bécasse

I distinctly remember the vee's being orange but the actual colour was slightly strange and I wonder if a fluorescent paint was used to make them more visible after dark. A fluorescent paint would have picked up station lighting.

My hazy recollection is that the voltage at Eastbourne was somewhere around 70 volts. There were plenty of places on the line where the overhead line was quite low and I remember conducting on the upper deck with the wire touching the top of my cap, giving rise to a mild tingling sensation. One "interesting" experience was on after-dark evening runs out to the Crumbles (then a desolate shingle beach quite different to today's housing estates). The tram was well lit but when one pulled down the trolley pole to turn it, one was plunged into darkness with the result that getting the trolley wheel back on the line at the other end of the tram was a distinctly hit and miss experience.

Sixty years ago 4 standees per BR standard non-corridor compartment would have been considered reasonably comfortable and probably a peak-hour train norm. Given disruption to a service, the reckoned maximum was the same number of standees as seats and that certainly was unpleasant but probably no worse than waiting on the platform for an uncertain following service. Semi-saloon compartments lost one seat per side but gained two extra standee places per side instead so could take 10 or 11 seated plus 12 plus 2 or 4 standees. Dwell times were obviously extended with such extreme loadings but rarely exceeded 60-90 seconds (instead of the booked 15-20).

I am reasonably certain that what you think might be rails are in fact the marks left by road traffic on a macadam road surface, quite possibly as the result of using traction engines to haul road waggons.

I certainly remember coming across both orientations - very frustrating if the van was at the front and one hoped to view the line ahead "over the driver's shoulder".

I never understood the logic of that either, a triangle on its base on "non-van" ends would have conveyed the "go to the other end" message quite well.

This Cecil J. Allen photograph shows the purple discs well. The photo dates from early LNER days but I can assure you that they remained in use a long way into the BR era.

I joined The Model Railway Club at its Easter Show in 1960, just as Keen House was opening, at the tender age of 14. School, and its dreaded three hours "prep" a night, made it difficult to be a regular attender on Thursday nights but I quickly made friends with Brian and his then new wife Jane. It was said (wrongly) of the MRC then that you had to be a member for ten years before anyone spoke to you but that certainly wasn't true with Brian and Jane. Perhaps the fact that they were both teachers and therefore used to interacting with young people helped. Ten years on and a group of five of us started to construct Bembridge at Keen House, one of the very first P4 layouts, and Brian took a very close interest in what we were doing, offering much useful advice on the side. It perhaps wasn't surprising that Brian then switched to P4, initially working on the Heckmondwike roundy-roundy but later becoming one of the kingpins in the construction of Bodmin General, like Bembridge a faithful-to-prototype model which Brian remained closely associated with for pretty much the rest of his life. Brian became one of the stalwarts of the Scalefour Society in its early years, and whilst I didn't actually join myself until after I had moved to Belgium, I was a regular attender at Scaleforum where I was able to enjoy long chats with Brian and Jane about the old times. The last time that I actually saw them was in 2010 when I had begun living in Belgium part-time but had yet to move permanently. It is always sad when disease takes someone but Brian must have been a decade older than me, and I am no longer a spring chicken, so at least he had a long and fulfilling innings. My condolences to Jane and their extended family.

Didn't the GE still use purple as well as white discs at that period for certain routes - could the folded up disc be meant to replicate a purple disc?

It was all but fifty years ago that we were taught about the need for 7 people to cover a 24h/24 7j/7 post. We were being trained as implementors of the proposed new "territory" structure, the financial rational for which required the application of properly costed standard procedures across the whole network, so understanding how costs arose was a fundamental part of our work. We were initially surprised by the 7 figure although it was obvious that, with the salaried staff working week comprising 38 hours, one needed more than 4 people to cover a single post that had to manned 168 hours a week, but our tutors took us through it and, adding in leave, sickness (a standard norm of just 10 days), training and a few other items, quickly demonstrated that an establishment of more than 6 was required. What is true is that the requirement for multiple posts was more than 6 but less than 7 per post. In the end, not long after the finish of our training in fact, the implementation of several trial single-location standardisation schemes demonstrated that the intended savings would not be achieved and the territory restructuring was cancelled. This rather surprised some of my colleagues but, having trained a physicist, I was aware that nature determines that chaos produces the most efficient flow and I wasn't that surprised to find that it applied to administrative systems as well. Nevertheless our training was very thorough and I often found it useful in later life, particularly the injunction to always stand back and make sure that you understand the broad picture.

The visible face of the signal arm seems to be plain red, I wonder if the other side was too and that the signal just acted as a "stop shunting" signal when on. Given its lofty position it might well have applied to all shunting on the site, not just adjacent roads.

I remember being taught at The Grove that seven people were required to ensure that a single continuously manned post could be covered without resorting to overtime, the apparent "extras" being required to cover things like leave (including public holidays) and "standard" sickness, it being reckoned that a single person wouldn't, on average, actually work more than 220 rostered turns of duty a year. It was interesting at Eurostar when new universal contracts were introduced which required flexible working for not less than 1.800 hours, and not more than 2.000 hours, per November-October year. I can still remember the puzzled look on (Personnel Director) Peter Whittaker's face when the senior members of the Commercial Team asked him what they should do when they ran up against the 2.000 hours ceiling, a situation that apparently hadn't been considered.

The "Warboy's" signs shown in your photo date only from the mid-1960s. Originally there would have been no signs, at least on the bridge itself, but in the late 1930s new standard road signs were introduced throughout the UK and these did include both approach signs and headroom indicators for low bridges. The headroom indicators looked like this, however their installation probably post-dated the period of your layout. The size of the sign was 3'-0" x 1'-9", the "stripes" were 3" wide and the centrelines of the verticals 10'-0" apart.

It wasn't uncommon for ventilation pipes to be provided for earth/ash closets. Their presence in photos, together with the lack of any loco water tank, is often a certain clue to their provision. Remember, at the period when the station was built the majority of country dwellers (and a good few town dwellers too) would have had them at home.

I do realise that, Roy, which is why I suggested that ash might have been used instead since either would have to be brought to site. The important issue is that there wouldn't have been a water closet.