West Somerset Railway General Discussion

You need to look at a Charles Dickens (1812- 1870) manuscript for sheer illegibility.

 

The printed versions can be pretty hard to read too

 

I prefer to go to bed with a good Trollope

 

... and pre-decimal currency days. I'd forgotten how prices were written in those days.

 

With the prevalence of keyboards and the 'thumbs' generation you might not need to include the last word at all soon...

 

Latest Gospel from The PLC:

http://www.wsr.org.uk/the-platform-dec-2020.pdf.

 

But nothing about how they are going to fund the work needed to get the infrastructure up to standard - and keep it there

 

Given that, and that it's you, I have only one guess as to what the subject will be!

Noel

 

The problem is that Dickens gets forcibly fed to schoolboys, upon whom it is wasted. They are then put off, probably for life, by having to dissect 'A Christmas Carol'. In my twenties I accidentally started reading Nicholas Nickleby, and became an addict

 

I do agree, actually; my comment was very much tongue in cheek.

I too did what you did, and whilst not an addict, I've enjoyed several, starting with David Copperfield soon after leaving uni, when I had a litle more time on my hands.

 

Having to read ‘Great Expectations’ at school has really put me of Dickens, I seem to recall in the copy I was given to read for my GCSE’s pages 400 to 450 had the appropriate Class 50 name written next to the page number. Heaven knows what the person the year after thought when they saw names like Renown Repulse, Hood, Courageous, Glorious, Furious and Ark Royal written in pencil at the bottom of the page.

 

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.” (Oscar Wilde)

To be fair, railways were bad news for many literary characters - Trollope and Dickens killed characters off with them.

On handwriting, I have never read anyone who was writing in a hurry with good handwriting.

To take it back to things Somerset, wasn't one (all?) of the signalmen in the Radstock accident illiterate/barely literate. When did being literate become a necessary part of the job? I've read lots of things about safety developments but at what point was being able to read/write considered to be a necessary safety critical skill?

 

You don’t have to be able to read well or write well but if it needs it you have to have someone to write out things as if could hurt safety. Writing is good though as it’s more needed to keep records of everything now a days. I have always kept notes on railways I’ve gone to but I also keep all the emails I get sent on here when they have told me my question is bad but I have proven them wrong then they just ignore me as I have sent a picture which is proof what I’m on about existed.

 

Everything you need to know about Dickens, in three minutes:



Tom

 

To be taken as seriously, my own comparable theory is that to people isolated along the length of the line the other people from
over the watershed might be so far removed as to be strangers and no understanding. - mutiples of 5 miles away.

 

High quality writing is not entirely best served by being visited on children as something to test them on in schools.

Not quite as you might naturally expect, Dickens is widely read and appreciated in South Africa.

 

Getting a bit more on topic, What is the scaffolding that has appeared on Williton down platform over the last couple of days actually for?

 

Repairs to the Goods Shed roof.

 

"The signalman in the Foxcote box was a boy who 'could not write or read excellent'" (David St John Thomas)

Patrick

 

Reading the account in Red for Danger I'm not sure that anything about the Radstock incident should be regarded as typical for the time. E.g. "In the first place, Foxcote signalbox had no right to exist at all", "The telegraphic arrangements left much to be desired", "Even in the best of hands the working of such a system to pass an extremely heavy traffic ... would have been fraught with peril", and "There existed a state of affairs that must surely have been without parallel on any English railway".

Then on the boy himself, as well as Patrick's quote, we have "unable to read the telegraph instruments", "nor was he very strong. His only training as a signalman consisted of one week in the box at Radstock where he was unable to pull over the levers".