it says in that article that "they" (the promoters) "bought the London and South Western Railway for £85,000, with the intention of turning the Lymington to Freshwater railway line from a branch line to a main line". Of course that didn't happen. At the end of 1901 the Freshwater, Yarmouth and Newport (Isle of Wight) Railway Company was bought to form part of the tunnel scheme.  The reports said it was promoters, or the Solent Tunnel Company, that paid £85,000 for it (or rather for a controlling interest). However, The South Western and Isle of Wight Junction Railway Act 1901 (and those of 1903, 1909, 1914, and later) created and gave the usual powers to a company of the same name. So formally speaking, it must have been that company that was the purchaser.

For most earlier railway companies, there were frequent reports of what they were up to, including company shareholder meetings. That didn't happen here, but there were a lot of rumours of engineering difficulties delaying the start of work, or it being imminent, or just that it all progress had stopped. The sequence of acts was partly to extend the time limit to start construction work. The promoters believed, or found, that the money available from themselves and other private subscribers was too little, but their repeated attempts to get public funds either on the island or from national government failed. Frank Gerard Aman himself died in January1938, despite the other dates being quoted, and the project was abandoned not long after.

 
Yes, the railway bug bites very early in life. I reckon I was bitten before my dose of chicken pox, a childhood right of passage in my day - thank God now for vaccines. Christmas was always a magical time for a child and during that season, on a day that my dad wasn’t at work, the highlight for me was him setting up on the living room floor his childhood Hornby Dublo train set for me to admire its running - but certainly not to touch!

Roll on Christmas 1966 and my first Hornby ‘O’ gauge tinplate arrived, courtesy of that wonderful white-beared chap, and I could finally get my hands on my own. The bug had left its permanent mark.

Come the following Christmas and an even more amazing item was shown to me; it was my grandfather’s ‘O’ gauge steam engine, dating from just after the First World War. It was an 0-4-0T crimson liveried locomotive, powered by liquid methylated sprits. The meths reservoir was in a metal tank just under the footplate feeding a couple of burner wicks that heated the boiler. Helpfully the tank had an overflow plug so that the correct amount of spirit could be loaded without running the boiler dry. The engine had no throttle - it was either stationary, hissing away loudly, or running at full chat. The only way to temper its speed was to load its train with suitable weights to stop it toppling over on the curves.

Now our 1960s living room was full of 1950s modern furniture - think Festival of Britain. The chairs and settee were all on spindly legs with a 6” to 7” clearance underneath - certainly enough clearance for an ‘O’ gauge tinplate track layout - and what layout is complete without a tunnel?

The great day arrived and the track was laid including the big settee tunnel. The train was assembled with suitable stones and half bricks as ballast and the locomotive prepared for its adventure - tank filled and match applied. The fun was about to start, and when the engine started spewing steam from its safety valve and cylinders it was given a gentle push - and off it set, careering around the lounge and through the tunnel with its heavy train in pursuit. This young boy was utterly delighted at the spectacle.

It was then that things started to go awry - the overflow plug of the meths tank fell out. Meths, being what it is, immediately leaked out and ran with surface tension over the whole locomotive and, of course, it immediately ignited. It was now a high speed blue ball of flame thundering around the lounge floor - like Cassy Jones’ last ride - including under the highly inflammable furniture.

Horrified, my mum screamed, “John, Stop it!!”  My dad shouted, “How?!!”

It was finally arrested short of a house fire and peace once more reigned in the land - but young me detected a certain tension in the air. Never again was grandad’s steam engine allowed to be run in the house.

In August 1968, the 15 Guinea Special was run in the northwest of England - the last UK British Railways steam train. Now 15 guineas was way beyond the pocket of my father and what is not so well known is that for several weeks before the final event, identical specials were run at far more affordable prices. My dad booked us on one of these, which I would guess to be in July 1968 when I was just finishing my first year at junior school. Liverpool to Carlisle, via Manchester, Blackburn and Hellifield - up the famous Settle and Carlisle.

The lefthand photograph was taken at Carlisle on that very trip looking reluctantly out of the driver’s window of 70013 “Oliver Cromwell” - and why, dear audience, am I looking so miserable? Well like all boys of my age, I knew far more than my dad, and his killjoy instruction not to stick my head out of the window up the Long Drag. Thus yours truly ended up with painfully sharp ash in his eyes. Nevertheless, the day sticks in my memory as ‘one of those events’.

Fifty years later and there was a re-enactment and this time I would be buying the tickets. At Manchester Victoria, shortly after the Class 7 had coupled onto its train my dad showed the crew the 1968 photo.

“Well, you’d better get another!”, they said - hence the right hand one. This time in the driver’s seat. Looking at the controls, I knew I could have taken it away - Standard Class 4T being the largest I have driven.

A couple of decades now in the heritage railway world and hopefully many years more. That bug is a lifetime infection.

 

Came across an interesting history of this scheme at

https://www.stbarbe-museum.org.uk/whats-on/online-exhibitions/local-people-and-stories/frank-aman-the-solent-tunnel/


Fascinating read at the URL above and for Coffee Shop members I have added a copy to our archive database so that it's available to future searches on the subject.

 

Harz - done much more.  Innerbanan, Narvik and Bodo done. 

Found the old thread in a search for Bodo ...  having noted this on Forbes.com


Trondheim is many hours north of Oslo ... but then it's another 9 hours to Bodo and even that's only part way to the Northern Cape.   I travelled southbound on this line about a month ago and had the pleasure of spending much of the journey chatting with a senior member of the TOC's staff and understanding some of the issues of providing the service.   There's a major article to be written - both fascinating to me and educational too.

 

"Ongoing issues" rather than from last night's fiasco

... some of our pages / content include references to images held elsewhere, and many of them - especially old ones - are http rather than https.  Browsers barf at these in various ways, depending on which bowser it is and what security settings the user has made.    Although I have edited / changed to an alternative secure URL for images as I have come across them, that's an awful long process with a tiny return for each edit, and I have in mind a better solution as I do other things.

... there are occasional times where the worker has been too busy to accept connections from the receptionist - a new issue since December as we only a single server so no internal comms to go wrong before December. Our discussion on another thread about AI and crawler load rather points to the "culprit" issues and by telling or bashing certain of the crawlers we have an element of control.   Log files give me an insight as to the prooportion of theses we have;  as they "turn over" during the period the server was down, yesterday's and today's are obscured by those other things.  Come Monday morning I'll have further data.

As part of the analysis of last night, there is a possibility that I'll suggest / make a couple of server changes in the next couple of months to raise the roof and give us more headroom because of the 'bots.

... the "view unread" issue relates right back to the base SMF software we're running - always been a bit flakey and it's one of those things that effects some users irritatingly and others not at / not reproducible.   Blooming had things to debug, too, issues that report on last 24 hours.  Once I see the problem, it's gone away ... and another period to wait to see it again.     I suspect intermediate caching devices which double-dip sometimes and like my testing, the first time they get correct unseen flags.  Coming back a (milli)seconds later, there is then nothing new.  That's a theory that would explain what you see.  And our server does see double hits.

 
I'm still getting the unable to connect securely via https message occasionally on Edge and clicking on the view unread posts button often returns no items even though it's probably been 24 hours since I last viewed it.

 


This one has folks aboard....

 

Google's AI says this.......

 

 
From the BBC:

 

 

May have misread that - Schleswig, Rendesburg (where the line north from Hamburg rises over the Kiel Canal) or Neumunster (where some of the suburban trains out from Hamburg to Kiel and Flensburg split, and there is a railway museum

 

"Quick everyone - duck ... there's another boat going by". 

 

I suspect you were headed, then, to Cuxhaven


and if so, and updated report on how they're doing in covering movement of air (wind) into movement of people (on a train) via splitting and reforming water (electrolysis and hydrogen power) would be great.

 
Johnneyw is closer, but not close enough..

 
That's more than 100 very invisible people! 

 
Saturday August 30

Signalling problems at Didcot, and plastic sheeting in the overhead wires at Southall.

1W25 12:53 London Paddington to Worcester Foregate St (15:11) : delayed at Didcot (+18), arrived Shrub Hill +19 and cancelled thereafter.

Departed +24.

1P25 13:05 Worcester Foregate Street to London Paddington (15:22) : held Charlbury (+11), arrived +40.

 

As part of a longer trip that makes sense, as it's where the local trains from Germany and Denmark both end their runs.  There are a couple of major places along the way which would make for a good stop on a tour too.  There is another place - Tonder - where German and Danish local trains meet, but from Hamburg there would be an extra change at Niebull. 

 
......a very poor week for the Thames Valley.....

Alterations to services between London Paddington and Reading

Due to an object being caught on the overhead electric wires between London Paddington and Reading some lines are blocked.

Train services running to and from these stations may be delayed by up to 30 minutes or revised.
Disruption is expected until 17:00 30/08.

 

It’s been a bit of an undignified scramble, but from a good nose around this afternoon, it looks as if final preparations are underway for it to just meet the deadline.

 
We have a bus in Swindon named Western Pathfinder.



If she is a she, does that concern a member here with a similar name?   

 

Yes, I see what you mean now.  I misinterpreted some of the info/replies. 
I'm thinking of Flensburg now.

 

Unlikely as that would be doubling back from Hamburg. 

 

Particularly bad on the Elizabeth Line. I've become quite an afficionado of "Gangsta rap" as a result! 

 

Bremen perchance?

 

I've always understood that all rail (and road) engines and ships are 'she', regardless of their name

 
Delays to services at Reading

Due to a fault with the signalling system at Reading trains have to run at reduced speed on some lines
.
Train services running to and from this station may be delayed. Disruption is expected until 11:15 30/08.

 

Lovely picture - but why do we say "She" when a locomotive has a male name.  Or is it because the locomotive was in drag at the time the picture was taken?

 
Whatever floats your boat.

 
From The Metro


Edit to add picture