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If a carriage was to be used at all for revenue earning purposes, its roof had to be watertight. That might be achieved with a new coat of white-lead paint or it might mean recanvassing (which again would result in a freshly painted finish).

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16 hours ago, 88D said:

The weird thing about this photo is that the white-roofed vehicle behind the loco appears to be a clerestory. Surprising that they would do it up at that late stage of its career? Unless my eyes aren’t what they were, and my point would then be pointless!

 

Your eyes are fine, it is a clerestory (mentioned in the post with the pic). The pic was taken in 1929 so all I see is a coach that is still fit for traffic and recently been through the works. there's a whole rake of clerestories on the trakc to the left of that one, albeit a lot more weathered.

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32 minutes ago, 57xx said:

 

Your eyes are fine, it is a clerestory (mentioned in the post with the pic). The pic was taken in 1929 so all I see is a coach that is still fit for traffic and recently been through the works. there's a whole rake of clerestories on the trakc to the left of that one, albeit a lot more weathered.

Idiot me. I had read this was the 1950 photo, not the 1929 photo. Still, glad to know that my eyes are ok, if not my brain cells!

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In 1929 Swindon was in the process of life extending clerestories with electric lighting and I assume the 1929 Westbury shot shows just that. As an example, The D33 shown elsewhere on this site, was rebuilt in 1928 having look outs removed, electric lighting and clerestory windows plate over. This gave them another 10 years of life.

 

The train is at in the carriage sidings. It was common practice for a short train from Weymouth to arrive from the left of the image and then a set of carriages added from the siding and the train continued as an express to London. It was usual for the dining car and the rear coaches to be removed at Westbury on Down workings. In the image the last coach is a 70ft diner H15/24 or similar and this would fit in with this practice. In 1929 Westbury was still using 4-4-0 counties alongside Saints on this duty.

 

Mike Wiltshire

Edited by Coach bogie
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On 19/09/2020 at 22:39, Steamport Southport said:

 

Urban myth about buildings being covered in soot I'm afraid.

 

It's one of those ideas trotted out by environmentalists even back in the day.

 

When they clean buildings such as the Palace of Westminster and ones such as the Liver Buildings in Liverpool it is the stone naturally darkening with age which turns them dark, not pollution and certainly not "soot".

 

They are just going back to their natural colour. It's only when they are freshly cut that they are bright colours, but people like them that way so they are constantly cleaning them to make them look new. Thereby causing more damage than if you left them to naturally go dark.

 

It's a geologist you need to talk to, not a chemist.

Well here is a photo of some black gritstone, just like I remember it from when I was a kid. The stone began to be sandblasted in the 60s and now 50-60 years later it is still pale in colour (throughout N Lancashire and W Yorkshire) as a result of massive industrial decline and Clean Air Acts.  Above Rochdale is Blackstone Edge. As a kid I thought (like everyone else) it was because the stone was black. In fact the name was originally Blakestone Edge, meaning Palestone Edge. So the stone was pale sandstone for a long time, till the industrial revolution turned it black.

wall.jpg.5dd965ec7068ca045391ef506963eee7.jpg

Edited by webbcompound
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22 hours ago, webbcompound said:

Well here is a photo of some black gritstone, just like I remember it from when I was a kid. The stone began to be sandblasted in the 60s and now 50-60 years later it is still pale in colour (throughout N Lancashire and W Yorkshire) as a result of massive industrial decline and Clean Air Acts.  Above Rochdale is Blackstone Edge. As a kid I thought (like everyone else) it was because the stone was black. In fact the name was originally Blakestone Edge, meaning Palestone Edge. So the stone was pale sandstone for a long time, till the industrial revolution turned it black.

wall.jpg.5dd965ec7068ca045391ef506963eee7.jpg

When I first visited Hebden Bridge in the mid-late 70s, all the buildings were black. Loads of people had told me how pretty HB was, and I thought it looked a dump. Within 5 or 6 years so much sandblasting had been done, it had changed completely, and, yes, it looked pretty. Some of the buildings looked weird because they had been sand-blasted too much!

coming back to railway roof colour, my time period is too late for white rooves. But I paint in various shades of grey and highlight certain areas: toilet tanks, sorted gas lamps, etc. So that no train has a uniform roof colour.

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