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TheSignalEngineer

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Everything posted by TheSignalEngineer

  1. I believe that Red Panda are now owned by Phoenix Precision Paints. I bought a Red Panda wagon from the H&A stand at a show about 12 months ago so hopefully they are still be available as I need another chassis for a conversion job.
  2. And the spell checker is no use if you use the wrong word but spell it correctly
  3. From a press report last week it looks as if WCRC has no intention of fitting CDL this year. https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2024/03/west-coast-railways-submits-new-heritage-train-exemption-application.html
  4. The colour rendition of my two eyes is not an exact match.
  5. I was referring to the danger to Hornby. I know exactly what asset stripping is, having been taken over by a large comglomorate which was in turn 'merged' with another one. They didn't know the product, didn't know the market and were only interested in getting their cut. They bought and sold companies or reorganised every few week it seemed. All turned nasty in the end as the share price crashed due to problems with deliveries on hi-tech projects. I understand they managed to find enough buyers for the various product divisions amongst competitors to pay off the debts and not go into liquidation. Fortunately I had left long before that happened.
  6. If I were at Hornby I would be more worried at who was taking an interest in the company's shares. Fortunately there's still life in the hobby, we haven't yet got to a category for Asset Stripper of the Year'.
  7. A couple of examples from my past. First at Langley Green Middle. It's low for sighting under the footbridge. The R/H doll used to carry the distant arm for Langley Green East. Off topic note:- Tin shed on left is Cox & Danks who cut up a few locos in the 1960s including some Kings. Next a standard GWR bracket for the Up Through line at Leamington with Gallows Bracket extemside to the left foe the Up Platform. It hangs down for sighting under the canopy. This was its replacement. IIRC the red aspects were 16'6" Above Rail Level
  8. The Requirements were a minefield of Must Do, Desirable, contradiction and getout clauses. The 'Desirable Standard' structure gauge for steam and 3rd rail shown on the drawing in the Requirements was 15 feet above the running rail. Company loading gauges at the time of the 1928 Requirements varied between 13 feet and 13 feet 9 inches. The standard clearance above loading gauge was shown in the text as 12 inches. In certain circunstances this could be reduced as low as 6 inches with special permission from the Inspectorate.
  9. I've just corrected the platform headroom to 8 feet as in the Requirements in 1928 and 1950. My memory let me down but it is about 30 years since I personally signed off the paperwork for one. We did tend to design to have the bottom of the structure of a colour light at a bare minimum of 11 feet above rail rather than measuring from the platform. You would always get a clever b******** who would decide that rebuilding thesubstandard platform would after all be in the project the week after the signal had been installed. One Inspecting Officer seemed very keen on what he called the Umberella Effect. That was a SPAD caused by a driver not seeing a red aspect as a city gent was holding his open brolly in line of sight.
  10. It is the clearance to any part if the structure, be it post, flitches, arms. If a lower quadrant arm is hung down from the roof or a gallows bracket it would be to the tip ofthe arm in the OFF position
  11. It also depends where they were located if they were outside the minimum required clearance from the side of the track they could be any height. We had one at Langley Green where you could virtually step onto the landing from ground level. Different rules applied if situated on the passenger areas of a platform. In this situation the required clearance was the whole structure to be at least 6 feet back from the platform edge and providing 8 feet 6 inches clear headroom above the platform surface.
  12. Non-electrified lines loading gauge plus 12 inches was specified for steam traction at least as far back as the 1928 Requirements. If possible electrification was to be considered it was 15 feet above rail level.
  13. Drainage outside the railway is an old problem. The flooding at Walsall was usually caused by blockages of the culverts and bridges in the stream coming down from Ryecroft. In the early days of Railtrack we were asked to lead an infrastructure condition survey with emphasis on the state of signalling. We took on board experienced ex BR Pway and bridge engineers to accompany us on site visits. When I presented the preliminary report to the client I was asked what I thought were the biggest risks to the reliability of the train service as far as the infrastructure was concerned. The Railtrack man was expecting me to point out deficiencies in the signalling but I chose two other risks. One was the number of bridge bashes particularly at two locations with a lot of HGV traffic where visibility was poor and signage needed to be better. The other was the amount of waterlogged cess areas due to lack of maintenance on cutting faces and draiinage. One particular area was in Smethwick where there is a culverted stream above the railway which IIRC crosses under the cutting in a siphon. I found an historical incident during my research for possible causes. My draft note in the report was "It is possible that this comes from the lake in West Smethwick Park as this has been the cause of previous major flooding. In 1927 following heavy rain water overflowed from an undertrack culvert. It ran down the gradient (through Smethwick West) and round the curve to Galton Junction washing out the Stour Valley Line. It was estimated that 5000 tons of debris was washed into the canal. LMS Birmingham to Wolverhampton rail services were suspended for four days but complete clearance of the canal took nine weeks." I can't find my source document at the moment but I have a picture of the 1927 washout somewhere and how many hundred men it took to clear the line and replace the ballast during the four days of blockage.
  14. Was Walsall No.3 the only signal box to be provided with a lifeboat service?
  15. For many years we have always made a large (25cm diameter, 10cm deep including marzipan and icing) Christmas Cake in the family tradition of my grandmother and mother. They were designed to do at least 12 people on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, a few New Years Eve visitors, plus a bit for the milkman, baker, coalman etc. Unfortunately I'm the only one left who eats it, so I set myself a target of finishing it by Lady Day, 25th March. I'm doing well this year, only about 6 servings left.
  16. That's the area I was thinking it was. There are about 25 disused shafts there up to at least 250 years old. They definitely predated the railway. The big hole in the ground to the north of the line was the clay pit for the brick and tile works next to the LNWR Coalport Branch. Looking at old pictures on Google Earth there was a lot of work done next to the railway about 10-15 years ago. This, looking North, shows the old clay its alongside the railway c2012. Looking South I don't like the look of that black stuff in the embankment. Looks too much like the stuff under the Mam Tor Road.
  17. Not only with the drainage system. When we used to do the school run to pick up grandchildren we had a game amongst the families to guess where the next water leak would be. Every couple of weeks the water would start coming up through the road so it duly got reported to United Utilities. A few days later the temporary light would go up and chaos would endue for about a week. We would give our predictions of where and when water would next appear through the road surface after the supply was turned back on. Rather than renew the main, their long term solution is to reduce the pressure by 25% so that the water takes longer to reach the surface. Cadent are even worse. It took them Nine Years to find a leak by Marple Station. Actually it turned out more serious as just about every joint for about 400 metres was not gas tight. After they had tried to fix them on numerous occasions they found that some sections of pipe were life expired and about 200 metres has recently been replaced. What started as an emergency job to fix a leak ended up taking 64 days with a complete road closure.
  18. Looking at the pictures of the Wellington - Oakengates slip there's about four times as much ballast below sleeper level as when I used to work along there in the 1970s. That would be about 3 - 4 tonnes more stone per metre of railway, plus the extra weight of concrete sleepers and heavier rail.
  19. I'm not sure of the exact location but it looks like around Hadley. That area is riddled with old mineshafts and there were opencasts and clay pits everywhere.
  20. Not 1980s but this link should get you to the London Road Stage 2 resignalling in 1960 https://www.s-r-s.org.uk/pullfree.asp?FilePath=ArchiveSignals\Downloads\brmr&FileName=1960-400g.pdf
  21. @Islesy Despite two attempts on here I haven't had any respomse about this. The Accurascale 1950-61 sets have upright vacuum pipes as I would expect but the TMC 2 set has hanging ones. Despite two weeks of trying I haven't yet found a picture of hanging vacuum pipes except on Yellow Spot vans. Do you have any evidence of them being fitted with hanging pipes before the days of the Yellow Spot upgrades. Thanks. Eric
  22. Correct. The use of suspended gangways on the LMS started with the Stanier era. They had been used on the GWR from c1925. I'm not sure what bit the Mainline ones actually represent. They look a bit like something from old Triang stable. The Replica and Bachmann ones came with the same type as the Airfix/Mainline Period 3 coaches. Mine still have the original ones as I can't tell the difference in the middle of the train. I'm just doing some more P1/P2 stock which is having scissors type and I may modify those on the brake coaches when those are finished, as there are only the Leeds Forge BTO, a Period 1 BCK and two BTKs. One of them is showing some signs of degrading. Besides the Comet scissors ones Ratio did a plastic version with end boards which is now done by Peco as Parkside PA111.
  23. @Accurascale Fran I'm still looking for a picture of 1950s livery vans (no yellow spot) with hanging vacuum pipes rather than upright ones. Has your team got one?
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