand which ones they were.[(-D] I do hope for more train trips while the diner is in GB. I am lacking in my British Rail experience.
Time to hit the sack, Hope Meryl is asleep I am really tired and she can be so demanding.[:-,][(-D]
Out of the Provincial Archives, it says last working steam loco out of Vancouver.
Good Morning and happy July! Where did half a year go?
Sorry if there was any confusion, Dave. I had offered to host the diner back on Thursday then there wasn’t much discussion after that other than one post between you and Ulrich.
This is a good look at 1959 track laying. They lay panel track then take up the pre-installed rails and then apply the 600 foot welded rail? Seems a bit unproductive don’t you think?
I could do without the Blackpool pipe organ score {{[:|]}} (I love theater pipe organ music but it simply doesn’t seem fitting here?)
Dave - in legal terms, British Railways was never a company, but a department of the British Transport Commission, a public entity, which did not follow regular accounting procedures set for private enterprises. Any loss had to be covered by the government out of tax money. As the losses were becoming a budget threat, Britain did, what most other European railroads did a few years later as well - abolish steam traction, cut-down on services, reduce the network. Like in all other European countries, this did not show the attempted benefits.
Btw, I wrote my thesis on the privatization of state-owned railways.
Back from my visit to the eye doctor - all is good, I just need to be more patient!
Hi Everyone, and welcome to the UK. It is nice to have you visit us, again. It is 11:15 and outside, tipping it down and the winds have swung back round from the north. Our GCH is running - in July! So I think I may feel like a 2nd helping of Full English Breakfast, at lunchtime. John had me fooled about his visit, albeit I did wonder how he being allowed to holiday before the Hotels open on the 4th of July (Independance Day)
Ulrich, British Railways as a Nationised entity since 1948, was what most people knew of, up until it’s being franchised into separate Railway companies in the 1990’s. My own research has brought me to firmly believe that Britains Railways would have been far better left alone as the big 4 private companies, GWR, LMS, LNER & SR. They may have required Goverment assistance, but our Rail Network would have survived far more intact had Nationalisation not provided a Lever for certain types to weald their Axe. Their attitude towards and the damage they inflicted on the BR network - is what led me (personally) to commence modelling USA Railroads.
Anyway, have a nice stay. I pressume in Cyber-world all the museums and preserved Railways are open. We missed our June holiday in North Wale
Too late for lunch, but the right time for some coffee and a piece of cake!
Good news on the home searching front. We have found a nice and cozy 1-bedroom apartment in a quiet street in Görlitz. We have set up a date to have a look at the place on July 13th, so we will hop in our car on the 12th to drive those 400 miles down there! I will try to set up other visits around that date, so we will have options available.
Paul, I am in total agreement to your statement! The same happened here! The total cost of all of the various operations have gone up drastically, as each separate entity maintains a costly, but mainly useless overhead. Another result is that hardly any of the managers has railway experience, both in the sense of technical and commercial implications. The result? Ticket pricing through the roof, trains overbooked and running late, customer service non-existing, demotivated staff and angry passengers!
North American railroading is brutally market price driven nowadays. In effect the rail bed infrastructure has been converted into a public utility, de facto through track sharing contracts, even though remaining in private ownership whereas motive power and rolling stock is privately owned and operated. This is, in effect, the current UK business model. Track is a public utility and operations are private.
Steam power was rendered uneconomic by steeply rising operational labour costs combined with very cheap refined petroleum fuels. Still absurdly cheap motive power energy.
Passenger rail traffic became uneconomic about the same time as passenger ship traffic for much the same reasons. It remains a very expensive way to move people. Why? Because people just aren’t heavy enough, even with modern diets. Nor are they dense enough despite some strange behaviour patterns associated with density, of intellect at any rate.
Like container ships and ULCC ships, railroads are about weight movement and transhipment costs. Containers and unit trains.
Anyone familiar with the shipment of oil by rail can immediately understand the economics of current railroading. For those not so familiar with this crazy way of transporting oil just imagine the ultimate oil tank unit train. With enough motive power in theory the unit train could be as long as from here to Vancouver… We already have such unit trains: they’re called pipelines. The ends of the tank cars have been removed and the tank shells all welded into a continuous train. The trucks and couplers are redundant and so is the track. Even the ROW is cheaper since grades and river crossings are pretty much irrelevant. Motive power is provided by stationary pumps and gravity.
Railroads cannot transport passengers cheaply enough because it is impossible to pack them tight enough or containerize people efficiently enough. A bus is a more efficient container and a car even more so because roads are m
Strange thoughts to be voiced in a model railroading forum, I must say! I fully disagree to what you say. Train travel still is the most economical and environmentally friendliest way of moving goods and people, especially when electricity drives the trains. If car drivers and airline passengers would be charged the real cost incurring to a society, there would hardly be a car on the road nor an air service.
Back to British trains!
Here is a short video on the 15" gauge Ravenglass & Eskdale Rlwy.! It´s not a toy train, but a public railway running on a timetable for the general public!
I loved the Rocky Mountaineer, but it is hardly commuting, business travel nor inter-city transportation.
As rail travel and interstate highway grew, development followed the highways. The car culture is big in the US. Acquiring land for a high speed rail line is cost prohibitive. Even low speed lines are expensive to build in the US.
I don’t know that the rails are a public utitlity. I am sure Amtrak pays trackage fees to CSX in my area but passenger traffic is often slowed by freight traffic and it is not a smooth ride.
Good morning! I’ve waited a while for this, so Chloe, I’ll have a full English breakfast. I’d also like lots of black coffee.
Paul, I apologize for the misleading post. I was thinking of the diner move. I only wish it was a real-life vacation to the UK.
Not much going on here. It’s bill-paying day, but that takes about five minutes. The rest of the day is open.
Last year, my daughters and families all began their European tour in the UK. They then moved on to France riding the train in the tunnel. I should have gone with them.
Ed … Thanks for the move to UK, and thanks to all who contributed so far. … I have a few things I can contribute this month, and I will do so when I can.
Bret … I can image what Bear could do with that last photo. He could make a Bear Toon like “That big airplane is sticking out its tongue.”
