clachnaharry

The 6 mile long St. Combs light railway in North East Scotland was operated by an Ivatt Class 2 tender loco, complete with cowcatchers in the 1950s. The replacement Cravens DMU managed to get by without these attatchments.

That's correct from my recollection. There were 2 starters on a bracket, with ground signals at the base for the run round movement. The discs were not cleared in some cases during the run round.

Back in the mid eighties, I spent some time observing trains at Barnstaple - back when there were loco hauled trains, freight, and semaphore signalling. I noticed that sometimes, the signalman did not bother to pull off the semaphores during the run round maneuver, just giving a hand signal from the box. I was reminded of this at the weekend when I was watching some videos of the Redmire branch in its last days , where the signalman sometimes did not pull off the signal at Bedale, relying on a hand signal. In both cases, there were no apparent faults with the signal and they were used for prior and subsequent trains. Was this a "sin" carried out for convenience, and would the practice be frowned on by higher authority at the time?

Ah, my mistake, I thought The incident occurred at the southern end of the rake. A quick look at street view corrects that!

Why was the Flying Scotsman buffering up that end of the rake in the first place? The subsequent forward movement would be onto the main line - surely unlikely at that time of the evening. Are we certain that this was not intended as a run round, but the points had not been set for the loop?

Attempted Manslaughter is an oxymoron.

Do you mean this one? Is the blob on the rail large enough for a scotch? I thought the rodding was just for the trap on the run round loop, but closer inspection does appear to show the end of the rodding is in line with the blob.

The bay platform at Thurso has no trap, and did not gain one when it was repurposed as a coal siding, back in the days when unfitted 16 ton minerals were still in use.

I believe Kyle of Lochalsh in the 60s and 70's had a single coach working - a brake composite, but this was invariable accompanied by numerous BGs and assorted parcels vans, so probably does not fit your criteria!

The demise of the last mixed commercial freight - the DB Didcot to Carlistle MoD which as well as vans, containers and the occasional open, also conveyed automotive, oil for Peak Forest stabling point and briefly gravel in the last of the HEAs. It faded out just before GBRF won the MoD contract. sometime around 2016 if memory serves me correctly.

Your cordon wagon looks great, and has prompted a bunch of questions as to their use. Were they for supplying gas for station lighting, coach lighting, or both? Were they dedicated to a particular station - as in restricted user brake vans? If they were required at a particular station, was there always at least one present there to provide supply, or was the gas transferred to some fixed storage tank? (you might need to build a second to effect the swap!) Where were they replenished? Did they usually travel to and from their stations on passenger or goods train? If they were replenished at a central location (Swindon?), Were they dispatched on any convenient passing goods train or did they leave as a block train for drop off remarshalling at various yards until they reached their destination?

08's have been and still are present at Inverness. They may have visited Elgin, which is further north, but I have seen no photographic evidence of that. I have also never seen evidence of any on the Far North Line.

Scottish yards in the 1970's seemed to mostly use a strange contraption based on a tractor with a grab that could reach into the wagon to unload 16 tonners. These meant that the coal wagons had to be berthed alongside a loading bank to allow the tractor to reach into the wagon. They were painted in a light blue shade, but I have not been able to unearth any pictures of one. The coal merchant at Maud junction must have acquired his in 1975. By this time there were only 2 sidings remaining in the yard, one next to the loading bank and one running parallel with it. Prior to 1975, pictures show the 16 tonners in the parallel siding. Post 1975 they were berthed alongside the loading bank. Picture taken in 1973 - courtesy of GNSRA.

Reference the new platform starters. I am struggling to think of any examples where a 2 doll bracket comprising starters for 2 platforms, but reading to the same departure line, are at different heights. I hope someone can prove me wrong!

If the pines were deliberately planted, why wouldn't they be evenly spaced? I thought the Victorians were partial to a bit of regimentation.

The coal merchant in Inverurie in Aberdeenshire had a fenced compound within the station goods yard, which had a gated siding with room for only a couple of 16 ton mineral wagons. This continued in use until the early 1980s.

Far better stealth warships have existed for over one hundred years. We call them submarines.

In 1980 the freight used to run from Oban in the early hours of the morning. I was camping by Loch Awe for a week or so that summer. It must have crossed crossed the 01.10 on it's journey. 280 ton would be the maximum allowable load. A loaded Mk 1 weighs in at 30 tons and most trains were 5 coaches or less, so tacking on the additional vehicles would still have kept one of the return workings within the load limit. I suspect they were added on to the consist of the first up train of the day. I do not recall any coaches hanging around during the day when no loco was present in the station.

There appears to have been no traffic on the Aberdeen Waterloo branch for some weeks now. Does anyone know if the Calcium Carbonate traffic to Irvine, Workington and Sleaford has ceased?

What is the difference between an ordinary turnout with reverse curvature and a "Y" turnout?

If you give your signalman a green flag, it covers all sorts of signalling anomalies - including non-working signal arms...

Will your signal arm for goods yard entry be working?

Try to put a pair of eyes on him with a pencil,or fine pen. You will be amazed at the difference these tiny dots will make in bringing the figure to life. I paint hundreds of wargaming figures and it's the single most transformative that you can do in any scale.

I believe Thurso bay platform was used for unloading coal to the offside after the parallel cattle dock siding was lifted.

It's great to see a location modelled at what looks like scale length. It just shows how much compression there is in the average model railway! Is it a continuous run or do you have a fiddle yard at each end?