A warm welcome to Six Bells Junction...
...the home of what is almost without doubt the largest archive of railtour information anywhere on the planet!
Just surf to 'The Railtour Files' in the side menu on the left and you can begin exploring over 20,000 pages of railtours dating back from the 1800's (yes, well over 150 years ago!) and right up to date. If you enjoy what you find then why not, if you have records of your own, check and forward me any new information as this will help the Website grow still further? There are guidelines for submitting info located a little further down this page.
Update News : as at 26/08/2024
As some have noted and commented on, there have not been any updates to my Website since early May. This is primarily due to Nick Bartlett having other commitments as a result of which he has chosen to stop researching current tours and creating tour Pages already in html format for me to quickly upload to the Website. We should all be very grateful to Nick for his hard work over the past few years and I for one am sad that he is unable to continue, but accept this as it is a hobby and neither he nor I gain any financial advantage to the many hundreds of hours we freely give to build the massive archive that Six Bells Junction has become.
I have also been 'hit' with a number of unexpected off-Internet draws on my time to add to my existing commitments. This however does not mean there is no activity going on in the background, just that there have been no updates uploaded to the Site. I personally am currently wading through and indexing one very large box of railtour itineraries and around 1,000 photos (primarily of railtours, dating from 1934 to 1989) that has recently been donated to me/Six Bells Junction. Between a third and half of the photos have nothing written on the rear so require a research to determine which tours they are of. I am hoping quite a number of them, copyright permitting where it can be established, will be uploaded to the Website in due time.
Please note that, due to the volume of e-mails being received I am unable to open, read and respond to them in a timely fashion; please accept my apologies for this but rest assured all new information received is still very much appreciated!
As well as publicly thanking Nick Bartlett for the around 500 completed tour Pages he has provided me with over the past few years I must also put on record my thanks to John Debens for supplying many tickets and information for tours mainly up to the end of UK steam (but now also some post-steam and worldwide too) and also the painstaking and time-consuming research to verify information as far as practical...also to Bob Mitchell for also providing many ticket scans of "more modern" tours, which I am currently getting stuck into uploading. Thanks are also due to Barrie Hughes, Richard Strange, Jon Horswell & Clive barlow for volunteering to work through creating/revising and adding to tour Pages with new and corrected information and also Gareth Kelly for his patient work compiling detailed information on many of the more recent tours, which are now just waiting for me to transfer into html format before they see the light of day on SBJ.
For those interested in photographs, the two recent major Internet projects I've been engaged in are uploading most of my photo collection to Flickr and also scanning and uploading those of the late John Broderick. If you have a Flickr account yourself please consider following these two Flickr sites (and I will reciprocate to follow yours).
Please note: Regrettably due to personal time constraints I am unable to provide a search service on your behalf, or enter into discussions/debates about what may or may have happened on a particular tour...I simply do not have the time for that as I prefer to use what time I do have available for adding more information from the massive backlog waiting processing. There is a search tool on 'The Railtour Files' year index Page (below the contributor links section), please use that.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE...when submitting tour
information
(assuming you want me to use your submission quickly);
put the date, tour name and tour organiser
in the SUBJECT LINE of your e-mail
...this will help me greatly
when I am making updates as I can quickly identify e-mails in my inbox about the same tour. E-mails received without this vital information in the subject will be archived,
unread, until such time as I may be able to work on them. The backlog currently
stands at around 2,500 e-mails in total, and growing daily. What time I have available
will be spent working on those which have been 'well presented'. E-mails simply
offering/asking if I want tour gen/photos sending in will be deleted without
response - if it is new gen you have to offer that is not presently uploaded on
the site then please send it in. Please also,
when sending timings, tell me whether they are booked or actual - in around 25%
of submissions it isn't at all clear!
Finally, please also take note of the rest of the comments in the section "Submitting Gen? Please read first...", especially if you are sending information for the first-time, or infrequently. By submitting gen to this Website it is assumed you have read and are complying with the comments contained in that section.
Two last requests with respect to sending photos (or other
large attachments);
1) No e-mails with very large attachments (files, photos etc) please without
first clearing it with me - with digital photos these days being often 5mb each
or more, it does not take many to exceed my ISP's mailbox limit and work
commitments sometimes mean I do not download e-mails every day.
2) Please do not forward photos that were taken trackside, or have the
appearance of having been taken from, 'inside the
boundary fence', even if that was from a legitimate location (e.g. footpath
crossing). Whilst enthusiasts and even the authorities took a liberal attitude
to this a few decades ago, we live in a far different world nowadays and I do
not want SBJ to be seen encouraging trespass or putting a
photographers safety at risk. If your photo does not
clearly show you were outside the boundary fence then it will not be used on SBJ. Exceptions to this are
legitimate trackside photostops (remember them?!?) or photos from the 70's and
earlier.
Want to use information from this
Website elsewhere? Please read first...
Use of this
information
elsewhere
To those who follow the rules - you have my thanks, it is
much appreciated.
WEST COAST
SIGHTINGS RECORDS 1948 to 1968
Do you have any spotting records tucked away?
If they are from somewhere on the West Coast Main Line in the period 1948 to
1968 then they may be useful for this project.
Struggling to find a preserved railway or preservation
site? Try this listing
(with thanks to Ian Evans for supplying).
Please
e-mail me with any additions or corrections so this document can be kept
current.
Contributor Links & credit
The owners of the following Website(s) in this section have very kindly contributed towards the running costs of this Website;
My personal thanks also goes to Dave Kirwin, Bill Leatherland, Brian Whitaker, John Debens, John Simmonds, Vic Smith, Greg Morse, David Tomlinson, Ian Lyall, Tony Davies, Keith Jenkin/The Cornwall Railway Society, Paul Harrison, Tony Davies, Ken Horan, Bruce Nathan, Ben Darby, Peter Toogood, Jon Stubley, Dave Warby, Christopher Horne, Alan Ogilvie, Paul Grenfell, Ben Darby, Phil Pearson, Steve Beames, Bernie Holland, Richard Dixon, Richard Mercer, Mike Slassor, Andy Muir, Bob Yeadon, William Adam, Andrew Mellor, Dick Franklin, Bill Braithwaite, Keith Langston, Paul Walpole, Graham Latimer, Paul Drake, George Denscombe, Rob Moorcroft, Adrian Hartless, Dave Douglas, Alan Grange, Justin Edwards, Rodney Armstrong, Neil Berry, Alan Paterson, Gerald Brown, Ivor Bufton, Roy Gordon, Steph Gillett & Bill Ewing who have all chosen to make a financial contribution as a way of acknowledging the important source of reference that SBJ has become and enjoyment that can be derived when reading through the many pages of information and memories.
It currently costs me around £100/year to bring you Six Bells Junction. The cost
is for the domain name (sixbellsjunction.co.uk) plus the provision of Webspace
and mail forwarding etc. Though I've never asked it before, donations towards
the running costs would always be gratefully received. I am willing in return to
consider allowing adverts (of a railway interest/nature only) to be placed for
an agreed period in this area of the homepage and/or in a prominent area at the
top of the links Page, or simply include your name in the growing list of people
who have financially supported this endeavour.
If you are interested then please
contact me for further
discussion, or simply make a donation via PayPal. Thanks in
advance for your kind support!
Caption Contest
Caption Contest - some railway
scenes deserving of a witty comment or two.
Why
not e-mail me and let me know what you think of
my website? Actual quote taken from a Jessops (camera shop) invoice!
"We strongly advise that you familiarise
yourself with your
equipment prior to using it for a special occasion"
This Website is copyright (c) Gary
Thornton (webmaster@sixbellsjunction.co.uk).
All photographs and articles used on this site are my own work,
unless otherwise stated. Copyright on all photographs remains with the
photographer/collection owner.
The views expressed on these pages are mine only, unless
otherwise stated (comments and views expressed in reviews are that of the
reviewer unless otherwise stated).
Photographs and articles from this site may be copied for personal use ONLY, and not used on the web or elsewhere without permission.
Gary Thornton.