The South Western Train that runs on The District Line 

Reverend Awdry would have had a field day with that incident! I believe it's happened before, particularly during the 1926 General Strike, when students and other volunteers tried to keep the trains running.

you've got to be speaking bollocks

Accurate 😭

@@ashleyjiscool cringe?

thanks Richard! somehow it made it more fun with added jeopardy …. (I still want SWR to refund me my night in a Basingstoke hotel tho 😂)

Why did you go down to Basingstoke to get the train? Could have got it from Clapham Junction instead

@@Joseph2302 it goes up the curve before it goesinto clapham

I remember coming back late from an emergency stores dropoff from Waterloo think it was Woking or Basingstoke, I ended up having to walk the line between Clapham and Kensington where I lived as the snidey station master at Clapham refused me to use his phone to call through to Stewarts Lane to arrange a pickup at the bridge crossing the Thames which I often did if coming back late. It was a gale storm too and one of the most frightening times crossing that bridge around 2am... nearly lost me Bardic crossing that bridge that night O.o I was just getting into Kensington when a 33 driver offered me a lift but I was so cold, wet and peeved I said thanks but I was alright, signalman at Olympia saw how bedraggled I was and done me up a strong pint mug of cocoa and said I should make a complaint about the Clapham station master, Olympia's charge hand was about the place too and gave me a long slug out of his "special" flask for cold wet workings.

@@dodgydruid that must have been horrible.

I have also done this once at night. I was sober and very worried I had taken the wrong train.

Just done it now on a 444, same scenario. was so confused when I saw us go past Southfields tube lol

I could recognize those gentrified leaves in the bushes anytime of day.

I remembered that too, after I'd put on my dress

Don't forget the bag on the head to stop you getting punched

@@Ellyerre Is it bad that I recognised the bush and realised it was Basingstoke before the sign came up and Geoff saying it?

One of Acaster’s few funny jokes.

Considering I used to work overlooking those tracks, I’m in! Where can I find out the details?

And Castle Class HSTs are running from Cardiff to Great Malvern.

@@SilverGear_ Many thanks. I’m going to give it a go!

Thanks for the gen! I was worried they all went via Westbury

@@ianmurray250 same week? Going to have to plan my day carefully, so I can do both.

Reminds me of "have I lost an eyebrow?" which is on many T-shirts

Hi dweller, psssst it’s me cash

@@Adrian-pe9ds found it

@@DwellerUK this is my other account that I watch everyone on lol

OMG DWELLER IM A HUGE FAN

hi dweller im a fan

I'm an ex pat Brit in the US and I hadn't made the connection until you said this. I can't unsee it.

That’s the colour scheme of outer suburban services of the former operator South West Trains. (Red - Inner Suburban, Blue - Outer Suburban/Regional, White - Long Distance) It’s on its way out in favour of a slightly dull grey/white livery. They are all/were the house colours of former franchisee, Stagecoach, and could also be found on trains operated by East Midland Trains (which has also since changed hands).

@@southcalder Yes, it's a disgrace. How long have SWR held the franchise but they have still not got all the trains re-painted or wrapped in their own colour scheme

The ex operator’s medium distance services, rather

Well observed👍🏾

They actually gave local people a chance to object to the station being transferred to Transport for London. Before TfL took over East Putney, Southfields and Wimbledon Park, it used to be possible to by though tickets to National Rail stations.

I remember standing on the northbound District Line platform at East Putney circa 1991-92, and finding it very odd that a British Rail (as was) train came around a curve to the opposite side of the southbound platform! Little did I know at the time...

@@DavidShepheard Yes, that's right, the ticket offices were stocked with BR tickets. I also recall that Wimbledon Park in the 1960's had green BR totem type station nameboards. If any have survived they wll be a collectors' piece.

I remember Green BR Southern Region nameboards at East Putney Southfields and Wimbledon Park in the 1950s

@@francispagan9676 That would be before the first time I rode the line, but yes, that's consistent with them officially being BR stations, despite them being exclusively served by Underground trains. Something similar occurred at Gunnersbury and Kew Gardens on the Richmond branch, but they also had North London Line (now Tfl Overground) services calling.

I lived in Carlton Drive. Happy days, remember that building well

Hey Geoff, I am a massive train geek and fan like you. Could I maybe be in one of your videos. The viewers will be amazed of of which I am amazing with facts. Reply any time.

I used to be a Waterloo guard and I've had the same experience. The end of one of my shifts I had to take an ECS from Waterloo to Wimbledon Park via East Putney and I couldn't pass up the opportunity. Got some great photos from the rear cab.

Was it picked up by cover turn?

Brilliant story, ha ha!! Oh how I miss slam door trains …

Same hahah

My hometown too

station looks nice too 👍

@@petitkruger2175 yes it quite a nice station but can get very crowded at times and there’s this little old man shouting through the speakers (SWR man) telling people the next train

blazingsmoke

Yeah, me too... lived in Wimbledon for a year way back in 1978/79 when at university. Would occasionally spot a Southern Region (as was) slam-door train passing in the other direction between East Putney and Wimbledon Park. I didn't realise at the time that there was an actual passenger working though... might try this one day!

Gateshead Stadium to Pelaw is a case in point - I was waiting for a train toward S. Shields at Pelaw v. Early and next to me was Grand Central HST waiting to go to Sunderland Central (the Metro I'd got off was going to Sunderland and Sth. Hylton). Meanwhile there was becoming a traffic jam as DB oil charter was going down to the Jarrow terminal . . . .

You can do that in Brussels

Probably the weirdest set-up is at Navigation Road station, south west of Manchester. It's shared by Metrolink (trams) and Northern Rail (heavy rail) but they can't share the same track, so there's 2-way Metrolink working on one track and 2-way Northern Rail working on the other. Is this unique in the UK?

Remember it well ...class 450 desi. The track people now put plates on sleepers to mark the last sleeper in their area for servicing. The next plate for the next crew follows on from that. So now there should be no forgotten areas.

If an American railroad or transit administrator found out about this, their head would explode. Light rail/metros/subways sharing tracks with national rail network trains is a huge no-no in the US.

@@jackwtat it’s a really odd fun little quirk of London’s railways, many of the London Underground stations outside of the city centre were built by large railway companies.

@@jackwtat At the beginning of the 20th century, the LIRR actually did run trains via the Brooklyn Rapid Transit elevated line across the Williamsburg Bridge to the big underground Chambers Street terminal. And some BRT trains ran to the Rockaways via the LIRR. As a matter of fact, the R44 and R46 subway trains were tested on the mainline. But after some time, the mainline trains became too big, and the signal systems became were too different and incompatible. It makes me wonder how the MTA would have handled proposals in the 1970s to have subway trains run on the Metro-North and the LIRR. They proposed one line run on the LIRR from Sunnyside Yard to Forest Hills as a super-express, another line run from Jamaica to Springfield, and have the 2nd Avenue subway run in the Bronx via the Harlem line.

@@Damien_N London is not the only place in the UK with such mixing, though it is the biggest example. The tyne and wear metro runs trains between newcastle and sunderland on tracks shared with mainline rail and afaict has been doing so since 2001. The sheffield supertram runs "tram trains" to rotherham central and rotherham parkgate on tracks shared with mainline rail. The manchester Metrolink doesn't actually share any tracks at present, but there is a section around navigation road where a former double track railway was converted into two single tracks, one for rail and one for metrolink. There is also merseyrail which operates much like a metro system, having only a few overlaps with other national rail lines but was never seperated out administratively from the rest of the national network.

@@bostonrailfan2427 Something about differing buff-strength standards between the two, mainline passenger car bodies must withstand something like 800,000 pounds of compression without damage (Sumitomo failed this test in their attemnpt to build bilevel cars for Midwest Amtrak services), while NYC transit's standards are around 200,000. There have been subway excursions ('fantrips') that took vintage D-type cars onto South Brooklyn Railway tracks over the connection where new cars and MOW stock are sometimes delivered to the 'B' division, Said train was bracketed by MOW diesels for the trip over non subway trackage. I found a link to a 1975 film of one such excursion clearly showing the subway cars being towed through freight yards in the Brooklyn waterfront ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Iv5R4shvfUg.html ).

At first I read shenfield as Sheffield and got really confused

Thats timetabled more than it used to be, now hourly (half hourly?) off peak for shopping at Westfield Stratford mainly.

@B E R R I L Y Yes it is, but it just reminds me of it because it goes down part of the London Overground, a little bit like how this one goes down part of the District line.

So you dont have to pay to maintain it.

The upside connecting bridge where the old pier remain was the result of Second world war bomb damage and instead of repair line was sadly closed. May come back one day you never Know!

so yes, it's run to put the Cross County train in place for the morning and they might as well run it in service to see if any passengers get it. comes from Glasgow, leaves around 9 o'clock in the evening i think, definetely go and do it!

@@geofftech2 thanks! The train I got, can't remember which operator, but it was coming up the west coast mainline. Definitely scheduled, as I remember looking at the scheduled arrival time at Waverley and thinking there must be a mistake cos it didn't normally take that long, and why wasn't it scheduled to stop at Haymarket like it 'always' does.

Do you work on the flying banana?

You are Bananaman, and I claim my £5.

Awesome!!

Will try to remember. There is another one out of wimbledon - The Haydons Road line towards Streatham that then turns past Tooting Bec Common , into Balham and Clapham Junction. Have seen freights using it after crossing the ladder from Raynes Park to Wimbledon, and ECS, not sure about any diverted passenger trains.

I’ve just been over the Beckenham Spur on a diverted Hastings-CX train. The excitement of potentially beating Geoff!!

9:15 SOUTHFIELDS

Indeed, wasn’t that called ‘the boat train’?

so yes, it's run to put the Cross County train in place for the morning and they might as well run it in service to see if any passengers get it. comes from Glasgow, leaves around 9 o'clock in the evening i think, definetely go and do it!