Cross Country Route
The Cross Country Route is a long-distance UK rail route that has in its central part superseded the Midland Railway. It runs from Cornwall via Bristol, Derby and Leeds and the north east to Scotland, it facilitates some of the longest passenger journeys in the UK such as Aberdeen to Penzance. In the summer services are provided to additional coastal stations such as Newquay; the line is classed as a high-speed line because the sections of the line from Birmingham to Wakefield and from Leeds to York have a speed limit of 125 mph, though the section from Birmingham to Bristol is limited to 100 mph due to there being numerous level crossings half-barrier level crossings, the section from Wakefield to Leeds is limited to 100 mph due to a number of curves. The Birmingham to Bristol section was built as the Birmingham and Gloucester and Bristol and Gloucester Railways before joining the Midland Railway, the southern forerunner to the cross-country route. From Birmingham to the NNE, the line had three separately owned sections, namely the: Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway to Derby, thence the North Midland Railway to Leeds, thence the York and North Midland Railway.
From the Labour Government's nationalisation in 1948 until privatisation in 1990 it ran through six regions of British Rail but had priority in none of them and therefore the services were poorly promoted and thus not always well-patronised. Most Derby-Nottingham local passenger trains were taken over by diesel units from 14 April 1958, taking about 34 minutes between the two cities. Use and services have expanded since privatisation when a better-prioritised route was awarded as a single franchise to Virgin Trains. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the network was served by High Speed Trains, Class 47s, which hauled various types of coaching stock. Modern, more powerful multiple-units of the 21st century such as the Turbostars and Voyagers have improved train performance without electrification. However, the line has higher operating costs and a higher carbon footprint than if it were electrified; the use of the route for freight has decreased, due to the bulk of haulage switching to road use and the building of the M5, M6 and M1 motorways.
In the 1960s the route was considered for electrification. In the early 1980s, electrification was again discussed at length and documentation for various proposals produced in 1981; this would have been beneficial for climbing the Lickey Incline between Cheltenham and Birmingham, as many of the early diesels were underpowered. In 1977 the Parliamentary Select Committee on Nationalised Industries recommended considering electrification of more of Britain's rail network, by 1979 BR presented a range of options that included electrifying the cross-country route by 2000. Under the governments that succeeded the 1976–79 Labour government the proposal was not implemented; the route is well connected, aside from its own alignment it uses parts of the South Wales Main Line, West Coast Main Line, Midland Main Line, Swinton to Doncaster Line, the East Coast Main Line. Major cities and towns served along the route include: Bristol Cheltenham Birmingham Tamworth Derby Sheffield Leeds YorkNominal start-point - DerbyMilepost zero for the main predecessor Derby to Bristol route has always been Derby, hence a train travelling the whole route starts out going "up" becomes "down".
The Birmingham to Derby section of the route has a line speed of 125 mph, however Birmingham to Bristol is restricted to 100 mph due to a number of half barrier level crossings. The line is not electrified, but some sections are overhead electrified at 25 kV AC such as Barnt Green and extended to Bromsgrove in May 2018 to Grand Junction, with further electrified sections around Leeds and the East Coast Main Line near York; the section between Leeds and York is due to be electrified by 2022 with the electrification of the North TransPennine from Liverpool Lime Street to York via Manchester Piccadilly, as is the section between Westerleigh Junction and Bristol Temple Meads as part of the 21st Century modernisation of the Great Western Main Line. It had been confirmed that the line between Derby and Sheffield would be electrified as part of the Midland Main Line upgrade. However, the electrification programme was cut back in July 2017. Most long distance services on the route are operated by Class 220/221 Voyager Trains, although a few services operate using Class 43 HSTs.
These trains are capable of achieving 125 mph, compared to the previous Class 47s and Mk 2 coaching stock, which had a top speed of 95 mph. Rail services in Bristol Transport in Wales Virgin CrossCountry CrossCountry Notes References
Doncaster railway station
Doncaster railway station is on the East Coast Main Line in the United Kingdom, serving the town of Doncaster, South Yorkshire. It is 155 miles 77 chains down the line from London King's Cross and is situated between Retford and York on the main line, it is managed by London North Eastern Railway. It is a major passenger interchange between the main line, Cross Country Route and local services running across the North of England, it is the point for which London North Eastern Railway services branching off to Leeds diverge from the main route continuing north towards Edinburgh. The railway station was built in 1849 replacing a temporary structure constructed a year earlier, it was rebuilt in its present form in 1938 and has had several slight modifications since that date, most notably in 2006, when the new interchange and connection to Frenchgate Centre opened. In May 2015, construction commenced on a new Platform 0 to the north-east of the station adjacent to the Frenchgate Centre on the site of the former cattle dock.
It will be used by terminating Northern services to Hull, Beverley and Scarborough. This will allow these services to operate independently of the East Coast Main Line, it is joined to the rest of the station via a accessible overbridge. The station has nine platforms on three islands. Platforms 1, 3, 4 and 8 can take through trains. Platforms 2 and 5 are south-facing bays, 0, 6 and 7 are north facing bays. A First Class Lounge is available on platform 3A. Platform 0 is scheduled to take exclusively Northern services to and from Hull and Bridlington; the brand new platform opened on 12 December 2016. Platform 1 is scheduled to take southbound London North Eastern Railway, Grand Central and Hull Trains trains towards London King's Cross. London North Eastern Railway services come from Leeds and Edinburgh, Grand Central services from Bradford Interchange to London King's Cross, which operate non-stop from Doncaster and Hull Trains services from Hull. Platform 2 has no scheduled trains and is not for public use.
Platform 3A is scheduled to take some southbound East Coast Main Line trains towards London King's Cross - London North Eastern Railway services here originate in York calling at all stations along the route. Platform 3B takes services to Sheffield and Manchester / Manchester Airport, operated by Northern and TransPennine Express and will take services from Sheffield when there is congestion. Between platforms 3 and 4 are the high speed up and down lines from London Platform 4 is scheduled to take northbound London North Eastern Railway services towards York and Edinburgh. However, southbound CrossCountry services towards Birmingham New Street and beyond depart from this platform. Platform 5 is a bay platform used for Northern and East Midlands Trains services to Sheffield and Lincoln Central. Platform 6 is a bay platform used exclusively for Northern commuter services to Leeds. Platform 7 is in public use, but when it is, is used for Northern services towards Scunthorpe via all stations. Platform 8 is used for northbound London North Eastern Railway services towards Leeds.
The platform is used for Northern local services to Scunthorpe via all stations. Southbound CrossCountry services are scheduled to use this platform, but only at times when the station is otherwise congested. There are presently no ticket barriers in operation at this station; the station has been refurbished in 2006 and is now directly connected to the Frenchgate Centre extension in Doncaster town centre. The station now has a new booking office for tickets and information, three new lifts, refurbished staircases and subway. There is some food outlets. More interactive touch screens have been installed around the station by London North Eastern Railway services to provide information about local attractions, live departures and disruptions and station facilities; as well as this, mobile phone charging points are now available on the concourse, touch screen, self service ticketing machines have been installed across the concourse and the stairways to the subway have now been divided into two way systems to improve the flow of passengers during peak times.
In a route study by Network Rail it was proposed that new platforms could be built on the western side of the station to meet demand expected in the future. In March 2019, it was revealed that there were plans that as part of the East Coast Programme in CP6 to add an additional platform at Doncaster. On 9 August 1947, a passenger train was in a rear-end collision with another due to a signalman's error. 18 people were killed and 188 were injured. On 16 March 1951 a derailment occurred south of the station in which 14 passengers were killed and 12 injured. Seven train operating companies call at Doncaster, the highest number of companies in the UK and is equal in number only to Crewe in the UK. Train operators include the following: CrossCountryCrossCountry have dropped most Doncaster to Edinburgh services, they offer an hourly service to Newcastle and Reading with one service per day running through to both Edinburgh Waverley and Guildford or Southampton Central. The majority of CrossCountry s
North Eastern Railway (United Kingdom)
The North Eastern Railway was an English railway company. It was incorporated in 1854 by the combination of several existing railway companies, it was amalgamated with other railways to form the London and North Eastern Railway at the Grouping in 1923. Its main line survives to the present day as part of the East Coast Main Line between London and Edinburgh. Unlike many other pre-Grouping companies the NER had a compact territory, in which it had a near monopoly; that district extended through Yorkshire, County Durham and Northumberland, with outposts in Westmorland and Cumberland. The only company penetrating its territory was the Hull & Barnsley, which it absorbed shortly before the main grouping; the NER's main line formed the middle link on the Anglo-Scottish "East Coast Main Line" between London and Edinburgh, joining the Great Northern Railway near Doncaster and the North British Railway at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Although a Northern English railway, the NER had a short length of line in Scotland, in Roxburghshire, with stations at Carham and Sprouston on the Tweedmouth-Kelso route, was a joint owner of the Forth railway bridge and its approach lines.
The NER was the only English railway to run trains into Scotland, over the Berwick-Edinburgh main line as well as on the Tweedmouth-Kelso branch. The total length of line owned was 4,990 miles and the company's share capital was £82 million; the headquarters were at York and the works at Darlington, Gateshead and elsewhere. Befitting the successor to the Stockton & Darlington Railway, the NER had a reputation for innovation, it was a pioneer in electrification. In its final days it began the collection that became the Railway Museum at York, now the National Railway Museum. In 1913 the company achieved a total revenue of £11,315,130 with working expenses of £7,220,784. Constituent companies of the NER are listed in chronological order under the year of amalgamation, their constituent companies are indented under the parent company with the year of amalgamation in parenthesis. If a company changed its name, the earlier names and dates are listed after the name; the information for this section is drawn from Appendix E in Tomlinson.
1854 York and Berwick Railway was York and Newcastle Railway and Newcastle and Darlington Junction Railway Durham Junction Railway Brandling Junction Railway Durham and Sunderland Railway Pontop and South Shields Railway Stanhope and Tyne Railway Newcastle and Berwick Railway Newcastle and North Shields Railway Great North of England Railway York and North Midland Railway Leeds and Selby Railway Whitby and Pickering Railway East and West Yorkshire Junction Railway Leeds Northern Railway was Leeds and Thirsk Railway Malton and Driffield Railway1857 Deerness Valley Railway Hartlepool Dock and Railway1858 North Yorkshire and Cleveland Railway1859 Bedale and Leyburn Railway1862 the "N. E. R. Foss Island BR" railway line, which appears on the 1860 Ordnance Survey map near Elmfield College Hull and Holderness Railway Newcastle and Carlisle Railway Blaydon and Hebburn Railway 1863 Stockton and Darlington Railway Darlington and Barnard Castle Railway Middlesbrough and Guisborough Railway Middlesbrough and Redcar Railway Wear Valley Railway Bishop Auckland and Weardale Railway Eden Valley Railway Frosterley and Stanhope Railway South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway 1865 Cleveland Railway West Hartlepool Harbour and Railway Clarence Railway Stockton and Hartlepool Railway 1866 Hull and Hornsea Railway1870 West Durham Railway1872 Hull and Selby Railway1874 Blyth and Tyne Railway 1876 Hexham and Allendale Railway Leeds and Pontefract Junction Railway1882 Tees Valley Railway1883 Hylton and Monkwearmouth Railway Scotswood and Wylam Railway1889 Whitby and Middlesbrough Union Railway1893 Wear Valley Extension Railway1898 Scarborough & Whitby Railway1900 Cawood and Selby Light Railway1914 Scarborough and West Riding Junction Railway1922 Hull and Barnsley Railway 1853 Hartlepool West Harbour and Dock1857 Hartlepool Dock and Railway1893 Hull Dock Company Having inherited the country's first great barrel-vault roofed station, Newcastle Central, from its constituent the York Newcastle & Berwick railway, the NER during the next half century built a finer set of grand principal stations than any other British railway company, with examples at Alnwick, Gateshead East, Stockton, Darlington Bank Top and Hull Paragon.
The four largest, at Newcastle, Darlington and Hull survive in transport use. Alnwick is still extant but in non-transport use since 1991 as a second-hand book warehouse, the others having been demolished during the 1950s/60s state-owned railway era, two following Second World War blitz damage. York station was the hub of the system, the headquarters of the line was located here; the basis for the present station was opened on 25 June 1877. Until the advent of modern signalling, the 295-lever box was the largest manually worked signal box in Britain. Newcastle station, opened on 29 August 1850, became the largest on the NER. Other principal stations were located at Sunderland and Hull; the station at Leed
Simon Jenkins
Sir Simon David Jenkins is a British author and a newspaper columnist and editor. He was editor of the Evening Standard from 1976 to 1978 and of The Times from 1990 to 1992. Jenkins chaired the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty from 2008 to 2014, he writes columns for both The Guardian and the Evening Standard. Jenkins was born 10 June 1943, in England, his father is United Reformed Church minister Daniel Thomas Jenkins. He was educated at Mill Hill School and St John's College, where he read Philosophy and Economics. After graduating from University of Oxford, Jenkins worked at Country Life magazine, before joining the Times Educational Supplement, he was features editor and columnist on the Evening Standard before editing the Insight pages of The Sunday Times. From 1976 to 1978 he was editor of the Evening Standard, before moving to become political editor of The Economist, he edited The Times from 1990 to 1992, but since has worked as a columnist. In 1998 he received the What the Papers Say Journalist of the Year award.
On 28 January 2005, he announced he was ending his 15-year association with The Times to write a book before joining The Guardian as a columnist. He was a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post, he gave up both on becoming chairman of the National Trust in 2008, when he resumed an occasional column for the London Evening Standard. On 14 April 2009, The Guardian newspaper withdrew one of his articles from its website after former African National Congress leader and South African President Jacob Zuma sued the paper for defamation. In February 2010, in favour of the Falklands War, argued in a Guardian article that the Falkland Islands are an example of anachronistic British colonialism and should be handed over to Argentinian control, he said that they could be leased back under the auspices of the UN. He remarked that the 2,500 or so British islanders should not have an "unqualified veto on British government policy". In March 2012, he stated on Question Time that Britain should begin negotiating the handover of the Falkland Islands to the Argentine government.
Only his fellow panellist. In 2010 Jenkins spoke disparagingly on the Radio 4 Today programme about the Shard, a skyscraper in south London. Jenkins has expressed varying opinions on the subject of national defence. In a piece in The Guardian in 2010 he wrote that the government should "cut, all £45 billion of it... With the end of the Cold War in the 1990s that threat vanished." However, he wrote in the same paper in 2016 in support of NATO membership, saying: "It is a real deterrent, its plausibility rests on the assurance of collective response."Jenkins voted for the UK to Remain within the European Union in the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016 arguing that leaving would provide Germany with dominance over the remainder of the union: "It would leave Germany alone at the head of Europe, alternately hesitant and bullying". Jenkins has written several books on the politics and architecture of England, including England's Thousand Best Churches and England's Thousand Best Houses.
More in his A Short History of England, he argues that the British Empire "was a remarkable institution that dismantled itself in good order." He wrote that England is "the most remarkable country in European history." Jenkins served on the boards of British Rail 1979–1990 and London Transport 1984–86. He was a member of the Millennium Commission from February 1994 to December 2000, has sat on the Board of Trustees of The Architecture Foundation. From 1985 to 1990, he was deputy chairman of English Heritage. In July 2008, it was announced. Although Jenkins had in the past been critical of some aspects of the Trust's work, he said he was "very pleased" by his appointment, that the Trust was "one of England's great institutions"; as chairman of the National Trust, a post he held until November 2014, Jenkins campaigned vociferously against the building of new houses, although according to housing minister Nick Boles he himself owned "at least two homes". Jenkins married the American actress Gayle Hunnicutt in 1978.
They have since divorced. He married Hannah Kaye in 2014. Jenkins was appointed a Knight Bachelor for services to journalism in the 2004 New Year honours. Simon Jenkins Education and Labour's Axe, Bow Publications, ISBN 0-900182-79-2 Simon Jenkins Here to Live: Study of Race Relations in an English Town Runnymede Trust, ISBN 0-902397-12-5 Simon Jenkins Landlords to London: Story of a Capital and Its Growth Constable, ISBN 0-09-460150-X Simon Jenkins Newspapers: The Power and the Money Faber, ISBN 0-571-11468-7 Simon Jenkins Newspapers Through the Looking-glass Manchester Statistical Society, ISBN 0-85336-058-8 Simon Jenkins and Andrew Graham-Yooll Imperial Skirmishes: War And Gunboat Diplomacy In Latin America Diane Publishing, ISBN 0-7567-7468-3 Sir Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins Battle for the Falklands M Joseph, ISBN 0-7181-2578-9 Simon Jenkins and Anne Sloman With Respect, Ambassador: Enquiry into the Foreign Office BBC, ISBN 0-563-20329-3 Simon Jenkins The Market for Glory: Fleet Street Ownership in the Twentieth Century Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-14627-9 Simon Jenkins and Robert Ilson "The Times" English Style and Usage Guide Times Books ISBN 0-7230-0396-3 Simon Jenkins The Selling of Mar
North East England
North East England is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of NUTS for statistical purposes. It covers Northumberland, County Durham and Wear, the area of the former county of Cleveland in North Yorkshire; the region is home to three large conurbations: Teesside and Tyneside, the last of, the largest of the three and the eighth most populous conurbation in the United Kingdom. There are three cities in the region: Newcastle upon Tyne, the largest, with a population of just under 280,000. Other large towns include Darlington, Hartlepool, South Shields, Stockton-on-Tees and Washington; the region is hilly and sparsely populated in the North and West, urban and arable in the East and South. The highest point in the region is The Cheviot, in the Cheviot Hills, at 815 metres; the region contains the urban centres of Tyneside and Teesside, is noted for the rich natural beauty of its coastline, Northumberland National Park, the section of the Pennines that includes Teesdale and Weardale.
The regions historic importance is displayed by Northumberland's ancient castles, the two World Heritage Sites of Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle, Hadrian's Wall one of the frontiers of the Roman Empire. In fact, Roman archaeology can be found across the region and a special exhibition based around the Roman Fort of Segedunum at Wallsend and the other forts along Hadrian's Wall are complemented by the numerous artifacts that are displayed in the Great North Museum Hancock in Newcastle. St. Peter's Church in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland and St. Pauls in Jarrow hold significant historical value and have a joint bid to become a World Heritage Site; the area has a strong religious past, as can be seen in works such as the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The work of the 7th-century Cuthbert and Hilda of Whitby were hugely influential in the early church, are still venerated by some today; these saints are associated with the monasteries on the island of Lindisfarne, Wearmouth – Jarrow, the Abbey at Whitby, though they are associated with many other religious sites in the region.
Bede is regarded as the greatest Anglo-Saxon scholar. He worked at the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, translating some forty books on all areas of knowledge, including nature, astronomy and theological matters such as the lives of the saints, his best known work is "The Ecclesiastical History of the English People". One of the most famous pieces of art and literature created in the region is the Lindisfarne Gospels, are thought to be the work of a monk named Eadfrith, who became Bishop of Lindisfarne in 698; this body of work is thought to have been created in honour of Cuthbert, around 710–720. On 6 June 793 the Vikings arrived on the shores of north-east England with a raiding party from Norway who attacked the monastic settlement on Lindisfarne; the monks fled or were slaughtered, Bishop Higbald sought refuge on the mainland. A chronicler recorded: "On the 8th June, the harrying of the heathen miserably destroyed God's church by rapine and slaughter." There were three hundred years of Viking raids and settlement until William the Conqueror defeated King Harold at Hastings in 1066.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes the change from raiding to settlement when it records that in 876 the Vikings "Shared out the land of the Northumbrians and they proceeded to plough and support themselves" The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria extended from the Scottish borders at the Firth of Forth to the north, to the south of York, its capital, down to the Humber. The last independent Northumbrian king from 947–8 was Eric Bloodaxe, who died at the Battle of Stainmore, Westmorland, in 954. After Eric Bloodaxe's death, all England was ruled by the grandson of Alfred the Great. Today the Viking legacy can still be found in the language and place names of north-east England and in the DNA of its people; the name Newcastle comes from the castle built shortly after the conquest in 1080 by Robert Curthose, William the Conqueror's eldest son. North East England has an oceanic climate with narrower temperature ranges than the south of England. Summers and winters are mild rather than hot or cold, due to the strong maritime influence of the North Atlantic Current of the Gulf Stream.
The Met Office operates several weather stations in the region and are able they show the regional variations in temperature and its relation to the distance from the North Sea. The warmest summers in the region are found in Stockton-on-Tees and the Middlesbrough area, with a 1981-2010 July average high of 20.4 °C. Precipitation is low by English standards, in spite of the low levels of sunshine, with Stockton-on-Tees averaging only 574.2 millimetres annually, with the seaside town of Tynemouth recording 597.2 millimetres annually. The summers on the northern coastlines are cooler than in the southern and central inland areas: Tynemouth is only just above 18 °C in July. Further inland, frosts during winter are more common, due to the higher elevations and distance from the sea. After more than 2,000 years of industrial activity as a result of abundant minerals such as salt and coal the chemical industry of the Northeast England is today spread across the whole of the region with pharmaceuticals being produced in the north of the region and fine chemicals spread across the middle of the region and commodity chemicals and petrochemicals on Teessi
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
Thirsk railway station
Thirsk railway station is on the East Coast Main Line in the United Kingdom, serving the town of Thirsk, North Yorkshire. It is 210 miles 56 chains down the line from London King's Cross and is situated between York to the south and Northallerton to the north, its three-letter station code is THI. The station is about 1.5 miles outside of Thirsk town centre and is on the edge of the village of Carlton Miniott. There are four tracks. From satellite imagery it can look as if there are platforms on the inner two tracks, but examination on the ground shows this not to be true; the station is operated by TransPennine Express. Other train services are provided by the open-access operator Grand Central; the railway line between York and Darlington was built by the Great North of England Railway, most of, authorised in 1837. The station at Thirsk, which opened to the public on 31 March 1841, was named Newcastle Junction. In 1933 Britain's first route-setting power signal box using a switch panel rather than a lever frame opened at Thirsk, to the specification of the LNER's signalling engineers A.
F. Bound and A. E. Tattersall, forming the template for many such future installations on the nation's railway network. Larger schemes to a similar design followed at other locations on the former North Eastern Railway network, such as Hull Paragon and York. Thirsk signal box itself, after various alterations over the course of its life closed around 1989 under the York IECC signalling scheme; the station has a staffed ticket office, open through the week and there is self-service ticket machine available. There is a waiting shelter on the northbound platform and customer help points and digital CIS displays on both sides. Step-free access to both platforms is via a barrow crossing and only possible when the station is staffed. There is an hourly service northbound to Middlesbrough and southbound to York, Leeds and beyond; some northbound Newcastle TransPennine services stop at Thirsk as well as Grand Central Railway services between London King's Cross and Sunderland. Sundays see an hourly service towards Middlesbrough and to York/Manchester Airport and four Grand Central trains to and from London.
1841 Station opened at the same time as the York - Darlington line. 1847 permanent water tower built. 1855 Connection to Leeds & Thirsk Railway line to Ripon via Melmerby opened. Accidents occurred in 1867, 1870, 1875, 1879 and 1882. 1933 Britain's first "panel" route-setting power signal box opened at Thirsk. 1954 The first four carriages of the "Heart of Midlothian" express from King's Cross to Edinburgh composed of thirteen coaches derailed. The four carriages derailed after problems with signalling and points, no one was injured. 1959 Ripon services cease in September with closure of Melmerby branch line to all traffic. 1967 A goods wagon derailed which led to a collision with an express, 7 people were killed, 45 injured. Thirsk rail crash Thirsk rail crash Train times and station information for Thirsk railway station from National Rail
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