Wheatley

Still wiring up, this is so much more civilised than trudging out to the shed in two coats and three pairs of gloves. It does rather limit use if the living room by the rest of the household though. This (above) is the west junction, the three boards forming the lifting flap in front of the door and floozy cupboard on the left, and the first couple of station boards on the right. The ply and mahogany box sticking out houses all the track section switches, the mahogany plank next to it (on part of the lifting flap) will be the lever frame for the West box. All connections are via 15 or 25 way serial connectors. These core boards are all plugged into each other, the plan is for the rest to plug into a ring main around the outside of the layout, separate from all the boards rather than running a lot of through cables from board to board to board. Thanks to John Isherwood (CCtransuk) for that idea.

They are certainly more memorable, there was much more variety of shape between them before computers got involved in reducing co-efficients if friction and we all finished up driving a jelly mould or a wedge. Also we were young and impressionable and it seemed to matter far more that you could recognise them. One of my mates could even tell different models apart in the dark from the layout of their rear lighting, not so easy from the front when everything had Lucas 7" round headlights !

Exactly. Think about what you want to do, work out what could go wrong and do what needs doing to avoid that. Do it diffrently, use more people, get a bigger crane/jack/hammer etc. Youtube is full of cranes toppling over, people felling trees onto houses and skateboarders landing nuts first on bollards and handrails. Even my 12yo can usually guess what's going to go wrong before it does. Some years ago one of the TV channels here showed a series following a military rescue helicopter. You would think that this was exactly the sort of situation where extreme risks would be justified and they did take some pretty hairy ones, but even then a dynamic risk assessment was done. A Sea King won't hover on one engine so once they'd found the casualty there was always a brief given as to where the captain would attempt to go in the event of a single engine failure, usually the beach or the shallow water. There was only one occasion I can remember, trying to winch a child off rocks against a rising tide, that the brief was along the lines of "No recovery option for this, everyone ok with that ?".

Don Rowland built a successful P4 layout in his conservatory so it can be done. His choice was based on the fact that a conservatory was permitted development on his new build whereas an extention would have required a full planning application. The only issues mentioned in various MRJ articles over the years were steel track going rusty (not necessarily anything to do with it being in a conservatory) and having to have two lifting sections to maintain access to the garden. It sounds quite pleasant to me, you can always cover it over when not in use to stop it fading.

It's a brake composite so it's the ideal through coach.

That. (Apologies for snipping it). H&S legislation essentially says you must identify risks, control them, and tell your workforce and anyone else affected about them. It doesn't mention anything about banning conkers, extension leads, bare feet in soft play areas or home made school packed lunches. However, it has spawned a whole side industry, some if which is very useful and some considrably less so. We've just got ISO 45001at work, we don't need it but its predecessor, 18001, was someone's vanity project ten years ago and now no-one dare drop it. One of the requirements is that our safety management system must 'consider the needs and expectations of stakeholders and interested parties', no-one from BSI, including three sets of auditors so far, can tell us exactly what that actually means in real terms. In the end we put a two page list of train operators, user groups and government agencies in an appendix to the risk assessment process and they seemed happy with that.

Legislation designed to stop employers killing and maiming people in the name if profit is not the same as the legal profession then using those same laws to make a very fat profit out of twisting the detail of the legislation (or lack of detail) and exploiting it for their own ends. Neither is it the same as insurance companies playing both sides off against the middle by providing liability insurance to employers and 'no win no fee' insurance to claimants (you didn't really think the lawyers were taking the financial risk did you ?).

Agreed. There are very few compromises in the layout of the sides compared to the real Grampians, the waist panelling is a bit shallow and they're a bit slab sided (but not actually Mk1 profile) but thats about it. They can be cut and shut into most of the other Grampians with varying degrees of wastage, some are easier than others. The similar styled 57' coaches include the two preserved ones, the major difference is that the top panelling on the real ones was painted on ! Coopercraft Thompson roof, scratchbuilt bogies and ends, I kept the Tri-ang chassis and added trussing to it. The other one is a proper Caley Coaches one with some indifferent painting by me.

This was Huddersfield Junction, Penistone after the Woodhead closed. As well as the redundant points on the right the Manchester bound lines leading off lower right were still in as far as Penistone Goods but disused. The facing points were secured with clips padlocks and fishplates, and were still detected, it was not unknown for the signalman (me, but it's not my photo) to clear a fault by knocking seven bells out of the point ends to jolt whatever it was back into contact. In the distance the formation snakes across from the up main onto the former Up Goods / Up Barnsley alignment (top left pic) https://twitter.com/WoodheadRoute/status/1249793418039091200?s=09 And here's the 'before' pic and a long after one: https://twitter.com/WoodheadRoute/status/1158752784788930560?s=09

I was at junior school from the mid 70s, the teachers cars were parked at one end of the playground and were, from memory, mostly Minis, Morris 1000s, Triumph Dolomites, Allegros etc. The floaty bohemian one had a VW Beetle which was about as exotic as they got. The headmaster had a Cortina Mk3 which was always immaculate. My dad was a headmaster, we ran Ford Escorts, always second hand, all through the 1970s. These were professionals on reasonable money and there was nothing flashy. Most railway staff (and artisans generally) would have had second hand cars if they had one at all, the size usually being dictated by the number of children required to be transported in them at weekends (no seatbelts, you can get 4 small ones abreast in the back of an Escort). Even then most would walk or go on the bus if it was convenient, especially during/after the oil crisis. Almost no-one had second cars, they were too expensive as occasional runabouts. The only railway staff I ever knew with with posh cars were relief signalmen, think second-hand Rover, Austin Cambridge etc. Parked next to the box so they could washing it while they were working your Sunday.

The pits weren't closed because of their environmental impact, they were closed because it was cheaper to transport coal halfway across the world than to mine it in this country where the seams are generally thin and inefficient to work. By the time environmental factors became a thing the damage to the industry was done.

Handle is the wrong shape for a tail lamp surely ? And the lamp looks round. My first thought was notices too. Presumably they'd be in the way on the footplate.

Heljan's 05 does exactly that - not on a bogie but on a full depth buffer beam.

But prior to the introduction of high intensity headlights you couldn't see marker lights on the real thing in daylight half the time, and you certainly couldn't see whether the headcode blind lights were on or off unless it was dark. So they're not important for me either, to the extent that I usually disconnect them if they can't be switched off (DC), especially if they're 'cool white'. Just because you can fit a particular feature doesn't mean it's realistic or even correct.

Wasn't that one of Calamity Dave's before they parted ways ?

Haymarket's had a water tanker (converted I think from a beer tanker ?) but they don't seem to have been common. The gap between loss of steam infrastructure (water cranes) and a fully deisel fleet doesn't seem to have caused massive issues so presumably the crane carried enough in it's own tanks for normal use. Failing that, most stations are near a road and, therefore, a fire hydrant. General / typical consist as mentioned before - crane, tool van, packing van, riding van. The vans went under different names at different times and places but essentially the tool van was fitted out with jacks, ropes, slings, tools and a workbench, and the packing van (which could be a van, an open, a coach, or a well wagon) was used for timber packing and other stuff too mucky to go in the tool van. You don't always need the crane (a lot of smaller re-railing jobs could be done quicker by jacking and slewing) but you always need the riding van because that has the manpower and the kettle in it. Lots of variations on this theme. In my chosen period (60s) Kingmoor's 75ton crane had an LMS BT as a riding van, another LMS coach as tool van and what looks like a Gresley full brake as packing van. Hurlford's 30 ton crane had an ex L&Y saloon as tool van, a Gresley open third as riding van and an ex-HR 6 wheeled brake as packing/brake van, later replaced by an ex-NER six-wheeler.

https://www.stationcolours.com/lms Signalboxes - From 1931 or possibly 1933 - stone planking and brown everything else (including bargeboards). Stations - From 1936 - stone or cream with brown, green, maroon or light blue highlights. If your building is planked then cream/stone with the other colour bargeboards, if it's stone or brick then the suggestion seems to be cream/stone bargeboards. Before 1931/33/36 - whatever colour the pre-grouping company had painted it.

They make good door stops ;-)

You may be correct with your first point, any photograph can only capture a moment in time and even official records never tell the full story. My point about unbalanced brakevans was aimed at the OP's original question about about back workings. But seeing as you asked, two coach trains with two Black Fives on the front were common, always eastbound, and the eastbound goods trains were often max length as well, but being predominantly vans it's impossible to say how much of the train is actually carrying anything.

If the yard was full and had spare brake vans in it then something was up - cattle market, sheep sales, seasonal traffic - any number of reasons. Traffic wasn't always balanced. Goods trains between Stranraer and Dumfries/Carlisle in BR days often conveyed spare brake vans, often two or three, heading back home as there was more traffic to Northern Ireland than from it.

In the current Rule Book 'Guard' is a role, not a job title. So the guard's duties on a DOO train are carried out by the driver, and the rules amended where necessary to take account of the fact that he/she can't be in two places at once. On a light loco in steam days then one of the footplate crew would have done it. As the 'guard's' duties in that case would have consisted of little more than fixing the tail lamp and traipsing to the box when required you can bet that the fireman did it. You can probably also bet that neither he nor the driver thought that meant he was in charge of the engine !

Wizard Models sell the Comet parts (all Big 4 and BR steam era) or Dart Castings for the MJT range (LNER and BR) and Frogmore Confederacy range (GWR) and Southern Pride for SR and BR.

Try Humbrol 93 Desert Yellow.

Ooh! One for the "I think you'll find...." brigade if e ever get back to an exhibition. More info here - https://www.focustransport.org/2020/10/rail-operations-group-assists-with-dats.html (I confess I Googled it after wondering what on earth they were testing, other than how many different traction units you could get in one train!)

Thank you. Oh yes, there's lots of freight too, and parcels stock. I'll probably wait until the boards are back in the garage to photograph those though.