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lanchester

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  1. Which if you think about it is what you'ld expect: North End, folks hurrying down the approach ramp need to know the time; but there isn't really anyone at the south end with that need (platform end trainspotters not having yet evolved).
  2. A quick aside on Methyl Ethyl Ketone. Many years ago now I visited a company that manufactures the printers that put those purple batch numbers and sell by dates on the bottom of drink cans etc. They had a problem - in Europe, opinion was very against using MEK as the solvent because it is a potential carcinogen, so wanted to use one of the alcohols. In the US, however they were relaxed about MEK but dead against alcohol on the grounds that the workers might drink it. You can't win sometimes!
  3. I take it 'Manchester' has been painted out to fool Jerry into thinking the location is one of England's many other ship canals? Shame the wagon code name isn't 'Pike'.
  4. I think the July 68 special with the two Standard 4s was on 28 July and they would be somewhere between Carnforth and Skipton. The train started from BNS with a Brush 4, then Man Vic to Carnforth with Oliver Cromwell, Carnforth to Skipton with 75019/27, then Skipton to Rose Grove with 45156/45073, Rose Grove to Stockport with 48773 (a surprise as she was booked to come off at Man Vic) and then back to BNS with the same Brush - I think D1946 from memory: it was a long day out for an eleven year old! (The route was rather more complex than that but I forget the details: it'll be on Six Bells somewhere).
  5. There is an apparently identical, right facing, Silver Fox in the Kelham Island Industrial Museum in Sheffield (it's on a plaque with some sort of inscription, but unfortunately at a height which renders this illegible!). I suspect the steelworks may have been dishing them out at any suitable opportunity for a spot of publicity.
  6. Of course, up till (and beyond) the early 20th century, Lambton was using a variety of 0-6-0 tender engines on their own, and presumably the NER, 'main line' to the staithes. There would though be obvious advantages, on a cramped site, of using non-tender engines, and clearly these were bought (Kitson and RS) as they became available. And to boost the fleet (although some of the 0-6-0s lasted until the sixties), LHJC number 52, now I think on the Worth Valley Railway, was indeed acquired, as were others, by my great grandfather, Sam Tulip, (my name also) in his capacity as Chief Engineer of the Lambton, Hetton and Joicey. Amusingly (or scandalously if you think that familial connections should automatically rule you out of things), my father, Geoffrey Tulip,who was a partner in a Newcastle firm of engineering agents which had amongst other clients North British Loco, had the pleasure of selling to my grandfather, Winston, who had succeeded his dad as CE, and subsequently with the NCB in the equivalent role, a NBL diesel hydraulic as a potential replacement for 52, which at the time was engaged on the lower, non-cable, stretches of the old Hetton Railway. (Dad wrote a little article about this - presumably for some NBL newsletter or similar - whether it was ever published don't know). The experiment was, I understand, only partly successful - the NBL loco went on to other things, but 52 stayed in service (although not necessarily on the Hetton, which in any case closed only a little later). Incidentally, my grandfather was 'Winston', not 'Walter' as quoted in the IRS books, and as I explained to Colin Mountford post publication - I think the confusion arose because he used to sign letter WLT, for Winston Leonard Tulip, and if you are taking notes of documents and then reading them back you might well think that was Walter. (Family says that old ST was travelling home, who knows from where, and passed through the village of Winston, thought 'that's a good name for a lad'. ) There is another slightly surprising thing about my great grandfather's appointment, back in 1897 or there abouts. Joicey, later Lord Joicey, had essentially chiselled the Earls of Durham out of the ownership of the company, using methods (concert parties and the like) which might not be strictly legal these days. And yet he appointed ST (who was only in his early thirties) as Chief Engineer, even though ST was undoubtedly a 'Lambton man' - his father William was an engineman or enginewright for Lambton, his grandfather had got himself killed being a sinker in 1854 when they were widening the shaft of the Lady Anne at Lumley and there was a cave-in (my father who could be a callous b*gg*r said we should claim the record for the fastest hundred yards in pit boots!) Meanwhile, or more accurately later, great great grandfather William, reaching his Diamond wedding anniversary in 1918, received a rather maginificent print, finely framed and with presentation plaque, of the well-known picture of the first Earl of Durham as a child (all red velvet and stuff) with a dedication from the then Earl. Bear in mind this is twenty years after the Durhams had had any control over the pits, and William was only an 'enginewright' anyway. It casts a slightly different picture on the relationship between at least some coalmasters and their employees? Meanwhile, I would like, before I am brought to bank, to see 52 with her Lambton style cab refitted, reunited with 5 and 29. Oddly, my Dad's favourite engine, when he was growing up at Bunker Hill, was the 'Victory' Kerr Stuart tank - I think Lambton 41? I seem to remember he reckoned it was a good'un because it shoved coal wagons up to the top of the well-known coaling stage at Philadelphia. It must have been valued - I have inherited a very well framed picture - it's only the KS publicity shot of the first in class, but it seems to have justified decent framing. No record of anything like that for the Kitsons or RSH 0-6-2T, for which the system is more famous.
  7. Unless I've missed it, no-one has mentioned Peterborough station. On a good day with a Sou'Westerly breeze you could inhale a) the sugar beet works b) the various brickworks and c) the brassicas (brussels sprouts etc) A lot of sulphur compounds in that lot! And God it was cold on platforms 4/5. Breweries? The Federation next to Newcastle Central had a particular aroma -very caramelised, compared to other breweries (and not reflected in the actual beer, curiously). Oddly, it reminded me of the smell from refreshment room tea urns. And what was that pipe tobacco so favoured by miners, in particular - 'Robin' or something? Smelt like soap, and thick on the top deck of buses when the back shift was going in. On a completely different topic, did anyone else notice how lineside brambles/blackberries declined with the end of steam? Don't know whether they were nurtured by soot/unburnt coal/ash; or were poisoned by diesel fumes, but at least in County Durham I noticed a marked decline in the mid Sixties (reference point, Lanchester Valley line to Consett - never completely diesel before closure in 66, but definite decline in fruit from 63/64 onwards as BR Type 2s and EE type 3s were increasingly employed). There is a slightly dodgy thesis to argue that steam engines were actually good for biodiversity, but I'm not pushing it 'cos I wouldn't want to get wrong of that Greta Thunberg person!
  8. Well OT, but the Boardroom at Dean Smith and Grace used to have a great view of the Keighley and Worth Valley - which was rather more interesting than the Marketing Director's product presentation when I visited, many years ago. I felt for him, though - this was in the mid Eighties and we may have been the first trade journalists to visit in years. They had oiled the hinges on the executive drinks cabinet, and doubtless lads on t'shop floor had spiled a firkin of Timmy Taylor's finest - but sadly this was the start of the Yuppie/Hipster era, and all the bright young things in sharp suits wanted was Perrier! However, being old school I kept the directors company, and was later poured into a suitable train. Mind you, I did get the story about the new (American) owners' plans which hadn't been on the agenda until the drink loosened a few tongues! (The yanks were interested not for the machine tools but because DSG had an accredited foundry for Meehanite, a type of spheroidal graphite cast iron).
  9. If you think about it, though, it is precisely those areas that don't have much 'heavy industry' that are likely to need at least occasional consignments of whatever from (much) further away. Think, for example, the agricultural machinery firms in Lincs or East Anglia - they are presumably pulling in raw materials and semi-finished goods from all over the country, albeit not every day or even every week. If the value of the goods and the competitive price offered outweighs the extra transport charges, you take it. (So you might think Rustons or such might get most of their inputs from South Yorkshire, being the closest 'industrial' area - but if a firm in Manchester or Birmingham or Glasgow offers a better price, you will take it, all else considered). Which means you can allow yourself one van or open wagon from pretty well any region/railway company of your choice - but probably only one of any given company, and only occasionally. An extreme example - your 'off scene foundry' may well have its own locomotive (perhaps virtual if it is off-scene). Now very occasionally that may need a new boiler, or a serious boiler rebuild. That could go to/from almost anywhere that has a boiler-making facility so you might get plausibly something down from Barclays in Kilmarnock in a GSWR wagon - but only, perhaps, once every thirty years! Generally though, as and for most of life, follow the money. If it made economic sense it would, at least occasionally, happen - if it didn't, it wouldn't
  10. Couple of observations. Firstly, if you actually orient a map of the UK by true North, instead of leaning it over a bit to try and get Orkney and maybe Shetland onto an A4 sheet, the 'divide' looks much more like West-East, so including eg Cornwall, Wales etc, but also acknowledging that the East side of eg Yorkshire, Northumberland, Scotland tend to be, relatively, more prosperous than the west. Second, this is mostly geology. It's no coincidence that when the Romans came in 43AD, initially they called a halt round about the Fosse Way/ A46, a line roughly Exeter to Lincoln. That bagged them all the good arable land (and of course tribes that were through trade already a bit 'romanised' and so fairly happy to cut a deal. Sadly, the Romans didn't always spell out the small print, hence the Iceni, Boudicca, and other unpleasantnesses). Advances further north and west were partly in pursuit of metals and similar geological resources - although they really didn't have to as the Brits only now had one market; and of course generals and emperors believing, perhaps rightly in the short to medium term, that the Empire could only survive through continuing expansion. Hadrian, the wall chappy, recognised that this wasn't sustainable (and after a wobble by Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius came to much the same conclusion). But they had hit on the same problem that prevailed in 'the North' right into the Twentieth Century - such wealth as there was, was largely based on mineral resources, and as these were worked out, or became uneconomic against easier-won stuff from overseas, that economy died. That has been true at many periods - lead mining in the Pennines and elsewhere - collapse of Western Empire means no market, so why mine? And at several later periods the industry has revived, only to collapse again as market conditions changed. Third point - although we Northerners like to think that those industries, and the infrastructure such as canals and railways that supported them, were 'ours' it actually was rarely true. The Stockton and Darlington was, certainly, funded largely by the Peases, Backhouses and other Northern banking families, but most of the finance for railways, and collieries, ironworks etc, was then as now derived from London-based capital markets - and of course if they got nervous, or crashed, guess who suffered. See for instance the struggles of the Stanhope and Tyne Railway or, a generation later, the devastation caused by the collapse of Overend Gurney (which was one of those 'clearing bank' operations that none of us understand, but which took down a large number of other financial institutions, especially the more local banks in the North that weren't as well capitalised, nearly finished the Consett Iron Company who owed money to one of those local bans, pushed the S&D into merger with the NER [OK, that was a good thing] and so on). There's another thought about capital. 62613 above is of course quite right that profits from slave-powered overseas investments boosted the early phase of the industrial revolution - but by the time of the major investments in railways, say 1830 onwards, that system was thankfully at and end. Meanwhile, it isn't particularly obvious that 'slave money' was reinvested in British Industry - as with the Nabobs pulling dodgy fortunes out of India, the aim was to achieve social advancement which meant country houses and estates, not the grubby areas of trade and industry. (we can still recognise that - if you got a sudden windfall, would you put that into a better property (the value can only go up, can't it? literally safe as houses) or into a speculative new technology promoted on the one hand by a semi-literate Geordie, or on the other by a dreamer who wants to build ships that are bigger than the Almighty gave Noah, or carriages run by gusts of air, and in any case is suspiciously French! But after about 1875, land (as in agriculture) stopped being a profit centre, mainly because of free trade with the American Prairies, Russia/Ukraine etc. So just at the time when 'first generation, world leading' technology needed to be replaced, UK sources of capital started to dry up - while if you did have some free cash, overseas returns (sadly, not even in our Empire, where we might have done some good to balance the bad, but in competitors such as the US, Argentine, Germany and, notoriously, Russia) were more attractive. Any of this sound famiiar? My personal problem is that, despite what I have written above, 'free trade' is probably the only political/economic principal I would go to the barricades for. Does that make me a complete cretin? It doesn't, necessarily, make me 'Tory scum' - I'm looking at my great grandfather's daybooks from circa 1900. He is of course a Liberal because, even though the Lambton pits have now been bought over by Joicey, that is what that part of the coalfield was. (Might be different if you worked for the Londonderry pits, which he did later: skilled staff like engineers seemed to exploit the system rather like modern day footballers, happily transferring to a new 'club' against which they have been competing for years). Any way, the point is it was the new Independent Socialists who were vehemently against 'tariff reform' which basically meant protectionism, Empire preference and the like, because it would increase the price of food and other imports for the working man. The repeal of the Corn Laws still wasn't a settled matter even 60 years after. Mind you, if any of us or our kids and grandkids had been taught anything about the Corn Laws (which notoriously split the Tory party under that undoubted Northerner, Peel), we might have had a slightly more nuanced debate over Brexit!.
  11. I have a grim feeling this has been covered before, but NER green is actually very simple - there is no reason to suppose that any more than a score or so of locomotives were in the same colour at the same time. It is of course 'official' that the (darker) Saxony Green of express engines is not the same as the, much lighter, green of freight and mineral engines - the latter familiar to those of us of a certain age on the E1/J72 pilots at Newcastle Central (68723/ 36 being the ones I remember, parked up next to the dmu's that took me to visit granny in Hexham). But I think the equivalent locos at Newcastle and York in the late 40's were presented in the darker 'passenger' green? As far as I can gather, the theory then was that as they were mostly dealing with passenger stock, they should be in 'passenger' green, whereas under BR they obviously weren't passenger engines and so should be in goods green. And of course, Gateshead, Darlington had their own theories on livery, and I'm not quite sure when eg York stopped splashing the paint brushes around. There ought to be totally reliable references in that the old York museum exhibits such as 1275, and 910, and a little later Aerolite and the class M, would have been painted for exhibition mostly by people who had done the 'real thing'. To what extent any or all of these have since been repainted, I don't know. The bit I really don't get is why it was the goods/mineral engines that got the lighter colour that was most likely t show the dirt?
  12. 1890s seem to have been troubled times for prices/inflation (only a year or two later, pithead prices for coals were up to 11/- and WE think we've got an energy affordability crisis!. No indication in Mark Ford's notes that second hand material was contemplated. I think the sleepers at Washington would have been softwood, which accounts for them being cheaper than in your figures. I suspect that your figure for ballasting (including material presumably) may not have been terribly relevant for a pit - there's enough stone coming out of the goaf and if you can find somewhere useful to put it, that's actually a saving! Price of rails - I'm thinking in 1876 these would still have been wrought/rolled iron - by 1890 they would likely be steel which by then would be appreciably cheaper. Interesting that cost of rail is dramatically lower, but fishplates significantly higher - I assume they are made of some more specialist iron? (Anyone know?). Labour for permanent way has reduced per yard, but that might be partly the use of longer rails? Overall, I suspect the increase in the price of chairs (which are basically the same material cast in the same process) is a reasonable indication of general material price movement over the twenty years but as we know today that isn't necessarily consistent over all materials, or indeed over labour costs (and of course in those days the men weren't agitating for increases so much as against decreases in wages. Things have got a little better for the working man/woman/pronoun! I haven't yet managed to decipher the old maps to work out whether this line was actually built. It was also a time of major change in the Durham coalfield, a lot of assets changing hands eg Joicey buying out the Earl of Durham (and, a little later, Sir Lindsey Wood at Hetton), the Marquess of Londonderry seriously rationalising his holdings (so he could afford to invest in development of Seaham Harbour) etc. Washington Coal Company bought the Usworth pit off someone (Bowes?) and it might have been essential to link the two by rail - or it might just have been in the 'nice to do' category. All events, my point stands - popping in a siding or spur to serve a customer is not cheap - £100-£200 for a 100 yard run plus signalling alterations etc - so the company ain't going to do it unless there is serious increase in long term traffic that can't be gained any other way (and of course road transport isn't, yet, a competitor so most customers don't have much option). From a modeller's pint of view, this may mean that goods yards etc in the period are fairly low density in terms of lines of rail, and laid out very much for manual and horsedrawn handling processes - even if there is a promising-looking business customer just over the fence!
  13. I've been looking at a day-book belonging to my great grandfather, from when he was in training at Washington 'F' pit, Co Durham, in 1890. Included is an estimate for 'making a railway from F pit to Usworth Colliery, 1320 yards' which I thought might be of interest. Rails 97 tons at £4-15-0 per ton Sleepers (1320, so they are at 1 yard spacing) 2/8d each Chairs 42 tons 7cwt at £3-10-0 a ton Fishplates 3 tons 5 cwt at £12 a ton (quite expensive items, then) Bolts and nuts 17 1/2 cwt at 14/- per cwt Spikes 3 tons 10 3/4 cwt at £13-10-0 per ton (again, quite pricey) Keys 2,640 at £3 per thousand Cushions 2,640 at 35/- per thousand Labour for platelaying is at 8d per yard; if you want it fenced that's 1/6d per yard. Filling and excavating charged at 1/- per cubic yard. No great earthworks involved but still 20,757 cy yards charged at 1/- per cubic yard, accounting for almost half of the £2196-6-4 of this line. No sign of any points and switches, or of course any signalling. This work of course would be to colliery standards, not main line, although it might perhaps be comparable to the standards for goods yard sidings etc (and if my maths is right the rail works out at 82lbs/yard which is fairly chunky?). In which case, if you are putting an extra siding onto your layout to serve some customer you are looking at about £1 per yard, exclusive of earthworks and fencing (oh, and £20 worth of gates). You would need to be attracting quite a bit of extra traffic to show a profit on say £100 invested in a 100 yard siding (and of course if you are the proper railway you probably have signalling etc to pay for). A shilling a cubic yard on filling and excavating seems quite generous, given that elsewhere he notes the piece rate for filling a ten ton waggon with coal as 1/8d. (For reference, at the time the pithead price of best coals was around 6/- a ton). So manual transhipment and haulage might well be more economic than popping a siding in. (Although not strictly comparable given underground conditions, my ancestor was calculating that 'pony putting' was more economic than manual putting (taking the coals from the hewer to the tubs)at any distance of put much over 35 yards, even given the fodder and other costs of the ponies - this though didn't apply if the seams were so thin that the roof had to be raised (or floor lowered) to accomodate the pony which unlike a putter, can't really go on its hands and knees. As an aside, I notice that the hewers were paid by the 'score' (which was actually 21, like a baker's dozen) of tubs - the latter varying between pits at between 6 and 8 cwt capacity, so in the Lady Durham at Sherburn (to which my ancestor transferred) the tubs were 7 1/2 cwt capacity meaning that the 'unit of account' for a hewer was 7 ton 17 1/2 cwt, or as near as darn it 8 tons. May that be in part why the collieries remained so attached to nominal 8 ton waggons, rather than 10 or larger? Hope the above is of some interest - but I'd still like to know why fishplates were so expensive?
  14. Given the heat generated when anyone mentions Thompson, I'm a bit reticent about putting this forward - but wasn't Thompson Gresley's successor as C&W boss on the Great Northern? And, contrary to the notion we are sometimes offered, that ET was viscerally opposed to anything HNG, Great Northern (and ECJS) carriage development seems to have continued on an even, mildly progressive, keel (allowing of course for the Great War). ET's much later developments such as plywood body sheets were a WW2 necessity, and his tendency towards 1/3, 2/3 doors rather than at carriage ends, whilst not I imagine unique, certainly counts as progressive. Given the relative costs and performance of steel against iron, structural timber, or some combination - the thing surely is not that HNG went for all-steel underframes with Gresley (if that is indeed when and why they changed) but why did anyone not?
  15. A couple of uses for reasonably big chains: The steering linkages on traction engines and similar The chain harrow (a piece of agricultural equipment) - lengths of chain dragged along from a bar to break up the ploughed soil. Both of those could be an excuse for running a wagonload of chain into even the most remote BLT? (serving some little firm of agricultural engineers off scene).
  16. The 'small containers sliding off' (with sort of live floor) is exactly the sort of research/trial/pilot scheme that the European Commission has been funding, and yes it is all technically well do-able and has been proven in practice. The trouble, I think (and I'm not taking a political view here, just analysing the research reports I have been paid to write up) is that the EC gets carried away and is looking for overarching solutions that will simultaneously solve a whole host of problems, rather than focussing on a few that might actually be implementable. In particular, they have become attached to the idea of the 'physical internet'. The electronic internet deals in data packets which are neutral as to how they are routed, providing they turn up in time in the right order etc - some of the page you are reading may have bounced off half a dozen satellites, some of it in theory could have come straight down some fibre-optic cable. So do the same thing for physical packets. This is in theory a gloriously attractive idea, under which by rigorous standardisation, everything travels in 'boxes' of particular sizes and shapes that relate to each other for maximum efficiency in 'palletisation' or the equivalent, which in turn can be broken down and made up, at a cross-dock for example. Side loading, live decking, RFID tracking naturally, all feeding into planning and routing systems that work across transport modes and direct a particular box through the combination of road, rail, air, inland water connections that will optimally and at that moment achieve the required result - which might be time, or mileage, or (not necessarily the same) carbon emissions, or avoiding congestion, or whatever, and can indeed reroute in the event of, for example, accidents or adverse weather conditions. Which is great, and all theoretically doable - BUT - it requires a cow of a lot of absolutely accurate data collection and processing at very many points or nodes, and possibly on the box itself during transit (for example for temperature controlled consignments). That is an awful lot of computer power and bandwidth. Then, everyone has to rebuild their vehicles - road, rail or whatever; invest in new pallets or the equivalent, and the IT systems, and whatever the mechanics that replace fork trucks are. And somehow this has to be economically viable. Note I don't say commercially viable - because the only way I can see of implementing this across the majority of traffics traffics, across Europe and beyond (and it has to be that sort of scale to be worth it) probably requires the sort of funding and enforcement that only a totalitarian-style system could achieve. The EC in fairness is trying to concentrate on what could be achieved on core transport lanes, of which it identifies a dozen or so across Europe and connecting into, for example trans-Asian rail links. (For the information of Remainers/Rejoiners, however you slice it, UK operations, of just one or two hundred miles mostly, are pretty peripheral to this thinking - a lane in Europe is Rotterdam to Brest Litovsk or even Shanghai, not Felixstowe to Daventry). And this is still only addressing stuff that, at least on some part of the journey, is travelling in pallet or container sized loads, not the casual and random assortment of small parcels and packets sent and received by most consumers and small businesses - ie Royal Mail business. All very annoying. BUT, there is no reason in principle why Royal Mail - and if competition laws were judiciously eased - in collaboration with the various other delivery and courier companies (DHL, DPDS, Hermes ....) couldn't adopt the most appropriate technologies to achieve major cost and environmental savings on the trunk portion of the delivery. They can and should still compete on 'final mile', and the ensuing charges, service levels etc. If you think about 'consumer protection' we don't actually care who trunks our stuff out of Southampton: they are using the same roads, similar trucks, paying similar wages probably, affected by the same pile-up on the M1... it isn't where 'competition' of the sort that gives consumers lower prices or better service is actually happening . We do care about whether the nice man in the van turns up when he says he will and doesn't throw Bachmann's latest into next door's hedge! That is 'all the competing companies' that Hesperus is pointing the finger at: and of course he is right, this is energy-inefficient, but it is what saves us from a monopoly (Royal Mail/Post Office pre privatisation/competition?) that, how shall I put this nicely, may not fully meet consumer expectations. In an ideal world, rail administrations would lead in putting in the investment, in locations and facilities, rolling stock, data and IT etc, over the core trunk routes (which will usually need to be of some hundreds of miles, so actually it isn't many) and with perhaps a marginal bias in government taxation or other policies, pretty well every logistics firm with those sorts of flows would pile in. You may say 'Ha! But we haven't got a rail administration that can or will make those investments - we need nationalisation'. Mebbis - but none of the effectively nationalised rail networks of Europe (who have longer distances and thus more viable trunk routes, or parts of trunk routes, to play with) have got anywhere with this; and indeed one of the many impediments on a European scale has been the inability of Dutch rail (for example) to talk to German rail or French rail, who don't talk to the Spaniards, the Italians or the Poles (and Switzerland ain't even in the club). It is all rather politicised so the idea that the UIC could do anything (although it is worth visiting their website to see what they believe could be done) ain't a runner. And we certainly aren't the only country where privately owned road haulage and other companies would cry foul if national or supra-national policy appeared to be driving them out of business in favour of the likes of DHL (although, actually, DHL is one of the most forward-thinking companies in this field - a browse of some of the research etc on their website could lose you for several days). Sorry if this has gone on a bit - I think the key messages are firstly around scale - the UK is too small (geographically, not in 'little britain' terms) to contemplate several of the possible innovations on its own; while the EU is arguably too big to implement them across the board, which of course it would have to - you can't, for example, leave Spain and Portugal on the 'too difficult' pile. (For understandable, even virtuous, political reasons, there are transport lanes in Iberia that count as part of the EU core network even though traffic flows are significantly lower than some other lanes that aren't included). And secondly, we have to find legal and policy approaches to allow and encourage collaboration without eliminating competition. That is Nobel Prize level, so I will leave things there!
  17. A general question, certainly not specific to this incredible model. I know cars and other vehicles were significantly smaller back in the day, but on any accurately scaled model, which I am sure this is, they look disproportionately tiny (and the roadways, by comparison, disproportionately large. Same applies to the vast empty spaces of goods yards when modelled to scale). The forecourt of 'Great Northern's Peterborough North layout exhibits the same phenomenon. I imagine this is something to do with our perspectives when we are live at street level, as opposed to taking the 'helicopter view' of a model. But my questions are, firstly, is this just me? And if it isn't, do any modellers feel tempted to 'adjust' the scaling (presumably of the roads since I assume most of the vehicles on anyone's layout are bought-in) to make an optical correction (sort of the reverse of some of the forced perspective techniques used for backgrounds? And if so, any recommendations on how and how far to go about this, given any adjustment is likely to b*gg*r the geometry? Incidentally, my wife is quite overcome by the modelling - my daughter lived in York until quite recently and we used to get to her over the footpath on the Scarborough bridge. Mrs L amazed to recognise so many buildings, but then says 'he hasn't got the bridge quite right, has he'. I've had to gently inform her that the bridge has been somewhat altered in the past half-century! But that a non-enthusiast can get so engaged in the modelling is a pretty good tribute to what you and your client are achieving. Oh, she had one other comment - she didn't see how the 'Time Team' excavation fitted into that part of the Royal Station Hotel gardens you have modelled (of course, you have shrunk the hotel a tad, I think). But again, a lot of engagement from a non-specialist. And since we've now all moved away from York, you are keeping our memories alive - even if ours are more 2015 than 1955!
  18. Some twenty years ago when I did casual sorting/delivery shifts for Royal Mail, delivery was by bike, but a van went out with bags of sorted mail (and packets/small parcels) and deposited these in conveniently placed lockers. Postie would cycle out to the first locker on his/her round, pick up a bag and deliver, finishing at or close to the next locker. Drop off the empty bag, pick up the next full one, and continue. Repeat three or four times. That seemed fairly sensible. The major problem was the quite appalling state of maintenance of the bicycles - but try getting hold of 'elf and safety at 6am on a wet February morning (for some reason, our office only seemed to need casuals when the weather was filthy - I wonder why?). There is a lot of work being done in the EU on urban logistics for domestic and business parcel/freight delivery (some of which involved the UK before we got kicked out of the Horizon programme). Much of this research, it has to be said, is reinventing the wheel at, in my view, excessive cost, but since I occasionally get paid for writing English language summaries of the work, I'm not complaining too much. The typical approach they come up with is to have 'cross-docking' facilities at the edge of town, on the ring road if they've got one, receiving goods at HGV scale. Perhaps four of five of these, each serving a small network of 'urban hubs' via electric vans or similar. From these, final delivery would be by cargo bike or similar (electric or pedal power), or by foot. One Spanish city I know, the proposal is that no-one would be more than 5 minutes on foot (or 400m) from an urban hub. This sounds great for getting rid of pollution, noise, and large vehicles from congested city centres, but it tends to lock the 'trunk' element even more firmly into road transport (ring road locations can rarely be sited to make rail-road transfer feasible). There is also Nimby style resistance to the siting of urban hubs, and as in the UK, often the obvious locations, the old Post Office local sorting offices, have been closed and sold off in favour of larger out of town offices. (It isn't just us that makes these short-sighted decisions). Nonetheless, the approach could work quite well for smaller, self contained, cities - somewhere like York, perhaps. But for larger conurbations, while you might get HGVs out of the centre, you might actually be creating even more mileage as HGVs circle the ring road to drop off at several cross-docks on the other side of the city from the direction the goods are coming from. Also, such schemes are only really viable if pretty well everyone is forced to use them. That means putting your last mile delivery, and thus a large element of your competitive advantage/customer satisfaction, into the hands of a third party - probably the municipal authority or their preferred contractor - so someone like, say Yodel, to pick a firm at random, might have an effective monopoly on everything delivered across the whole of, again at random, Leicester. There is certainly scope for this to be 'sub-optimal' in terms of customer service - remember when Royal Mail had an effective monopoly?
  19. You do have to wonder who, in Paddington's Publicity Department, thought that a psychotic train driver was a positive image to put before the fare-paying public? I don't think it would get past the suits these days!
  20. That livery makes me wonder, what if London Transport had bought 15XX instead of 57XX (I expect in real life there are probably problems with clearances on the outside cylinders, but they would have looked smart, yes?)
  21. At a tangent, I've just received an email from a firm called Capel, who I think are one of Network Rail's civils contractors, promoting 'rail safety week'. Great timing, or what?
  22. I guess you are right, but may we pretend you aren't - otherwise by the same logic we can't drill a hole.
  23. For the benefit of the uninitiated, what is a 'corridor locker compo'? (I get corridor and composite, but 'locker'? I assume it ain't some early incarnation of Amazon!
  24. During the 1960s Dubonnet used to arrive at St. Albans (Roses Lime juice factory) and be offloaded over the fence. The traffic was lost to it coming in bulk ships as the popularity of Dubonnet increased in the early 1970s. I don't suppose there was any traffic to Thurso, nearest railhead to the Queen Mother's Castle of Mey? (A nice rule 1 opp for Far North modellers?)
  25. Just caught up with this thread and the discussion a few pages back about setts, cobbles etc. A couple of observations. Firstly, the line of the kerb may often delineate land ownership, rather than necessarily a sensible layout of roads, pavements etc. Second, you quite often see, 'inside' such a kerb, that the 'paving' is cobbles rather than setts - I assume to discourage traffic from straying onto your property, and indeed from peering through your windows or bashing into your house/factory/warehouse walls. Third, quite often, at least round here (East Cheshire) the main thoroughfares/heavy traffic routes are paved with granite setts - better able to resist iron-shod wheels/horse hooves, whereas pedestrian paving and minor lanes use setts of the local, significantly softer, sandstone. On steep slopes the latter is often laid with the laminae/bedding planes vertical, which gives an interesting texture and more grip, (no idea how you would model it) although I imagine it is less hard-wearing. There is also the question of economics. I imagine granite setts are by some way the most expensive option (even in a granite area - they are a lot harder to work). Suitable local sandstone may be cheaper if available (for example, round here the Kerridge sandstones made good flags for roofing, but some beds that didn't readily cleave as thinly might be used for setts). Cobbles would be cheap if you are beside a suitable beach, but they don't have to be beach/river derived. Round here suitable cobble-sized stones occur in glacial boulder-clay deposits and have been used as in my second point above. Finally, there is always the wooden block option.
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