lanchester

Isn't it funny how everyone knows that the GCR London Extension was 'the last main line railway' to be built (until HS1, I suppose) but I bet there are very few of us realise how late the Dore-Chinley line was (1894). You (OK, I) would imagine it had been built much earlier). Didn't the Midland see any merit in linking their Leeds and Sheffield interests to Manchester on their own rails, or was the company just too focused on Derby as the centre of the universe?

Just a late thought about the mystery pipe : it couldn't be for a steam lance as in de-icing pointwork etc? it gets pretty wintery up at Dowlais.

To pick nits, that's not quite true, in that the Lambton, Hetton and Joicey, for example, had running rights over the NER to get to the staithes and had their own wagons (some ex NER). But true, they wouldn't be used to take coals to landsale depots on the NER system. (Some of the colliery systems had their own landsale depots). Also, and as elsewhere, I suspect there would have been 'foreign' wagons to bring in grades of coal not available from North Eastern pits (particularly anthracite). Certainly there are pictures of GWR open wagons not just on the NER but on colliery railways (from memory one occurs in a picture in one of Colin Mountford's books after a bit of a smash at, I think, Morrison Busty or thereabouts) and I imagine POs may have appeared as well.

Both. There was an ATCOST shed at Lanchester, North Eastern Region in the early sixties, behind (ie closer to the buffers) the stone-built NER goods shed. Not sure of its use - possibly agricultural materials (fertilizers etc).

Clive - having the 'public facing' wall or walls in something reasonably classy like Flemish bond, and the back walls in something cheaper like stretcher, or English Garden, is actually normal; almost the rule. Similarly, front/street faces in 'Accrington brick' (the glossy terracotta-ish stuff) and other walls in commons. Anyone building a netty or similar in Flemish Bond had more money than sense. A problem thing to model well is, I suspect, the diaper effect obtained by using the dark 'burnt ends' of bricks to make patterns (often diamonds). I think the North Staffordshire was particularly fond of this effect in its station buildings, but doubtless there were others.Obviously it has to be tailored to the features of a particular wall, working round windows and scaled for length and so on, so a generic paper is unlikely to fit the bill.

I hadn't realised until a day out with SWMBO last week that one of the warehouses at Manchester Liverpool Road (now the Science Museum) was originally Great Western. Question - would GWR locomotives have worked in (and what might have turned up?), or would trains off the GWR hand over to LNWR/LMS traction somewhere else? More generally, there are quite a few places where one company's quite substantial warehouse or goods yard complex is isolated, sometimes by many miles, from the parent network - what would the usual arrangements be for working in and shunting? I'm thinking for example of the LNW City Goods depot in Sheffield (nearest LNW being Huddersfield?) or the cluster of depots outside Fenchurch Street - Haydon Square LNW, and both Mint Streets, GN and MR, all three of which are a good shoogle away from their parent systems.

'This is not a fishplate - it's an S&T fishplate'? With apologies to Marks and Sparks

I can't back this up, all my stuff being in storage, but I believe there are multiple instances of footplate crew actively resisting the introduction of 'better', ie more enclosed, cabs, despite the conditions they faced. From memory the GNR had this, hence the very minimal Stirling/Ivatt cabs; I believe also the GWR; and when Bouch on the S&DR section of the NER introduced full cabs with proper side windows (for the Stainmore line? - and of course the NER in the end probably had some of the 'best' cabs of any of the pre-grouping railways) these also were resisted. Arguments like 'the snow sticks to the spectacle glasses so you are better off without' come to mind. Also 'give us seats and we'll doze off', although hours prior to the Act, that does seem somewhat plausible. Difficult to work out why, but this sort of thing was by no means uncommon in British industrial labour. There is a long history about resistance from pit workers to the introduction of safety lamps, which seems incredible but is true. Sometimes I suppose it was the entrenched attitude that 'if the management is doing this for us, there must be a catch', or that 'they must be doing this for profit so where's our slice'. And then, think of consultant surgeons who don't reckon there's anything wrong with their juniors working 96 hour weeks because 'it never did me any harm' - not too sure what harm it did to the patients. And the long history, in the pits and elsewhere, of the lads coming out because its unsafe - but for another shilling an hour, suddenly it's safe again. And of course anyone on piecework is likely to reject any safety features (guarding on machines, for example) that might reduce their earnings. Industrial management tends to get a bad write-up, but it can sometimes be 'strordinarily difficult to do the right thing.

Even Gateshead-mucky, Silver King had star quality. Proof. 1963, I'm six rising seven, we are at Newcastle Central fairly late at night to see my Uncle and family off on a motorail to either Fort William or Inverness. Station is rammed - Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton there, I imagine to do with filming 'Becket' at Bamburgh. I don't remember them at all - I DO remember Silver King in the Sunderland platforms with a parcels (my earliest datable memory of a Streak). Who needs Hollywood when you can have an A4?

In similar vein, could the OP allow himself a daily steam service with the potential to run 'mixed' against the possible need to move livestock (which can't be left lying around to wait for the weekly pick-up goods)? Or perhaps there is a daily milk van? which again doesn't want to sit in the sun while shunting takes place at leisure.

I think we have just hit on two conflicting problems. Modelling steam locomotives it has been rightly observed that we need to convey the impression of mass and heft and solidity and so on. But with diesels, on the prototype all that sheet metalwork isn't beautifully smooth like the plastic model, but dimpled and stretched and warped and looking much like Bacofoil stretched over chicken wire. I submit that it is a sight harder to convey that, whether scratchbuilt or RTR, than it is to show the solidity of steam. (Has anyone tried to get the effect by creating a body frame and then stretching thin sheet over it, a la prototype? It might rule out the Hand of God, though!)

Is it just me, but does the lazy stroke of that outside con-rod onto the eight foot driver just ooze the effortless superiority to which late Victorians must aspire? I can almost make out a thesis for the late revival of singles for express work being more a cultural statement than anything boring about steam sanding gear.

Not just BR. When Lambton numbers 5 and 29 left Philadelphia, they had to have 'NCB' painted out on the side tanks. That would be 1969 I think.

May I ask a really silly question? On the picture (previous page) from the top of Stoke Tunnel, the line of telegraph posts runs around half way up the bank. Was there any good reason for putting them in the least practicable position possible? I can see you may not want them at rail level if you don't want to run them through the bore of the tunnel (corrosion I suppose) but wouldn't you put them up at the top of the bank so that in the predictable case of maintenance or replacement being required, you've got some sort of a flat surface to work from (not to mention, some cutting sides have been known to exhibit slippage on occasion which ain't too good for the old poles). Sorry to interrupt - just asking!

Sorry folks, this intervention is a little wordy! Clearly, Beeching was tasked with modelling a railway system that would at least come somewhere to breaking even, GIVEN CURRENT CONDITIONS. That is really all he could be expected to do - the forward view is why we have politicians, rather than bureaucrats, in charge (OK, allegedly). The political classes (of both major parties) failed totally here. Bear in mind that although Beeching was commissioned by the Tories, almost all of its application, plus quite a few of the closures that weren't in Beeching, plus the failure to go through with some of his more positive proposals, were under the Labour government of 1964-1970. That nice Mrs Castle's DoT did indeed bring in the concept of social payments for otherwise unviable routes, but only after most of the likely candidates had already been closed. (oh, and while we are talking about the crook Marples, there was certainly something 'crooked' about the Humber Bridge, wasn't there? A vital link now, but it took several decades to justify itself - certainly didn't have the transformative impact on Humberside that voters were promised). But I digress. Political failings fall into two classes as I see it - there are economic developments that nobody saw coming - the men in white coats would have been round - which while disastrous (for the railway were perhaps forgiveable or at least understandable; and those which really should have been predicted because they were to a greater or lesser extent the results or desired outcomes of other government policies. In the first category, it is interesting to note that government (of either shade) clearly did not believe in its ability to deliver the stuff they had promised voters. Pre Beeching, 'Supermac' famously said that 'most of our people have never had it so good' but the often-missed subtext was 'and if we don't pull our fingers out, we'll never have it so good again'. This sort of thing was seen by the people as a promise of ever-increasing growth and prosperity (which is, actually and give-or-take, what most of us got) but: No-one predicted not only that private motoring would rapidly become so ubiquitous and affordable (to the point that now, having a problem running a family's SECOND car is for some a definition of poverty). Actually, no-one saw that the availability of a used car market might be significant. Doh! No-one predicted that leisure time (and the cash to exploit it) would grow so rapidly, or if they did: no-one predicted that flights to the Costas etc would become so affordable (although of course, when they did, government fought tooth and nail to defeat the likes of Freddy Laker). These points have opposing consequences: Beeching was more right than he could have known in suggesting that a lot of 'seaside branches' were only going to get even less viable (although oddly I don't think either Ilfracombe or Hunstanton were on the original hit list), but equally the general pressure on transport on what are now crowded areas such as the Lakes, Peak District, Dartmoor and Exmoor, which now would love to have some relief through railway service, could not have been predicted. The idea that folks with or without cars would be prepared to commute a couple of hours each way each day, regardless more or less of price, is definte looney bin time. AS is the idea that most people would live as far away (rather than as close as possible) to their factory/place of work And more importantly, although of course business and industry was expected to get more efficient, no-pne could allow themselves to believe that the traditional major industries for which the railways were created - coal, steel, shipbuilding, textiles etc would be so decimated (effect on freight) or even where they survived, would have such a reduced need for workers (effect on passengers). No-one would have foreseen quite what a revolution containerisation would bring to both international and internal freight, and particularly which ports needed better rail facilities (and in fairness, Beeching I think DID have some feel for this). But the current desirability of boosting service to for example Felixstowe and Southampton, rather than London Docks and Liverpool, would not have been apparent then. So, to honour a 50th anniversary, we were promised the moon, but when we actually got it, no-one was more surprised than the folks who had bought our vote. All that is kind of understandable, Predictions are hard, especially about the future, to quote Yogi Berri. But there is a lot of other stuff that Westminster should have factored in to 'moderate' the Beeching conclusions, because they were the foreseeable consequence of existing government policy. I give just a few examples. The New Towns programme appears to have been completely ignored from a rail point of view. OK there was Milton Keynes Central, but did anyone really think about ways of serving Peterlee, Cumbernauld, Skelmersdale - and is anyone surprised that these were not, shall I say, quite as great an improvement on the old slums as might have been hoped. I mentioned containerisation above, but in the Beeching era it was the country's intention to join the Common Market - did no one think that this might change dramatically the pattern of freight flows and the relative importance of different ports? Governments rightly put a lot of money into promoting industrial investment in declining industrial areas - how often were rail linkages, even to major sites like car plants, considered? (Pre War trading estates, like Trafford Park or Team Valley, often did have rail facilities - but it kind of helps if your customers have as well). BR, NCB, and CEGB were all under state ownership (fairly uncontroversially at the time). Remind me, how long did it take for any movement on the MGR concept? (Again, Beeching, read properly, is supportive here). And, still ongoing, the policy of building big new hospitals in areas almost devoid of public transport, despite an ageing population of users who can't (or shouldn't) drive. (That, incidentally, is a lovely example of achieving local efficiencies at the expense of system efficiencies, and is theefore in the same category as policies of closing feedee branch lines that do't technically wash their face but contribute to the viability of the greater network). So, let's hear it for joined up Government! None of the above is Beeching's fault - it is the politicians failing to believe in, think through, and act on, the consequences of their own policies (which may themselves be entirely virtuous). If I can allow myself a final observation, which is still relevant. The Green Belts. These started as a concept pre War when it seemed a real possibility that the Great West Road out of London (and others) would soon have ribbon development all the way to Bath or Bristol. 'Clearly' we need to ring fence towns and communities to preserve their character etc etc. But suppose, in the light of what we now know about the environment and transport and where and how people choose to live, we had chose instead positively to encourage MOST development onto those established radial (from a London perspective -other cities are available) transport corridors, and preserve the fingers and slivers of 'countryside' that still went quite deep into many conurbations. There would have been two consequences: 1) many more people would be on or close to the 'town/country' edge, in other words have ready acccess to green fields (a ring by contrast is the most effective way of minimising the numbers on that edge). 2) concentrating most freight and passenger traffic onto linear routes is exactly what railways, and buses, and some styles of road freighting, are designed to be good at. With the random dispersion of new industries and new housing into the 'non green belt' countryside, sensible and effective transport systems or networks, of whatever mode, are rendered almost impossible. Look at the location of Distribution Centres, out in the country near motorway intersections, which makes some sense in trucking terms, but is not too good if you want a young labour force that probably can't afford even to insure a banger on minimum wage. But I guess it's too late now. Any one who's still with me, sorry for wasting your time. But the point is, Beeching actually got a lot more right than the subsequent implementation (which wasn't his doing) can give him credit for.

Ah, yeh, well, but. It's no coincidence that around this time a lot of 'Locomotive Superintendents' got rebranded as 'Chief Mechanical Engineers'. Note that the differential is mechanical as against civil - electrical engineering as a discipline/profession was still developing. CMEs were responsible for a lot of stuff that wasn't strictly locomotive - structural stuff on carriage and wagon work, for example (a number of CMEs including Gresley had C&W in their CVs). as well as static installations such as cranes, and perhaps (I don't know) they new-fangled infernal combustion vehicles, on road and rail. Off the main line, my great grandfather was Chief Engineer for the Lambton Hetton and Joicey Collieries, 1897-1935. Certainly his responsibilities included locomotives. But Lambton Engine Works made and mended a lot of stuff for the pits beyond over and under ground rail systems - aside from mech eng for underground (although this was increasingly bought in as technology advanced) and stationary winding etc engines, there was maritime-related work for the collier fleet. My ancestor was well in to electrification - Lambton had its own power station - and was involved in developing underground electrification, and of course converting/replacing steam winding engines etc to electric. All very advanced for the time, and chiming with the views of near contemporaries such as Raven. BUT - the Lambton rail system remained steam-powered until very near the end, essentially for economic rather than engineering reasons. CME's on the major pre-group railways were expected to handle a much wider brief than the old Locomotive Superintendents - whether or not they were designing there own engines (or alternatively going to the trade for a standard design). And of course the various works had capabilities well beyond the fettling of engines - as was demonstrated in both wars.

I may have got this wrong, but I think that the long beam to which everything else was attached was the original meaning of the word 'tram', from which all the other more modern usages derive, somewhat indirectly.

A crop you might consider, if you get tired of all-over green for your fields, is mustard. This used to be widely grown on the Northumberland coastal plain (Mustard 'flour' was actually 'invented' by a Mrs Clements in Durham in 1720, so irts got a good North East connection). Used to see fields of it certainly into the 60s from the ECML between Newcastle and Edinburgh. I don't know if it gave rise to any rail traffic (Colmans at Norwich?) or whether there were more local producers. Bright yellow, like rape to which it is related, but a 'warmer' less artificial sort of yellow.

Not sure how 'modern' the 'so...' thing is? I first noticed it in the early Eighties in the context of working for a number of people who had previously been officers in BAOR. I think it may at least partly mirror a German speech pattern, but I suspect that it is also a more recent usage by our younger friends (where it makes a refreshing change from the random introduction of 'like').

Stop me if this is a silly idea (reference books in storage etc) but would a model of Lambton no 29 (Kitson 0-6-2T), with an alternative cab, widen its appeal by also helping Hull & Barnsley, and LDECR/GCR modellers? LNER N6 and N11 - originally the same as LDECR sold to H&BR the ones it couldn't pay for. They look superficially quite close to No 29, or am I missing some insuperable problem?

RE ballast - as far as memory serves the ballast on the running lines on the Sedbergh line, after lifting, was largely Shap granite (the pink stuff, which figures) and mostly quite new at that - it was certainly quite lively to walk on, on the five mile trek to Low Gill for an afternoon's spotting - indeed it may have been the condition of the ballast that allowed my Housemaster to recognise my trainspotting as a physical recreation on a par with fellrunning or at the other extreme, having a little lie down at Deep Mid Wicket. Like all the best schoolmasters, he was a swine but a fair-minded swine! . How far your preservationists would have been able to reuse that, or whether local farmers etc had 'acquired' most of it (if the memory wasn't fading I could name some who certainly did) I leave to your reconstructed history. Will there be sheep? There must be sheep (from memory, Swaledales, Scottish Blackface, and perhaps a few surviving Rough Fell although I think they were more or less gone even in the Seventies. Not many Herdwicks as you might suppose, although I doubt anyone will tell the difference in 4mm scale).

Can you just remind us of No 53's details - (presumably Fletcher from the square cab windows, but all my references are in storage while I'm camped out with the mother in law). On another tack, is it just me or did NER footbridges look really quite 'modern' compared to those of some other companies? (some of which tend to look like the 'Bridges of Madison County' if that was the film I'm thinking of, or that timber thing in Lucerne) Apart from the lack of wheelchair access, you could imagine something similar being built today. Or was there a big replacement programme in late Victorian times?

Just curious but is there any evidence that this sort of balls up ever occurred in real life? I don't imagine wagon painters were the best paid, skilled or supervised of railway workers and one end of a wagon looks much like another from the side, at the end of a shift. And after all, there are I believe verified accounts of much more valuable assets such as locomotives being renumbered erroneously and so forth.

Fessing up, in my case I think it's the lack of haircut that's significant. (As St Enodoc knows, I 'disappeared' from the BREL realm only a week or so later - 'letting me go' is still believed to be one of BR's best decisions in the whole of the 1970's). Weird thing is, I still talk about the railway as 'we'. I suppose it's a bit like being a lapsed Jesuit - they get you early and they get you for life.

I am not sure when the more Dionysiac, not to say positively Neolithic, aspects of the rites were suppressed, but surely the cultural life of the Achings retains some vestiges of the ancient traditions associated with Flint Knapping. I fully accept that in this brave new Century actual human sacrifice may be considered a tad de trop, but I suspect various deeply symbolic practices survive. Indeed do I not recall that upon the new line of railway being opened, the ribbon was severed by means of a polished axe-head of improbable antiquity?