MR Chuffer

Not sure this is mentioned upthread, but my terminus is split into 2 yards, a coal yard with capacity 25-30 wagons and a separate goods yard with a separate road entrance. If coal is inbound only, then I don't require a weighing station at its entrance, as the coal has already been weighed at its origin? The goods entrance has weighing facilities for booking goods outbound. Is that correct? (pre-WW1 MR - but probs applicable through the years).

And put the 2 in the cabside number the right way up? Or is it a G&SWR form for 7. (Whoops - upthread it appears to be a 7)

I've done this but Code 75 flatbottom to code 100 in fiddle yard/traverser, see https://peco-uk.com/products/transition-track, 4 in a pack. Can probably be bodged for bullhead.

If you're not sure, then there can't be many others that are. So should anyone ever visit my layout, its unlikely they will have strong views on the placement of vacuum pipes when there are so many other flights of fancy lurking in there.

Recommended reading The Rise and Fall of King Coal. A lot of railway pictures, both on and off colliery and the story right up to the Workington Mine proposals

Thanks Stephen @Compound2632, that's pretty much what I've seen through countless photographs, though you rarely, if at all, see a photo of both ends of a vacuum piped wagon. So variations of practice are common across dates.

Whilst we're on fitted and unfitted, is there any guidance as to which side of the coupling a vacuum pipe is fitted? On locos, it is invariably to the left of the coupling when looking at the buffer beam from the front, but on the tender or tank engine coal bunker? And for wagons, if the pipe is to the left of the coupling on one end, is it to the right on the other end, or diagonally to the left on the other end too? And would any guidance be railway company specific (pre-grouping), effected by the wagon builder (or retrofitter) or ad hoc. I read that the pipe would be on the same side at both ends as an off-centre vacuum cylinder. Given the foregoing posts, I'm looking at retrofitting through vacuum pipes on some key wagons.

Hickleton Main?

As was discussed upthread, Huskisson picking up at Aintree, Lostock and Blackburn for Hellifield and beyond was a Midland turn over L&Y metals, and the reverse.

They did take over the LNWR at the end of the day, in the guise of the LMS, so no insecurity here. And then there is that other regional railway, the GWR, not without its fan bois on here...

Oops, most of us then... But seriously though, what also comes out of the Marple piece, from the author(s), was the absolute lengths that the LNWR would go with skulduggery to suppress any and all competition.

The Great Central and the Midland, why were their fortunes so different when there were so many overlapping areas of operation and geography? On RMweb (this thread?), I saw the postabout Marple being a full on, pre-grouping, multi-company station suitable for modelling, a major traffic interchange station on the jointly owned S&M line (that’s Sheffield, later GC, and Midland). I then turned to https://www.marple.website/railways-of-marple-and-district/website-introduction.html to get the full history, fascinating. The author seems biased towards the Midland – aren’t we all in this thread – denigrating GC passenger services run with 4- and 6-wheel passenger stock when the Midland's equivalent were using 6 wheel and bogie carriages of “the highest comfort” (paraphrase). And that whenever the GC had an idea for expansion, they had no money and the Midland rocked up to initiate projects. It seemed that if the Midland wanted it, it got done, except of course for the Settle and Carlisle politics when the Midland got cold feet. The GC had access to the same Sth Yorkshire coalfields as the Midland in the early days, but was it their expansion into Lincolnshire – no coalfields! And they accessed the Wigan coalfields, which the Midland didn’t. He even praises the Midland’s reliability and effective maintenance provisions (mentioned above) whilst still calling it a “small engine” policy – grrrr - and including carriage preparation and cleanliness compared to the GC’s. Anyway, any thoughts on the differing fortunes of the two?

To me, that looks like 10 and the tail of the 9 appears to be a crease or blemish on the photo, being a much taller numeral than the others if it was 19.

The record I'm looking at, in Donald Binn's book, has the branch timetable for Nov 1881 showing 8 trains each way, all marked as Passenger and Goods. My 1903 timetable gives no indication, but there again, why should it? But it does show up to 4 L&Y services per day starting at Barnoldswick and heading through Colne to various destinations in Lancashire.

For Barnoldswick, yes, and for some reason the number of goods wagons was limited to 9, even in the early part of the 20th c. when they ran separate goods trains. Can't understand why but this limit may have ceased when they extended the coal sidings c. 1912 and the traffic figures jumped from 3,628 tons of minerals and 18,811 in 1910 to 10,876 tons of minerals and 27,846 tons of coal in 1912

"On January 1st, 1905 by arrangement with the LNWR, a L&Y through train was introduced from Rose Grove to Carlisle hauled by a Rose Grove 0-8-0 alternately with a LNWR loco. A similar train left Nelson for Carnforth nightly...." Railways around East Lancashire by C. Richard Wilby. Quite obviously a move to reduce Midland S&C mileage, relations at Colne end on junction between the L&Y and the Midland were rarely cordial and this lasted well into LMS days.

It was one engine in steam for most of its Midland existence, probably always. The moment you leave the sidings area and cross Fosse Road, the line runs/ran hrough allotments, the area is still there and labelled Stokeswood Park, all the way to the Glenfield Tunnel East Portal. In fact, looking at Google maps, they are even more extensive than I thought. So yes, bucolic right up to where the sidings were laid. Definition Google Maps https://maps.app.goo.gl/GRiq7Kft4JCLy1xD9

It was originally a Rover car factory taken over by the Government during WW2 to make the jet engine being developed in nearby workshops in Clitheroe by Frank Whittle (which was bombed by the Germans in an attempt to slow development - they missed). But Rover couldn't engineer to a high enough standard so the "factory" was swapped for a Rolls one in Coventry in 1943 and became a Rolls establishment

That was replaced on that loco about 1903 as there is a photo of it in the book The Skipton-Colne Railway and The Barnoldswick Branch by Donald Binns, before with screen and after, full cab. And there is an extensive write up in Disused Stations.

Yes, with North and South facing junctions off the mainline, there were at least 20 passenger trains each way in 1903, some direct to Nottingham but mostly to Ilkeston junction. And I was researching online that it suggested there were up to 10 good trains in a day. Now that's a proper branch line!

Have you visited Leicester West Bridge Yes, I have as a matter of fact, I lived within 10 miles of there in my early days, and later in the City of Leicester. I can always remember travelling on the 602 Midland Red bus along Groby Road keeping pace with the standard 2MT 2-6-0 struggling up the incline with a train of empties. The road ran parallel to the line as it ran thorough what seemed a mile of allotments before entering Glenfield Tunnel. And then on the other side, the delightful to model Glenfield Station and nothing but open countryside between there and Desford Junction. And I visited West Bridge shortly after it closed, nothing ominous about it as most industry had moved away, it was just extensive empty sidings that only ever had 1 engine in steam so wasn't particularly grim by the standards of more intense trafficked yards.

No, it's in the list, it's what I'm modelling - loosely - 5m length including a 1.5m traverser/fiddle yard. And yes, there was a run round loop, for the 1F 0-6-0Ts to run round their passenger trains. Modeller's licence, I have introduced a set of sidings and small goods shed for separate L&Y operations: they did run 2 passenger trains a day from there to places west in Lancashire in 1903.

Not quite sure your definition of "vide" is quantifiable, as Ilkeston Town is surely on spec. Single line terminus at the end of an approx 1 mile branch connected north and south to the Midland Erewash valley main line through a triangular junction. But, we are talking modelling potential here and are there many more railways "more" BLT than the Midland, there are certainly far fewer; imagination is the key as there are very few true to scale BLTs in 4mm from what I see because of space constraints. I quoted Haworth instead, re-edited in original post 1mm in 4mm scale? Still a delightful bucolic branch with lots and lots of PO wagons.

A little harsh - Morecambe, Heysham, Grassington, Hawes and Ingleton (sort of), Barnoldswick, Haworth, Dewsbury, Leicester West Bridge, Southwell, Buxton, Wirksworth, the original Ripley, Ilkeston Town, and probably several more further south, at which point my geography starts to fail....

These "attachments" have started appearing on footpath crossing lines on the Clitheroe (Lancs) lines, perhaps because people don't understand the first exhortation?