wagonman

Was that meant to be satirical? He sounded like he was phoning in his commentary from CA.

Thanks for that Stephen. So the side doors were indeed 4ft 6in wide whereas standard for mineral wagons was 4ft 0in or thereabouts. My assumption may not have been total rubbish!

I assumed the reversed curve was due to the door being wider. Wouldn't cross ties 'inside' the middle bearers get in the way of the bottom doors? I've not seen the drawings – as is probably obvious!

The reversed hockey stick shape of the side knee-iron washer plate is a distinctive feature too. In the dark recesses of my memory there is the notion that some derelict D299s were retrieved from Sharpness Docks and sent to ?Bristol Museum. Not sure what happened after that but they may still be extant.

Given that choice I'd be with the Islingtonians every time, but then I read a lot of Christopher Hill when I was a student. #WorldTurnedUpsideDown

The latest MRJ (289) has an article on making tarpaulin sheets from scratch silicone bath sealant and Kleenex! That said, your method looks pretty effective too.

My memory of Studiolith (I was in the EMGS at the time) was that they had an extensive list of products, few of which were ever in stock. It was all rather silly.

Further upstream there was a group of riverside factories in Battersea – Price's candle works was one, and there was a distillery (Gordon's?) and possibly Haywards pickles – that together created what the polite citizens of Chelsea called the Battersea Pong when the wind was in the right direction. What the less polite citizens of Chelsea called it I'll leave to your imagination.

Wasn't there one in the undercroft of St Pancras station – the bit where you wait for your Eurostar. I seem to remember the support pillars were spaced at multiples of a Burton beer barrel. Or this another urban myth?

Don't forget that BP also supplied a very tidy 0-6-0ST which Beattie of the LSWR bought pretty much off the shelf. There were other buyers I believe...

Even more worrying when you enter a bank wearing headgear and a mask – almost as good as a balaclava. I'm assuming people still do enter banks, though it is becoming increasingly difficult to actually find one.

A forerunner of Sam Vimes perhaps?

Quite so. The steam from a bisque firing is quite acidic – given the chance it will etch glass!

Sorry to rain, or at least drizzle, on your parade, but collieries usually had exchange sidings or at least connected to the main line directly – Camerton Colliery is a good example of a small pit that survived to the early '50s. They also had landsale depots which took care of the local market for domestic coal. Might I suggest a quarry instead? Or a paper mill? Or a tweed mill – like Bliss's at Chipping Norton (you don't have to model the mill!)? Something that creates rail traffic, preferably with PO wagons, without dominating the traffic flow and putting your local coal merchant out of business.

It doesn't last 'forever' when it's covering a pottery kiln! The fumes from that thing will turn corrugated iron into corrugated lace in a few years... Richard

The last time I was in York...

Rather small... By way of contrast a matching rake of 6 close coupled Metro 4-wheelers (can't figure out the diagrams) hauled by one of the lovely River class locos (also with six wheels and a big shiny thing on the boiler) in the Bristol area early 1900s.

A friend of mine has been transcribing a notebook kept by someone working at the MR repair facility in Bath in 1890 and this lists the vehicles dealt with and how they were disposed of afterwards. The wagons were a mixture of PO and company wagons, the latter being more or less evenly divided between MR, SDJR and LSWR – no 'furriners' in those days.

Off the top of my head I'd say that was probably a G&SWR wagon. Oh the joys of pooling! Richard

I suspect the makers of anti-tank missiles are laughing all the way to the (non Russian) bank.

Brest-Litovsk was signed in 1918 though it was abrogated by the Versailles Treaty of 1919. The matter was finally settled at Rapallo in 1922. This, and the Riga treaty of 1921, settled the borders of the Baltic states, Finland and Poland for the next 17 years. The Russian assault on Ukraine has uncomfortable echoes of the Soviet attack on Finland at the start of the Winter War of 1939-40. It seems History DOES repeat ... and not always as farce.

I suspect Mad Vlad is still nursing a grudge about the Treaty of Brest Litovsk. Watch out Finland and the Baltic states.

I cannot give any info on this wagon – it's way out of my territory – but the Wigan Coal & Iron Co wagons used to sport a large oval plate a bit like that. Richard

They're definitely there – 397, 398 and 399!

I think you're out of luck, Bill. The only model of an MSWJR horse box that I know of is the MSC kit for the MRC&W design (very similar to the Cambrian version) but that was only available in 7mm. Correction: Taff Vale Models produce a MR D397 kit, but once again only in 7mm scale.