wagonman

Alas I can't help with any actual details (have you tried the BGS?) but would offer the suggestion that if the GWR added another side door to the converted fish wagons it would likely be symmetrical – door openings the same distance from either end.

Trips to London from school c1960, which travelled via the B&H line, often seemed to arrive at platform 11 under the 'new' roof. I don't know about parcels, but there was usually an all-pervading smell of fish.

I've not seen any Irish station name boards in Erse in pre Free State photos.

Growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional. Richard

During the C19 and early C20 the use of Welsh in schools was actively discouraged by the use of the 'Welsh Not', a wooden board on strings that was hung around the neck of any pupil heard using the language during school hours. This was not so far as i know a legal requirement but was common practice in south an d west Wales. Richard

Railway Modelling 101 suggests you model the prototype rather than models of it! Alternatively make it up – my long term project* is to model a mineral railway that could have run north from Llandovery, but unaccountably never did. * long term project means unlikely to be anywhere near complete before I snuff it.

There are a few, very few, decent and honest politicians around – and they are generally roundly vilified by their opponents, their colleagues, and the media. Maybe we really do get the politicians we deserve...

All too common response to vegetarians, still. One of the reasons I don't travel much any more.

Indeed you could – helicopter hire is around £800 per hour (flying time) but you'd have to go to Battersea to board it. Flying time includes time taken to get from its base to/from Battersea. For a definitive answer, ask Mr Sunak. He seems to be an expert in these things!

It was definitely cheaper to send stuff by sea than by land – hence Tyne coal was still being shipped to ports in North Cornwall in the mid C20.

I have the Peter K version sitting in my pile of unmade kits. I suspect my executors will get to it before I do! It is supposed to be rather better than the usual run of his kits.

Rabbits were much more likely to be deadstock than live. The was a steady traffic in (dead) rabbits from the warrens of Breckland to London via the GER. Turkeys and geese, on the other hand, walked to market – often up to 100 miles. This tradition dated back to at least the C17 and lasted into the 1930s.

I know the photo. It was taken somewhere on the Salisbury branch – Wylye I think.

Of course you often have to publish what you know in the sure and certain belief that fresh knowledge will become available soon after – probably as a result of your publication! Evidence, even from primary sources, has to be evaluated as we cannot always be certain of the context in which it was created: 'official' drawings of vehicles which never actually existed being a case in point. Clerical errors did happen. The Lightmoor Press 'house style' eschews endnotes so we have to smuggle sources into the main text. Where something is conjectural, we say so, giving the evidence available. Their books are after all aimed at a general readership rather than an academic one.

30 Dorchester Road, round the back of Paddington station, was the GWR/Western Region's records store (though dump might be a more appropriate word) which they were in the process of closing down. It had shelves full of miscellaneous and totally unsorted correspondence, various documents like Private Siding Agreements and Cartage Agreements, personnel records, plus a few precious books like the Registers. There were also thousands of drawings which Mike Jolly and Colin Waite were cataloguing for the BGS. This little empire was presided over by Robin Lidster and his very able assistant Ian (damn, I've forgotten his surname) and a few superannuated employees who it's assumed were put out to grass there. In addition there were the 'volunteers' led by David Hyde who were ostensibly there to weed the records but mostly took the opportunity to do our own research. The only other person there who I knew personally was Adrian Vaughan. The only perks, apart from access to an A3 photocopier, were the free X passes for train travel to and from one's home – in this case my girlfriend's place in Norfolk rather than my flat in London! Is there a statute of limitations on this? The Chippenham archive is the Wilts County Record Office, now incorporating the Swindon records as well. Montague's book had a good selection of photos, but the captions were uninformative at best, downright wrong at worst. Why were there in effect two versions of the History? Why was the index so wastefully laid out? The main reason for resenting Montague's work – which looked like it had been thrown together over a weekend – is that it killed the market for a proper job. BTW, I have a feeling it might have been Sandy Croall who cracked the enigma of the solebar code. Wagon company records, where they survive at all, are scattered all over the place: Birmingham Wagon Co records are at Stafford, Lincoln Wagon & Engine records are in Edinburgh, for example. Thank goodness Gloucester Wagon Co records are in ... Gloucester!

A few points about Gloucester Owners' plates: these were applied to both simple hire wagons and deferred payment wagons – in the latter case they were presumably removed after the payments had been completed. I haven't managed to pin down exactly when the rectangular style gave way to the elongated 'G' but suspect it was about the time of the introduction of the 1887 RCH scheme. I did read an explanation of the painted solebar code many years ago but have alas forgotten it. I think it was, as you suggest, in the HMRS Journal about the time everyone was doing a, well-deserved, hatchet job on Montague's book. There are three pre-1887 GWR Registers extant, one broad gauge and the other two narrow. They contain internal evidence pointing to the existence of further volumes, now lost. The BG volume was interesting as many of the earliest entries were retrospective, there being a column specifically for the age of the wagon at the time of registration. I haven't seen them since I worked on them at Porchester Road in the mid-'80s where they were discovered by David Hyde and set aside for preservation. They may have gone to Chippenham, possibly via Swindon. Without further specific research any more comments by me are superfluous...

The dimension board is attached to the solebar and not that easy to read: it was 12' 6" long, 6' 9" wide, with 10" high sides rising to 28" under the peak – all dimensions internal of course. With flap open and the front "door" removed it should not have been too difficult to get at the cargo with a long handled shovel. That said, there was some doubt about the actual use of the wagons. They are not to be found in the Gloucester Wagon Co Agendas (summary of orders) and yet they were photographed by the works cameraman. The photo is dated October 1871, and Balcombe's interest in Blaencaelan was over by 1873 at the latest, so their working lives may have been short – or they may have been sold on for use elsewhere by Balcombe or A N Other. I am assuming that there were at least two of them.

I've not had access to the Aberystwyth Port Books so I only assumed the ore went by sea as the store shed appeared to be on the quay. But there is a documentary reference to a fixed secure ore store at Aberystwyth station is to a Mr Harvey who was given a site for one in the yard for £5 a year rent. But that was in 1874. And it it was after Balcombe had ceased to have an interest in the Blaencaelan mine.

Another point: there exists correspondence between the Van mines and the Cambrian Railways Goods Agent specifically requesting 1 and 2 plank wagons with sheets for their ore traffic.

This is slightly undermined by the roofed lead ore wagons built by the Gloucester Wagon Co for J B Balcombe which came fitted with a chunky padlock. There were also secure lead ore stores at Llandovery station and Aberystwyth harbour – there may have others but these two I know about – presumably for the accumulation of enough ores for a cargo. I won't argue that it was probably the silver content that made the stuff nickable – except there was no silver in the Blaencaelan ore!

The crushed lead ore produced at the Van mine in central Wales was transported in sheeted 1 or 2 plank wagons. In this case the sheet was presumably to provide protection from tea leaves rather than rain! AFAIK the ore travelled to south Wales for processing, some (from other mines) even being sent by ship from Aberystwyth. Was there any lead smelting in N Wales?

Given that most photographers were using large format plates I doubt 'grain' would have been an issue. Nor indeed would focus – a least for a static subject like this. By the turn of the century optical design had reached a high degree of sophistication with only coating and the use of aspherical elements yet to come, plus the use of computers for the number crunching (in the 1840s Petzval had to call on the Austrian army for that job).

I sit corrected.

I would hope so, if it's needed. There are major bottlenecks in central Manchester too, not to mention the reinstatement of much that was prematurely 'rationalised' in the '70s and '80s. But a rolling programme of electrification is probably the most urgent priority if they're serious about being net zero in 2050, or whenever. Big 'if'?

The HS2 station will be at Curzon Street which is nowhere near Moor Street and even further from New Street. My source for this assertion? HS2's own website.