Cab Ride - Wandsworth Road to Staines 

Good stuff!

Thanks for the nice comments. Glad you enjoyed the ride!

Frustrating when you’re behind a stopping passenger train, and stations are so frequent. I generally try to always keep at least one yellow in front of me - less danger of a SPAD then

Glad you enjoyed the ride

Thank you for the kind words. Final video in this journey will be up in a few days

Thanks for the nice feedback, Les. It’s appreciated

I try to provide enough to be informative, but not so much it’s a distraction from the view. I think it’s a fine balance

It’s a complicated web of lines around there, that’s for sure! I think if videos are too short, the journey is too broken. But then too long, and people switch off. So 30-45 mins is roughly what I aim for if I can

The same is true of the Chatham lines between Swanley and Shortlands - the stoppers use the Fasts, and the expresses use the Slows

Pretty sure it was April 2022, as I have the resignalling booklet for it that was issued to staff

@@emmo999 2022 was Egham, Virginia Water and Ascot. I work for SWR in the Richmond area.

Ah ok, cheers for the clarification

No, this was a weekday run, and this was the booked path. So pass!

Very interesting as the Hounslow branch looked clear and it looks like you more or less got stuck behind the all stations Kingston service until Twickenham. Not that I am complaining in anyway, this is the first video I have seen of the Richmond branch since all the new signalling was installed. I am not sure about the new signal at the end of Richmond station just after the underpass, it looked difficult to see because of the darkness/sunlight, I think the old Feltham signal used to be at the end of the platform and I felt it was clearer for train drivers to see but I could be wrong, it may have just been the camera adjusting etc.

You’ll note along the route a lot of the signals have moved. Where the journey is still under Feltham, and not yet transferred to the ROC, you can see new posts been installed without signal heads showing the new locations. This was equally true of what has already changed, so we could see the changes in advance of it going live

@@emmo999 Got it!! I have often wondered why the new posts are there for such a duration of time with no signal heads!!

I don’t think it’s deliberately for drivers to get to them, but it’s certainly advantageous to take note of these things ready for the inevitable changeover

Hopefully it should be uploaded tomorrow afternoon. Hoped to get it up today, but time was against me. The route was always planned as Richmond, and yes, somewhat slow going when you’re behind a stopper and stations are so frequent!

To be honest, you switch off from the rattles after a while. They’re just part and parcel of the journey. And you need full senses to deal with the various audible alarms that go off (vigilance, AWS for example) The rain wasn’t great, but at least it was sporadic rather than heavy heavy

Next route will be Staines to Woking via Virginia Water

@@emmo999 Ah. That's the same as the other video. Seems like a common route for freight and non passenger traffic.

There’s nowhere else to go. From Staines the only other alternative is Windsor, which is a dead end line

@@emmo999 I realise that. I just figured that you might have to tamp on those sections at some point, but perhaps that's a much rarer event.

The trouble is we don’t get control of where we tamp, so some bits of line we rarely travel on, especially dead end bits. Whereas obviously through routes get used for general machine movements, not just tamping

Official name is an impedance bond. What they do is part of the track circuits, which tell the signaller where you are on the line. They are quite old technology and are everywhere all over the network

Depends on what work is taking place. If it’s anything significant, then it will be during an engineers possession, and the electrics will be isolated. Otherwise, there are shrouds they can use to place over the juice rail, if they are unable to guarantee a safe distance from it

The Network Rail maps I refer to still name it as Middlesex, although I accept the county has long gone and the station is, indeed, in Surrey

locals like myself still call it Ashford Middlesex.

I live in Bromley, and I still say Kent

They’re not too bad if you learn them gradually over time bit by bit