Monday, September 6, 2004

100 years ago: The Dean of Ripon paid tribute to railway servants, in the course of a sermon, receiving the approval of TT. The Dean described them as "soldiers of peace, who were exposed to constant danger, though the exploits and self-sacrifice of their service were less before the public eye". The columnist exhorted readers: "Think of the load upon the shoulders of an express engine driver whose judgement the lives of perhaps hundreds of people depend, one wonders what his feelings are when flying mile after mile a minute through the night, knowing that a slight obstruction on the track or a trifling error in taking a sharp curve may cost the lives of scores. Then think of the duties of a signalman whose momentary forgetfulness may result in that most awful of disasters - a railway collision."

50 years ago: A banknote issued by the Bank of Selby had been discovered by an Edinburgh man while searching among his father's papers. He sent the banknote to Selby Museum, where the town surveyor passed the note on to a West Riding historian. With a face value of £1, the fragile note had a picture of Selby Abbey without the twin western towers in the top left hand corner, on the same side the date 1811, with a reference to an "Exhibition of Bankruptcy" printed on the other side. This, thought the experts, meant that the bank had gone into liquidation, although local historians knew nothing of the existence of such a bank. The West Riding Museum expert who had the note believed that there may be an indication of the bank's ownership from the word Foster, which was printed on one side of the note.

25 years ago: A gadget installed a year before to check the number of people inside York's Castle Museum was to be given the sack because it couldn't count. The electronic eye had been on the blink about 20 times in its short life, and so it was decided to get rid of it. As well as breaking down, it was "inaccurate" when swamped in summer. For example, when a school crocodile passed, the eye would count it as one person.

Updated: 08:55 Monday, September 06, 2004