Stop & Examine
People quiz: who are our winners?
Our thanks to everyone who played along and took part in our Stop & Examine People Quiz ( RAIL 843). For this competition, we had four copies of Hitachi - Inspire the Next (the special Hitachi version of popular board game Monopoly) to give away, courtesy of Hitachi.
Our four lucky winners are:
■ Richard Bone, from Bishop Auckland.
■ Richard Kemble, from Stoke Gifford.
■ K G Cuthbert, from Camborne.
■ David Smith, from Stockton-on-Tees.
And now… the answers:
1 Dr Richard Beeching. 2 Cornwall. 3 Reading. 4 Newton Aycliffe.
Four of Hitachi’s global facilities are featured on the Inspire the Next board game, in the segments traditionally occupied by the railway stations, and the question asked for the location of the UK facility.
Sunderland, Ashford and Maidenhead were also all put forward. The corporate office is in Maidenhead, and there are facilities at Ashford and Sunderland, but the one featuring on the board game is Newton Aycliffe in County Durham.
For the record, the other facilities featured are Kasado in Japan, Pistoia in Italy, and Miami in the US. 5 Cecil Rhodes. 6 David Shepherd. 7 Arnold Ridley. He played Pvte Godfrey. 8 George Stephenson. 9 River Tamar. 10 Michael Portillo. 11 Sir Nicholas Winton. 12 Kim Wilde (and brother Ricky Wilde). 13 John Prescott.
This was the one that caught out most of you. We asked for the name of the Secretary of State for Environment, Transport and the Regions at the time of the Hatfield rail crash in October 2000.
One person said Hilary Armstrong, but her title was Minister of State for Local Government from May 1997 to June 2001.
One reader said Michael Meacher, who was Minister of State for the Environment from May 1997 to June 2003.
Nine went for Angus John Macdonald, Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, but he was Minister of State at the Department for Environment, Transport and Regions from July 1999 to June 2001.
And nearly 20 readers thought it was Stephen Byers, but he was Secretary of State for Transport from June 2001 to May 2002, preceded by Prescott.
Prescott was Secretary of State from May 1997 to June 2001, while also in the position Deputy Prime Minister.) 14 Michael Palin. 15 Metro-Land. 16 St Pancras International. 17 Rudolf Nureyev. 18 Marcel Proust. 19 Michael Bond. (He did, of course, write the Paddington books.) 20 Senior Pest Controller. Well done to all our winners, and to everyone who scored 20/20. If you missed out this time, there will be more opportunities to win prizes in future Stop & Examine quizzes. Watch this space.