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Annie's Virtual Pre-Grouping, Grouping and BR Layouts & Workbench


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6 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

Not being familiar with the area, I'm wondering if there was a lot of seasonal fruit or veg traffic which went by passenger train and the barrows were there to transport it between the carts and the train across the platform?

 

Jim

That is highly likely as agricultural produce was a major traffic for the railways in East Anglia.  I don't know a great deal about Aldeburgh either as it was images of the station that I'd found that prompted me to post that particular photograph.

 

Aldeburgh station before BR demolished the train shed.  (Photos Edward Lawrence collection) 

hcZazGw.jpg

 

Aldeburgh signal box and engine shed.

QpftaWe.jpg

 

gv51wi8.jpg

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Broad Gauge cheer up picture:  This grainy photo of Abingdon station is reasonably well known, but I like it so I'm posting it.  The Abingdon branch opened on the 2nd June 1856 and was converted to coal cart gauge standard gauge on the 26th November 1872.

At the request of the Abingdon Railway directors, The GWR officially absorbed the line on 1st September 1904.  Passenger service ceased on 7 September 1963, but freight and private traffic of coal and MG cars for export kept the line open until June 1984.

 

ixIjcKu.jpg

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5 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

What's the diamond on the engine's buffer beam? Is it related to the diamond seen on engine headlamps?

A lot of Broad Gauge engines carried a pair of white diamonds on their buffer beams or on a separate board above the beam.  There are various opinions on their use but they are most likely to be the early equivalents of yellow ends.  They may have aided look-outs to judge the distance of an approaching train.

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21 minutes ago, Annie said:

This grainy photo of Abingdon station is reasonably well known, but I like it so I'm posting it. 

My home town - but the station has largely disappeared under a supermarket car-park.  The building in the background on the right of the photo survives, however, as shown in my photo, below:

AbingdonStationYard2021.jpg.44ebb9c21b95c703c57e74664191a109.jpg

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Thanks Mike, - it's good to know that such a wonderful old building has survived even if the station hasn't.   I wonder how much of Britain's railway heritage ended up under supermarket car parks, - or any kind of car park for that matter (sigh).

Thanks too for explaining about the white buffer beam diamonds as I had often wondered about them, but hadn't been able to find anything saying what they were for.

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I think the other thing of note in that picture is the rails. There’s a shadow along the side indicating they’re Vignoles section, rather than bridge rails. So the question is, how is it sleepered? There’s seems to be a faint part of a transverse sleeper sticking out, and the rail fastenings look that way, but could just quite as easily be baulks?

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2 hours ago, Northroader said:

I think the other thing of note in that picture is the rails.

Funny you should say that Mr Northroader as I was having a small frown at that old photo and wondering the same thing myself.

There is a noticeable difference as compared to this photo taken at Didcot station where the track definitely is the baulk road.

 

Y8c97tc.jpg

 

And then there's this photo taken at Minehead and I'll bet my best cloche hat that those are transverse sleepers.

 

Gy6JpjS.jpg

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13 hours ago, Northroader said:

But Abingdon happened quite a bit earlier 1856 than Minehead 1874 when you could expect branch add ons to be in transverse sleepering.

I've asked if anybody knows what the original trackwork was at Abingdon, but I doubt that I'm going to get any kind of authoritative answer.

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ju8D1sF.jpg

 

As promised 'Sharpie' No.065 has been joined by 'Sharpie' No.066.  I decided that they should both have light grey cab roofs, - because why should the Stratford Works built engines have all the fun.  My attempt at trying to give them Sharp Stewart builders plates failed though as no matter what I did they came out looking blurred.  I did find the texturing to be a little strange to work with on these engines so in the end I gave up and removed them.  I don't think there's going to be anymore ultramarine painted 'Sharpies' than these two unless something startling arises once I start looking at the branchlines on the Eastlingwold & Great Mulling.

I've removed all four 'Buckjumpers'  I had on the layout since it really would not be likely that condensing gear equipped rebuilt R24's would be assigned to somewhere like wot my layout represents (whatever that is).  The C32 2-4-2T's can take over their role on the secondary mainline routes and the two 'Sharpie' 2-4-2T's can take over their tasks on the lightly laid branchlines.

 

In other news my new spectacles arrived, but there was a hidden crack in the frames and they snapped in half almost as soon as I picked them up.  They've gone back to the optometrist to be sorted out and they said that they'd deliver them to me once they were repaired. 

Which is really good because I'm still struggling with being fatigued after even the most simple tasks.  However I now know why that is so (dun dun dun......!). 

Some years ago I came down with a really bad dose of the 'flu and to cut a long story short I ended up developing ME/CFS and I was pretty darn poorly with it for about 10 years before it faded out a bit and didn't bother me so much.  Some doctors say you can't get both ME/CFS and Narcolepsy, but on the other hand some doctors should really go and find themselves another profession since they are rubbish at being a doctor.  Some doctors also said that ME/CFS was a psychological illness and not real at all, BUT some very interesting research is being done by a couple of NZ medical researchers who have traced molecular changes in the body due to viral infections and they have shown that ME/CFS and also Long COVID (which is similar to ME/CFS) are very real indeed and can show exactly why they happen. 

While I was reading an article about all of this over breakfast this morning a particular paragraph made me sit up and take notice.  It seems that research had also been done to find out what happens if people who have had ME/CFS are given COVID vaccinations AND what happens is that all their symptoms come galloping back and knock them flat!

Strange as it might seem it is really good to finally know why I've been so trashed out after having my jabs.  And while what happened isn't good, - it's certainly better than gasping my last with ventilator plumbing stuffed down my throat.  And I will be getting my booster jabs as well even if I get trashed again because it's better than being dead.

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6 hours ago, Annie said:

I've asked if anybody knows what the original trackwork was at Abingdon, but I doubt that I'm going to get any kind of authoritative answer.

 

Annie, if you know who was the engineer in charge of the line's construction , then his other rail contracts (if any!) might give a clue.

 

PS. your note about connection between vaccination, long covid and ME/CFS was interesting, I've not seen any such report here in the UK,

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2 hours ago, DonB said:

PS. your note about connection between vaccination, long covid and ME/CFS was interesting, I've not seen any such report here in the UK,

This is the article on the radio New Zealand website Don.  https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/what-you-need-to-know/456714/is-long-covid-a-new-type-of-chronic-fatigue-syndrome

 

2 hours ago, DonB said:

Annie, if you know who was the engineer in charge of the line's construction , then his other rail contracts (if any!) might give a clue.

Yes that's a possibility.  The Disused Station website only dusts over the line's construction fairly lightly, but possibly someone at the Broad Gauge Society might know.  The earliest 25 inch to the mile OS map the NLS has is 1910 unfortunately, but they do have a 6 inch to the mile map from the 1875 survey which is better than nothing.

 

Edit: Possibly this book might be of use; - Trippett, Nigel; de Courtais, Nicholas (1985). The Abingdon Branch. Upper Bucklebury, Berks.: Wild Swan Publications Ltd. ISBN 0-906867-29-0.  

 

Edit edit: A search on the BGS website turned up this, - only you'll need to become one of the blessed elect in order to access such arcane knowledge that is not for the eyes of lesser beings.

 

RexLuO3.jpg

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9 hours ago, Annie said:

Some doctors also said that ME/CFS was a psychological illness and not real at all,

Certainly not true.  I had a young patient who developed it very severely as a student.  her mother used to phone the practice and say "She's awake.  Can I bring her round for her check-up right now?"!

 

Jim

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15 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

Certainly not true.  I had a young patient who developed it very severely as a student.  her mother used to phone the practice and say "She's awake.  Can I bring her round for her check-up right now?"!

 

Jim

I was lucky Jim as my GP at the time was a very experienced English doctor who had seen patients with post-viral syndrome and ME/CFS before I came to see him.  I have heard from others here in NZ who weren't so lucky though and had a terrible time with doctors who thought it 'was all in their mind' and tried fob them off with antidepressants.

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fX3LJFY.jpg

 

As interesting as it all is I don't want to distract myself with Broad Gauge branchlines at the moment as I'd really like to get the landscape and scenic work around the Tenpenny branch and Foxwood branch completed before wandering off somewhere else.

Originally there were three not very well done brick overbridges on what is now the Foxwood branch.  After demolishing the most easterly of the bridges this is what I replaced it with.  It involved a far bit of fiddly work to get it to look like this and I'm happy with how it turned out.  After having a closer look at the second bridge I decided it was serving roads that were fairly close to those served by the bridge I'd just completed so I deleted the bridge and the roads and tidied up the field boundary hedges and landscape so it looked like it had never been there.  When all is said and done I'm not in the business of pandering to road users.

So there is just one bridge left to do and I can't delete that one as it's serving a fairly important road from Mirely St Marys, crossing over the branchline and onwards to the road that meanders in a largely unhurried fashion round about and in between the towns along the coast.   So I tried various bridge kit pieces and didn't like any of them and I ended up deciding to do a repeat of the bridge I did earlier.  I would like to find a wider version of the bridge if possible so I don't end up having to make too many changes to the roads, but if I can't I won't shed too many tears over it.

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23 hours ago, Annie said:

This is the article on the radio New Zealand website Don.  https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/what-you-need-to-know/456714/is-long-covid-a-new-type-of-chronic-fatigue-syndrome

 

Yes that's a possibility.  The Disused Station website only dusts over the line's construction fairly lightly, but possibly someone at the Broad Gauge Society might know.  The earliest 25 inch to the mile OS map the NLS has is 1910 unfortunately, but they do have a 6 inch to the mile map from the 1875 survey which is better than nothing.

 

Edit: Possibly this book might be of use; - Trippett, Nigel; de Courtais, Nicholas (1985). The Abingdon Branch. Upper Bucklebury, Berks.: Wild Swan Publications Ltd. ISBN 0-906867-29-0.  

 

Edit edit: A search on the BGS website turned up this, - only you'll need to become one of the blessed elect in order to access such arcane knowledge that is not for the eyes of lesser beings.

 

RexLuO3.jpg

The photo in the Lawrence Waters book is slightly better quality than the scan , but I don't think it helps.

 

 

20211129_114631.jpg.3a97e4e8578853d9b1184a1dab14256f.jpg

 

all my broadsheets are still in a box somewhere after last year's move so I can't look at that article. 

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On 28/11/2021 at 12:04, Annie said:

Edit edit: A search on the BGS website turned up this, - only you'll need to become one of the blessed elect in order to access such arcane knowledge that is not for the eyes of lesser beings.

As one of the "blessed elect", I had a look at the BGS Broadsheet article but it is silent on the subject of the rails type.  Its author, Brian Arman, does however confirm my explanation of the purpose of the white diamonds: i.e. that they were warning signs.  He also draws attention to the disk hanging from the lamp bracket on the engine.  This was probably red and would have been reversed to show white, when the train began its return journey. 

 

The following photo shows the use of a separate board to carry the white diamonds:

 

1855474790_SDR_Aurora800x600.jpg.2a65daeeb70a94a19ea3583181b105ca.jpg

'Aurora' 4-4-0ST

 

Another possibility for the rail type is Barlow rail, which was used quite widely in the early days of the GWR.  This rail used no baulks or cross-ties and was notoriously difficult to keep to gauge.  The Obituary of William Henry Barlow states ".... Mr. Barlow designed a saddleback rail, known as the ‘‘ Barlow ’’ rail, which was at one time largely used, notably on the Great Western Railway, where it may still be seen in some of the sidings in the country station-yards."  On the other hand, pieces of bridge rail have turned up, being used as fence posts, along the length of the Abingdon Branch.

 

Mike

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On 28/11/2021 at 12:04, Annie said:

Edit edit: A search on the BGS website turned up this, - only you'll need to become one of the blessed elect in order to access such arcane knowledge that is not for the eyes of lesser beings.

 

 

23 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

As one of the "blessed elect", I had a look at the BGS Broadsheet article but it is silent on the subject of the rails type.  Its author, Brian Arman, does however confirm my explanation of the purpose of the white diamonds: i.e. that they were warning signs.  He also draws attention to the disk hanging from the lamp bracket on the engine.  This was probably red and would have been reversed to show white, when the train began its return journey. 

 

The following photo shows the use of a separate board to carry the white diamonds:

 

Blessed elect or damned well-informed?

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17 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

 

Blessed elect or damned well-informed?

A bit of both really.

 

43 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

On the other hand, pieces of bridge rail have turned up, being used as fence posts, along the length of the Abingdon Branch.

I suppose that makes for a strong arguement that baulk road track was used at Abingdon.

 

23 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

He also draws attention to the disk hanging from the lamp bracket on the engine.  This was probably red and would have been reversed to show white, when the train began its return journey. 

Something else I didn't know about, - so thank you very much Brian Arman.

 

52 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

The following photo shows the use of a separate board to carry the white diamonds:

And thanks Mike for posting that very useful photo.

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2 hours ago, MikeOxon said:

As one of the "blessed elect"

Alright I'll be sensible from now on and stop making silly jokes about the BGS and them possessing arcane wisdom & etc.  :(

 

So far shunting and trip working hasn't shown any problems with any of the new trackwork which is definitely a good thing.  The weed afflicted half buried trackwork in the yards at Tenpenny wharf might look much the same, but a fair bit of alignment adjusting had to be done to get the new 60lb procedural track to work properly.  With the old flatbottomed rail that was there before it didn't matter too much if the alignment was a bit off.  The cattle vans are 1860's ex-LNWR in case anybody is wondering.

 

4i2gwRR.jpg

 

 

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Broad Gauge cheer up picture:  Ostrich, one of the ten 2-4-0s of the Hawthorn class rebuilt as 2-4-0 saddle tanks in 1877 stands on the Newton Abbot traverser.  Newton Abbot Goods Shed is in the background. The photograph is believed to have been taken circa 1890.

(Broad Gauge Society: Broadsheet 43)

8Awe00k.jpg

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