Modern Railways

I read a magazine called Modern Railways so I had some information to blog about. First of all I'll tell you I have a friend who has worked as a signals tester and designer for over 30 years for a railway company in Britain. He told me a couple of stories. The first is he used to have to go out to any railroad crashes as part of his job. When they had the Clapham Junction crash in 1984 he had to go out to it. Apparently train crashes are horrendous worse than anything you can imagine but anyway as he was walking about examining the scene he almost stepped in someones remains. Apparently he has a copy of the accident report for that crash and it's almost written in the style of a thriller. It says things like at 7am this happened and at 7.10 am that happened. The other thing I'm going to tell you is you know passenger trains get priority over freight trains. Often a freight train will pull onto a siding to let a passenger go past before going on its merry way. Freight trains are normally slower than passenger trains. Nowadays the freight carrier has to guarantee it will get there by a certain time and day. Anyway in the days when British Rail was a public company freight wasn't a priority. Apparently between Carlisle and Gretna Green was a siding where freight trains had to wait to be called to complete their delivery. Nowadays there is a marshalling yard which has speeded things up. Apparently it was common for a driver to come on duty, wait by his train and at the end of his shift the train still hadn't been given permission to carry on its way. This situation often lasted for several days.
In Modern Railways apparently Hitachi are going to build the train that replaces the class 125's in Britain and are going to relocate their research and testing facility here. The Thameslink Phase 1 in London has been completed they've done a massive upgrade to Farringdon station which is set to become the busiest station in Britain. In Blackfriars by St Pancras they've been soundproofing the part of the track that goes under a hotel. Apparently St Pancras is a grade 1 listed building. Finally at Borough Market they have been building an extra viaduct to ease congestion on the current viaduct. It's one of the busiest places for trains in the world.