Talk on 8th January 2020

On January 8th, Geoff Queen gave a talk about ‘Railway Humour’, entitled “We apologize for the delay”. Geoff, a civil engineer who spent his entire career working for British Rail, was a strong advocate for rail (much safer than travelling by car), and felt that any problems like delays to travel were mainly due to the weather, the trains or the passengers!

He demonstrated this with slides and his commentary on derailments, bridge-bashing, animals on the line (including a lion!), high winds, ice and mining subsidence. Speaking to a club with a lot of members who were also former engineers, questions focused on the technical, and Geoff answered the eternal question ‘why don’t continuous welded rails bend through expansion’. You’ll have to look it up!