On 17/02/2020 at 08:00, Pete the Elaner said:

Did you photoshop that yourself or did you find it somewhere?

 

The pan is at the wrong end so the side grilles should be visible too.

The number on the front loco can just about to be made out as 86401, so where are the MU jumper blanking plates & why is it on 87 bogies?

It's my photoshop from my own photo of 86101 dragging 86401 from Crewe to Willesden at Cathiron nr Rugby. 17/09/2009 seems to be the date on the laptop, although I havent checked any workings for ACLG locos from around that time.

On 15/02/2020 at 08:39, woodenhead said:

Does it still need resilient wheels?

 

I thought they added those to make the 86/3 but as an 86/4 it also has the Flexicoil bouncy springy things making it the same as an 86/2 no?

As built, all class 86's were fitted with solid wheels. The forces on the track from the unsprung weight of several tons of angry wheel and traction motor, bouncing up and down at 100mph, knocked 7 bells out of the WCML track, and "wet spots" with a 20mph slack were a common feature.

60 AL6's were rebuilt with resilient wheels and flexicoil suspension in the early 1970's, later becoming class 86/2. The rest became class 86/0.

In the late 70's, the class 86/0's were derated to 80mph and (theoretically) restricted to freight use. A pressing need for 100mph locos saw 20 class 86/0's fitted with resilient wheels, becoming 86/3's. Later in the 1980's, all class 86/3's & 86/0's had flexicoil suspension added, becoming class 86/4.

Freightliner's fleet of 86/6's are essentially 86/4's but with solid wheels fitted. If allowed to run at 100mph, the same problem of damage to the track will occur, as the flexicoil springs do not change the unsprung weight of the wheelset and traction motors.

Edit: the difference between an 86/4 and an 86/2, apart from mu equipment, is that 86/4's (and their previous incarnations as 86/0 & 86/3) have less powerful traction motors than 86/2's. As far as I'm aware, they retain these traction motors as class 86/6.

Well, it was just as well the railway was mostly completed when it was, as it seems that it will be seeing a lot of extra use in the coming months. There are a lot of smaller detailing jobs that can still be done, but running the trains is going to be the order of the day for now 

A northbound freight and Express approach Harrow from the south. A Derby Lightweight Single Car DMU finds itself operating the off peak services on the Stanmore Branch.

Busy moment at Harrow. The northbound Liverpool Pullman overtakes a freight on the Down Slow Line. As a 304 passes on the Up Slow Line on a 'stopper' from Birmingham a Euston bound Express sweeps through on the Up Fast Line. In the background on the DC Lines a pair of 501s brake for the Harrow stop, as a 1938 tube set heads off for Watford.

On the southern approaches to Watford a northbound Express overtakes the Kings Cross to Tring Cement Empties. A DPU with 'Tail Traffic' head off along the Up Slow Line. In the background a Metropolitan A60 set sits in the Electric Siding waiting a platform, for its next run to Baker Street via the Croxley Link.

The Kings Cross to Tring Cement Empties race the Stanmore DMU into Harrow.

'Western Invader'. During their last years the 52s made occasional forays along the West Coast on freight workings. Although this example is relatively clean compared to the rather travel stained examples that could be observed at the time.

'Out in the sticks'. The Widnes to North Wembley BOC Tankers head south along the Up Slow Line at Linslade. In the other direction a Postal working passes a Freightliner.

A 31 heads south through Harrow, as the Euston bound Manchester Pullman dashes through on the Up Fast Line. In the background the humble 501s rumble on about their daily business.

The possibilities of a model railway. Watford Depot, that never was. Plenty of 25s to be seen, once an everyday sight at the southern end of the West Coast in the 1970s.

A pair of 20s heads north at Harrow on an empty wagon working destined for Toton via the Northampton to Market Harborough Line.

A 37 heads north at Watford with a train of four wheel petrol tankers. A pair of 310s call at platform 9 on their way into Euston. A Derby Lightweight DMU sits on the Depot Headshunt having arrived from Bletchley, as a Cravens 105 waits in platform 10 with the next service for St. Albans Abbey. In the North Bay a train of DMUs being made up ready to depart for Bletchley TMD.

Hi, I am hoping to build a model of this to run, its fascinating and provides an excuse to run diesels. 3 flickr photos have turned up, it appears to be 4 or more Gresley coaches and a cable winder which looks like the same as on original GNR type 6 wheel coaches used to electrify the line. It was kept at Penistone, pics include 31308 and 08052 hauled it at least once.

One coach had at least one pantograph in the Woodhead style.

Anyone know anymore? Thanks...in anticipation

On 25/01/2020 at 18:57, Edwin_m said:

If you'll allow rail-under-road bridges too, M1 junction 15a re-uses the one built for the Northampton-Blisworth line and a few miles south there's another one over the Towcester-Olney.  I think there was a discussion on here a few years back abour the latter railway being closed before the M1 opened.  Further north there's one over the GNR Nottingham-Kimberley line just north of J26, which may eventually become a tram extension.  And back to rail-over-road there's the one for the Luton-Dunstable line, now a busway.  

The M1 bridge over the Northampton - Blisworth line, taken in 1970 by Peter Narramore on an authorised walk along the line...

Breakdown cranes tended over time to be less used for their original purpose of clearing the line after accidents, as many of these situations could be dealt with by modern hydraulic jacks and road cranes, depending on the exact distance; fortunately there were less accidents as well, though one might have been forgiven for not realising this in Railtrack's 'glory' days in the late 90s and early noughties...  

In the time I worked at Canton in the 70s, the Canton breakdown was IIRC never deployed for a derailment (we were lucky not to have any bad ones), but it was in business several times for major civil engineering work, mostly lifting bridge girders into place.  The vans, with jacks, lifting gear, and timber baulks for raising stuff and mess/tool facilities, were out at least once a week to some minor incident or other, very often on Cardiff Docks and sometimes in the Tremorfa steelworks, which had a very good free canteen...

Probably the most difficult derailment recovery job in that time was a 37 that fell into the river Ebbw down a steep ravine at Cwm Colliery and took some time to deal with; this involved putting lifting beams across the ravine and winching the loco, and the 2 bogies separately, out of the hole they were in.  The crane was not used for this; there was no room between the siding and the edge of the drop for the legs.  There were claimed to be dead fishes in the cab when it was finally recovered; there was certainly a good deal of rather smelly sediment!

Can anyone tell me which W.R. early Castle class  loco's ended their working days still retaining the original scalloped inside cylinder cover.?

Thank you,  Keith.

Don't forget M. Philou's excellent maps!

More route learning insterspersed with working trains on the routes learned:-

Gloucester.

Plenty of interest here, and some gradients to worry about as well.  Up and down loops at Lydney and Grange Court, and a proper goods yard as well as the shipyard at Chepstow, but we never went in these places.  Later on I regularly worked the 05.30 dmu to Cardiff, first service of the day, which was usually more full as the empty stock on the way up, as it collected any Severn Tunnel traincrew that had fetched up at Canton or made their way to Newport overnight, usually a 120.  One of my colleages, Bob Jeffries, good mate, same age as me and much the same taste in music, was involved in a tragic incident with this train on the way up to Chepstow with the ecs one morning.  It was winter, pitch dark, and a stiff northeasterly breeze meant that a Per.Way gang working on the up main junction turnout at STJ and concentrating on what they were doing failed to see or hear them coming, and two of them were sadly run over.  I digress...

It was difficult to get night time experience during route learning and I appreciated the more experienced guards I rode with pointing out landmarks that would be useful at night and in poor visibility.  Some of these were bridges, useful for the change in noise as you passed beneath them, and some were lit features on nearby roads or in buildings.  You needed to know where to put your van brake on, and where to release it in order to avoid bumps and snatches that might break couplings and would certainly attract comment from your driver (fair enough, we would happily mention it to them if we thought they'd been a bit rough with us).  There was a morbid fear of breaking couplings but in fact this was a very rare occurrence and I only recall hearing of one incident of it for my entire career, which had occurred on the Gloucester Road but not to a Canton man.  The problem with night route learning was that, understandably, the company were reluctant to book you out at times for which enhanced rates of pay were applicable when you were not doing anything productive.

Part of route learning to Gloucester was The Windmill.  This was a pub up a side street just off Barton Road on the town side of the level crossing, and much frequented by railwaymen waiting for back workings or cushions home.  There was a long public bar along a street frontage, painted green one end and red the other, to separate the Western men from the Midland.  I thought this was a great tradition and good craic of course, but didn't take it seriously until elbowing my way in to a space at the bar up the red end one evening and being promptly told 'oi, Canton, f*ck off up your own end' in a Brummie accent.  How he knew my depot I have no idea, but I thought discretion was the better part and f*cked off up my own end...  This was a quarter century or so after the demise of both the GWR and the LMS, and half a century after the Midland Railway did all GW men a favour and ceased to exist.

Vale of Glamorgan

I had a week learning this with a job that we relieved in the station, a class 7, that like the early morning Jersey Marine train put traffic off at Margam, then ran light engine to Swansea High St Goods to work a fully fitted vacuum train back up, with a Hymek.  For the entire week I was booked to learn the Vale with it, it ran main line because of late arrival at Cardiff.  But I stuck with the crew and signed for Court Sart Jc to Swansea High Street at the end of the week.  They gave me anothe week over the Vale, this time with a Barry crew on an Aberthaw-Blaenant MGR job. 

Cushions to Barry, picked up the MGR as it collected the wagons from one of the sidings, and away to Jersey Marine, where the train reversed and picked up an air-braked brake van, purpose revealed shortly.  which was left for us on the hump and which we rolled down by gravity to the rear of the train.  Off up to Blaenant, where the train pulled up clear of the top points and was let back down the bank through the loader three hoppers at a time, controlled by a travelling shunter from Jersey Marine using the air brake setter (exhaust valve) in the van.  As the site was on a curve in heavily wooded country, by the time he could no longer see handsignals from the NCB shunter on the ground, this shunter could be seen from the loco, so the process continued,  Once the train was loaded, we pulled forward into the loop and cut the loco off to run around for the drop back down the hill to Jersey Marine through the ruins of Neath Riverside. 

This was the Neath & Brecon Railway route, still open up to Craig y Nos Quarry.  In the northern outskirts of Neath, it ran along the back fence of a place called Penscynor Bird Gardens, which anyone of a certain age from South Wales will remember as somewhere you went on a day trip when it was raining, along with Dan yr Ogof Caves (and dinosaur park), a sort of mini zoo with exotic birds and a petting zoo for the kids.  Almost everybody had a car window sticker from this place.  Anyway, the news that week was that an ostrich had escaped and was manfully evading recapture, being sighted all over the place.   We went to town with this on the journals in the 'remarks' columns, reporting sightings of the ostrich, herds of wildebeeste sweeping majestically across the Serengeti, lions, tigers, pink elephants, Moby Dick, zebras crossing, luncheon vultures, and all sorts...

Then home via Aberthaw CEGB, which I had to learn anyway.  One reported to the 'main discharge control office' when one arrived at the reception roads, which was upstairs and had a grand view of operations.  There were all sorts of consoles with flashing lights and dials, don't think anybody knew what any of them did but they looked the part.  Another feature of Aberthaw CEGB was the moon pool.  This was buried deep in the very bowels of the boiler house, and was where the seawater intake from the concrete platform half a mile offshore came out.  This platform had an abandoned Ruston Bucyrus crane on it that had been used in it's construction, gradually deteriorating in the salt air; it lost it's jib in a storm a few years later.  Anyway, back to the moon pool, this always had a fine variety of live fishes that had come in with the seawater, cod, hake, skate, plaice, you name it.  Water went through a filter from the moon pool to evaporate the salt out and render it suitable for the boiler, which could also be oil-fired if needed.  If you brought a plastic bucket, there was a net you could borrow to catch any you wanted and them home, alive, for your supper.  I am rather fond of skate wings, fried in butter, and seasoning in a bit of tomato paste, but dabs (small plaice, you need about half a dozen to make a decent meal) were another regular from the moon pool.  I was introduced to the delights of conger eel steak from this source as well; these were killed and cut up on site.  You didn't want one of those b*ggers thrashing around in a loco cab, all head and teeth and a serious attitude problem.  Saw one snapping and trying to get it's own back on the bloke who'd severed it's head about ten minutes earlier, nasty sods*.

There was an urban myth in the area that skate could not be brought ashore whole and the wings, the edible bit, had to be cut off at sea aboard the trawler, because the fish's body had genitalia similar to human (sort of, but you'd need a good imagination).  Nonsense of course, but there were several people who told me I couldn't bring live skate home with me for that reason. 

Then you reboarded the loco for the computer-controlled run through the discharge hoppers, then over a weighbridge, which gave you the empty load (which you knew already, the same as yesterday), and right away Barry to be dropped off for cushions home.

I enjoyed my week with the Barry men, which finished rather pleasantly with a session in the BRSA (staff club) at Barry on the Friday.  My route knowledge net was spreading ever wider... though it was some time before I had occasion to work over the whole of the Vale line again, and when I did it was at night.  The Barry men's tuition was good, which was just as well because once you get past Llantwit Major it's blacker than the inside of a cow down there...

*One of the funniest things I ever saw in my life involved a conger eel.  I had foolishly allowed myself to be persuaded by a 'chum' that sea fishing was the mutt's wotsits, and agreed to a day on the end of Barry Harbour breakwater with a borrowed rod and a bucket of maggots, in December, in a strong easterly wind, on a spectacularly dull and cold day.  The idea was that we were going to catch cod (a world record, 44lbs, had been set at this unlikely spot the previous year), and a haddock if we were lucky, or a Hake if we were very lucky.  There were about half a dozen likely characters huddled around the lighthouse for shelter, including my oppo and me. 

Nobody caught anything except colds, except one chap who was casting on the harbour side of the breakwater.  He managed to hook a conger, about three feet, which gave him a hell of a struggle as he got it clear of the water and up over the rocks that made the breakwater.  He was a big strong lad, but this eel was clearly about his limit.  He eventually got it up the bank, took about forty minutes, and then had a time of it subdueing it.  They are basically half head with extra teeth and half pure muscle that you can't get a grip on, and it took several of us to hold it reasonably still while he administered the last rites, with a 5lb sledge hammer, whack, and Mr Conger shivered a bit, and then lay very still, lifeless. 

About half an hour after this it started getting dark, not that it was the sort of day that had ever really been properly light, and a general concensus of opinion was that we should all warm up over a pint in the pub at the top of the hill, the Marine Hotel, long gone now but the building is still there.  If I'm honest, I'd given up hours before, and so had my maggots, and the conger was the highlight of the day, or so I thought at the time.  It was just about to get better, much better...

We were walking along the top of the breakwater towards the landward end, and our hero had his prize slung over his shoulder, it's lifeless head swinging side to side, very stone age man.  Now, I must pause in the narrative to recall Rod Hull and Emu.  Mr Conger decided at this point that he wasn't quite as dead as we'd thought he was (that hammer blow would have seen off Smaug the Dragon, surely).  He lifted his head, looked straight at me, turned it side to side exactlly like Emu checking for witnesses, and clamped his considerable jaws around our hero's neck!

'Get it off me, get it off me, help, it's gonna kill me, get it off me, stop laughing you 'stard and pull it off me': nope, the comedy had got to me and I was helpless laughing at the poor so-and-so, nothing I could do.  Luckily, the others present were less heartless, and after a fairly heroic struggle, managed to prise the monster's jaws apart for our poor hero to release himself.  Mr Conger then promptly slithered back whence he came over the rocks, giving us a particularly expressive backwards 'ferkyew' glance just before entering the water.  I apologised profusely to the victim, who eventually saw the funny side, but thought it was only right to buy him the first pint, after all he'd been the best part of an otherwise miserable day!  He was wearing an industrial grade full on Nanouk of the North anorak, the thickness of which probably saved him from any real harm.

Never went fishing again after that.  It was never ever going to be as funny again, ever!

24th April 1971

Southall-Paddington-Southall

D817 865   D1024 D1027 D1034 D1068   1558 1584 1607 1666 1679 1681 1714 1721 1918   5539   D7046 D7088

Kings  Cross

169  1508 1516 1548   5602 5622 5642 5647 5677   9012

St Pancras and Kentish Town

12 47 49 61 64 88 104 121 123   3188 3306   5182 5216

Euston

5220  E3102 E3104 E3110 E3114 E3115 E3120 E3129 E3142 E3146 E3154 E3163 E3165 E3168 E3178 E3190 E3199 E3200

Neil.

If you are modelling Deutsche Bundesbahn in the 1950s but are short of German coaching stock, feel free to drop in a Mk1 BCK behind the Danish coach:

The consensus here (German) is that it is indeed a Mk1, but no conclusion has been reached as to the how and why.

Sorry to hear this, please see the following for details on how to get in contact and resolve the issue - https://www.national-preservation.com/threads/trying-to-register-email-verification-problem-please-read-as-important.1423700/