The Stationmaster

Could this be construed as a political remark I wonder or does that only come into play when we get round to the choice of livery? (sorry no emojis but I'm sure you'll treat it in tthe spirit in which it was meant)

Absolutely spot on Ron. And nothing that lots of folk don't know is even BR had started leasing rolling stock. And in fact one of the original prime movers of the idea of leasing rolling stock later became Deputy Leader of the Labour Party andwas regarded by many as being a left-winger and was even sponsored by the NUR. Leased rolling stock and traction is very definitely an economically sensible way of running a railway - whoever owns that railway.

It didn't work for Network rail - which started as exactly that. But because Govt guaranteed its debt (how else could it have borrowed money?) that ultimately that it became a state owned company.

And a squadron of Gloucester Old Spots has just passed overhead. Under BR Footplate Staff were on an 'all line vacancy list' with the very simple effect that men (most were in those days) moved to unpopoular depots in order to get their grade and then waited their turn to for their seniority in the grade to get them where they really wanted to be (often for better or more interesting turns and very often for more money). Net result was that certain depots, especially SR inner suburban ones , were perpetually short of Drivers as even those who went there for a grade quite often went elsewhere before they had finished umpteen months worth of road learning. All privatisation did was re-frame the attractions of working in certain places or on certain types of work in a different way from what had gone before - and Drivers at last started to get a basic salary that more correctly matched the responsibilities of their job. As for telling people where to go in order to work NR has already faced a lot of industrial trouble over trying to to reorganise some staff to s do exactly that. In reality contractors can get away with it, nationalidsed industries usually can't Fares are of course already set by Govt (or rather DafT) and in most cases ticket revenue goes direct t them, not to the operating companies. The lack of commercial freedom fort operators is a net result of teh change for franchises and in places it has worked out to the disadvantage of passengers. But if n effect fares have always in many respects been state controlled so that won't change. The only change will be if politicos are prepared tp stand the costs of reducing rail fares and that goes straight back to one long standing question in any nationalised industry - would you rather have a new hospital or school etc or would you like 10% etc off train fares or your water bill? Guess which one will always win - and whatever they say all the politicos know that is the case. But worst of all further state ownership would put more into the control of DafT - who didn't get that additional letter 'a' in there for nothing. MPs don't like state controlled railways - it fills their post bags with moans and expectations of them 'doing something'; and, for what it's worth the person who said that was the then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. So any 'bright new railway' hopes resulting from a Labour Govt are at best illusory and at worst unrealistic. But the oddest thing about Labour's stance is that it keeps on about nationalising NR - which was effectively nationalised by the Conservatives some years ago.

Yes, no, maybe. In some cases trains were starting from goods yards and sidings (various) long after marshalling yards had opened nearby. For example trains started from and terminated at Paddington Goods long after yards had been opened within a few miles of it - and that continued until it was closed. But it had suitable sidings to ffacilitate that sort of thing. And Paddington Goods wasn't unusual in that respect and neither was the GWR/WR. On the other hand Crimea Yard, Westbourne Park, was a domestic coal yard and handled no other traffic but for many years - long after marshalling yards were available within a couple of miles of it - a train of coal empties for South Wales started from there 9including first having to cross the Hammersmith & City Line. The train was also booked to call at Aberdare Sidings, Old Oak Common, in order to attach any coal empties which might be available there. So it all needs a bit of research into teh sort of things any particular modeller is looking to reproduce.

I'm pretty sure they have always doen exactly that by describing it as building up stock levels for ... etc. But while I agree that it is accounted for it is clearly not part of a massive heap of stuff piled up on pallets or whatever at considerable warehousing and balance sheet expense and which showed an almost continuous growth under the immediately previous management. That is where there's the really serious problem - previously tackled by 'fire sales' - that they must deal with (as, I'm sure. we're all agreed).

One thing which has changed over the years is the time of payment. in many cases in the apast payment was not made ion Chinese produced model railway items until they had been received at the UK shipping agent's port premises. But. certain behaviours by various -but particularly one person - in the UK market has meant that final payment is now often raised at factory gate. Thus although the goods are not taken into stock at that point money is being paid out. However Hornby's mountain of unsold stuff has, I'm sure, very little to do with that change of payment arrangement and is largely, if not entirely, down to past mismanagement and very poor to non-existent marketing decisions. For years a retailer friend f mine was loud in his complaint that if Hornby repeted a model in many cases they couldn't even be bothered to offer a different running number. If you don't make what folk will buy then you aren't going to sell it. Factory payment arrangements also vary with some folk repotedly still being able to get end-loaded payment where various stages of work aren't paid for until tooling starts or - I have heard in one case, -until end production starts. The time of paying out during development thus varies although hopefully it will all be ciming out of a development budgeting process which takes account of the way payments are invoiced by the factory. But whatever happens, and presumably exacerbated by the Red Sea shipping route debacle, money is now usually having to be paid out a much longer time before it can begin to be recovered as sales revenue. But budgeting and cash flow management should, I hope, recognise that problem

The difference is that the Lanarkshire models version hasn't got the section cut out of the beam to avoid excessively damaging Dellner couplings in the event of a stop block collision

Not quite as a lot of their railway design and operational requirements exactly reflect UIC requirements - i.e. they are set by an international, rather than a national, body. Although BR, and its successors have been/are UIC members we have until recent years rigorously avoided paying any attention at all to UIC requirements except in respect of traction units and rolling stock operating internationally. Somethings - such as advanced notice of Bank Holiday and engineering work train alterations would be a darned sight improved if the UK were to apply UIC requirements. Signed past member of timetable conferences, and certain other meetings relating to train operation, organised in accordance with UIC procedures.

The latter contains some errors. For example the notes in respect of 'Grove' implying it was originaly an SR code are incorrect it was a national code issued by the REC. The word was directly derived from the name of the wartime LMS headquarters at The Grove, a country house near Watford and in later years a BR training Centre (various of us on RMweb attended courses there - a long while after the war!!).

GWR trains to Warrington via Hereford and Chester were originally planned (the plan drawn up in 1911) to be worked to Warrington by 28XX. What happened under the pressures of wartime might well have resulted in other engines working some of the trains.

Some did, many didn't. Attaching and detaching, especially up to the 1960s also took place at just about every station and in soem cases remarshalling of freights took place at location with no more than a couple of sidings (e.g. Broom Junction). Quite a few stations had track layouts which allowed the work to be carried out by trains travelling in either direction and through trains would call to attach (and sometimes detach) traffic in the goods yard itself. Traffic being attached to through trains often had to be segregated (i.e sorted into correct order) to mi mise the time taken to make the attaching moves. The war saw a huge increase in the number of places where some sort of sorting sidings or marshalling yard - often in rural locations - were created out of almost nothing, or were increased in size, to handle the massive increase in freight traffic. Many of these changes hunk on through the period of freight traffic decline which steepened after the 1955 ASLEF strike which caused the loss of much Goods Rated traffic to road transport. A lot depends on the period - you've got that, and the volume of traffic being handled but also the type of traffic created, or used, by local industry and other activities such as farming or fisheries. So you need to consider lots of basic things before you decide on your track layout and what it will be meant to do.

Quite agree. But I reckon it's daft duplicating something when you haven't spent any big money on the project and even your initial research isn't complete but the opposition are obviously (to me at any rate) way ahead. Far better to dump what little time and money you have spent and go find something else otherwise you're just turning it into a w*lly waving exercise.

And don't overlook the fact that the 'retailers' being talked about here were almost certainly not the model railway trade but the big multiples and mail order houses where the big Christmas market lies. One look at the sort of 'toy trains' they were selling and you can instantly see just how far off the market some of the Hornby stuff would have been - massively higher priced for less play value in many cases.

But was it down to them or someone at the factory producing an Ep who thought it would be a good idea or maybe thought that was how the English do such things? It did at least show that all the lamp brackets were there!