Re: Signalling in Victoria

[G.Lambert@unsw.edu.au (Geoff Lambert)]

"Rufus" <rufus.dog@mpx.com.au> wrote:
>Hope this post gets thru....[having an argument with Big Pond, and they have
>a little more muscle than me]

Well, an e-mail reply bounced, so presumably bigpond prevailed

>During the early '70s I was asked to upgrade a 'new' Appendix and Addenda.
>Also a set of working timetables,,,,,,,I went to Old Head Office with about
>7 brand new books fresh from the Printer in North Melbourne and spent 3
>weeks with scissors and clag pot inserting amendments to all books.
>Now the GA was bound and approx 3/4" thick, after I finished it was
>impossible to get the covers within 6 ".
>Weekly notices were the prime source of amendments, but many special pages
>were printed to upgrade these very important books.
>When Gerald Dee saw my work, he told me that he thought his own, books were
>completely up to date, because he religiously inserted each amendment as it
>arrived! He doubted that my efforts had  been really successful because I
>could not guarantee each amendment had been made available to me.
>Some six months later a new set of Safe working books and timetables were
>issued, incorporating all the above mentioned amendments, plus another stack
>of corrections and new amendments already found to correct the new manuals.
>I never again worried about keeping these books up to date, instead rel;ying
>on local knowledge and good bosses to keep me on the straight and narrow!!
>So unless you are working full time in the system, you cannot claim to be an
>expert, and even if you do opperate the system every day, how can you claim
>knowledge in those systems, you dont operate under regularly??

You tell a story about rule books, etc. that is new to me.

It was my understanding that the recent publishing history of General
Appendices on VR was: 1928, 1936, 1953, 1979.  I have never heard of a
new Appendix being issued in "the early 1970's" nor of a "set of
safeworking books".

Which was the GA which you amended ("7 brand new books fresh from the
printer")?  In the early 1970's I would have thought that the
"freshest" GA was the 1953 issue, the one with the brick-red cover. It
would have been a lot thicker than 3/4", about 3" thick when new, I
should have thought.  Was there yet another issue between 1953 and the
early 1970's?  Perhaps all of this happened in the early 1980's not
the early 1970s?  That would fit in better with what you have said-
the GA was new in 1979 and it was a post-bound document that WAS about
3/4 inch thick

You see, I have written an as-yet-unpublished book on railway rule
books and operating manuals, oriented towards those in the "British"
system.  There is one entire chapter on the publishing history of
Australian rule books and Appendices, including those of the VR.

I have also created a database with the publishing dates of Working
Time Tables for all Australian railways, so I was interested that your
work included an updating of some WTT's, presumably one for each
district, plus Addenda?, plus Directory of Stations? (both of which
were essentially classed as "Working Timetables") As WTT's were
published about yearly, I wonder to which ones you are referring as
"early 1970's"?   The following are the "early 1970's" issues that I
know about

Date		Metro	W&SW	M&W	N&M	NE	East	Addenda
Index/DOS
1-Jun-1970		X						
22-Jun-1970		X						
7-Sep-1970					X			
12-Oct-1970						X		
16-Nov-1970				X				
28-Jun-1971							X	
1-Nov-1971		X						
9-Jul-1972	X							
4-Sep-1972				X				
27-Nov-1972					X			
6-Aug-1973		X						
10-Sep-1973						X		
25-Nov-1973					X			
26-Nov-1973	X							
1-Dec-1973	X							
18-Mar-1974		X						
24-Jun-1974				X				
11-Oct-1974	X							

You can see that there was a new Addenda in June 1971.  Is this the
one you did?

If the time when all this happened was the early 1980s (rather than
the 1970s), perhaps the new WTT's were those issued in october 1981,
when all districts had a new WTT all at once, consequent upon the
introduction of vastly-increased services?

When you refer to a new set of safeworking books, I am also
interested. As you doubtless know, most (but not all) of the
safeworking instructions were published as appendices to the rule
book, and bound into the back of it. For instance, Appendix 2, as I
recall, was for Staff & Ticket working. This was still being done in
1966, when a major reprint of the rule book occurred. As late as 1982,
Government Gazette amendments to the rules were still implying that
the safeworking instructions remained as appendices to the rule book.
The new rule book of 1984 did the same and furthermore incorporated
newer safeworking instructions that had either been in the GA or
separate booklets, as rulebook Appendices, just like the earlier
safeworking rules

So, what were the safeworking books which were produced in the early
1970's?

Did the insertion of all amendments really increase the size of the GA
that much (8 times!)? I have copies of the NSWGR Local Appendices that
were in use from the early 1930's to the mid 1960's and they contain
all amendments issued over about 30 years.... but they only
approximately doubled the thickness, rather than multiplying it by 8
times! I know some issues of the GA in both NSW and Victoria were
amended by the issuing of collated sets of amendments as little
booklets, which you were supposed to keep with the original. Did this
ever happen with the one you worked on? 

Geoff Lambert