runs as required

NOYES FLUDD may have featured in Grand Designs. It is owned by Phil Dyke, Civil & Mechanical Engineer and his charming wife February ('Febbie') Deeplake, a professional carriage finisher, trimmer, painter and liner; who prides herself on her painstakingly built-up multi coat finishes “so deep you can fish in them”. Three children and many more ducks and black Labradors complete the household. They devised the project for a flood-proof home-based pair of small businesses: agricultural and restorative engineering alongside high-class bodywork and carriage restoration. Phil Dyke hit upon adapting the long abandoned remains of a small station on a branch line laid on the banks of a drain leading off into the north Norfolk sea marshes and saltings. The raised platforms are utilised as access to the “Ark”, a floating house workshop between the platforms. It is built upon a marine ply buoyancy platform restrained by sliding up and down against greased timber posts. Services are via coiled tubing and overhead cable. The glu-lam “Ark” is an open single storey structure with a recreational roof deck, useful for outdoor sleeping on hot nights. The main floor is subdivided as necessary by fire proofed modular partitions that separate living from work areas deemed noxious. Spaces expand and contract as business and family needs demand. The derelict station buildings are used as a “Trombe wall” to store heat and release it at night. They also house the fire hazard forge and metal working areas. The whole platform area is enclosed by a glasshouse (familiar throughout the Fens) that affords year round reasonably wind and water tight well-insulated accommodation for the Dyke household s and their projects. Noyes Fludd was a small station and passing place on a “no-hoper” of a line cheaply constructed in the early 1900s by the West Norfolk Railway. This was during a brief spell of positive thinking by rural lines about resources that might be tapped by extending low-cost lines into promising hinterlands of oil-bearing shales, clay bricks, pressed and fired using cheap ‘sea’ coal imports from the north-east. The line was to terminate in a resort with a beach, with east-west facing hotels for morning and evening sunshine, plus a gated Colonial style Township for week-end and holiday Villas. In the post Armistice 1920s, cheap war surplus lorries dispersed such dreams along the new arterial roads..

In the late 50s early 60s the trick was always to wait at the end of the platform in the direction of travel. As well as a seat, you could find a "strengthener" - an absolute delight, out of Region, with some very nostalgic carriage pictures and interior upholstery (arm rests or none?) and carriage detailing. Plus you could hear and feel the loco at work.

I agree - but why annoyed me was that I couldn't actually identify if it was on the HS2 route or just o one side if you followed up on the mention of Wellwick farm/manor . The tunnel portal site is well to the SE of Wendover and its existing station. Next large site going down is an over-bridge across a B road NW of Wellwick Farm. Pub Quiz Question: Where on the UK Motorway network do you pass by a stone circle actually within the motorway fenced area? Did you have to check by Googling?

Thats because it was a run-way with an empty cab (as in the Titfield Thunderbolt !) The smoke from the chimney was impressive.

So where might a Bobby have gone to relieve himself in such an over-looked and exposed busy mainline box? It looks like its about 250 yds down to the station; would he have time between trains to scuttle there and back on day shifts? Might he have had a book boy capable of holding the fort during longer newspaper reading sessions?

Very interesting - I wonder whether either of my Grandmothers would have given him the ‘come on’ in 1899 like she did ? What was that 1899 train? LSWR ?

Hi! Back again after all the Political stuff beyond my my pay grade Comment on that Curzon St terminal: there looks to be more retail at rail level and below than will exist in the rest of the City Centre (NB reported closure of the adjacent Flagship John Lewis Store) 2 Could anyone please update retired OFs like me exactly what of HS2 and HS2a is already a) ‘Let’ on the ground and b) what is definitely ‘Shovel Ready’ as opposed to still being subject to permissions etc.

Must be absolutely huge , cos the one across the boulevard looking onto the river was no small Art Deco Iti pile. i was leading a group of TP students exchanging with World class Torino poly and studying the Alto-Adige Autonomous Region. They can spend all the income taxes raised in the region within the region. While studs were there, they’d run out of infrastructure stuff to spend and had voted to dish out Benz 4x4s to all farmers to save on snow clearance.

Like the fact it doesn't give subtitles - its brilliant for refreshing my Italian comprehension* Always easier when there's a lot of universal tekkie jargon. *from 1980s onwards EU Erasmus days - sometimes in Torino opposite the famous Fiat Lingotto factory!

Nice houses in the background - is that Rugby?

I’m hoping for a really cleverly simulated mist partially obscuring the remnants of the snow fence

The Panhard I wanted alongside my DS in Liverpool 8 in the early sixties was the 24 coupe https://www.flickr.com/photos/voodoo-punch/9416803638

What were Porton Down’s earlier years ? Were they active before WW II - transporting dead animals for anthrax filled shells ?

This thread seems now to have drifted OT to Traditional English Unionist prejudices - well away from the really interesting debate a few pages back of anticipating post pandemic revision of network travel patterns. See you in a few pages time.

Thank you, I enjoyed that signing off explanation. I have somewhere a few copies of my wife’s stepfather’s LMS magazine from the late 1930s. He went straight From school in Peak Forest into Peak Forest Box on the Derby-Manchester mainline at 15/16 and worked there right through the war until he retired in the 1970s. The LMS magazine looked very low cost Art Deco In presentation with stylised ink drawings of stripey streamlined trains.