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Selby on the radar
ITHOROUGHLY enjoyed the article on the Selby Diversion (October issue), and it brought back a memory of an unusual occurrence every time a train ran.
I spent two years at RAF Church Fenton between 1984-86 and I worked in Air Traffic Control. The airfield is very close to, and clearly visible from, the diversion and the Runway 24 threshold is about a kilometre from the line by Ryther.
When Runway 24 was in use, the Precision Approach Radar (PAR, used for‘talking down’an aircraft) would face towards the railway line and whenever a train passed by, it would show up on the glide path radar screen as a fuzzy return at the bottom of the screen running left to right or vice versa, depending on the direction of travel.The type of train, freight or express passenger, could be gauged by the speed of the fuzzy return moving across the screen.