lanchester

Almost too obvious to be worth mentioning, but 'Buffet tea for two' by Family; serious 45 action on the Midland Main Line.

In my copy of 'Mandalay', it reads '....lookin' lazy at the sea...' which removes the problem. It's probably been rewritten by those fine geographers who gave us 'Krakatoa, East of Java'.

We've been mostly thinking here, I suppose, about internal user mineral wagons. But your pit may also need other types - flat or single plank for moving lumps of machinery around, special wagons for shifting winding ropes (both for shafts, and for surface inclines - the latter might include wagons equipped to 'pay out' new winding cables: I think there are pics in Colin Mountford/IRS 'Private Railways of County Durham', and vans - for various things that need to be dry (cement, for example). And also, if your colliery employs ponies, something to move the 'choppy' - the Lambton system had a 'choppy store' inbye Bunker Hill, and I think used vans to move this to the various pits for the ponies. A large system like Lambton would also have vans etc for tools/equipment, analogous to Engineer Dept vehicles on the 'big railway'. Unless your model is wedded to a particular prototype, almost anything goes, I would suggest - even a modest colliery would have the wood and metal working skills to build any superstructure onto a second-hand chassis, and quite a few could have run up a chassis itself, probably only buying in wheelsets and other major forgings and castings, possibly second hand. So your wagons don't need to be identifiably 'ex big railway', and if you are stuck with a kit or RTR that is just SO wrong, well there's your answer - the 'A' Pit joiner's shop rebuilt it! Simples, and unchallengeable! (For example, if you look at Lambton rolling stock, while some of it, especially open wagons, is known to be second-hand from the NER, albeit in some instances 'changed, terribly changed' as you would expect after several decades of ad-hoc repairs, there is other stuff, including locomotives, that has an 'NER flavour' but was actually built at Philadelphia more or less from scratch or with key parts bought in. Just like us - we 'scratch-build' but buy in the wheelsets and the chimney castings!). I wish I had more than the vaguest memory of my great grandfather and grandfather, who were successive Chief Engineers on the Lambton Hetton and Joicey. Their duties ranged widely and in fact the 'railway' aspect was probably not their main focus most of the time - underground electrification, mechanisation, coal conveyors, power generation etc would be the big ticket items (and back in the day, Philadelphia was also engineering support for Lambton's collier fleet) - and my grandfather ended his career partly responsible for planning the Hawthorn combined mine: a lot of underground transport, and if you are familiar with the South Hetton system up above, you'll know why! But as 1:1 train sets go, the Lambton system wasn't bad. Thank you, Doilum, for the note on pony poo logistics - I had always wondered, but was too polite to ask!

When I knew the area in 65-67, a lot of the interesting steam was actually inland, in places like Cleator Moor, Egremont, and Beckermet, (which of course were freight only by then) rather than on the coast line itself. But you could still get pulled by steam at least in 65, 66 - Black Five Seascale to Barrow sticks in my memory.

Coals to landsale depots, certainly. Also coals to winding engine boiler houses (and pit baths if these were provided and had separate heating) as well as for locomotive use, and removing ash from same. Bear in mind also that coal isn't the only stuff that comes out of a hole in the ground - there can be a lot of stone, for instance when driving through to a new face, or through a geological discontinuity, which has to be shifted somewhere. There may also be stuff like fireclay which can be exploited (and quite a few collieries at one time had brickworks associated with them). Pits also used quite a lot of brick underground for various purposes (explosives stores, pony stabling etc). Shifting pitprops from store to the bankhead could be another use. And just moving general crud, like fines and dirt from the screens/washery. (Talking of crud, I don't know how pit pony 'waste' was handled - I assume it wasn't just left underground?) And although you might not believe it, many collieries tried to keep the bankhead reasonably tidy, so all sorts of scrap, waste, small coals, timber offcuts, oily waste, etc etc might get chucked in a wagon to be taken to the tip. If you look at Edwardian period pictures, there is none of the general detritus that you see in pics of say the 1960s (but then labour was cheap, and it was work to give some of the many who were too badly injured to work underground).

Sorry, got interrupted there. Just a couple of other thoughts. Your railway must cross, and therefore could have some interchange with, the Manchester Ship Canal. Does that suggest any traffic? Especially giving Derby/Leicester/Nottingham better/alternative access to the Atlantic trade. And also, the LNWR was necessarily on good terms with the North Staffs (end on junction at Macclesfield) and your line might give the LNWR enhanced access to the aforementioned East Midlands cities. (For example, Scottish traffic off the WCML bound for the East Midlands without having to fight through the congestion in the Manchester area. And if your line is built in the 1870s it would be in direct competition with the new Settle-Carlisle for East Midlands- Scotland traffic. So anything to/from the East Midlands via the S&C could equally plausibly use your route? Now of course in real life the Midland (who would lose out in the scheme I've suggested above) was actually a partner in the CLC, while the LNWR had no reason to like the Cheshire Lines at all at all (although it was OK with the NSR). But if your line had actually been built, the politics might have evolved differently and we are back with Rule 1! Final thought - some sort of NW-SE route across Cheshire really should have been built, and if it had been I suspect the industrial geography of Cheshire would have developed in a different way. (Also, all those overpaid Premier League footballers in the 'golden triangle' would have a railway line at the bottom of their infinity pools - tee-hee!)

Just a few thoughts, but Macclesfield was the original home of 'Hovis' bread - does that give any inspiration for traffic? Great opportunity for some bogus but plausible private owner liveries? More significantly, there were and are extensive sand quarries around Chelford and environs. The current products and uses are silica sand primarily for float glass, and the Gawsworth sand for construction, horticulture, sports surfaces and the like. Of course back in your timescale the float glass process hadn't been invented, and cinders were good enough for sports grounds, but I imagine you might justify sand going both up towards St Helens (Pilkingtons etc) and perhaps the other way down towards whoever made bottles for the Burton brewers. Thinking of beer (as you do) I believe Bass was shipped all over the country in the cask, to be bottled by local 'franchisees'. I imagine ships out of the Mersey would have taken a lot, both as exports and to be consumed on board. After all, that's how we got India Pale Ale, isn't it. Dava mentions dyestuffs - perhaps traffic not only to the silk industry in Macc, but also to textile industries in Derby, Nottingham (silk and lace I think) via the NSR and GN, and perhaps Leicester (especially hosiery, I seem to remember). Dyestuffs, and indeed silk, are relatively small volume, high value goods - well nick-able. I wonder what rolling stock would be appropriate, and what class of train, to meet security considerations? Quarrying in the hills above Macc, at Kerridge (flagstones) etc, might have fed in, if the line you are thinking of had ended up like the proposed extension of the LDEC (Chesterfield - Buxton - Macc and onwards) which has been discussed somewhere on here. I think there were several different schemes over the years for a line in the broadly Macc to Warrington direction. It's still quite difficult to get across Cheshire South East to North West, even by road. If your line does extend east from Macc up into the hills, I suppose you postulate an interchange with the Macclesfield Canal, which I think ended up being owned by the MSLR/GC - at any rate there was a 'Great Central' wharf just north of the Hovis Mill. (The canal is half way up the hillside in Macc, whereas the railway is in the valley bottom, but that didn't worry Victorian railway promoters, so it shouldn't worry you. It does strike me, though, that railway speculators had their own special interpretation of 'Rule 1'!). Also, the North Staffs and the Great Northern were quite cosy and the GN was involved in the CLC - : might part of your line have offered an alternative to the Midland route for traffic from Nottingham and environs to the big GN warehouse on Deansgate (Manchester).

For me, Lanchester, obviously. As a layout plan it has some attractions. The Lanchester Valley Railway was built single track, but then doubled to about a mile uphill of Lanchester (actually to Lanchester Colliery) - the impressive, US-style trestle-built Knitsley Viaduct I assume impeding full doubling all the way to Blackhill. When the colliery closed, the second line became a very long headshunt - well off the scenery of any plausible model. Now this means that if you are operating authentically, you can have all the fun of double into single line, but if you were, say, exhibiting, with the same layout you can do a bit of roundy-roundy on the southbound track while shunting the yard etc which all comes off the Northbound. Said yard includes goods depot, coal staiths, and a line into a site which at various times was, I think, a brickworks, and a saw-mill (possibly pit-props, there were NCB/Forestry Commission plantations in the area). A couple of bays allow for side and end loading - there was a cattle auction mart in Lanchester so I assume livestock was a feature at one time, also perhaps agricultural equipment. Certainly in the 60s there was an additional warehouse of the 'Atco' variety, used I think for fertiliser etc traffic, Lanchester being an agricultural village in a mining area.. I wish I remember more, but Dad was very firm about not trespassing on the railway, and like a fool I actually obeyed! Passenger services ended before WW2 (and had been partially replaced by NER bus services in about 1919) but freight until 1966, including on at least one occasion, 1964, diversions of the Tyne Dock ore trains. OUGHT to have had Sentinel/Clayton railcars (as a continuation of the Newcastle-Blackhill via Rowlands Gill service, but as far as I know didn't. Pre-WW1, and perhaps later, Lanchester was a tourist destination as well. But even if modelling BR era freight-only, you can still run Durham Miners Gala specials with just about anything you want. Station building readily adaptable from the 'Goathland' style kits. All in all, what's not to like?

Is it just me or aren't the chimney's different? OP's pic, it's slimmer and tapering out towards the top?

The Audi circles are nothing to do with 4 wheel drive: they represent the four separate marques that were amalgamated into Auto Union, (from the ruins of which post-War Audi was created) in the 1930s. As to whether liveries and logos cut any ice in the freight sector, Eddie Stobart, before more recent troubles, set great store by their livery, the cleanliness of their trucks, etc. In a highly competitive sector it certainly kept them in the public eye. Of course, in road freight the consumer is more likely to make a connection between the goods they are buying and the rust-bucket that has delivered them to the supermarket loading bay and retailers don't want their beautifully branded trailer, which is effectively a mobile billboard, being pulled by a tractor unit that hasn't had a wash in months, so image may count for more. Even in more industrial contexts most people want their company to be associated with other companies that have a positive image, and not with those that don't.

A lot of locomotive tenders with coal rails had the latter subsequently plated in, which might suggest that even pre-War, run of mine coals were getting smaller - perhaps because of more mechanical handling, as well as mechanisation of the actual mining? Pre-First War, you sometimes see pictures of locomotives where the tender seems to have been very carefully hand-coaled, with larger lumps used to build 'walls' to maximise the amount of coal in the tender - to the height of the cab roof even. Whether this was operationally common, or just staged for a better photo-opportunity, I'm not sure. (I have a vague recollection that 'Toram Beg' (Norman McKillop) talks about coaling before the Great War in one of his books, possibly 'Enginemen Elite', but I may be wrong). And somewhere on this site there have been pictures of summer stockpiles of loco coal (at Stratford, March and elsewhere, from memory) - again, with very large lumps being used to create walls, containing smaller (but not all that small) coals. If coal is going to be stored in the open, there is a lot to be said for large lumps - it will tend to break down in the weather, and if you start small you'll end up with dust.

A swift Google revealed some memoirs by a Mary Keay from Norton on Hale (which as I am sure you have spotted is actually in Shropshire, not Staffordshire) which mention an EG Keay as being the Postmaster (and i/c telephone exchange 'had it moved into his house' in 1933). I wonder therefore whether the IRS has got muddled and EG Keay is effectively the 'post restante' for some one else whose wagon this actually was?

Of course, I've mislead myself. GE etc were of course originally 1500V DC, but on conversion to AC the 6.25 kV system was used as the standard for suburban areas on safety grounds which subsequently proved unnecessary - presumably the lower voltage was still reasonably fatal. Units were dual voltage.

I think the GE, and LTS for that matter, were 6.25kV AC originally, as were the first of the Glasgow Blue Trains. Lots of other overhead oddities, like Lancaster- Heysham at 6.6 kV AC, and of course the MSJA was 1500V DC like, although independent of, the Woodhead. Did any of these have equivalents to the warning flashes, or were they just a 25kV thing?

There was a throw-away reference to Royal trains out of St Pancras the other night on the 'railway architecture' series now airing, when they visited Wolferton. Fortunately I had recently re-read this thread, so thank you Compound2632 for stopping me muttering 'Liverpool Shtreet, shurely' and being exposed as an idiot! In fairness, I don't know that using St Pancras rather than Liverpool Street was primarily about avoiding hoi polloi - the idea of the King-Emperor's carriage trying to navigate City of London traffic would have given Special Branch nightmares. Horsedrawn omnibuses, hansom cabs, etc plus all the commercial traffic: Billingsgate, Smithfield, Covent Garden going full strength, and all the stuff hauling out of the Pool of London and St Katherine Dock. All those big carriage wheels to interlock, and you just need one horse to be flogged dead, as they were... Majesty could be stuck for hours, a sitting target for the Fenians or the anarcho-syndicalists. Plus, of course, he'd need permission to enter the City from the Lord Mayor, so that probably means parades and bands and speeches. No, St Pancras is a much better plan.

The old Young's 'Ram' Brewery in Wandsworth had various bits of walling made of blocks from the Surrey Iron Railway. I believe the site has been redeveloped 'retaining the historic' bits (including a beam engine?), but whether these blocks have survived I don't know. Young's started there in 1831, but as a brewing site it predated the Surrey Iron by several centuries.

At the end of that episode, when they are in the perp's railway room, among his impressive collection of artefacts is a smokebox numberplate with a totally spurious number - from memory, something like 91XXX. You have to wonder why, when the set dressers have gone to some lengths to assemble a collection of railway objects, most of them I imagine genuine, they have to put in something like that, especially as it has cost them to make? Or do they run a book on how many sad people like us notice and complain?

To confirm that zander/pike-perch is indeed good eating, and in my experience less inclined to be 'muddy' that pike. Remember that it is non-native to the UK, and a serious pest in some of our waters, so it is almost our patriotic duty to eat it. A classic way with pike and similar is quenelles, one of the many specialities of Lyon. But if you are there, don't bother. As far back as the 1950s, Elizabeth David was complaining that they were all factory-processed mush.

For the benefit of the ignorant, what bad things happen if you have 'too many' Brake Control Units?

Point to remember - different ports fished for different types of fish, so eg cod from the Grand Banks wasn't necessarily landed at the same port as herring from the North Sea, or mackerel and pilchards from Cornish ports. I seem to remember Hull was mostly trawlers (cod, haddock and other deep water and bottom dwelling fish), and Grimsby more drifters (near surface fish like herring). So, rather like different grades of coal, you might have the, on the face of it bizarre, situation of fish being brought into an area famous for fishing (albeit in smaller quantities). And of course the South eats cod; the North notoriously favours haddock, so you might need some shuggling around of supplies. This is why Billingsgate was a market for much more than just London demand - a proportion of the fish that came up to Town went back out again. Although I guess if someone in Mallaig really wanted Dover sole this probably went as a parcel, not in an Insulfish; similarly salmon, when it was wild, seasonal and as dear as prime beef, not today's farmed, flabby and cheaper than chips version. As noted above re herring, some fishing was seasonal. Irrelevant aside - why don't we eat hake in this country?

The coal wouldn't come from the Selby field though. Although there are prodigious quantities there, with five or six winnable seams, the decision from the start was only to exploit the Barnsley seam. The reason being, much of the land is only a few feet above sea level (the Ouse is tidal up to Naburn, and before the Victorians put the lock in, was tidal to beyond York). The expected subsidence of up to a metre, just from winning the Barnsley, was about as much as could be coped with. Diverting the ECML would have been just the start of what was needed. I lived in Stillingfleet until quite recently - Google for pictures of floods around the Cawood swing bridge - pretty well any year will do - to see the extent of flooding on otherwise prime agricultural land even without additional coal-related subsidence. (Although abandoning dredging since the last commercial traffic ended in the early 2000s, paper webs to York Press, I think, hasn't helped). As it happens, the Selby field closed more or less according to the original plans, although much less coal was won, largely because the geology turned out to be less favourable than the surveys had indicated. The Vale of Belvoir/North East Leicester Prospect, would probably have had similar constraints - well above sea level but the land is very poorly drained. I suspect that, if Mrs T and Arthur Scargill had never been born, we still wouldn't have a deep mining industry by now - but we might have got there without wrecking quite so many lives. Mind you, who on earth would you get to work down a pit these days?

Shoddy is fibres from recycled yarns and fabric; whereas mungo is waste fibres from the actual spinning/weaving processes production. That at any rate is the distinction, and I think its that way round!

That's not quite as true as usually thought. Indian railways were buying German and American in the 1890s because British manufacturers couldn't cope (and of course the Midland, GNR and others also bought American at the same time for the same reasons); Borsig sold 32 goods engines to East Indian Railways in 1902/3 (assembled in India); Herschel supplied ZF class narrow gauge 2-6-2T in 1935 and I am sure there were many other examples. (The Indian railways also got many locomotives from the US and Canada in the Forties but of course there was a war on and the UK wasn't in a position to supply). After all, if India (and other dominions) had been automatically buying British anyway, 'Imperial Preference' wouldn't have become a political issue.

In a different area, I believe RJ Mitchell used to do much the same thing at Supermarine. But at least if you do this in the drawing office there is a chance that changes are properly recorded. A quick redesign on the shop floor is not such a good idea.

A point to be aware of is that ICI was notorious for varying the roundel logo in incredibly subtle ways, usually after spending large sums with 'image consultants' and the like. The precise font, the exact shade of blue, how wiggly the waves were, and so on. You have to be a nerd to notice (so why did they bother?) but our hobby by definition embraces nerds!