KingEdwardII

Ahem, funnily enough it was the railways themselves that changed this during the Victorian period. Railways enabled low-cost transportation of heavy materials like bricks and the development of large scale production in a few favoured locations. Bricks could come from Bedford, Peterborough and so on by the million. And of course, the railways were also consumers of vast numbers of bricks too. Not to say that there was not local production, rather that imported materials became much more significant. Also, mechanisation of the production processes tended to favour the larger concerns. Yours, Mike.

That is surely a weird thing to see anywhere other than on a preserved line in recent times. Yours, Mike.

My understanding is that landslips and cliff falls are mostly to do with the buildup of groundwater in soil and rocks, providing both lubrication and pressure. Groundwater levels are mostly a long-term tale of rainfall over weeks and months, rather than caused by individual storms. Individual storms are more associated with riverine flooding than with groundwater levels. Around here in central southern England, Jan/Feb 2014 was probably the worst recent period we've had for high groundwater, with widespread destructive groundwater flooding across a wide area as well as landslips. Yours, Mike.

Curiously, for England, there has only been a very modest increase in rainfall over the past century or so, especially in Winter, as can be found on the Met Office site here: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-temperature-rainfall-and-sunshine-time-series Yours, Mike.

It's well known that they go round in packs of three...

Just goes to show that running through incorrectly set points is not just a model railway problem! Yet we have folk here hoping to carry on as normal with their layouts when it occurs. They should be thinking in terms of half a day outage and the need for an engineering team to attend :-0 Yours, Mike.

I think the Library of Scotland site may have some older aerial photos available, but I have not checked whether they cover Didcot. Their site is a treasure trove, but it takes a lot of time to wade through it all. Yours, Mike.

Sounds like it has been boiled up with sugar & pectin syrup ;-)

& for modern era, the Google satellite views are pretty good... Yours, Mike.

One source are the SRS signal box diagrams - perhaps a bit before the era you want, but they give the general flavour: https://www.s-r-s.org.uk/html/gwa/S165.htm https://www.s-r-s.org.uk/html/gwa/S166.htm https://www.s-r-s.org.uk/html/gwa/S167.htm https://www.s-r-s.org.uk/html/gwa/S214.htm There are also useful O/S maps available on the Library of Scotland website here: https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16.0&lat=51.61333&lon=-1.24670&layers=193&b=1 Again, a bit before your era, I think, but a starting point. Yours, Mike.

Didcot is a very entertaining junction station, in that the line to Oxford has: a) bypass pair of mainlines on the north side for non-stop services between Oxford & Reading/London b) pair of tracks diverging towards Oxford right off the west end of the platforms, for stopping services c) triangle, with tracks going west towards Swindon as well as the eastbound tracks towards London d) Didcot station has a pair of high speed tracks east/west which each have platforms, but which have a good proportion of non-stop services going through at high speed. e) the tracks to the power station diverged on the west side of the triangle. The power station tracks had a large loop supporting the merry-go-round style of operation for coal trains. There is a significant set of sidings between the 5 platforms and the bypass lines to Oxford, a group of which make up the current GWS preservation site, the location of the former Didcot engine shed with its magnificent coaling stage. It's a busy place today and was even busier when the power station was still in operation. Yours, Mike.

Now, if you do that in relatively recent times (say, post 1990) then you could have a crack at both the mainline stuff and the preservation stuff at the GWS. HST @ 125MPH straight through the mainline platforms and 25MPH flat out on the GWS "main line" with a Castle or a King and a vintage coach or three :-). Pick the right dates and you'll also have the merry-go-round coal trains delivering to the power station. Yours, Mike.

True, but if that is the case, you will likely have a bigger problem of the switch blades not being fully home resulting in derailments. I spend time & effort when installing the motors to ensure correct alignment to so that this problem does not occur. Yours, Mike.

Switches built into point motors like the MTB MP1s don't have this problem. They are constructed to work in tandem with the motion of the motor and enable the frog polarity to match the position of the turnout tie bar. I have no problems with my 30+ MP1s. Yours, Mike.

I am already drawing my pension, but the "little hand-held screen" is exactly where I read my maps - including both the Tube map and also the more complex London Tube + Rail map. There isn't always some convenient map on a wall nearby to peruse . The assumption that old folks are clueless with tech is somewhat overdone, although I can agree that there is a higher proportion of older folk who are not comfortable with tech. Hell, I even drive my model railway off my smartphone... Yours, Mike.

A lesson learned a long time ago - which makes it very strange that it was not adopted before. Was it deliberate, I wonder? Yours, Mike.

The locals living along the line are going to love the disturbance at 3.00am - there has been grousing over the years in our local town about the stone trains that rumble through at similar hours, disturbing sleep as they go... Yours, Mike.

Maybe even named after a certain navigable river in Cheshire... Yours, Mike.

Hmm, we don't seem to have done that for most of our mainline railways, yet plenty of folk travel on them with few problems. Yours, Mike.

I can't agree that "Weaver" is inspired. I am pretty sure that most folk would be much more likely to associate the word "weaver" with the cotton weavers in Lancashire, the wool weavers in Yorkshire or the tweed weavers in Scotland (the borders and/or the various islands). The word does not conjure up the east end of London. Yours, Mike.

Long ago I used solenoids for turnouts, but my discovery of slow action motors has changed my outlook completely. All my turnout motors are now slow action (MTB MP1s in my case), driven from DCC accessory controllers and with no requirement for CDUs. The motors have a self contained switch to handle frog polarity on my electrofrog turnouts. Simple and straightforward. All this combines to enable computer control of the whole layout - covering locos, turnouts and signals. My "control panel" is now a computer touch screen - both a large static one in a fixed location and also small mobile ones in the form of smartphones. Yours, Mike.

DCC enabled turnout motors really can work with just 2 wires total - and those are usually droppers from a single 2 wire bus. More wires are only needed for additional tasks like controlling the frog polarity of electrofrog turnouts. DCC wiring can truly be simple - one 2 wire bus for the track and one 2 wire bus for the accessories, with droppers to the track and to the accessories. Something I never found possible with DC, since on DC there is the need to have isolated sections to hold locos and then switches to control the power to those sections. And each isolated section typically requires a pair of wires running back to a control panel of some kind. As for accessories like turnout motors, DC typically requires at least a pair of wires from control panel to each turnout motor - and similar for signals. On my current DCC layout the only long distance wiring is the 2 pairs of bus wires. I have nothing like the fat bundles of wires I had on previous DC layouts. Yours, Mike.

Perhaps you have not driven much recently and played the game of "dodge the potholes". The road maintenance budget has been savaged equally much. Yours, Mike.

Classic website mistake. The £9.99 one does not appear if you search for "Multimeter", but it does turn up if you go for "Electrical Testers". Iain gives you the direct link to the £9.99 model above. Yours, Mike.

Well, they tried this in real life on the GWSR at Broadway station and ran King Edward II over an incorrectly set loop turnout while running round. KE II got really upset about this and trashed the turnout comprehensively. The turnout required a rebuild and it was more than a month before they got it back in action. Tripping your DCC system seems a minor let-off by comparison, easily avoided by having separate trip devices for your track and for your accessories. Yours, Mike.