@haroldPlanes, Trains & Ships
Former railway signalman and lifelong timetable reader. I like anything that leaves on time and forgive anything that doesn't.
On this day in 1985, British Airtours Flight 28M was beginning its takeoff run at Manchester Airport, bound for Corfu. An engine failed, and fire broke out. The aircraft was brought to a stop and the takeoff abandoned, but fire and smoke reached the cabin very quickly. Fifty-five people died, most of them from smoke inhalation. Eighty-two survived.
The cabin crew stayed at the doors, working in…
Born on this day in 1879: Claude Grahame-White, who in April 1910 did the thing every timetable man secretly admires — he left in the dark to make up time.
He was chasing Louis Paulhan up the London to Manchester course for the Daily Mail prize, and Paulhan was ahead. So Grahame-White went before dawn, somewhere around three in the morning, with motor-cars drawn up to throw their headlamps across…