Hogwart/Shakespeare Hall Class Locos

Define "Right handed".  

Train driver (engineer) stands to the right of the cab?  Just like the automobiles .

In crowds, like an amusemnet park to the people in England tend to walk on the left side on the sidewalks/walkways?
Scott Smith

As in the engineer operates from the right hand side like in most of the U.S. and unlike, what I suppose is, most of the U.K.

Hi, Jim.

 

GWR locomotives were set up for right hand running. There were other pre-nationalisation companies whose Drivers ran from the right side as well.  

 

Bob

I would suspect that that is the fireman. In the UK, almost all trains have the driver on the left hand side.

The Great Western Railway always tended to do things their own way.  They started off with a massive 7-foot track gauge.  They were the only one of the "big four" railways to not use Pacifics (with one exception), and as the BR Western Region, they preferred diesel-hydraulics to diesel-electrics.  So I'm sure the right-hand running is just another one of their quirks.

Aaron

That is the about the same thing my friend in England had to say when I asked him about this right hand running deal.

As we say out there the rails...you learn something new everyday.

 

Nicole,

That is indeed the engineer as Bob & Aaron have attested to.

Here is the real thing

 

The driver is on the right

   I hope Big Jim will allow me, as a non-Brit, to clarify some things:

 

1)  While the GWR continued with right hand drive up to the end, it ran its trains left-handed, as almost all railways in Britain.  However, unlike them, it usually* placed its signals on the right.

2)  "During the 19th century the most usual position [ for the driver ] in Britain, with the notable exceptions of the LNWR, LYR, LBSCR, and CR [ Caledonian ], was to the right side of the footplate and this practice persisted until the 20th century.....An important exception even then was the Great Western...

    ....It is interesting to recall that even with their massive boilers the first batch of Gresley [A1] Pacifics were right hand drive [**]."

     L. F. E. Coombs writing in the 8/71 issue of 'Railway World'

 

*Usually, but not always.  Signals on both sides of the line were major factor in the Norton Fitzwarren accident.

** Perhaps the near-disaster at Northallerton in 1935 contributed to changing the driving arrangements when a driver missed the nearer stop signals and 'read through' clear signals for another train farther down 'his' track.

 

Hope that helps.

 

SZ

Footpaths.