Many stops along the way...

[HansV]

lotsofstops.jpg

[StuartR]

That is a LOT of stops!

[HansV]

2^63-5 to be precise...

[stuck]

That is a LOT of stops!

But it is the east coast main line we're talking about here...

It's been a while since I used that line but I do remember one journey to London feeling like there were that number of stops involved. The train finally stopped for good just north of Stevenage, until another locomotive was found to push it into the station. Everyone then had to disembark and wait until the train was moved out of the way to allow the train behind it into the station so that we could all cram onto that train and stand for the remainder of the journey into Kings Cross.

Or there was the time I and a colleague were returning from a meeting in London but didn't get on the first train due to leave for York because my colleague was overwhelmed with the desire to buy a Cornish pasty. However, that Cornish pasty turned out to be really good value for money because it meant we didn't get on the train that broke down and so we got back to York with only a short delay, while the dead train in front was pushed into the next station, and we already had seats when the passengers from the broken down train were shoehorned into our train.

Ken

[jonwallace]

I once got the airport "express" bus from Edinburgh Waverley to Edinburgh Airport. I think that's the number of stops it had...

[John Gray]

"It is better to travel well than to arrive" - Buddha

[DocAElstein]

"It is better to travel well than to arrive" - Buddha

As we say here, „Der Weg ist das Ziel“ ....

.... it is the east coast main line .....The train finally stopped for good just north of Stevenage, ....

That brings back a lot of memories… For about 10 years I worked close to the Stevenage Station and lived for over 10 years near the next Station back North up the line, Hitchin, before emigrating to the Fatherland. Often I took the train to work, and back as well sometimes if I did not feel like a long jog back home.
Also we often went down to Kings Cross for one day conferences at that IEEE place or visiting some collaborating London Universities
Before that I lived and grew up in Biggleswade, - at that time the next one North up the line from Hitchin. The last few years we had a council house right next to Biggleswade Station.

I did not do much nipping across the tracks back then though, - in fact I never did back then, as far as I can remember. I did run alongside or parallel to the east coast main line on the track bed of a ripped up old line on another jogging route which went from home, then around the fields and then back home again alongside the east coast main line, before slipping down the embankment, at a point close to my house, which I am guessing would be at about the point of the signal box here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4n4SWxA0tY&t=30s
No trace at all there now except the overgrown track bed, - that signal box would likely have been burnt down by the scrap people as a quick way to get at all the metal.

Train things are quite different here, in a few ways.
_ All the platforms and tracks are open to everyone all the time as there is no ticket control outside the trains, - that is all done in the trains with controllers or guards, on the trains or they get on temporarily along the way for the smaller local trains, which they still have a lot of.
_ The other big significant difference, which makes it a bit more tolerable to be here just now, is that they did not do that terrible and idiotic thing done in England of spending a lot of time and money ripping up the beautiful branch lines and destroying many beautiful buildings, bridges, viaducts etc. Instead , here, they just left them if they were not economic anymore, and only ripped up odd bits as and if they really needed to. Some got re opened , commercially, or remaining parts were restored by Vintage train enthusiasts.
I remember middle in my from house jog route from Hitchin always being curious about a small kink in a field path with a small amount of unusual rubble there in the middle of nowhere. I only found out in internet in recent years there was a massive train cut in and beautiful bridge, https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4ng3-O3xdZc/ ... Bridge.jpg ,
https://youtu.be/1BrFsHuimE8?t=630 ,
https://east-west-rail.blogspot.com/201 ... eford.html , - the cut in is filled in with rubbish, flat, now, no trace of the railway anymore, the bridge totally gone without trace there like a lot of others along the way, and thousands I expect across England.

If they had not done all that destruction , Ken, then instead of

to push it into the station.

, they could instead of pushed it backwards to the last Station, Hitchin, you could have waved out of the window to me along a beautiful branch line to Bedford, then gone down to London from there.

I am still making interesting discoveries along my old railway track here in North Bavaria. (They might wish they had pulled that up without trace, or bombed it, lol, when I am finished making my video about it, - I sent some original pics to Bob Archell for his light entertainment, and because I figured Görings Luftwaffe couldn’t get at him as far away as Canada)

[stuck]

By the way, Hans, where did you get that screen shot?

Ken

[HansV]

From Reddit. I can't find it anymore now...

[Graeme]

The last 20 years or so of my working life was spent on the railway. Although I didn't ride on a train very often. My time was spent on the track or in the substations. When we had a meeting to go to in London we would use the High Speed which goes from Ebbsfleet to St Pancreas at 130mph!

Thanks for the nostalgic post Alan.

Graeme

[HansV]

St Pancreas

[ChrisGreaves]

lotsofstops.jpg

Please see also "Why a 49-mile journey in Wales takes seven hours"
That's about seven miles per hour, although that is not the average speed of any one leg of the journey.

By comparison in the early 1960s the 3'6" gauge Kalgoorlie Express left Midland Junction (Perth) at 1715 and pulled into Southern Cross at 0215 the next morning, having slugged 230 miles across the dead-flat wheat belt at an average speed of 25 mph. Back in those days I could (racing) bicycle faster than that, although not for 230 miles.
Cheers, Chris

[stuck]

Isn't there an infamously slow / liable to break down Australian train that gave rise to a joke along the lines (no pun intended) of:
Man to train guard, "Is there a doctor on the train?, my wife is in labour and about to give birth"
Train guard, "Why did you allow your wife to get on this train if she was so near her due date?"
Man, "She wasn't pregnant when she got on the train."

Ken