/n2/ - Transportation » Thread #60536

[15 / 0 / ?]

Anonymous Tue 25 Nov 2008 07:44:00 No.60536 View View Reply Original Report

Quoted By:

Hey /n/, just watched a great documentary and was sure many of you would be interested to take a look.
It's all about the history of the British rail system with a particular focus on the destruction of around 1/3 of the network in the 1960s.

Lots of great footage of trains, the railways, abandoned stations, everything really.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00drtpj/Ian_Hislop_Goes_off_the_Rails/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4cGRpOspkk

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 25 Nov 2008 09:30:00 No.60556 Report

Quoted By:

oh fuck yes

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 25 Nov 2008 09:38:00 No.60558 Report

Quoted By:

beautiful but i can't help but be depressed at such a waste and short sightedness for what sgould be one of the finest rail systems in the world

Kartma !wvTgDQHyaM

Kartma !wvTgDQHyaM Tue 25 Nov 2008 10:11:00 No.60576 Report

Quoted By:

Anything about British rail history is awesome. That country fucking INVENTED the train.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 25 Nov 2008 14:31:00 No.60592 Report

Quoted By: >>60611

Well at least without the beeching axe, we wouldn't have got so many preservation lines.

Kartma !wvTgDQHyaM

Kartma !wvTgDQHyaM Tue 25 Nov 2008 17:39:00 No.60611 Report

Quoted By: >>60613

>>60592

Ah, the Beeching Axe. Seems classy somehow. All we Amerifags got were Amtrak, mergers, and Conrail.

ytter !gf83DND1Iw

ytter !gf83DND1Iw Tue 25 Nov 2008 17:52:00 No.60613 Report

Quoted By: >>60615

>>60611
>Confail.

Fix'd that for ya man ;)

This was a nice doc. Thanks.

Kartma !wvTgDQHyaM

Kartma !wvTgDQHyaM Tue 25 Nov 2008 19:34:00 No.60615 Report

Quoted By:

>>60613

Oh, it did well enough to get divvied off to CSuX and Horsecock Southern. :P

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 25 Nov 2008 22:14:00 No.60622 Report

Quoted By: >>60633

Beeching's axe was somewhat questionable but its a shame his bad reputation comes mostly from the point of view of nostalgia for an age which had mostly died long before the 1960s.

The modernisation of Britain's railways was badly implemented but it needed to be done. To put things into perspective, the last steam powered service in Britain was 2 years AFTER the opening of the first Shinkansen line.

Nostalgia and romance can be wonderful things, but they can also hold things back quite badly.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO unknown.jpg, 0B, 0x0

Anonymous Tue 25 Nov 2008 23:53:00 No.60627 Report

Quoted By:

I bet Fred Dibnah would have been doing this.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 26 Nov 2008 01:31:00 No.60633 Report

Quoted By: >>60634

>>60622
>To put things into perspective, the last steam powered service in Britain was 2 years AFTER the opening of the first Shinkansen line.

And nine years before Japan itself ended steam-powered service.

You can have both working together fine, really.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 26 Nov 2008 01:40:00 No.60634 Report

Quoted By: >>60645

>>60633
Not really, there is a massive difference in the way steam locomotives are driven, operated and maintained compared to diesel and electric. Its essentially like running 2 seperate rail networks. Which in the case of Japan, it actually was, but not on the same track and with the same depots and stations as would have been the case in Britain.

Britain's railways were lagging way behind where they should have been as a major industrial power at the time. Thinking about the good old days held back Britain's network when other nations more heavily damaged by the Second World War were better able to move on, modernise and in some cases rebuild from the ground up.

Its like it says in that documentary, the golden age of Britain railways ended with the First World War, sadly things didn't move on a great deal from there.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO unknown.jpg, 0B, 0x0

Anonymous Wed 26 Nov 2008 03:33:00 No.60645 Report

Quoted By:

>>60634
Thing is that Britain is actually going to put a steam locomotive back in service on one line from the start of 2009.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/7737382.stm

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 26 Nov 2008 03:44:00 No.60646 Report

Quoted By:

That will be pulling charter trains which isn't anything approaching the same thing as the return of steam to large scale regular revenue earning services.

Steam will never make a full return. It will remain the territory of heritage railways and railtours.

Kartma !wvTgDQHyaM

Kartma !wvTgDQHyaM Wed 26 Nov 2008 06:38:00 No.60651 Report

Quoted By:

At least people can see how steam worked and how marvelous it was. Then again, there are the issues of progress and practicality. But it's nice to have around to remind us of how things were.

Capcode	All Only User Posts Only Verified Posts Only Moderator Posts Only Manager Posts Only Admin Posts Only Developer Posts Only Founder Posts
Show Posts	All Only With Images Only Without Images Only Spoiler Images Only Non-Spoiler Images
Deleted Posts	All Only Deleted Posts Only Non-Deleted Posts
Ghost Posts	All Only Ghost Posts Only Non-Ghost Posts
Post Type	All Only Sticky Threads Only Opening Posts Only Reply Posts
Results	All Grouped By Threads
Order	Latest Posts First Oldest Posts First

On these archives

Your latest searches