lanchester

Could that be brick laid in a herringbone pattern?

I don't think this has been mentioned, apologies if I have missed it, but 'arresting' someone in these sort of circumstances works both ways: the person involved is subject to a laid down legal process, which can be challenged if not respected; and the media are aware that there is a possibility that charges might be forthcoming in which case their ability to comment is rightly curtailed. OK they are allowed to say what they like before any charges are put, but the respectable media will be rather more cautious than otherwise. So in some ways, at least, being 'arrested' actually protects the individual, and helps assure that proper procedures are gone through.

Your second Midland Railway sign quotes a fine not exceeding 10 pounds. That is massive compared to the usual 40 shillings, and from the early date of the Act must go back to 1844 or so. Did the Midland have some particularly good lawyers to get this through Parliament? or did the latter subsequently decide that something like two month's wages was a tad excessive for mere trespass, and reduce the figure for later enactments?

Spelling is a minefield. In the 19th century 'Scotch' seems to have been common useage and not particularly pejorative. Thee is a parallel with Wales - one regiment remained the Royal WELCH Fusiliers even though others used 'Welsh'. Away from nationalities, there are other railway-related spelling changes: for example, in the days of 'City of Truro', the valve gear would have included 'excentrics', not 'eccentrics' as we have them now. Why? Who knows.

Seriously weird. That was one of my late father's tricks, but no matter how long St Enodoc and I have may spent together in the lounge bar of The Navigation, London Road, Derby (where the Southern Comforts and Worthington White Labels were table-served by a lady of uncertifiable age and personal hygiene, as he will recall) I don't remember ever disclosing that secret! Admittedly, the knowledge may have been wasted in the environment of Litchurch Lane and indeed Loco. Do you, St Enodoc, perchance remember the little guy of South Asian extraction, in one of the Loco shops, who used to heat up petfood on his profile flame cutter for lunch? Seemed very weird, but for other reasons I looked into food standards a few years later and reckoned he was about right! Certainly, in the days when Pedigree was rail-served at Melton Mowbray, it was still reckoned that the standards for pet food were considerably in advance of those for food destined for human consumption! I hope the 'owner' of this site will excuse this totally irrelevant post, but St Enodoc and I were at BREL together, and although he sent me a contact type email I think I messed the reply up - I write about technology for a living, doesn't mean I actually understand it! For other confused users, the Navigation was the closest pub to the YMCA on Derby London Road, where BREL engineering management trainees, and indeed some from Royces, used to lodge in the mid Seventies. Unlike St Enodoc, I was 'let go' after a year in a move generally reckoned to be the only strategic decision BR got right in the whole of the 1970s! Happy days and I learnt a lot - mostly about the limits of my own incompetence.

This is almost certainly a dumb suggestion, but some wine bottles come with a cage or net of very fine brass or brass-effect wire over the cap - could that be useful, and enjoyable, for those very fine details? Not having a micrometer screw gauge to hand, as one doesn't these days (just like you rarely find motorists with a set of feeler gauges around their person, spark plugs for the setting of) I don't know the diameter but I reckon could be 0.1-0.2mm?

The double slip right at the base of the bank down from the High Level, about a minute in, looks like it's really asking for trouble! Was it always safely negotiated, do we know? (Try modelling it with that gradient and I bet you have problems).

I, or more accurately my late father, had a copy of that map, on very thin paper. It came in the box of a GWR jigsaw depicting I think King George V and either North Star or Lord of the Isles and may have been a 1935 Centenary commemorative.

Noting the Type 2 on the front, and just guessing wildly, would this have been one of the Boat trains for Tyne Commission Quay? To connect with Bergen/Fred Olsen lines? When I was still in short trousers they used to be taken down by V1/V3 tanks, but mostly Type 2s later, as memory serves.

Hum - tender first. May not be the right place to ask this, but I'll have a go any way - and if anyone knows it will be Great Northern or one of his followers. According to the RCTS Green Books, corridor tenders only had two lamp brackets (bottom left and right). That's OK for light engine movements, but in the, admittedly rare, event that a corridor tender pacific was required to handle traffic tender first, what did they do about lamp codes? Just asking - does anyone know?

The barrow crossing may not be as daft as we think. The parcel/package/ crate is presented at something like natural height, so there is little or no actual lifting and bending involved (which is the bit that generally does your back in). So, ergonomically, very good; probably much more so than having to push recalcitrant trolleys up and down ramps, and bending to load/unload.

There is a little-appreciated subtlety here. As I understand it, it is very difficult for UK pension funds, insurance companies, and the like to invest directly in infrastructure development projects (be they railways, power stations or whatever) because of laws supposedly protecting the putative pensioners etc. Oddly, infrastructure tends to give fairly consistent, even guaranteed, returns, albeit at a relatively low (regulated) level which is actually the sort of investment that pension companies looking to cover their liabilities 20 or 30 years out, are looking for. But, public sector pension schemes in eg the US or Canada (eg Calpers, or the pension funds for Canadian teaching unions) face few such restrictions and are at least willing to consider these sort of investments in this country. The City attitudes are indeed a problem, but some of them are imposed or dictated by the governments we vote in.

J1147 - what we all really wanted - 'Happy Valley' PLUS 8Fs. Any chance in series 3?

Since we are currently running the two themes of stress fatigue and Thompson-bashing, may I pull them together? I think I'm right in saying that at least some of Thompson's carriages had 'sharp' corners to the windows (not the loos, obviously), and that the stresses thus set up and not dissipated made them more vulnerable to rot as a result?

When I was at Sheffield University, mid Seventies, and went on a special over the remains of the Louth line, it was definitely double-syllable, although some variance between Loo-uth and Lau-uth. Lincolnshire is a big county, and there is no more reason to suppose pronunciation to be the same across Kesteven, Holland, and the other one whose name escapes me, than across the North, West and East Ridings of Yorkshire. (Perhaps the pronunciation varied according to the variety of holidaymaker?)

The Aberdeen-Penzance or equivalents have been such a long running thread of grief, pleasure, connections made or failed, curious routing (was it that one that used to disappear from BNS on a circular tour around dodgy parts of the West Midlands to reappear at BNS an hour later - something to do with line capacity towards Bristol?). Someone should write a book. (Now you will tell me someone has, but then that's just the info we need).

Is it just me, or is it surprising to see TWO LMS wagons in the upper image. We are talking 1920's so no question of wagon pooling; the Rosedale branch wasn't exactly on the main drag to anywhere, I don't think the ironstone was going too far away so they woyldn't be for outbound traffic, so what traffic would have brought them there. I know there is a cracking pub up there, but even one vehicle's worth is an awful lot of Bass!

Ones that got away In my fantasy world, the one where I actually have the time, skill and cash to build a layout, I sometimes think of one based on the Preservation era, but featuring exclusively locomotives (and other rolling stock) that so nearly made it to preservation. I don’t mean engines that schoolboys tried to reserve but found their pennies wouldn’t add up, nor indeed the difficult choices the forerunners of the Scottish RPS faced (J36, N15, Pickersgill 4-4-0) that have I think been documented elsewhere on this forum. No, what I am thinking of is the stuff that was officially, or semi-officially, intended for presentation but didn’t ‘make the cut’. Some are obvious – we all know the tragic tale of the HR 4-4-0 Ben Alder; or in an earlier generation the fate of North Star and Lord of the Isles. Beyond that? I believe Derby had a 1930s clearout including a Kirtley 2-4-0 (a gap which it was subsequently possible to plug). I think there may have been a NLR 4-4-0T involved? Where there others? Similarly, I have an idea that Eastleigh pre-war had quite a collection, possibly including some interesting Isle of Wight relics, but that these went in the war-time scrap drive. I know the last NBR Atlantic, Midlothian, was restored and brought back into limited service around 1939, with an intention towards preservation, but again got cut up in the WWII scrapping. Earlier, the last NER ‘398’ class 0-6-0, no 991 I think, was retained for preservation in the new York Museum but according to the RCTS Green books was passed over in favour of the GNR single no 1 (and I suppose if you really can only take one, that was the right choice). Around the same time an early GNSR 4-4-0 (by Manson?) was restored for the S&D Centenary show – was this ever intended for preservation? Were there others that were earmarked and then discarded, or retained ‘in the hope’? (Not just main line perhaps: I know the NCB at Lambton Engine Works held on to no 27 for some years in the hope of a buyer – it had some claim to an identity going back to around 1846, with a history about as complex as that of Aerolite, happily still with us). Where there any instances of carriages or wagons similarly being ‘safeguarded’, at least for a while, before meeting the knacker’s yard? Because my fantasy layout will need some rolling stock! I don’t know whether it is permissible to go OT on my own topic on a first post, but a) Was Stanier really responsible for the Derby carnage having brought nasty ideas from Swindon, or is that a gross libel? b) Either way, how the heck did Crewe manage to hang on to Columbine and Cornwall (two of the most fascinating, and perhaps most ignored, survivors of all)?

Shot of 60538 - you sure that wasn't on the cover of 'Trains Illustrated'? It's even got the slightly inferior printing and paper quality!

I'm probably being dumb here, but I imagine one of the joys of taking pictures of a creation such as yours is to take the pictures you would have taken in 1958 if youl'd been there, had anything better than a box Brownie, and if film and development didn't cost two months pocket money. And if all those factors had come together, how many of your shots would have had telegraph poles emerging from chimneys, water cranes obscuring nameplates, some horrid diseasel filling in the background that you would swear wasn't there when you looked through what passed for a viewfinder. How many shots were wasted shooting into the sun, because it was an unrepeatable moment, even though you knew as you pressed the t*t that Boots wouldn't be able to do anything with it. You are, Sir, recreating a whole other aspect of our hobby. My only criticism is that you don't seem to manage the shots where EVERYTHING is out of focus, regardless of depth of field.! Seriously, you had one a few pages back where you only caught the back of the tender of, I think, an A1. In 1964 or so - that is ALL I ever got of dear Silurian, apart from one shot where half the smoke deflector is obscured by my thumb. [Wharton Park, Durham, '121 was a regular on the afternoon parcels up from York). So keep on keeping on - these are the photos we would have taken, or did but Mummy chucked the negatives. (Obviously, I'm talking about the pix you seem to regard as 'failures'. Speech fails me for the other 90%. which are successes in anyone's eyes).

Great combination. Am I the only one not fully to have appreciated the size/length difference between the 3MT and the 4MT (don't often see 'real life' pix of the two together, and I never actually saw an 82XXX at all).. We tend to go around retrospectively saying that such and such a class was unnecessary - the bigger (or smaller) version could have done the job - but I'm not sure we all get the sheer size constraints involved. It tends to crop up with items like short-tender Sandringhams for tiny tiny GE turntables, but perhaps we don't always see the bigger requirements picture?

I think the caption must be in error. According to RCTS Green Book (not infallible, but pretty good), 68723 w/dn 9/63, and 68736 in 10/63. I certainly have fond memories of the former (at the East end of Newcastle, beside me in a dmu - front seat looking past the driver, obviously - en route to see Grandmother in Hexham. In Autumn 1961 I would have been just 4, doubt I would have the memories and not sure if Gran had actually moved to Hexham by then. In 63 I was at skule, wel groan up and wif one knotbuk and pensil for numbres. SO! But it is certainly true that '36 came north to Newcastle. My impression is that the latter tended to be West End, and 23 the East End (including I think shifting stock in and out of the Motorail or whatever it was then called bays.

May I be allowed to barge in on a couple of points - my only credentials being that I was at Sedbergh School 1970-74 so know the S&C area quite well (although not as well as my late father, who with the OTC and the local Home Guard spent parts of the war guarding the tunnels overnight - not the place here but I assure you that 'Dad's Army' was a toned-down version of the original: bulls, thorn trees, tea at one end, milk and sugar at the other, sitting on the knees of locals with loaded shotguns pointing into your as yet untested genitals - you get the picture). Anyway, my points are firstly, quite trivial - a couple of pages back folks were agonising about representations of Tarmac - be assured, the fells were in the seventies at least, pretty well strangers to tarmac as a constructional material - there may have been a tar spray (which isn't the same thing) to try to hold things together, but that rapidly broke down and even on relatively important ('B' ) roads, the strip of grass in the middle was pretty standard. So the finish, apart from the grass/weeds, you are looking for is a fair bit more textured than what you would have found in an urban environment. But, the colour may be as dark or even darker. There is a metamorphosed limestone known as Dent marble - It's a middling grey as quarried but polishes to black, with white inclusions (graphtolites, bellemites? - I've forgotten my geology). There was an industry around Dent in C19 providing this for chimney pieces etc. Chippings went into roads and duly got polished black. Not an easy finish to pull off, and I doubt viewers would believe it anyway. My second observation is more general. Physicsman and others agonise much about fells (and not that fated locomotive). I just wonder whether, at least if you are planning a layout in a reasonably hilly area, it might make sense to plan in the geology before you plan the track. This has consequences: First, in sedimentary rock, you can work out what levels or dips of rock strata are 'right' On the S&C the underlying bedrock is mostly in well defined more or less horizontal strata but (unlike the Midland through the Peak) this can be smeared over or disguised by boulder clay. Once you get into the Eden Valley, the geology becomes v different, stuff like Old Red Sandstone. (Someone now is going to tell me it is New Red, but its 40 years since I knew this stuff so please excuse). Another aspect, perhaps peculiar to the S&C , is that incidence of boulder clay. As recorded (I forget where), this glacial debris needs dynamiting in dry weather, and a few days later might need scooping up in buckets in the wet (hence continuing landslides along the S&C to this day). Savvy engineers would avoid such ground if they could (although not often possible up on the Pennines). The boulder clay gives you the 'rounded hills' contrast to the angular limestone and Yoredale Series beds - both characteristic of the S&C but difficult to combine effectively in a smallish layout. And, if you've worked out the geology you are going to model, you have a reason for why the railway went the way it did (in other words is this the natural way for an engineer to try to defeat the terrain?) Several factors here - the very old one of trying to balance spoil from cuttings and tunnels with the requirement for fill for embankments etc; second - need for quality building stone (on the S&C a lot of 'public facing' buildings are built with the Red Sandstone from excavations on the Eden Valley stretch - less public bits using any local stone available). It also gives you an excuse for an otherwise unaccountable flat bit - 'Yeh, well, they quarried that for the building stone, innit'. Another aspect that I am occasionally critical of (hark at me, not having done any serious modelling for forty years!) is the line of streams etc that are portrayed on layouts - they need to derive, as far as possible, from the geography around them - otherwise it can look as though you are making water flow uphill, or at the least, it isn't finding its natural route (which, particularly at the moment, we all know is what water does!. Ask them in Appleby - Oh and don't get me started on the BBC calling the County Town of Westmoreland a 'village'). Please forgive if this intervention from an 'armchair enthusiast' of railway modelling, who couldn't do any of the stuff you people do and which gives the likes of me so much pleasure, seems inappropriate, but I'm really trying to help! Oh, there's another thing which I meant to raise over at the'Dent' strand but I guess will be picked up here. A while ago, Dent had a 3 wheel Scammell in its yard. Now., I ain't saying that's inauthentic cos I just don't know, but I do know the roads round there and if true, it must have been scary (actually, any trailer combo, 3 4 or 6 wheeled!).

I don't think the 'star of david' had the same religious significance in the 19th century as it has had since the establishment of the state of Israel. I suspect it was simply a decorative, easily cast, and fairly robust motif. (Even nowadays, you find commercial companies using symbols or names because they look or sound pretty, and only discovering afterwards that they have a more profound meeting for particular communities). I'm not aware that the NER was particularly dependent on Jewish bankers (or, given the dividends, bankers of any source). The Stockton & Darlington, of course, was largely funded by Quakers such as the Pease family, who were also bankers, but as far as I am aware the Quakers are not particularly big on decorative religious symbolism - they prefer to contemplate their relationship to the sacred and the secular, rather than plastering it over the walls. I'm not a Quaker, or indeed particularly religious at all, but I have always found them rather admirable largely because they are more concerned with their own relationship to 'god' than they are about ramming their beliefs down the throats of the rest of us Heathens.

ER, actually Herbert Nigel, first Viking raid was c795 on Lindisfarne -ie very end of eighth century. Vikings didn't permanently settle until around 865, ie two thirds the way through the Ninth century (the Great Army overwintered at Repton). Then you get King Alfred, char-grilled flatbreads and other lovely quasi-historical bits. Trouble with being a pedant is there's always a bigger pedant out there - trust me, I'm a journalist! But you will forgive me because one of my given names is Nigel, after the Great Man. Back to topic, do we think the 'mess house' was for train crews on lodging turns (who must really have loved being woken by a bell even when it wasn't there time) or was it just some catering facility? 'Mess' seems to have had varying connotations, from eating together, to actually rooming together.