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bécasse

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Everything posted by bécasse

  1. Each duty spelled out a locomotive's tasks for the "day" together with the timings for those tasks.
  2. One disc on each Southern head code habitually displayed the locomotive duty number.
  3. When I first read the question my immediate reaction was that he couldn't possibly be asking about roads passing below stations (approximately) orthogonally and so he must be asking about examples where roads run under stations approximately parallel to the railway above. I could think of a number of cases of terminal stations where the cab road would qualify for that but I couldn't offhand think of any examples of public roads (except for a possible oblique example at Vauxhall) but there must be one or two examples of that somewhere in the UK surely?
  4. My first was the 1954 Model Railway Club show at Central Hall when I would have been eight. I joined The MRC in 1960 and so stewarded from 1961 onwards except in 1969 (August that year), when I was a demonstrator for the first time, and in 1971 and 1974 (and also at Wembley in 1985), when I was a layout exhibitor. Rather to my astonishment, I have exhibited layouts in France on six occasions since moving to Belgium thirteen years ago.
  5. Roy, assuming that you are viewing RMweb on your iPhone, choosing files should offer you the option of searching your iPhone photo library for the file. If that doesn't work you can transfer a copy of the photo from your photo library to "files" which you do by selecting the photo in the photo library and then selecting the transfer button (square with upward arrow) and scrolling right down until you get to "files" and selecting that option. "files" is one of the options offered when you select "choose files" in RMweb on your iPhone. David
  6. Ah! Eureka moment! All problems solved! Line reopened as an electric interurban tramway with street running through Bodmin linking approach to Bodmin General station to the Camel Trail at the erstwhile Bodmin Jail site, and again through Wadebridge and even perhaps at Padstow. The current preservation group could continue to operate Bodmin General to Boscarne and the Camel Trail could co-exist with the tramway. It doesn't really help the OP although a nice Padstow tram terminal model might be a possibility with HO being perhaps more practical than OO given that most suitable tram models are in that scale.
  7. Looking from abroad, I thought that sowing confusion was one of the raisons d'être of the British Rail network of today. I am just glad, despite possessing a silver pass, that I don't actually have to use it.
  8. Is the apparently separate character in the middle an ampersand (rather than a Welsh "Y"). If it is, it perhaps suggests a colliery named for two joint (original) owners each with a short name. I agree that the lack of any routing instructions suggests that it is very local.
  9. So Bodmin South Parkway it would have to be. Oddly I had been through the same thought process myself!
  10. There are a number of photos on the internet showing BR-era locos, both steam and diesel shunter, which appear in the photos (and in at least one case apparently in reality) to be black but are in fact BR loco green. This would seem to be the result of the atmospheric conversion of the lead compounds in the green paint (which the 1956 green undoubtedly contained) to lead sulphide which, although actually a dark grey colour, appears to be black - the same effect that lead (pun, sorry!) to the darkening of white canvas roofs on rolling stock.
  11. Perhaps the loco has just run round the train prior to propelling it west clear of the station in order to cross over on to the up. The pristine state of the wagons does suggest some sort of trial run.
  12. Unless you can find a contemporary reference (Inspection report, local newspapers?), I suspect that differentiating between 1854 and 1856 will prove next to impossible, especially as the dates for other stations vary too. Building style often offers important clues but I would never rely on that for just a couple of years difference. Noting that there would have been a manned level crossing at the station site from the opening of the line, is it possible that initially it was an unofficial stopping place, regularised (and provided with a platform and rudimentary building) when the other stations also opened in 1856? I suspect that 1876 was the year that the suffix "... and Meare" was dropped although the Ordnance Survey continued to use the full name for years after that (which might suggest that any running boards or etched lamp names weren't changed, just the paperwork).
  13. An interesting mix but indicative of the fact that before the pooling of wagons goods trains only contained wagons of companies which had a good reason for being in the rake concerned, rather than being like liquorice all-sorts with wagons of many companies being mixed in with wagons of the predominate local company. Mineral trains with typically a much greater proportion of private-owner wagons would have shown greater variety but, I suspect, even there there would have been less ownership variety than the average "old-time' modeller assumes.
  14. When the use of colour film by individuals was still rare the processors could have an influence on how colour was rendered in the resulting slides. Our next door neighbour's elder daughter got married in the early 1950s and, as her newly betrothed was comfortably off, they went to southern Ireland for their honeymoon accompanied by a decent camera with colour film in it. When they got the slides back they were generally excellent but they were very surprised to find that the deliberately posed shot of the pair of them in front of an ex-GPO pillar box showed the box to be red. When they complained to Kodak, they received a very nice reply (together with a quantity of complimentary colour film) thanking them for the explanation that the box really had been green and not red. Apparently, it had been rendered correctly on the film but the individual processor noticed that what he thought was an obvious British post box hadn't come out the correct colour and so had "corrected" it. Kodak were indeed very pleased to learn that it wasn't a fault of the film but of the perceptions of the processor.
  15. A certain gentleman who was once a sector director and who has more recently been associated with the Ffestiniog Railway would certainly agree with that final comment. In the second half of the 1980s the Treasury insisted that BR moved the basis of its accounting from the traditional calendar year to the fiscal year. After one very strange year that contained 16 accounting periods, the next year reverted to the normal 13 4-week periods but what no-one in authority noticed was that Easter, then a period for bumper InterCity receipts rather than an opportunity to dig half the network up, had fallen in late March before the new fiscal year started and then the next Easter fell in mid/late April after fiscal year had ended. Apparently the period-by-period receipt out-turns were largely in line with forecasts through the year until the final out-turn, with no Easter to bolster it, fell well short, meaning that the year as a whole also fell well short. The result was that the aforesaid gentleman went ballistic, I didn't personally see his "performance" but I did see his shell-shocked sub-sector directors immediately afterwards and they weren't a pretty sight. The real irony is that the aforesaid gentleman had, prior to becoming a sector director, held a senior position in the Board's HQ strategy planning office and consequently might just have been expected to notice the emerging problem himself (rather than constantly trying to score points against the other sector directors).
  16. The board on the right with its back to the photographer would have had a [ T ] indication indicating the terminal point of the PSR on that road. Southern Railway PSR indicators were rare beasts, usually only installed where there was nothing else to help a driver identify his position, clearly here there is a signal but presumably the other end of the PSR wasn't so obvious. The standard top limit on the Southern Railway for steam traction was 85 mph but a lower overall limit may well have applied over the whole S&D, the introduction page to Southern-produced WTTs would have stated it whatever it was.
  17. The 6-COR units concerned 3041-3050 only ever worked regularly on the South Eastern Division and then only on peak hour services during the 1967 summer timetable period. After that they were only used spasmodically including on the Central Division (and just possibly on race trains on the South Western Division). I strongly suspect that, given that they were effectively electric versions of the "long sets", their livery mostly never progressed beyond the green/small yellow patch stage and they were all out of service by the autumn of 1968. Certainly the couple I saw were in that livery, however I believe a couple may have acquired blue with yellow ends. Note that, as built, they marginally fouled the SED loading gauge and it was found necessary to remove the roof board brackets from all the vehicles to comply.
  18. Officially you need a carnet. Not having one, even if the layout is "hidden" in the boot of your car, risks not only the confiscation of the layout for non-declaration but also of the vehicle. It probably wouldn't happen but it can and it isn't only the French Customs who are a risk but the Belgian Customs, who carry out regular spot checks within the country, too. Remember, the UK got unnecessarily nasty post-Brexit by insisting on the need for passports (which the majority of Europeans, including myself, don't have even if they are rather cheaper than British ones) so for the Customs to find a British vehicle carrying "contraband" would be considered a "good win".
  19. There were definitely at least two different lengths for the horizontal platform.
  20. But if you think about it, the painting process for coaching stock was quite different to that for wagons.
  21. There were definitely workings into both Charing Cross and Cannon Street of 10-car formations 4-EPB + 3 x 2-HAP. There may have been restrictions as to which platforms they could use but I don't remember Bill Woodyer mentioning it. His team at Cannon Street produced the platform workings for both termini and he was forever complaining that they were just handed the finalised WTT and told to work out the platforming which hadn't been taken into account in the planning and was, consequently, a far from simple task. All the planners had ever done was to ensure that there were never more than six trains (of which three long-distance) at Charing Cross and eight at Cannon Street at the same time.
  22. If the final painting was carried out when the body was already mounted on its chassis (which obviously it was), it would have been more productive, and therefore cheaper, to have painted it all the same colour; given the metalwork on the body a paint suitable for application to primed metal would have had to be used anyway.
  23. Pre-grouping stock on the Southern Railway tended to keep to the lines of its former owners. There were exceptions, pull & push trains for example (see Mike King's book for comprehensive details although pull & push trains tended to be fairly rare on through routes) and, of course, the ex-SECR long tens which turned up as strengthening vehicles all over the network, plus other odd examples. Typical stock on the Reading-Redhill-Tonbridge line, largely worked as an entity, and on stopping trains on the Tonbridge-Ashford line, would have been predominately ex-SECR birdcage 3-sets (of which there were more than one variety). Fast trains between Tonbridge and Ashford, and especially boat trains, would have been increasingly formed of Maunsell coaching stock, sometimes with Pullman Cars in the formation. Dedicated Maunsell stock would eventually have worked the odd through-to-other companies trains over the whole Reading-Ashford line, with the stock provided by the "other" company on alternate days. I would add a word of warning about using historical photographs (say anything pre-mid 1950s) as they tend to give a very lopsided view of the operation of the railways. Most photographers worked Monday to Saturday lunchtime (but parsons had Monday off) and so a lot of photographs were taken on Saturday afternoons when the working of the railway tended to be rather different to the rest of the week even if the timetable looked similar. Furthermore, the sheer logistics of photography then meant that photos had to be taken sparingly and, not unnaturally, photographers tended to concentrate on the unusual rather than the everyday routine.
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