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Sheffield Exchange, Toy trains, music and fun!


Clive Mortimore
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4 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Anthracite fuelled ranges  - I believe the LNER definitely had some too in kitchen cars.   Basically no different from cooking on a range at home but no doubt a larger range with more than one oven and hotplates.

Thanks for that. I wouldn’t have thought that hot coals would be permitted in a moving train.  Maybe is was safer that it sounds.  Maybe the cleaner that emptied ash from the smoke box cleaned the cooking range as well ? :)

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2 hours ago, Tim Dubya said:

 

and I believe 3rd RTR are know as the 'Armoured Farmers'?

I never had anything to do with 3 RTR. When with 10 Fld Workshops we shared 2 RTR's cookhouse for a while. I was on detachment to 1RTR, where everyone wore a black beret. Modifying traversing gears on Scorpion tanks. I was traversing the turret on one a spotted a group of black berets close to the tank through the gunners sight. I shouted out "Turret traversing, get your f'ing heads out the way." Crash bang as I heard someone climb on the tank and next thing an upside down RSM head appeared in the commanders hatch. "Next time you tell the colonel to get his f'ing head out the way remember to say SIR". 

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5 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

The big tractors and combines around here don't need a driver, just tell its computer where you are and off it goes ploughing or harvesting on its own. If the law would allow it they would travel from field to field on the roads driverless guided by GPS.

 

All the farmers kids around here can drive by 16 years old.

Modern tractors?
off, we have these John Bloody Deere tractors on the airport for snow clearance, I can't start the , they are alchemy to me.
I worked in agric for 30years.
Tractors have become this 'other land'.:lol:
GPS?
I spread fertiliser and sprayed by eye. OK, my kit was miniscule compared to the 'OUT THERE' stuff now.
If I was, still, in agric, my biggest tractor would be a 'Ferguson 65.
You can see, from this, I'm completely out of touch with modern mixed farming...... OR AM I??????????

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5 hours ago, jazzer said:

Thanks for that. I wouldn’t have thought that hot coals would be permitted in a moving train.  Maybe is was safer that it sounds.  Maybe the cleaner that emptied ash from the smoke box cleaned the cooking range as well ? :)

Ah but Jazzer mate, they were made when the thing up front doing the pulling was more of a fire risk than the chef's little stove. 

 

The LMS did try electric cooking but that required diesel -generators on the coach. Not until the wide spread use of electric heating via a diesel electric loco or an electric loco was electric cooking feasible.

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1 hour ago, cheesysmith said:

 

 

This makes facebook worth it to me.

Wonderful.

Unless that was made of from film of multiple journeys, notable that they passed two coal trains within the length of Woodhead tunnel and another just past Torside.  Electrification was clearly justified by the volume of freight traffic.

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22 hours ago, John Tomlinson said:

"Lincolnshire borne,

 

and Lincolnshire bred,

 

strong in the arm,

 

and weak in the head"

[insert county of choice] borne,

 

and [as above] bred,

 

strong in the arm,

 

and weak in the head

Edited by St Enodoc
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11 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

The law was changed in the early 1960s to - if I remember rightly - the requirement to be 14 years old to drive agricultural machinery anywhere including on private land.  Just after that ruling came in I was drivinga combine cutting a field - aged almost 13 because i was too small to handle the grain sacks so my uncle did that while I drove.

I learned to drive on a tractor - in Normandy, aged 13.

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13 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

I learned to drive on a tractor - in Normandy, aged 13.

Is that a sort of euphemism for something a little more 'interesting' on an exchange visit, by chance?

Laurie Lee

 

Edited by Mallard60022
Derrrrrrrr.
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23 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Ah but Jazzer mate, they were made when the thing up front doing the pulling was more of a fire risk than the chef's little stove. 

 

The LMS did try electric cooking but that required diesel -generators on the coach. Not until the wide spread use of electric heating via a diesel electric loco or an electric loco was electric cooking feasible.

 

Thank you Clive. It never ceases to amaze me the number of things I learn on RM web the That never crossed my mind previously.

 

One of the first “proper “ railway books I ever read , aged about 10 or 11 was L.T.C. Rolts Red For Danger So From an early age my young brain was filled with stories of gas fuelled infernos in wooden carriages , so I suppose I have tended to think on those lines and ignore progress. I think the LNER missed a trick with their corridor tenders though. Egg and Bacon cooked on the fireman’s shovel and a carried back to the restaurant car has a certain attraction that the soul-less electrics can’t  compete with .........

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On 09/10/2021 at 15:48, The Stationmaster said:

Anthracite fuelled ranges  - I believe the LNER definitely had some too in kitchen cars.   Basically no different from cooking on a range at home but no doubt a larger range with more than one oven and hotplates.

 

On 09/10/2021 at 21:36, Clive Mortimore said:

Ah but Jazzer mate, they were made when the thing up front doing the pulling was more of a fire risk than the chef's little stove. 

 

The LMS did try electric cooking but that required diesel -generators on the coach. Not until the wide spread use of electric heating via a diesel electric loco or an electric loco was electric cooking feasible.

 

The LNER had all-electric cooking on restaurant cars, in fact starting with the GNR Leeds Quintuple dining car set of 1921 but it relied on ground charging points and battery storage on the cars.  But as they relied on charging points being available they weren't suitable for cross country services (presumably other companies didn't provide them) so from 1937 they introduced anthracite-electric cars where anthracite was used to heat the water and main ovens while electricity did the rest; from 1938 all their restaurant cars used this system.

 

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7 hours ago, Mallard60022 said:

Is that a sort of euphemism for something a little more 'interesting' on an exchange visit, by chance?

Laurie Lee

 

it was indeed an exchange visit but I've no idea what could be more "interesting" than driving a tractor...

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11 hours ago, 31A said:

 

 

The LNER had all-electric cooking on restaurant cars, in fact starting with the GNR Leeds Quintuple dining car set of 1921 but it relied on ground charging points and battery storage on the cars.  But as they relied on charging points being available they weren't suitable for cross country services (presumably other companies didn't provide them) so from 1937 they introduced anthracite-electric cars where anthracite was used to heat the water and main ovens while electricity did the rest; from 1938 all their restaurant cars used this system.

 


All this fascinating trivia has led me to do a bit more research.  As you say, it was Gresley that was at least nominally responsibly for introducing all electric cooking but what kind of surprised me was that anthracite-electric cooking seems to have been used well into the BR era on Mark 1 coaches. I can’t find out when anthracite was eventually phased out, but I seem to recall seeing photos of a Gresley Restaurant or Buffet car being being used on the Western Region in the Blue era so I guess it anthracite was still being used up to the mid/late sixties ?

 

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12 minutes ago, jazzer said:


All this fascinating trivia has led me to do a bit more research.  As you say, it was Gresley that was at least nominally responsibly for introducing all electric cooking but what kind of surprised me was that anthracite-electric cooking seems to have been used well into the BR era on Mark 1 coaches. I can’t find out when anthracite was eventually phased out, but I seem to recall seeing photos of a Gresley Restaurant or Buffet car being being used on the Western Region in the Blue era so I guess it anthracite was still being used up to the mid/late sixties ?

 

 

I took what I wrote last night from David Jenkinson's British Railway Carriages of the 20th Century as it was near to hand, but there is more information in the Michael Harris books on LNER coaches.

 

It reads as though the anthracite - electric equipment was only used for Restaurant Cars intended for cross country and excursion work, in other words ones that went to places without charging points.  Other Restaurant Cars were fully electric.  Of the Diagram 167 Buffet Cars that survived into the blue / grey era early ones originally had gas for cooking and later ones just electric cooking, they weren't intended to be able to cook full meals.  I remember seeing them quite frequently at Cambridge in the early 1970s, but by then they had been rebuilt by BR (in the late 1950s) which included conversion to propane gas for cooking.

 

As an aside I remember seeing Belgian restaurant cars on the International trains from Oostende with smoke coming out of the chimney, probably into the early 1990s!

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2 hours ago, 31A said:

 

I took what I wrote last night from David Jenkinson's British Railway Carriages of the 20th Century as it was near to hand, but there is more information in the Michael Harris books on LNER coaches.

 

It reads as though the anthracite - electric equipment was only used for Restaurant Cars intended for cross country and excursion work, in other words ones that went to places without charging points.  Other Restaurant Cars were fully electric.  Of the Diagram 167 Buffet Cars that survived into the blue / grey era early ones originally had gas for cooking and later ones just electric cooking, they weren't intended to be able to cook full meals.  I remember seeing them quite frequently at Cambridge in the early 1970s, but by then they had been rebuilt by BR (in the late 1950s) which included conversion to propane gas for cooking.

 

As an aside I remember seeing Belgian restaurant cars on the International trains from Oostende with smoke coming out of the chimney, probably into the early 1990s!

I remember being given a marvellous mug of proper Russian tea by a 'statuesque' sleeping car lady in her 'through' carriage at the Gare D' Nord in the 80's.
She had an anthracite fuelled hot water boiler, complete with smoking chimney.
The tea was great.
I think she fancied the 20year old Chris.:lol::lol:
Do svidaniya,
Chris.

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I may have missed it, but are you familiar with the work of Sam Battle (aka, look mum no computer)? A bloke from Kent with some synthesizers is probably the polar opposite to girls playing guitars from the other side of the globe, but he's still a talented chap! 

 

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3 hours ago, Satan's Goldfish said:

I may have missed it, but are you familiar with the work of Sam Battle (aka, look mum no computer)? A bloke from Kent with some synthesizers is probably the polar opposite to girls playing guitars from the other side of the globe, but he's still a talented chap! 

 

Interesting.

 

Anyhow girls playing guitars can come from nearer home, like these ladies from Bristol. One of the UK's best punk bands at the moment.

 

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