well filled baps The Sheep Chronicles : These are the adventures of a Sheep, the Works Forecat and Naughty George,

[NHY 581]

Morning all, 

 

Not much to report. A second J70, 68225, an 'unskirted' example known to have frequented the W&U, had a decoder fitted yesterday evening. Again, no resulting  issues and we have a second smooth runner. I need to obtain a few more of these decoders as they really seem to suit small locos. 

 

68225 will be weathered once the cowcatchers have been fitted. 

 

Here's a colourized view which I did a while ago now. Sadly I'm currently unable to credit the original photographer. 

 

 

This is fairly typical of the formations we will see at Ewe. The exception will be the brakevan which is a 6 whl, ex- Great Eastern job. I'll be using a Toad E or B but I'm pretty certain Wiggers made a pretty fine job of scratchbuilding a 6 wheeler quite a while ago now. 

 

Perhaps he'll post an image in a bit. 

 

Rob. 

[Moxy]

7 minutes ago, NHY 581 said:

Here's a colourized view which I did a while ago now. Sadly I'm currently unable to credit the original photographer. 

 

 

Morning Rob,

 

It's from this public domain postcard by H Coates & Sons, Wisbech.

 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wisbech_and_Upwell_Tramway_(postcard).jpg

 

Cheers

[NHY 581]

7 minutes ago, Moxy said:

 

Morning Rob,

 

It's from this public domain postcard by H Coates & Sons, Wisbech.

 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wisbech_and_Upwell_Tramway_(postcard).jpg

 

Cheers

 

 

Thanks Moxy. I know the photo pops up quite often but have never seen it properly credited. 

 

Rob. 

[MrWolf]

Images like that are just about the only source of inspiration and information for those of us born after the 1960s and the fact that we can simply hunt for them on the internet saves hours of hunting through a set of archives or being unable to access another. Besides the train there's a lot of other information such as the ground surface, telephone poles and the home made diamond pattern fencing which is now rarely seen.

[The Stationmaster]

3 hours ago, NHY 581 said:

Morning all, 

 

Not much to report. A second J70, 68225, an 'unskirted' example known to have frequented the W&U, had a decoder fitted yesterday evening. Again, no resulting  issues and we have a second smooth runner. I need to obtain a few more of these decoders as they really seem to suit small locos. 

 

68225 will be weathered once the cowcatchers have been fitted. 

 

Here's a colourized view which I did a while ago now. Sadly I'm currently unable to credit the original photographer. 

 

 

This is fairly typical of the formations we will see at Ewe. The exception will be the brakevan which is a 6 whl, ex- Great Eastern job. I'll be using a Toad E or B but I'm pretty certain Wiggers made a pretty fine job of scratchbuilding a 6 wheeler quite a while ago now. 

 

Perhaps he'll post an image in a bit. 

 

Rob. 

I wonder which artistically minded Guard or Shunter put that train together?  The symmetry of high roof - low - high roof - low - high roof rather looks alm ost like it was done on purpose.  Do that on a model and you'd be told off for being ridiculous because real trains were never formed like that.

[Donw]

Looking at the Telephone poles  are they GPO for the houses or Railway for signalling etc as well as there internal phones. Come to that I have no knowledge about the signalling on the W&U.

 

Don 

[NHY 581]

24 minutes ago, Donw said:

Looking at the Telephone poles  are they GPO for the houses or Railway for signalling etc as well as there internal phones. Come to that I have no knowledge about the signalling on the W&U.

 

Don 

 

"A telephonic communication is provided between Wisbech and Upwell, with a telephone at Elm Depot, Boyce's Depot, Outwell Basin and Outwell Village ". 

 

The line, outside of Wisbech was devoid of signalling or the use of tokens etc. 

 

As far as the telegraph poles in the images, your guess is as good as mine. 

 

Rob. 

Edited August 29, 2022 by NHY 581

[St Enodoc]

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

I wonder which artistically minded Guard or Shunter put that train together?  The symmetry of high roof - low - high roof - low - high roof rather looks alm ost like it was done on purpose.  Do that on a model and you'd be told off for being ridiculous because real trains were never formed like that.

Should've put a loco on both ends...

[NHY 581]

3 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Should've put a loco on both ends...

 

 

I see what you're doing here...........stop it.....

[Asterix2012]

9 hours ago, Donw said:

Looking at the Telephone poles  are they GPO for the houses or Railway for signalling etc as well as there internal phones. Come to that I have no knowledge about the signalling on the W&U.

 

Don 

They could be shared poles, even now it’s not uncommon for telephone lines to use electricity poles in rural areas.

 

By which I mean gpo and railway.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Asterix2012
Clarification

[MrWolf]

Good point, even in the last decade or two out in the sticks there were wooden poles with an electrical cable strung across the top, a few telephone insulators and even a 1930s era bracket street lamp attached. Some still had the old round sodium lamp though most had been converted with a rectangular yellow lamp in the 70s.

 

These BLEECO type were common.

 

Image: BENO.

 

This kind of thing:

 

Image: BENO.

 

Not something I recall seeing modelled?

Edited August 29, 2022 by MrWolf

[Donw]

I have worked many times on telephone cables on EL poles. I don't think I came across any electric cables on GPO poles. I also think the railway always used its own poles but of course the GPO did provide lies into railway properties. The lines may well of been on railway poles within their curtilage. A railway could of rented a private circuit from the GPO this could connect up places some distance apart. However the circuit would have been maintained by the GPO and run within their cables. Such circuits areused by  many organisations.

 

Don

[The Stationmaster]

5 hours ago, Donw said:

I have worked many times on telephone cables on EL poles. I don't think I came across any electric cables on GPO poles. I also think the railway always used its own poles but of course the GPO did provide lies into railway properties. The lines may well of been on railway poles within their curtilage. A railway could of rented a private circuit from the GPO this could connect up places some distance apart. However the circuit would have been maintained by the GPO and run within their cables. Such circuits areused by  many organisations.

 

Don

And - going way OT - the so called 'private circuits' area bout as private as New Years Eve in Trafalgar Square.  When the Central Wales Line was converted to No Signalman Token (Remote) operation in order to save money the WR rented private direct circuits from BT to avoid the cost of installing a cable route the length of the line in order to connect the token machines.

By the mid 1980s failures of token working had become so frequent that an in depth study was carried out and it pinpointed all the failures as occurring within BT circuits.  As a next step we obtained from BT detailed call logs and they revealed what was happening - firstly our 'private direct circuits' turned out to be nothing of the kind and when the supervising Signalman initiated a call release to a token machine the local exchange simply when through its normal procedure for routeing a 'phone call and selected whatever line it first found to offer a route - we even had 'calls' to token machines being regularly routed via Manchester and we found one which had gone via Glasgow.  The other problem was that if a route couldn't be found quickly something in the BT circuitry would time out and try again and if that happened  the BR end would identify it as a failure to connect with the relevant token machine.  A rather big row ensued with VBT who replied that was always what they did with so called 'direct lines' 😮

[MrWolf]

The delays, maintenance call outs, investigation and subsequent report probably cost more than a few telephone poles...

[jollysmart]

10 hours ago, Donw said:

I have worked many times on telephone cables on EL poles. I don't think I came across any electric cables on GPO poles. I also think the railway always used its own poles but of course the GPO did provide lies into railway properties. The lines may well of been on railway poles within their curtilage. A railway could of rented a private circuit from the GPO this could connect up places some distance apart. However the circuit would have been maintained by the GPO and run within their cables. Such circuits areused by  many organisations.

 

Don

 

Some GPO poles were licensed for power lines to be attached, much rarer than GPO on power poles, as you point out,  which was a routine occurrence, it was mainly in rural areas and seemed to vary significantly  between different areas. This continued into the BT era but has been almost completely phased out now as it causes difficulties both from a safety aspect and difficulties when a pole requires renewal for deterioration or damage. The way the poles are protected from rot varies and so does the method of testing the structure to ensure that it is safe to climb, and method of climbing, hence the much increased used of elevating platforms to perform work on the poles and whatever cabling is attached.

 

GPO/BT also provided some very limited number of links to isolated railway areas but the circuits normally originated and terminated on railway cables and I suspect the practice has all but ceased by now, the difficulty of agreeing which part of the circuit was faulty could, and did, cause delay in rectifying the fault.

[Donw]

6 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

And - going way OT - the so called 'private circuits' area bout as private as New Years Eve in Trafalgar Square.  When the Central Wales Line was converted to No Signalman Token (Remote) operation in order to save money the WR rented private direct circuits from BT to avoid the cost of installing a cable route the length of the line in order to connect the token machines.

By the mid 1980s failures of token working had become so frequent that an in depth study was carried out and it pinpointed all the failures as occurring within BT circuits.  As a next step we obtained from BT detailed call logs and they revealed what was happening - firstly our 'private direct circuits' turned out to be nothing of the kind and when the supervising Signalman initiated a call release to a token machine the local exchange simply when through its normal procedure for routeing a 'phone call and selected whatever line it first found to offer a route - we even had 'calls' to token machines being regularly routed via Manchester and we found one which had gone via Glasgow.  The other problem was that if a route couldn't be found quickly something in the BT circuitry would time out and try again and if that happened  the BR end would identify it as a failure to connect with the relevant token machine.  A rather big row ensued with VBT who replied that was always what they did with so called 'direct lines' 😮

 

BTs response and the failures to resolve are a load of rubbish. Most private circuits are point to point. I spent some time adding components to improve the frequency response of PW circuits. However I am not sure that BT was suppling what was required or whether BR had wanted something cheaper than a dedicated circuit for each token machine and BT had offered something which routed over normal circuits. Had I been dealing which the requirement I would have established exactly what BR required and offered a solution. However not all project managers had my engineering background. One of the key skills in analysing  system requirements is checking what the customer says he wants will actually meet his needs. No doubt the signalmen knew exactly what they wanted but if the person dealing with BT was not a signalman and the BT person specifying the solution didn't understand the requirement that may explain the failure.

 

 

 

Don

 

[MrWolf]

That's pretty much how I operated when being asked to provide a solution to an engineering problem. Go and speak directly to the people actually using the equipment. That's half the job done already.

[Winslow Boy]

Oh I do love a bit of technical.

 

I once had to do reports for a committee and they had to be written in plain English as anything technical was how shall I say this - over there heads.

[Nick C]

12 hours ago, MrWolf said:

That's pretty much how I operated when being asked to provide a solution to an engineering problem. Go and speak directly to the people actually using the equipment. That's half the job done already.

Don't be silly, this is a large corporation you're talking about. The last thing you should ever do is talk to the people on the ground - or worse, the customer. They might suggest something different to what the planning committee have decided, and that would never do.

 

Of course the planning committee haven't actually decided anything - but whatever you suggest is not the right answer, because they didn't think of it.

 

A friend of mine used to work for an ISP, and even they, with direct hooks into the heart of the network, had huge trouble getting any kind of sense out of BT. 

[MrWolf]

The defence industry doesn't quite work that way, but elsewhere I've had plenty of people talking themselves round in circles and beating on about just in time, lean methodology or whatever this week's shirt is. You just have to wait three years until someone on the planning committee has repackaged the idea as their own and they try to get the job done at the price quoted previously...

OR, wait until the piece of critical path equipment you originally went to look at goes spectacularly bang and the whole plant is stood, losing 17k an hour or so.

At which point, you can say: 'Somehow, "I told you so", doesn't quite cover this...'

[The Stationmaster]

18 hours ago, Donw said:

 

BTs response and the failures to resolve are a load of rubbish. Most private circuits are point to point. I spent some time adding components to improve the frequency response of PW circuits. However I am not sure that BT was suppling what was required or whether BR had wanted something cheaper than a dedicated circuit for each token machine and BT had offered something which routed over normal circuits. Had I been dealing which the requirement I would have established exactly what BR required and offered a solution. However not all project managers had my engineering background. One of the key skills in analysing  system requirements is checking what the customer says he wants will actually meet his needs. No doubt the signalmen knew exactly what they wanted but if the person dealing with BT was not a signalman and the BT person specifying the solution didn't understand the requirement that may explain the failure.

 

 

 

Don

 

The S&T Dept dealt with BT and I would be surprised if they hadn't asked for dedicated circuits because they were required for token machines  so rather a basic safety requirement involved.  i do wonder if the language used to ask for the circuits didn't reflect exactly what was wanted plus or whether it was understood by 'someone' that a separate circuit was required for each location if not for each pair of machines for each section at each crossing station?   

 

The circuit from a railway viewpoint was no different from the one used where a BR transmission route (invariably cable by then) was used and I can't recall any real problems with any of those although the distances were much shorter;  Pantyffynnon to Craven Arms is an awful long way for any circuit although Llandrindod Wells was the place that seemed to crop up more frequently than anywhere else in the list of failures.

[Donw]

Long way is not a problem. The work on improving the frequency response was on amplified circuits. A lot of these are used for data transmission. I cannot see an issue with sending a signal saying release a tablet and getting a signal tablet released back. Still this is not the place to redesign the system. Suffice to say we seem to have widespread agreement that the technical people in the customer need to speak to the technical people in the supplier. I would also add the project manager needs to be able to understand enough to check they are speaking the same language.

 

Don 

[NHY 581]

I think I'll rename the thread 'The Buzby Chronicles'...........

 

I feel the need to do something railway related...........

 

 

Rob. 

[NHY 581]

On 29/08/2022 at 07:39, NHY 581 said:

Morning all, 

 

Not much to report. A second J70, 68225, an 'unskirted' example known to have frequented the W&U, had a decoder fitted yesterday evening. Again, no resulting  issues and we have a second smooth runner. I need to obtain a few more of these decoders as they really seem to suit small locos. 

 

68225 will be weathered once the cowcatchers have been fitted. 

 

Here's a colourized view which I did a while ago now. Sadly I'm currently unable to credit the original photographer. 

 

 

This is fairly typical of the formations we will see at Ewe. The exception will be the brakevan which is a 6 whl, ex- Great Eastern job. I'll be using a Toad E or B but I'm pretty certain Wiggers made a pretty fine job of scratchbuilding a 6 wheeler quite a while ago now. 

 

Perhaps he'll post an image in a bit. 

 

Rob. 

 

 

Further to my last, pretty certain the brake van tagged on the end ( No John, the other end) is an ex Great Central emigré. 

 

So possibly not as reproduced by Wiggers. 

 

Rob. 

[NHY 581]

Talking of Wiggers, here's Alex's J70s. 

 

 

A lovely job he's made of them as well and one of his images which really inspired me to look again at the Wisbech and Upwell. 

 

Lovely. 

 

Rob.