wagonman

As a kid c1960 I lived for a while in darkest Wiltshire and would 'help out' at the local farm in the holidays. It was a mixed farm with a smallish dairy herd of about 12 head, mostly Guernseys but with at least one Jersey – for the cream content. The old Jersey was the matriarch of the herd and thus at the head of the queue come milking time.

Have you tried the Continuous Springy Beam approach? The CLAG website has all the info. http://www.clag.org.uk/beam-annex3.html The advantage is that it gives active rather than passive springing, and you can vary the 'load' on each axle – at the cost of unprototypical knobs and bit of spring wire.

Springing is even better!

Renationalisation is really the only answer for the railways today. I just hope we don't have to wait until 2048.

My loss of interest in the 'real' railway started when diesels appeared on the West of England line, while the Beeching massacre was the coup de grace. That it also coincided with a burgeoning interest in 'cigarettes and whisky and wild, wild women' is of course purely accidental... It probably explains why I model pre-group exclusively.

The picture that Stephen posted was of the 'lost motion' clutch. There was also the other, rather more noticeable, 'reversing clutch' which normally used the two interlocked cams, but sometimes a lifting link. Look further down the page at http://www.gwr.org.uk/nowagonbrakes.html. Richard

Clang! I meant Manet of course, as Tom pointed out! A reminder not to rely on my increasingly fallible memory.

At least we got a painting by Goya out of the debacle. Not much consolation to Mad Max of course...

When Awry was a kid he lived near Box and would listen to the freight trains labouring up towards the tunnel. Apparently. I can vouch for the fact that he couldn't hear the trains when he was shipped off to boarding school...

Most of the Bath stone mines were taken over by the government at the start of the war and converted. There was, and is still, a limited amount of dimension stone produced in the area though when they stopped sending it by rail I know not – probably '50s. That rather begs the question why have you chosen the '50s/'60s when the '20s/'30s would be a much better bet?

Quite so. The Midland Wagon reference came from Ian...

Sorry for being so off-piste, but I have done a bit of digging: the business started as The Plymouth Steamship and Coal Co in about 1904, having taken over an existing business Hill & Co. in c1915 it was registered and the name changed to The Plymouth Coal Co Ltd, this being the entity finally wound up in 1996.They had regular adverts in the local press mostly advertising their "best Newcastle Wallsend coal" regularly discharged from their own steamers. Unfortunately I haven't yet been able to find out who owned the company, nor the names of any of their steamers, though I think it's safe to say their wagons were mostly used for local distribution and were not very numerous.

I do have a copy of Bill Hudson's book and here is the entry – apologies for the quality of the image! According to the London Gazette the Plymouth Coal Co Ltd (no.935872) was one of a slew of companies officially put into liquidation on 31 January 1996, all under Ernst & Young's Sheffield office. The implication is it was a mopping up operation for moribund companies. At some point I'll have to plough through TNA's BT31 index again; meanwhile there is the local press to keep me busy. I suspect the wagons will be untraceable though...

I have been working on Exeter and Torquay coal merchants – haven't got round to Plymouth yet – but at a first glance the Plymouth Coal Co's wagons seem to be very elusive. Nothing in the GWR registers that I have seen other than a Merthyr colliery of the same name. They bought some s/h wagons from the Midland Wagon Co in the 1870s and ... er, that's it. Do you have any information other than the POwsides transfers?

I might, if I'd ever actually seen one!

A few random thoughts: the late surviving 2-2-2 at Oxford was mainly used on the Fairford branch I believe. Any secondary main line in the Southwest probably needs a Duke. Apart from the Duke, Bulldog and 3521 classes, all 4-4-0s were Red, I believe. I don't think Aberdares ventured west of Exeter until much later – a batch was employed on china clay traffic in the 1920s. Dean Goods were common in the Southwest in the 1890 and 1900s but had all but disappeared in the 1920s when there was just one left at Exeter. Pre-WW1 much, but definitely not all, of the coal used in Devon and Cornwall arrived by sea. That said, no layout of that time and place would be complete without at least one Renwick, Wilton & Co wagon!

Most of the wagons the GWR inherited in 1923 had wooden underframes which were anathema at Swindon, hence their early demise. The exMSWJR stock built with steel frames by Gloucester in c1897 mostly lasted until the early '50s.

For the definitive story of Bath stone... https://lightmoor.co.uk/books/digging-bath-stone/L8863

A good pretext to get the plastikard out...?

Yes.

You are coping with your arthritic fingers and failing eyesight better than I am with mine. Respect! Richard

The exchange of the Read & Son wagon may well have been at Bristol as that would maximise MR mileage!

MSWJR no.26 was a one-off – the first of the 'modern' designs built (from memory) by Birmingham RC&W in 1896 presumably copying the LSWR design. Buying gas-lit stock from the MR was a retrograde move for an all-electric line!

I seem to remember it was Wessex that united England – apart from those bits where the Danes were squatting – and that speaking as a Londoner.

My immediate concern is to try to prevent their election to the NT Council next month. They can spout their reactionary nonsense as much as they like, but I don't want their feet under the table.