Jeremy Cumberland

I suppose the plural of that would be Tresleches Cake Court. Yum!

New question: Plates on signal box levers giving the lever number, description and pulls. I've seen these referred to in writing as "leads", but I don't think I've ever heard the word pronounced. Are they the sort of lead you might use when walking the dog, or the sort of lead you might use for roofing your church (with or without a clerestory)?

Where's your 18 mm from? I don't know the exact details of your particular prototype but I'm guessing that the back to back would have been something like 4' 5⅝" and the wheel thicknesses would have been about 6", giving a distance over the wheel outsides of 5' 5⅝", or 21.875 mm in 4 mm scale. On the prototype, driving wheels generally have very little sideplay, but even so you're probably looking at at least 22 mm in 4 mm scale, unless the wheels are particularly thin. Your Gibson wheels might be 2.3 mm thick and your back to back is 16.5 mm, so you've got something like 21.1 mm across the wheels, which is probably less than the prototype (because of 18.2 mm gauge rather than 18.83 mm). But you'll have more sideplay.

When I looked at the details I wondered at the tiny wheels (4' 6") and low adhesive weight. I don't know what trains in New Zealand were like but I can't imagine a role for it in Britain - an eight-coupled 5F with the route availability of a 2MT, obtained by shifting so much of the weight onto non-driving wheels. I can't help thinking it would be rather light-footed, which rather defeats the purpose of going for an eight-coupled arrangement. Presumably, axle weight was a big problem in New Zealand.

I wonder how many will complain that the Countess set doesn't look at all like the Welshpool and Llanfair.

There is no reason I can see to have any interlink between 14 and 9. If signals 6, 7, 11 and 12 are all at danger, you can move the points and work the crossing gates to your heart's content. No supply to the signals is fine, but no supply to the points would be rather restrictive. I think, even in a model. I don't understand what you are aiming for here. Is lever 9 in the normal or reverse position to lock the points? From your second sentence, it looks like pulling 9 unlocks the points, but really the complexities of interlocking, even in such a simple installation as this, don't lend themselves to only using the switch contacts contained within the Cobalt lever units. Instead you need something capable of more complex logic, such as multi-contact relays or some form of computer control with an input module that detects each lever position. There is, of course, a fundamental problem with just using electrical switching rather than physically locking the levers in that it is all too easy for lever positions to be out of correspondance with the physical points and signals on the layout. You might have correctly set a route for a departing train using signal 7, with 7 reverse, 8 reverse, 9 in whichever position locks the points and 14 in whichever position locks the gates across the road. You might then set a route for an incoming train from 11, but forget to put signal 7 to danger first. So you change 9 and 8 and pull 11, but nothing happens. You then realise you didn't return 7 to danger, so you do that, but what happens now? Perhaps nothing, depending on how you have interlocked 8 and 11 - will the points change with lever 11 reverse (even if the signal on the layout is still at danger)? I think I would find this very confusing. Several people have come up with ways of physically locking levers so that you can't, for example, move lever 9 with lever 7 reversed, but I don't think there is any way of putting a mechanical or electrical lock on a Cobalt point lever. I could be mistaken though.

The only places I've known with box steps in recent years have been single door only stations, so the guard is always on hand to offer assistance. I think all the Cumbrian Coast platforms have now been built up to not need box steps.

After 1976 or whenever it was that headcodes were dispensed with, the standard for disc fitted locos was the old express passenger code.

What does lever 12 do? All I can think is that it allows the spring points to be held over for shunting the siding.

There's posh. We only get doner kebabs here.

I grew up in Hemel Hempstead and all the masts had G on them (cream letters on maroon background as I recall back then). From what I could tell the entire West Coast Main Line via the Trent Valley and Warrington was G, at least to Preston. The main Birmingham loop between Rugby and Stafford was BS, and I think Northampton was RR. It was something odd, at any rate. Edit: I think I'm mistaken about BS - this was (perhaps not surprisingly) the route via Bescot, and I have a faint memory of the line via New Street being something else.

They'd have to be far enough apart to show an unoccupied track section between them, and indeed, for the track circuit at Upperby Bridge Junction to he unoccupied by either train for Bob Taylor to have changed the points between the two portions. News reports at the time say that the train divided three miles south of Carlisle. This might not be the actual place it happened, just where the first track circuit fault showed up. Looking at the gradient profile, it really has to have been after Plumpton, otherwise I would have expected the 2 miles of level to have caused tha gap to have widened to a detectable distance a lot earlier, but I suppose it depends on how long the track circuits are in that area. In any case, it would have to be after Penrith:

The signalbox is on the down platform, so running trains through the down loop means less walking for the signalman to change tokens. I dare say, he'd signal up trains through the down loop if he could.

I've found an account elsewhere on the forum: I don't know how accurate it is, but it seems to be missing some information. If the guard at Weaver Junction never reopened the air valves after reconnecting the brake pipes, the brakes of the rear 10 wagons (of a 15 wagon train) would have been fully applied, something that is almost impossible to imagine, even with 10000 horsepower on the front end (double-headed class 87s).

If anyone can find the accident report, please post a link, for I can't find one. Other sources say that earlier in the run some of the brakes were dragging and so the train was stopped and these brakes were isolated (closing a valve between the brake pipe and the distributor and draining the air reservoir on the vehicle). Although this renders the brakes on that vehicle inoperative, it won't affect any other vehicles on the train, but perhaps it meant the detached portion no longer had enough brake force to stop on the downhill gradient. This isn't the whole story by any means, because the automatic brake didn't apply on the front portion either, which means that a train pipe isolation valve must have been closed, presumably the one on the last vehicle where the coupling broke. It is conceivable (and I think there have been incidences) that the action of breaking the coupling also closed the valve. Alternatively (and probably the most common cause of runaways) is not opening the train pipe valves in the first place (and not doing a brake continuity test from the rear vehicle), but this seems at odds with the report of the brakes dragging. Perhaps a train pipe valve was closed as part of the investigation into dragging brakes and not reopened.

Before looking at pictures in response to this thread, I would have said that brake tenders in the mid- to late-70s didn't have yellow ends. Now I think it is probably just that they got very dirty. I've just found Paul Bartlett's page: https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/braketender B964024 looks to have blue ends, but close inspection shows the line between the blue and the yellow on the top panel. B964002 has a bit more of the yellow visible, not that you'd really notice. There appear to be three main styles of yellow ends: All yellow: B964113 is the clearest example on the Paul Bartlett page. B964014 is almost certainly the same, as are the ones Mol pointed out above. There is no blue on the end anywhere. 2 yellow panels: These have a blue "bonnet", a blue arch above the top panel, blue sides to the bottom yellow panel, and most of them seem to have rounded top corners to the bottom panel. B964046 is the clearest example, and B964083 is another good one. Some didn't have rounded top corners, for example B964006. Some have a short bottom panel (more of a stripe, really), such as B964002, and B964029 in the second Hugh Searle picture in Mol's first post. A bottom yellow panel/stripe and no top panel: B964007 is the only example on the Paul Bartlett page.

What's freight BR blue? I thought corporate image BR only had one blue, applied to locomotives, carriages, DMUs, EMUs, newspaper vans, carflats and doubtless other things I have forgotten about. And brake tenders. Before Rail Blue, brake tenders were green. Most photos of green brake tenders show them with yellow ends, but I am not sure that they all had yellow ends when painted blue. I think the practice of coupling them in front of the locomotive might have ceased by then. Brake tenders when I saw them were invariably very dirty.

I doubt it. I don't think they've got a CDL fitted brake vehicle, and presumably they want catering as well, plus some/all of the CDL-fitted stock doesn't have retention tank toilets, so Mk1s are needed for loos. To me it looks more like they simply don't have enough CDL-fitted stock for two sets. I'm not sure why they took three more coaches to Fort William last week, whether it is just spares for the first set, or whether they intended strengthening the set to 5 CDL-fitted vehicles, or whether it is just part of the unfathomable mind games they are playing with the regulator.

Apart from Inter-Citys, Cross Countrys and TransPennines, and a few oddities elsewhere (101s in Cornwall?), I didn't think blue and grey appeared on DMUs till 1978/9, after the white and blue refurbished livery was found not to wear so well. I think blue and grey was then applied to non-refurbished units as well. White and blue refurbished livery started appearing on some classes of DMU from about 1975 (the prototype was done in 1974, as I recall).

There are two sets. In a post a few days ago, @adb968008 reckoned they didn't have enough stock for two trains: If I have counted correctly, they appear to have 6 Mk2s with CDL and they are (or were) using 4 of these on the morning train.

Rather obviously photoshopped, with PUBLIC FOOTPATH clearly visible underneath, but I like it nonetheless.

A minor point unrelated to signalling, but assuming you are fitting models of Williams (or similar) point levers, ones that you always pull in the same direction regardless of which way the points need to change, you've drawn the levers facing the wrong way. The shunter needs to see facing train movements when changing points, so the position of the lever at rest should be towards the toe end of the points, so the shunter facing the point lever is also facing the approaching train. Admittedly, there are/were many lever boxes installed the other way round, but I'd like to think this is a more modern phenomenon as standards have slipped.

It's probably just because it was a Western Region vehicle. It was converted from W1012 at Swindon in 1963. This is long before the the other exhibition coaches were converted, which I think was done shortly before their European holiday.

I wouldn't forget about Coombe Junction entirely. It provides a very rare prototype for a junction where passenger trains reverse but goods trains can continue. Easy question first: Not for siding B (it is worked off lever 17), but you do need one for the Warehouses branch. In itself this isn't a problem, but it does suggest that the box was intended for a bigger installation that was either never put in or else has since been removed. You would need to decide on a numbering policy. You could easily adopt the 1956 Coombe Junction numbering. Here is a summary: You have two signals not on the Coombe Junction plan, for entry and exit from siding B. These could be 13 (siding exit) and 14 (siding entry). You can then squeeze things up a bit and use a smaller frame (will the model have a signal box? How big is it?). This is fairly conventional "modern" numbering, with the main running signals at opposite ends of the box, on the side that trains approach from, with only the level crossing bolt outside them. Point levers are more or less in order as viewed from the box and FPLs are immediately next to the points they lock. Shunting signals are placed where they fit, again more or less in order as viewed from the box. I have no idea when this became a more or less standard numbering convention, but in times past, things used to be different, with signals, point levers and FPLs all interspersed, generally grouped according to direction of travel. FPLs were often a long way from the lever working the points. Note in the Wikipedia diagram that for a train leaving the platform for Liskeard, that the points are 12, 15 and 16; the FPLs are 6 and 7 and the signals are 11 and 14. Approaching the station from Liskeard, the points are the same (12, 15 and 16); the FPLs are 18 and 19 and the signals are 20 and 21.

I don't think it is. The numbering seems to me something of a giveaway that this is a Victorian box, and it matches the 1950 SRS diagram. The box was replaced in February 1956, and the 1956 SRS diagram shows some simplification and more conventional numbering. For example, @Halton Boy's 2 and 3 (now positioned where 11 is in the Wikipedia diagram) become 1 and 2 in the 1956 diagram, and @Halton Boy's 1 becomes 3. You can find small thumbnails of the SRS diagrams here: https://www.s-r-s.org.uk/html/cdgwef.htm There is a lovely hand drawn diagram matching the SRS 1950 diagram (and quite likely the basis for the Wikipedia one) on the signalbox.org site here: https://signalbox.org/~SBdiagram.php/?id= 372 I suspect there were special instructions at Coombe Junction since the only purpose of points 16 in the Wikipedia diagram appears to be in case of runaway. However, in @Halton Boy's plan there presumably isn't a 2 mile long 1 in 40 gradient on the left hand line from the halt, and siding B has ordinary points and a trap set normal for the main line. In this situation, the points would need to be set for the main line and the FPL engaged before a train could be accepted. There is no reason why wagons (or even an engine) couldn't be left in the siding.