Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Stop your shunting!

Funny the things you find kicking around the magazine collection of your local model railway club. Here we have the Instructions to be observed with the working of royal trains.

Most of it covers block working and signalling stuff that passes me by. However, at the end we have this:

5. Shunting Operations

Shunting operations on any line or siding next adjoining the line on which the Royal Train will run must be suspended at least 10 minutes before the Royal Train is expected to pass the site of the shunting operation.

It appears that Royal personages were not to have their sight offended by seeing the ordinary working chap actually doing some of his ordinary work.

This gives us modellers the prefect excuse when there is a break in operations. Just say, "There's a Royal Train on its way mate." and no-one can argue.

1 comment:

Michael Campbell said...

I suppose the reason is more likely to be to avoid any runaway or other shunting incident causing delay? Nice excuse but implausible on any of my layouts!