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Railways & Railroads
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  Rabbit  ·  Race & Racism (I)  ·  Race & Racism (II)  ·  Radiation & Radioactivity  ·  Radio  ·  Radium  ·  Rage  ·  Railways & Railroads  ·  Rain  ·  Rainbow  ·  Rap & Gangsta Rap  ·  Rape I  ·  Rape II  ·  Rat  ·  Rational & Rationalism  ·  Raves  ·  Read & Reader & Reading  ·  Reagan, Ronald  ·  Reality  ·  Reason  ·  Rebel & Rebellion & Revolt  ·  Records & Vinyl  ·  Recycling  ·  Red Dwarf (Star)  ·  Redemption  ·  Reform  ·  Reformation  ·  Refugees  ·  Reggae Music  ·  Regret & Sorry  ·  Regulation  ·  Reincarnation & Past Lives  ·  Rejection  ·  Relationship  ·  Relics  ·  Religion (I)  ·  Religion (II)  ·  Religion (III)  ·  Remedy  ·  Remember  ·  Renaissance  ·  Repent & Repentance  ·  Repression  ·  Reptiles  ·  Reptilians  ·  Republic  ·  Republicans & Republican Party  ·  Reputation  ·  Research  ·  Resignation  ·  Resistance  ·  Resources  ·  Respect  ·  Responsibility  ·  Rest  ·  Restaurant  ·  Result  ·  Resurrection  ·  Retirement  ·  Revelation, Book: The Apocalypse of John  ·  Revenge & Vengeance  ·  Revolution (I)  ·  Revolution (II)  ·  Reward  ·  RFID Chip  ·  Rhetoric  ·  Rhode Island  ·  Rich  ·  Richard I & Richard the First  ·  Richard II & Richard the Second  ·  Richard III & Richard the Third  ·  Ridicule  ·  Right & Righteous  ·  Right Wing  ·  Rights  ·  Riots  ·  Risk  ·  Ritalin  ·  Rituals  ·  Rival & Rivalry  ·  River  ·  Road & Road Films  ·  Robbery  ·  Robbery: Rest of the World  ·  Robbery: UK  ·  Robbery: US (I)  ·  Robbery: US (II)  ·  Robot  ·  Rock & Rock-n-Roll  ·  Rockefeller Dynasty  ·  Rocket  ·  Rodents  ·  Romance & Romance Films  ·  Romania & Romanians  ·  Romanov Dynasty  ·  Rome  ·  Roof  ·  Room  ·  Rope  ·  Rose  ·  Rosicrucians  ·  Round Table Groups  ·  Royal Family (I)  ·  Royal Family (II)  ·  Royalty  ·  Rubbish  ·  Rude & Rudeness  ·  Rugby  ·  Rule & Reign  ·  Ruler  ·  Rules  ·  Rumour & Rumor  ·  Run & Running & Runner  ·  Russia (I)  ·  Russia (II)  ·  Ruth (Bible)  ·  Rwanda & Rwandans  

★ Railways & Railroads

It’s morning rush-hour at Manchester Piccadilly: ‘Everybody’s in such a rush.’  ibid.  information bloke

 

It's May Bank Holiday and the Western Coast Main Line is closed  major engineering works.  ibid.

 

 

A huge network under constant pressure.  The Railway: Keeping Britain on Track V: Railway on My Doorstep

 

Decades of industrial decline have led to high levels of crime and deprivation in the valleys.  ibid.

 

Alan and his team are responsible for three hundred miles of land by the track.  ibid.

 

Last year they handed out 15,000 penalties and prosecutions.  ibid.

 

More than 600 million passengers use London’s 357 stations.  ibid.

 

 

Scotland: one of Britain’s most challenging networks.  More than 200,000 passengers travel along over 2,000 trains every day.  The Railway: Keeping Britain on Track VI: North of the Border

 

Glasgow Central is Scotland's busiest station.  ibid.

 

Nearly 300 people are killed on British railways every year.  ibid.

 

Most fatalities on the railways are suicides.  ibid.

 

 

For more than a hundred years steam-trains drove Britain.  But in the 1950s the government planned to modernise the railways, scrap steam and close thousands of miles of track.  The Golden Age of Steam Railways I: Small is Beautiful, BBC 2012

 

After World War II branch lines were closed and steam fazed out.  Some people refused to accept it.  ibid.

 

A passion to save something they saw disappearing: the world of the narrow-gauge steam railway.  ibid.

 

Talyllyn, north Wales: It didn’t stop the volunteers from opening the world's first preserved railway on May 14th 1951.  ibid.

 

The world’s first narrow-gauge steam railway: it ran for twenty-two miles from the harbour of Porthmadog.  ibid.

 

 

In the 1950s three thousand miles out of a twenty thousand mile network were lost.  A few people resisted these closures.  The Golden Age of Steam Railways II: Branching Out

 

Bridgnorth – the volunteers worked every weekend for two years.  ibid.

 

The Worth Valley Railway reopened in 1968 ... The Preservation movement was gaining momentum.  ibid.

 

The Railway Children was to have an effect on preservation well beyond the Worth Valley.  ibid.

 

All over Britain more than 200 restored steam locomotives are running on more than 100 preserved railway lines.  ibid.   

 

 

In Darlington in 2008 a team of enthusiasts is building the first brand-new British steam locomotive from scratch in nearly fifty years.  It’s a multi-million pound endeavour that started nearly twenty years ago.  Timeshift: The Last Days of Steam BBC 2011

 

It’s theatrical.  It’s dirty.  Noisy.  Powerful.  It’s heavy metal in motion.  ibid.

 

Over two and a half thousand brand-new locomotives between 1948 and 1960.  ibid.

 

The railways may not have been Britain’s top priority.  ibid.

 

A wonderful but complicated heritage that could do with a bit of sorting out.  ibid.  early film

 

The four great railway companies were brought together into one single new organisation: British Railways.  ibid.

 

Officially the Great Western Railway is dead.  And to many undoubtedly the late lamented.  ibid.  early film

 

The question of steam’s continuing place on our railways had to be addressed.  ibid.

 

Electrification required miles and miles of costly overhead lines; diesel power was more straightforward.  ibid.

 

This great variety of locomotives running on the lines gave rise to a cultural phenomenon that celebrated this diversity ... The weird and wonderful engines running on Britain’s railways.  ibid.

 

Engine classes, numbers and dimensions ... The trainspotter craze took off.  ibid.

 

‘That thing has got a voice up the front there, it’s making a noise, it’s speaking, the terrific noise it makes ... It sings like a kettle.’  ibid.  trainspotter

 

British Railways ceased to be a profitable company.  ibid.

 

The passing of steam was happening.  Even the railway enthusiast could see that the Age of Steam could not carry on.  ibid.

 

Steam was dirty, noisy and impractical; new diesels were clean, safe and quiet.  ibid.

 

The modernisation plan had promised an end to steam-powered locomotives.  But steam-engines carried on being built for several years.  ibid.

 

Others were racing against the clock to preserve Steam’s heritage.  ibid.

 

The Beeching Report of 1963 advocated the closure of money-losing regional lines.  ibid.

 

Luxury Pulmans provide one of the answers ... It’s already been called the Expense Account Train ... It cocks a snook at the MI.  ibid.  black and white film

 

As the engines went jobs were removed too.  ibid.

 

Over one hundred separate heritage railways.  ibid.

 

The public are still in love with steam.  ibid.

 

One of the biggest success stories in railway preservation is the Great Western society based at Didcot, and started by the Southall Boys.  ibid.

 

 

There is an entire world of literature, poetry and film devoted to the railways.  What is the source of the railways’ mystique?  Timeshift: Between the Lines: Railways in Fiction and Film, Andrew Martin reporting, BBC 2013

 

Trains were generally superior; they had a weight of history and culture.  ibid.

 

90% of our current route mileage was authorised in the three years from 1844 to 1847.  ibid.

 

The theme of Dombey & Son is the destruction wrecked by the London and Birmingham railway line that runs to Euston Station.  ibid.

 

The railways were losing their Gothic aspect.  An age of railway romance was emerging.  ibid.

 

The Titfield Thunderbolt 1953: a remarkably prescient call to arms – a warning to the villagers and to us all of the great migraine which was to come.  ibid.

 

For Betjeman much of the railways’ appeal was its permanence.  ibid.

 

 

For more than a century some of us have been captivated by the miniature world of the model railway.  Timeshift: The Joy of (Train) Sets, BBC 2013

 

The British love of model railways is etched into our historical obsession with the real thing.  ibid.

 

Bassett-Lowke introduced them to the new model world.  ibid.

 

The distinction between toy and model was an important one to Bassett-Lowke’s clients.  ibid.

 

Frank Hornby – a compulsive inventor in 1901 Hornby had created a design that would change the toy industry for ever – called Meccano it made him very rich.  ibid.

 

Hornby’s new trains were a far cry from Bassett-Lowke’s detailed models.  ibid.

 

In the 1950s one company – Tri-ang Robex – aimed their trains at working-class wallets.  ibid.  

 

Bound up with the urge to recover something lost.  ibid.

 

Model railways became the preserve of adults.  ibid.  

 

 

For most of us the glory days of the railways tend to mean one thing – the distant age of steam ... There was another golden age – one less well known.  When the nationalised British railways replaced steam with modern engines a new railway was born.   Timeshift: The Nation’s Railway: The Golden Age of British Rail, BBC 2015

 

A wonderful but complicated heritage that could do with a bit of sorting out.  ibid.  Transport 1950 film

 

A reduction in the rail network by about a third.  The closure of over two thousand stations and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs – all this brought instant notoriety to [Richard] Beeching, seen as the axeman of the rail system he became a target for satirists.  ibid. 

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