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[SDL]

I remember working with an early lineprinter which displayed a hexadecimal status code "FoFF" every time it was switched on.

Reminds me of that signal at Stockport with the rear "F OFF" indication.

[JRB]

All very well until you realise you have delicately minded young ladies working as software programmers.

Not at Westinghouse at that time, or not working on that job anyway. We still didn't do it though.

[Bob Davies]

It made me smile when it took only a very short time after the commissioning of the station area for the Carlisle signalmen to describe the overnight sleepers parked in one of the north-end bays at Citadel Station as ZZZZ.

[signalman]

In the early days of computer based TDs (WN, PN, CE), there were problems with signalmen putting 4-letter words in TD berths which appeared on the ATR terminals before delicately minded young ladies in control offices (their estimation of delicacy). It was seriously considered to make a list of unacceptable 4-character combinations and use them in a software filter. In the event, a warning to signalmen was decided to be adequate

What you did, when a train had suffered a small but unfortunate delay which nobody wanted to confess to, was to change a zero in the headcode to a letter O, or some change like that. Then the computer system didn't flag up the loss of two minutes as the train times were not recorded into TOPS at all. By the time the Control realised this had happened it was usually too late to try and trace things back . . .

Sorry guv, my describers went blank and I must have put it back in wrong.

J

[Keith]

I'm surprised we've not had a comment yet on the DI's latest offering. Maybe people just think he's aged a little compared with his original avatar, which, for those who don't remember, was extracted from the second photo on this page of his website.

[Alan Norris]

I'm surprised we've not had a comment yet on the DI's latest offering. Maybe people just think he's aged a little compared with his original avatar, which, for those who don't remember, was extracted from the second photo on this page of his website.

I thought he'd aged quite well.................................

[John Webb]

I'm surprised we've not had a comment yet on the DI's latest offering. Maybe people just think he's aged a little compared with his original avatar, which, for those who don't remember, was extracted from the second photo on this page of his website.

Is the DI's new avatar the expression of a signalman who's just realised he's somehow got more than one train in section?

Or is it of a West Countryman practicing 'Gurning', as I think it's called?

[Chris Osment]

...or a 'bobby' who's just realised that, when he threw his tea slops out of the box window, his false teeth went with them

[signalman]

Or is it of a West Countryman practicing 'Gurning', as I think it's called?

I didn't realise that Chris's "West Country" included West Cumberland.

John

[John Webb]

Sorry! I aways thought 'Gurning' was from the SW not the NW - we live and learn.

[Chris Osment]

Sorry! I aways thought 'Gurning' was from the SW not the NW

I thought it was a station on the LB&SCR somewhere.....

[John Webb]

....I thought it was a station on the LB&SCR somewhere.....

Looking at the Pre-grouping atlas there is a 'Gurnos (Goods)' station on a Midland line running down Swansea Valley - it was still there in 1955 but on a goods only line. I wonder if staff had to pull faces to work there!

[JRB]

Looking at the Pre-grouping atlas there is a 'Gurnos (Goods)' station on a Midland line running down Swansea Valley - it was still there in 1955 but on a goods only line. I wonder if staff had to pull faces to work there!

No, it came spontaneously.

[Keith]

...but surely gurnos are people addicted to gurning?

[Alan Norris]

Sorry! I aways thought 'Gurning' was from the SW not the NW - we live and learn.

Up in Scotland it is "Girning"