Wright writes.....

[The Stationmaster]

How interesting.

 

My use of it comes from the signalman at Kiveton Park who, on one memorable day, let my brother and me pull off the signals for the Up 'Master Cutler' (actually the afternoon Sheffield Pullman, but it was the same six-car rake). In the broadest of Yorkshire accents he announced ''You lads pull t'up boards off''. My recollection is of the banner repeater being the easiest. 

 

'Pegs' was a very common name for signals at Retford - ''Peg Donny or peg Lonny'' announced in excited anticipation of what was coming. It was also common at Chester - ''Middy out peg, or Wessy in peg" broadcast as the signals were pulled off at Crane Street. How vernacular schoolboy language can be, but can you imagine any of us urchins saying 'Look, the Midland Region Down signals have just been pulled off?"

 

Does 'dolls' refer to the posts or the signals themselves? I seem to remember reading somewhere that a certain bracket signal had three dolls and five arms. So 'arms' in this case refers to the boards/pegs/signals; and 'dolls' the posts? 

 

One final note, and it shows how once-magnificent signalling installation have disappeared. I was taking pictures at Westerfield Junction one day (in BR blue days) when the lamp man appeared. He told me that he changed the lamps every seven days, and the oil should last ten. I suppose it never occurred to me before that it meant the lamps were lit for the duration; all through the day as well. Those who have illuminated semaphore signals on their layouts, please note. The hardest task was for him to climb the ladder of a very tall repeater signal, about 40' high (am I right in my memory here?). Since I cannot stand heights, I marvelled at his courage. At the very top, the only sop to elf-'n safety was a ring for him to lean against, the ladder itself being totally open. Coincidence decreed that on my next visit (my sister-in-law once lived in Ipswich), a different lamp man was there, but, although the tall lattice post still remained, it only had the lower arm in use. One can only conclude that trains on the East Suffolk line were no longer fast enough to need a sky-background signal or safety-first had become paramount.

 

Two surviving semaphore signals I pass by regularly, at Heckington and Langham Junction, now look like guard posts at an American Federal Pen', such is the amount of protection around them. Still, no one wants to see railway workers injured, but all I can say is that the lamp man at Little Bytham must have had a head for heights!

Dolls are the little posts, which carry the signal arms, on gantry and bracket structutes.  However 'dolly' (or 'dollies') are a vernacular term used in some parts of the country to describe ground disc signals - on the Western they are 'dummies', on your bit of railway they would be dollies.

 

Signal lamping on very tall signals I think must have needed very strong nerves, or maybe none at all - or a windlass arrangement to wind the lamp up & down.  I've been up about 30 feet on a gantry signal doll to do the lamp and that was quite enough - albeit that it was Boxing Night and pouring with rain.  Alas we had a fairly useless young Lampie and we had loads of lamps go out that evening which meant me being called out and, with the Signalman, having to do a lot of very badly maintained lamps very quickly; the Lampie was sacked the next morning.  We got a smashing older chap in to replace him and the only worry he ever caused was chasing for lots of well nigh unobtainable spare parts as Reading no longer held stocks and only manufactured occasionally in batches - so we got some lamp inners and wells made up local and Fred, the Lampie, cut the glass for them; real railway work

 

Nowadays it's all Working At Height Regulations and probably, and statistically more dangerous on ladders than it ever was in the past- that ring at the top of the ladder was ideal and very safe, feet on the ladder, wedge your back end against the ladder ring and you had no need to hold on to anything as you were perfectly safe.

[Southernman46]

We examine the WR's bridges & tunnels generally using ladders but have now started to use road-rail mounted elevated working platforms for even moderately high bridges for precisely the same reasons that signals now exhibit huge access structures - whilst the examiners seem to be able to handle hammer, tape, lamp, clipboard, camera and still maintain 3 points of contact with the ladder   today (rightly so) it is viewed as too late if someone falls off and then action is taken.

 

It just means that things take far more to organise, absorb a seemingly larger volume of resource and run a greater risk of wasted shifts especially as we are competing with Crossrail, GWML electrification and the Reading etc projects for the available machine & machine controller resource - not to mention that the cost to the industry of doing the same task is vastly increased but what price safety.............having had a number of colleagues killed or severely injured over my 30+ years in various departments...........never too high  

 

Sorry - just looked at the thread title completely OT

Edited July 3, 2014 by Southernman46

[Michael Edge]

Not sure a lizzie looks right in BR steam Blue....

 

prefer them in BR Maroon..

 

Princess Margaret Rose (1280x293).jpg

 

one from Mr Edge in EM from his own etches...painted by Graham Varley and dcc sound fitted , then weathered by me...

 

Just back from France and 46208 works as well as it looks - left it on the heaviest train we have on the layout (10 sleepers, one Pullman and two BGs). The combination of Comet's gearbox and Maxon motor with a load of Cerrobend produced a smooth, quiet running loco. The other three Princesses have now returned to the workshops for similar treatment.

[Clive Mortimore]

Sorry - just looked at the thread title completely OT

 

Hi Southernman

 

I don't think you have too far off topic, the discussion was about how lampmen use to work at very high heights with little safety equipment. I think your insight to the reality of working on the railways reminds us all that today's health and safety measures are there for a reason.

[Andy Y]

Followers of this topic may wish to see Little Bytham in October's BRM - if so please cast your vote - http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/87624-brm-october-rmweb-edition-choose-your-content/

[S.A.C Martin]

Tony,

Hope you don't mind me posting this:

It's my V2 (60857 of Grantham -I think ) made with a Graeme King body, running on Bachmann chassis  - I'll try to get a better photo of it.

 

If there's no sign of Bachmann revising the body then I'll be getting three or four more from this source. The chassis is okay - but I think a Comet / Branchlines chassis  would provide a better solution. 

 

I must say David, that's one of the nicest V2s I've seen using the Bachmann chassis. I've currently three in my pile to do and feel much happier about my build having seen yours. Did you use the cab glazing from the donor V2 in Graeme's model or is that something you've done yourself using a glazing product?

[davidw]

The glazing is from a scrap A4 loco I had - It was useful for cab seats, backhead detail and so on. No reason why the original Bachmann V2 windows can't be used....

 

Cab doors from bits of scrap brass.

Edited July 6, 2014 by davidw

[31A]

How interesting.

 

My use of it comes from the signalman at Kiveton Park who, on one memorable day, let my brother and me pull off the signals for the Up 'Master Cutler' (actually the afternoon Sheffield Pullman, but it was the same six-car rake). In the broadest of Yorkshire accents he announced ''You lads pull t'up boards off''. My recollection is of the banner repeater being the easiest. 

 

'Pegs' was a very common name for signals at Retford - ''Peg Donny or peg Lonny'' announced in excited anticipation of what was coming. It was also common at Chester - ''Middy out peg, or Wessy in peg" broadcast as the signals were pulled off at Crane Street. How vernacular schoolboy language can be, but can you imagine any of us urchins saying 'Look, the Midland Region Down signals have just been pulled off?"

 

Does 'dolls' refer to the posts or the signals themselves? I seem to remember reading somewhere that a certain bracket signal had three dolls and five arms. So 'arms' in this case refers to the boards/pegs/signals; and 'dolls' the posts? 

 

One final note, and it shows how once-magnificent signalling installation have disappeared. I was taking pictures at Westerfield Junction one day (in BR blue days) when the lamp man appeared. He told me that he changed the lamps every seven days, and the oil should last ten. I suppose it never occurred to me before that it meant the lamps were lit for the duration; all through the day as well. Those who have illuminated semaphore signals on their layouts, please note. The hardest task was for him to climb the ladder of a very tall repeater signal, about 40' high (am I right in my memory here?). Since I cannot stand heights, I marvelled at his courage. At the very top, the only sop to elf-'n safety was a ring for him to lean against, the ladder itself being totally open. Coincidence decreed that on my next visit (my sister-in-law once lived in Ipswich), a different lamp man was there, but, although the tall lattice post still remained, it only had the lower arm in use. One can only conclude that trains on the East Suffolk line were no longer fast enough to need a sky-background signal or safety-first had become paramount.

 

Two surviving semaphore signals I pass by regularly, at Heckington and Langham Junction, now look like guard posts at an American Federal Pen', such is the amount of protection around them. Still, no one wants to see railway workers injured, but all I can say is that the lamp man at Little Bytham must have had a head for heights!

My late father referred to them as 'boards', which came from his father who was a signalman on the GN / LNE / BR(E) initially in the Doncaster area but for most of his career in North London.

[unclebobkt]

... .

 As all locomotives were coaled with Yorkshire hard coal this immediately put the Western Region engines at a slight disadvantage as the drafting arrangements for these engines had been designed around the use of softer South Wales steam coal. Subsequent additional tests were carried on the Western Region with these engines on their more usual South Wales steam coal which did result in an improvement in coal consumption.

  ... .

 

  Pray refresh my memory - for the 1925. GWR./L&NER. loco. exchanges what type of coal was used for the GWR. 'Castle.' on the L&NER's. lines?  :-) 

[unclebobkt]

  ... .

 One final note, and it shows how once-magnificent signalling installation have disappeared. I was taking pictures at Westerfield Junction one day (in BR blue days) when the lamp man appeared. He told me that he changed the lamps every seven days, and the oil should last ten. I suppose it never occurred to me before that it meant the lamps were lit for the duration; all through the day as well. Those who have illuminated semaphore signals on their layouts, please note. The hardest task was for him to climb the ladder of a very tall repeater signal, about 40' high (am I right in my memory here?). Since I cannot stand heights, I marvelled at his courage. At the very top, the only sop to elf-'n safety was a ring for him to lean against, the ladder itself being totally open. Coincidence decreed that on my next visit (my sister-in-law once lived in Ipswich), a different lamp man was there, but, although the tall lattice post still remained, it only had the lower arm in use. One can only conclude that trains on the East Suffolk line were no longer fast enough to need a sky-background signal or safety-first had become paramount.

 

 

  --  Back in the early/mid-sixties the Company who employed me won the contract for a RADAR. atop a 100+Ft. tower for range-safety purposes at Shoeburyness.

 - Before the internal ladders and lift were installed the usual way to the top was by means of a cable car:  A cable-stayed spar was erected on the tower's platform, and a taut guy-line ran-down to the ground;  a small gondola was suspended below the guy-line by a traveller and a cable led -from the traveller, through a pulley-block on the spar, around the drum of a windless and back to the traveller.

 - Safety dictated that the gondola should be run UP & DOWN before start of work every day and on the resumption of work after rain-storms & high winds.

 - One morning I arrived late and saw that the spar had broken, and that the guy wire was taut no longer.

 - Apparently the pre-work safety run was NOT done, a couple or three men got into the gondola,  and when the gondola was some 40ft. above the ground the spar snapped and the gondola dropped like a stone.

 - Chatting with the foreman, later on,  he gave me to u'stand. the following -

>. - Falling from below 40ft. one might break one or both ankles or leg-bones,  but should be back at work after some six weeks;

>. - Falling from between 40-70ft. one might well be wheel-chair bound for the rest of one's life - if one was that unlucky;

>. - Falling from higher than 70ft. one would have no further worries.

Edited July 9, 2014 by unclebobkt

[Graham_Muz]

  Pray refresh my memory - for the 1925. GWR./L&NER. loco. exchanges what type of coal was used for the GWR. 'Castle.' on the L&NER's. lines?  :-) 

Indeed during the 1925 GWR/ LNER exchanges between GWR Castle class and LNER A1 Pacifics reciprocal trials were run on both GWR and LNER metals. On the GWR welsh coal was used and the Castles showed far superior coal consumption over the A1's.

On the runs on LNER metals using Yorkshire hard coal 'Pendennis Castle' was still, to the surprise of some,  more efficient on coal consumption but the gap was vastly reduced between the two classes.

Overall these trials with other performance tests such as timings and minutes gained included,  were considered to be a great success for Swindon (as i'm a Southern man you don't know how difficult that was to type) over Doncaster.

[The Stationmaster]

Indeed during the 1925 GWR/ LNER exchanges between GWR Castle class and LNER A1 Pacifics reciprocal trials were run on both GWR and LNER metals. On the GWR welsh coal was used and the Castles showed far superior coal consumption over the A1's.

On the runs on LNER metals using Yorkshire hard coal 'Pendennis Castle' was still, to the surprise of some,  more efficient on coal consumption but the gap was vastly reduced between the two classes.

Overall these trials with other performance tests such as timings and minutes gained included,  were considered to be a great success for Swindon (as i'm a Southern man you don't know how difficult that was to type) over Doncaster.

And thus was set in chain the developments that led to the Gresley A3.

[coachmann]

And thus was set in chain the developments that led to the Gresley A3.

....while the chain in development on the GW ran out of links.    I read or heard somewhere than after Stanier left the GWR to join the LMS, he told Collett he was having trouble with poor quality coal and that Collet might find he has problems in future years with low-superheat. Collett apparently ignored his colleagues advice.

[Tony Wright]

Indeed during the 1925 GWR/ LNER exchanges between GWR Castle class and LNER A1 Pacifics reciprocal trials were run on both GWR and LNER metals. On the GWR welsh coal was used and the Castles showed far superior coal consumption over the A1's.

On the runs on LNER metals using Yorkshire hard coal 'Pendennis Castle' was still, to the surprise of some,  more efficient on coal consumption but the gap was vastly reduced between the two classes.

Overall these trials with other performance tests such as timings and minutes gained included,  were considered to be a great success for Swindon (as i'm a Southern man you don't know how difficult that was to type) over Doncaster.

Thanks Graham,

                           I've read at great length about these trials down the years and there's no doubt the LNER A1 was effectively trounced by the GWR 'Castle'. Whether Gresley agreed to them is a moot point because several of his staff had already informed him of the benefits of long-travel valves and so on. I believe the decision to have a 'competition' was taken by higher authority after the two classes were seen at the Wembley Exhibition where the GWR claimed the smaller 'Castle' was 'Britain's most powerful express passenger loco'. I think this was based on tractive effort, which is a bit misleading if taken just as such; the K4, for instance has a higher tractive effort than an A4, but is nowhere near as powerful.

 

I think it's fair to say that the 'Castle' was the (almost) complete development of the GWR four-cylinder 4-6-0, following a set of brilliant principles laid down by Churchward. The 'Kings' were just bigger. The classic lineage can be traced back to the first of the type. Gresley's A1 had no such pedigree in a way. It was not a development of the Ivatt C1 (which was the GNR's equivalent of the 'Stars'), but an entirely new design - the Genesis of a type rather than Jude's Epistle, if a biblical analogy is appropriate. Though I'm not making excuses, as has been said previously, the trials, in a way, led to the development of the A3 which Gresley must have already been anticipating. Why, if not, did he leave the classes A3 and A4 blank in 1922/1923? 

 

There were other factors - I've read the driver of the 'Castle' ignored some speed restrictions on both roads (not dangerously, I hasten to add) whereas the A1 driver (a cautious soul) adhered to them to the letter. Thus the 'Castle' arrived before time. In fairness as well, the twisting road through Devon caused the longer A1 some problems with bearings over-heating. Is that one of the reasons why the GWR stuck with 4-6-0s, other than THE GREAT BEAR, which was barred west of Bristol, anyway?

 

Thus, Gresley learned what his staff already had predicted. The GWR learned nothing - they didn't need to. However, as the decades moved on, to stick with inside valve gear (even post-war) on large locos was surely backward-looking. And, in 1948, a WR inspector was overheard to say, as he stepped off SEAGULL's footplate at Paddington during the Exchanges, "We have nothing to touch this engine". 

[bluebottle]

Gresley's A1  ...  was not a development of the Ivatt C1 (which was the GNR's equivalent of the 'Stars'), but an entirely new design - the Genesis of a type rather than Jude's Epistle, if a biblical analogy is appropriate.

 

It's times like this I wish I'd stayed awake during Bible studies ...

[t-b-g]

Tractive effort was never much of a guide as to how powerful a loco was. One writer once told how removing the coupling rods from a King (advertised by the GWR at the time as the most powerful loco because of its tractive effort) wouldn't alter the T. E. calculations. Taking the boiler off and replacing it with a Sentinel vertical boiler at a higher pressure would increase the tractive effort calculation but the thing would be unlikely to move itself, let alone a train.

 

As for the A1 design, there is a diagram of a proposed pacific in one of the many LNER books that would have been very much a stretched Ivatt Atlantic (it may even have been a pre-Gresley drawing, I can't recall).

 

Maybe something for somebody like Graeme King to add to his "might have been" collection?

 

Tony 

[S.A.C Martin]

There are several line drawings of the original Gresley proposal of 1913, and having studied those at length for other reasons a few years ago, my thought was that it was clear the drawing of 1913 and Great Northern were not directly related, but the basic outline remained the same. The wheelbase was rather simialr too. The biggest change Gresley made was to the boiler and the tender size, both proportionally bigger than Ivatt's large boilered Atlantic.

 

You can see the development of line from Ivatt's earliest locomotives, through Gresley's early moguls, and from his K3 directly into his A1 Pacific. That's what I love about pre-grouping to grouping locomotive engineering, the family resemblances are very much apparent.

[The Stationmaster]

How to keep several folk happy (?) in one thread - a couple of pics from my collection so exact date detail unknown (but we all know the year ).

 

 

 

 

 

 

[S.A.C Martin]

Mike, thank you so much. That shot of Mallard is stunning, will help my modelling very much. That shot of the king is interesting too - compare to the A3 in the foreground.

[bigherb]

Why has Mallard got a dog poking its head out of the cab window?

[Mallard60022]

Why has Mallard got a dog poking its head out of the cab window?

Looks more like a seal to me?

P

[stewartingram]

Nah its the driver.

He's been round to the Dog and Duck pub beforehand...........gettit?

 

Stewart

[unclebobkt]

Hi Southernman

... .   I think your insight to the reality of working on the railways reminds us all that today's health and safety measures are there for a reason.

 

      A good many years ago now I read of a railway's accident, (thiss in some railway' magazine whose title I forget): 

  Work was being done on relaying lengths of new rail on a gradient.  Some trucks loaded with lengths of rails either were insufficiently braked or chocked and stated to run-away down the slope - with unfortunate consequences for those who did NOT heed the warning whistles.

  'And why did they not heed the warning whistles?'  I hear you ask.

  "Answer was that they were all wearing Ear-defenders.".

[Leander]

Grayrigg on the WCML - 23rd February 2007

 

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayrigg_derailment

 

Pete

[unclebobkt]

 ... .  I read or heard somewhere than after Stanier left the GWR to join the LMS, he told Collett he was having trouble with poor quality coal and that Collet might find he has problems in future years with low-superheat. Collett apparently ignored his colleagues advice.

 

 -- But was it not Churchward who disliked high s'heater.temps. as he considered it wasteful to thrown high temperature steam out of the chimneys after use - hence the GWR's. usage of a comparatively LOW s'heater.-temps..

 - Reportedly it was noticeable that once the WR. adopted double chimneys and Schmidt four-row superheaters the performances of WR. lococ. thus fitted improved immeasurably over non-fitted locos. despite using inferior & NCB's. quality coal.  But the fitting of such improvements occured far too late in the day as the WR. Board was far-more interested in trying-out its ideas with Diesel-hydraulic traction to spend either money or time on steam.