Monday 11 July 2011

Pointless signs - Hyde North

This from the Banker...


Evidently attention to detail is also lacking in Tameside as this sign on Victoria Road for Hyde North shows.

Eye wonders if Sealink ever served Hyde North?

Labour leader ducks a meeting with RMT!

An extra-ordinary tweet from @RMTLondon...

So Ed Milliband didn't go to Durham Miner's Gala as he 'didn't want to share a platform with Bob Crow.'

Eye thought it was only Boris who ran scared of Crow Bar Bob?

Meanwhile, in more encouraging news, the BBC is saying that Petrol-head will meet with the RMT this Wednesday to discuss the Thameslink contract.

To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war.

Pointless signs - King's Cross

This from a Mr Malins...


Perhaps more about attention to detail than an actual pointless sign?

Pointless signs - Feet on or off the seats?

Miles and chains - a sign of the times?

This from the late Edmund Gunter...

Sadly the new generation of railway employees appear ignorant of traditional British units of measurement as still used by the railway.

This particular example has been an affront to my eyes for many years as a regular commuter on the Portsmouth Direct.

I noticed in August 2005 that the cast iron structure plates on the footbridge at Haslemere station had been replaced by new aluminium ones with the distance of 42m 80c cast into them.


I mentioned this to Network Rail friend and the plates were recast with the correct 43m 0c on them, which I noticed in October 2005.


In October 2008 Network Rail decided to change the style of the structure plate from the cast aluminium ones to corporate standard "road sign" material with a reflective backing and the incorrect 42m 80c returned!


Nearly three years on the "wrong" plates are still there.

Presumably attention to detail on today's railway is now optional?

UPDATE: This from Steve Strong...

Why isn't there a bar code, or some other scanable identity recognised by the Asset Register, on the last one?

UPDATE: This from The Man by the Photocopier...

Actually, the latest plate suggests that the primary distance is 42 metres, according to SI.


Since the railway will have to change to metric units as ERTMS spreads (and the Rule Book has already largely been converted), perhaps we should bite the bullet and consign these increasingly irrelevant Imperial...
(Sadly, owing to pressures of space, Eye is unable to reproduce all the rabid Metric rantings of The Man by the Photocopier)

Do Christmas Turkeys have privs?

This from Smalltrousers...

It's often said that the modern railway has a touch of the surreal about it, but maybe none more so than this.

The Railchat forum (billed as "The Professional Rail Staff chat site) is currently hotly debating the HS2 project.

The site's members are firmly in the skeptic/anti camp and have backed using as 'slightly more objective" evidence that High speed is highly polluting from none other than 'Transport Watch'.

Those familiar with Transport Watch will know them as the people who've long campaigned against the rail industry and called for the entire network to be torn up and converted into roads.

So, we have a rail staff opponents of HS2 supporting, as 'objective', an organisation that wants to tear up the country's railways.

Turkeys evidently can and do vote for Christmas!