Jump to content
 

Wheatley

Members
  • Posts

    2,478
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Wheatley

  1. Yes it was there when I went past last week too. My guess was asbestos removal or grit blasting something, the Explainer "couldn't possibly comment ;-) ".
  2. In the meantime, the last time I was there they were doing something with the 31 in the Great Hall that involved parking it over the inspection pit completely sealed up with polythene sheets and gaffer tape. It seemed unnecessarily unkind to mention to the Explainer that it was a shame they didn't have some sort of workshop where this sort of thing could be done.
  3. Struggling to see how someone with the nouse and motivation to build either a kit or something from scratch (which is the market Squires serves) can't work out how to use a non-phone payment method or doesn't have the patience to. And yes, it is excellent news. All power to Squires' elbow.
  4. I confess to being well practised on the fillet idea as the result of being hopeless at accurate layout planning, and having to add bits as I go along ! The Google Maps idea is genius.
  5. That, and a bit of the road to give them some protection from stray sleeves and elbows brushing past. It doesn't need to be the full ply construction, something lightweight cantilevered off the existing board will do. If that doesn't work/fit then I'd shorten the gardens as that to me would be the least unacceptable compromise. But then I've managed to get a 28 ft long formation into a 14 foot garage by bending it in half, so your mileage may vary !
  6. Yay ! I cancelled my 2020 trip after the forecast windspeed on the ECML topped 60mph, the overheads not usually needing that much help to fall down. Then spent the day in the office watching both my outward and return trains on TRUST run right time almost to the minute. 🤨
  7. Thats an excellent idea, you should suggest that to the DfT as a replacement for the current Schedule 8 arrangements. Do let us know how you get on.
  8. There is a Bradford Barton paperback called "Signalman" by Michael Burke, detailing his career around Manchester in the 1960s. The Platting Tail Lamp was a local custom whereby the tail lamp of a particular trip working from Miles Platting could be anything except an actual tail lamp, hung on the drawhook of the last vehicle*. "For a period a particularly lacy bra was popular with the shunters". (* Which is why the handle of a BR standard tail lamp is such an odd shape.)
  9. All three are not incorrect and all three will have been generated by whatever delay code the Network Rail or individual TOC controllers put in the system, which will have been based on what they were told at the time. All three indicate that something major is going down and that this is not going to be fixed by the time you finish your coffee, which at least manages expectations. Getting them all to agree with each other in TRUST and getting the delay correctly attributed to the same root cause is a Day 2 back office job. Control are too busy standing up with a phone at each ear shouting at each other across the room trying to work round it at this point.
  10. Just south of two very shallow short tunnels on a route with other very shallow short tunnels nearby, in an area made up of geological porridge (the Guiseley Gap) so presumably known to be prone to landslip when it was built. I don't imagine the water helped though. Nor I expect did the 1970s bungalows built on the top of the cutting that's now slipping. https://maps.app.goo.gl/RGcP3qnwrsGkdbR29
  11. Yes I was surprised too. It's as not terrible as could be realistically wished for. We were having a similar conversation about this at work. Unfortunately the Disability Discrimination Act means that the days of just asking the CCE if he's got any old bridges lying around following an electrification scheme are over (I think Settle's came from Drem ?). Nowadays you either get the full DDA-compliant works or nothing, as the halway house is, with very few exceptions, illegal for new works.
  12. Westinghouse v vacuum, 21" vacuum v 25" vacuum, vacuum v air, single pipe air v 2 pipe air, screw couplings v buckeye, screw v tightlock, tightlock v BSI. Don't imagine incompatibility is a symptom of the modern railway.
  13. Oil lamps continued on DMUs and locos because until the Rule Book was revised (1974 ?) the lamp (white metal thing) was the indication, not the red light, which only had to be lit if the journey was to take place in darkness, fog falling snow or through a tunnel. After they were discontinued plenty of DMUs were stopped to check whether they were complete as the 40 watt bulbs were useless in bright sunlight. We had a spare oil tail lamp in the box at Huddersfield Junction which was occasionally waved at Huddersfield bound guards as a prompt to confirm whether the lights were on or not.
  14. Planning application with drawings - https://onlineplanningregister.northyorks.gov.uk/Register/PlanAppDisp.aspx?recno=11477
  15. Fox and Cambridge Custom Transfers. Previously Modelmaster as well but see long running thread on here and caveat emptor.
  16. Not that I can think of (I had a look in Smiffs, I dont have the pic in front of me). It's a grainy pic taken at a distance.
  17. Some of the other vans in the consist are LNER and LMS Standard vans in clean pre-1964 bauxite (no boxes), with a lot of scruffy grey ones and a couple of white ones, one of which is sheeted. There are also two either late GWR or BR Std vans. None of which adds much but (for me) suggests early 50s. There is a bit of a red cast on the photo but the sheets are definitely red fading a bit to pink. Not reddish brown or brownish red.
  18. Thank you, that is extremely useful. The CR 782 Class was unequal wheelbase, but as far as I'm aware the only other option (excluding Hornby Thomas etc chassis) is the Alan Gibson milled option which would involve sourcing almost everything else from scratch. Food for thought, thank you. Apologies for the thread drift, although hopefully it was of some use to the OP in terms of what to expect.
  19. Which is also built through a prehistoric but still active landslip. Not an issue when the only traffic was neolithic herders, you just walk up or downhill a bit to find a bit that's easier to walk on.
  20. Apologies, I was writing that on the train at 7am this morning; somewhere between the Wi-fi disappearing and re-appearing I forgot to mention the 400 yds / 450 yds mismatch. The Outer Home needs to be (at least) 440 yards outside the inner home otherwise (as mentioned) it's just there for show. As for signal labelling (which I also forgot), Outer/Inner Home is fine as is Starter/Advanced Starter. Other regions labelled them Home 1, Home 2, Home 3 etc ... Starter, and from some point before 1987 Starters became Section signals. Not sure what happened to the Starter/Advanced Starter in those circumstances, I don't think you can have Section/Advanced Section, you have to re-name the first one something else. Correct, because the 440 yard clearing point is fouled. Unless there's a colour light distant in which case the clearing point is 200 yards. Unless .... etc etc !
  21. Quite. You need it to stop moving or at least be able to get up close and personal enough to see if its likely to move again before you go charging about clearing it.
  22. What are the current SEF chassis kits like quality wise please ? I need one for the CR 3F tank (my supply of 1960s Triang Jinty chassis being sadly depleted) but I don't think I've ever seen one built up.
  23. 1. Yes 2. Yes provided he can ascertain the fast goods is complete (get the guard to take the tail lamp off and wave it at the box if there's no phone provided for the purpose). 3. Yes provided Regulation 5 (later 3.5) Warning Acceptance is authorised at that box, it wasn't universal. Indicating to the driver of the following goods that he was accepted at 5 / 3.5 was at various times done by bringing him almost to a stand at the previous box's starter, or by waving a green flag slowly from side to side as he passed the previous box, it wasn't necessary to actually speak to the driver.
  24. The number of trees in the photograph in ess1uk's link would suggest that loss of tree cover was not the primary cause. None of the three major railway landslips I was closely involved with the aftermath of (all significant enough to derail 156s) were caused by removal of trees because there was not and never had been any significant tree growth on the slopes involved. One was the failure to maintain crest drains allowing the top of a shale and boulder clay slope to become waterlogged, one was a latent geological issue where very heavy localised rainfall caused a millstone grit layer to slip over a shale layer and the third was the result of putting a railway line through a geological fault. Loss of ancient tree cover might be a significant issue in tropical locations but in the UK the issue is usually either the failure to maintain existing drains, or drains being inadequate for current rainfall volumes.
  25. Thanks. I knew it wasn't Moray Firth Nairn but I hadn't picked up on the apostrophe and the fact that it was a personal name. You're right, naming after the farmer or the farm was very common and it caused confusion at times. Between Long Preston and Hellifield there were once four accommodation crossings named Shutts No1, Shutts No2, Switchers No1 and Switchers No2. Only Switchers was still open when I knew it in 1992 but a conversation with the farmer and an attempt to reconcile recorded mileages with actual mileposts and a pile of 25" maps revealed that it wasn't Switchers at all. At some point in the 1930s the farms had been amalgamated, the farmhouse at Shutts Farm sold and the land added to Switchers Farm. So now all of them were Switchers Farm's crossings, even though two of them were still called Shutts. To further confuse matters the farmer at Switchers had stopped using the two Switchers crossings in favour of one of the Shutts crossings for convenience and that had become known colloquially as Switchers Crossing. It was in fact Shutts No2, and you can imagine the subsequent telephone call to the Level Crossings Section at York. It was also the place where I discovered that the going rate at 1992 prices for pulling bogged down railway vans out of fields was £20 cash. ("Yer could allus call t'AA lad...").
×
×
  • Create New...