bécasse

One might have expected the Annett's patent route indicator to have been used by the LBSCR, but it wasn't as that railway normally provided a single home at the approach to the throat of a terminal station together with platform homes mounted back-to-back with each platform starting signal. The pulling off of the relevant platform home informed the driver which platform he was routed to while the pulling off of the approach home gave him the authority to actually go there. At some stations there were also platform distants mounted under the homes, the road being completely clear to the stops if both home and distant were pulled off but partially occupied if only the home was. I have attached two of my photos of the standard LSWR/SR indicator at the entry to Ryde Pier Head which, by post-war years anyway, was electrically operated even though the actual home signal was wire worked. The black cover disc operating arm can be seen going to the bottom right quadrant so that too (despite my previous doubts) was operated from that quadrant, I have struck out the reference in the previous post. More distant views of the same signal show that the electrically operated and lit version of the indicator had a plain metal back sheet without the frosted glass window required when the indicator was back lit from an external oil lamp. It should also be noted that the electrically worked version required a switch attached to the spectacle plate of the main signal which is clearly visible in the from view above.

Don't forget that all the discs would be "upper quadrant" ones, a distinctive feature of the LNER and its constituents, not only do these discs move "off" in the opposite to those on other railways, but the glazed holes to provide night-time aspects are in different places on the discs too.

Envy! Walker, alone among the big four GMs was spending money (carefully) left, right and centre to modernise his railway and was getting excellent financial results in return, even in those straitened times. While I was at Oxford in the mid-1960s, the Southern Region starting timing some of its trains in the WTT to ¼ minutes, a fellow OURS member (who went on to be a highly respected railway manager) was heard to comment that the Western Region could apparently manage no better than timing to hours and quarter hours - or so it seemed from the punctuality of its trains.

But that Annett's design one on the H&BR not only doesn't resemble the standard LSWR/SR indicator, it doesn't work in the same way either. The indicator discs in the LSWR/SR version swung up and down through a right angle approximately as shown on the appended drawing below (although I think the blanking disc was pivoted the other side to the indicator discs). The operating mechanism was effectively concealed within the box but was quite simple with the operating wires emerging through a slot in the base of the box.

The owning partners tended to be parsimonious so far as capital expenditure was concerned which would tend to support the provision of cheaper cast-iron plates. The white highlighting of characters in relief on these wouldn't have stayed white for very long - regular wiping with an oily cloth would turn the white a pale buff colour.

And just as pertinently, the 25" OS maps show land ownership boundaries (and acreages) and there is no indication that the land concerned was ever in railway ownership. Irregularities in depicted boundaries are often important clues to the one-time existence of railway facilities, in this case there is absolutely nothing to suggest that there was ever anything other than plain single track through this area, even the previous existence of a single platform would normally show up as a slight widening of the cutting and, perhaps, an adjustment of the land boundary to facilitate access to it from the road. As a passenger facility, whatever was provided must have been inspected by the BoT, I wonder what their inspector's report said (assuming one can read his handwriting).

John Hinson's excellent signalbox.org website doesn't seem to actually include any photos of Southern Railway WWII ARP boxes but looking at the photos of SR and BR(S) boxes built either side of that war will demonstrate that the basic internal layout remained consistent with the frame and instruments along the back wall of the box. These photos of the 1939-built New Hythe box by the late Norman Cadge are probably the most helpful.

S originally stood for second (and T for third had been used instead on older vehicles until June 1956). Standard only replaced second as a class designation in the mid-1980s at about the same time as passengers became customers, and for much the same reason.

Reading Christbel Hallas's report of the ECJ ruling (and the added warning about every case being different) suggests to me that the ruling would have minimal impact on taking model railway layouts across the EU border (either way) for display at exhibitions. The main issue there is that one would be taking something of (considerable) value across a Customs' frontier and the fact that normally VAT/TVA (and possibly duty) would be charged on the value of the items concerned. A carnet acts as an insurance policy that that VAT would in fact be paid should the items remain the far side of the Customs' frontier instead of being returned home a few days later as intended.

See if there is an appropriate local Facebook group for Framlingham, which is quite likely, you might have to join. A request on that for information, including, of course, one or more of those b/w photos, might well elicate memories. I see a couple of FB groups for the area in SE London where I grew up just after WWII, I never cease to be amazed at how people are able to identify individual shops (and even shopkeepers) for example. You might find other useful information the same way.

That postcard photo almost certainly predates the Great War. Publishing new photos of a railway "junction" on one of the principal rail routes to the front-line would almost certainly have fallen foul of the censor. You could have added to your criticism of the current preservation scene the forest of signals which has appeared almost everywhere and which seem to so greatly confuse (youngish) modern modellers of the "old" scene. I understand why such a forest now exists and I do appreciate that some railways try to ensure that their forests are at least made up of the right trees, but, to me personally, it does rather spoil the images that I remember from my youth.

Kings Cross (in the capable hands of the ambitious Keith Dann - sadly to be later killed in a road accident) didn't appear until the mid(?)-1960s - a regular haunt to be visited on the way to the MRC's Keen House HQ on a Thursday evening. I wonder if they took over one of pre-existing ranges, I certainly have a vague recollection that Commander Ingelfield at CCW decided to concentrate on O gauge sometime around then and Kings Cross would have been a natural new home for their existing 4mm range. After Dann's untimely death, Kings Cross became associated with Eames of Reading.

The LSWR certainly made considerable use of the products of the British Power Railway Signal Company, notably in their extensive pneumatic (and later electro-pneumatic) installations but I don't believe that the standard LSWR/SR design (as I drew above) originated with the BPRSCo* (whose deigns tended to be distinctive and would have appeared elsewhere, for example on the L&Y) and neither could it be described as electrically worked as certainly many, perhaps most, examples were wire-worked (and often oil lit). It is intriguing that Alan Webster mentions an early LSWR design which appears to work in exactly the same way as the LSWR/SR standard design which he suggests had a S&F connection. I might suggest that what is more likely is that the indicators were actually produced for the LSWR by a number of signalling contractors as it was that company's normal practice to invite tenders to manufacture signalling equipment to the company's design, you will, for example, find its standard "knee" ground frame components with the names of half-a-dozen or so different signalling contractors' names cast into them, all fully interchangeable. It isn't impossible, though, that they were simply manufactured at Wimbledon given that, although they were to be found system wide, they could hardly be described as numerous and I know of only one "off-system" example - at Longmoor Downs on the Longmoor Military Railway. Alan Webster's paper is reasonably comprehensive but I suspect compiled from patent specifications and contractors' catalogues, and the LSWR/SR design would have appeared in neither. Back in 1954 it was still unusual for BR signal engineers to have experience (or comprehensive knowledge) outside their home Region. * the BPRSCo may well have been responsible though for the route indicators attached to some of the Southern Railway's early colour light signals on the SED which had a curved top and which I believe used a complex system of internally reflected light to provide the indication (which never seems to be visible in the rare photographs) - like cluster signals, few examples survived the mid-1950s. The main contractor for the early schemes seems to have been Siemens but they clearly sub-contracted much of the work on the ground (as opposed to boxes) and the BPRSCo seems a significant contender for this work.

I would have to admit that when I first saw your photo, that was exactly the kit that came immediately to my mind. I didn't do any checking so I did no more than post the suggestion that it might be a CCW kit (as per the advert I included in the post). I am also reasonably certain that I have seen a photo somewhere of the prototype in a train formed of MR clerestory stock.

Those semi-circular route indicators (IIRC there were a pair of them attached to adjacent semaphore signals at the south end of the up-side island platform) were a Southern Railway installation. They weren't quite unique, I seem to recollect coming across one or two other examples (although I can't now remember where), but they were unusual and may be the result of the cramped space available at the end of the island platform together with sighting issues. The standard LSWR/SR mechanical route indicator was the one that I included a drawing of above, there were examples all over the system, initially oil-lamp illuminated, later, where power was available, electrically lit (much as with banner repeaters). There were also, of course, route indicators attached to certain colour light signals, early installations on the south eastern used one design with a rounded top (examples of which were very rare by BR days), later installations used a Westinghouse "box" design which continued to be installed well into BR days.

The LSWR did occasionally use route indicators in the Edwardian era, there would be a signal box lever for each of the indications (typically terminal platform roads) with a further lever to pull off the related signal (or signals if there was a calling-on arm as well as the main one), the signal lever(s) was locked normal until the appropriate indication lever had been pulled and the signal lever then cleared the disc obscuring the route indication as well as clearing the signal arm itself. I have attached a scale drawing of one I measured up over 57 years ago.

No, that 4th picture shows a brake end in the lined maroon livery. I am not quite sure when lining started to be applied to non-corridor (and presumably NPCS) but certainly early post-1956 repaints in maroon were unlined. If a non-corridor or NPCS vehicle was lined and had the painted numbers at the right-hand end it was in maroon, but if the painted numbers were at the left-hand end it was in red/crimson. As I have suggested above lined non-corridor vehicles in red/crimson were extremely rare, either very few were repainted during the two year period when officially the lining should apparently have been applied (which isn't impossible) or works decided that the lining looked so awful on panelled stock that they left the lining off of their own accord and the official 1952 instruction merely reflected what was already happening out in the sticks. Leaving lining off would have been an easy decision for works to take as it would have saved work at a time when many/most were struggling with staff shortages.

Given post-war material shortages, the inter-union dispute may have been a useful excuse for delays in the construction of vehicles that they wouldn't have been able to build (or at least complete) anyway. Concentrating on the refurbishment of war-weary existing stock (which would have required a much small input of items in short supply) was clearly the sensible way forward even if it failed to bolster someone's vanity.

The quick answer to that is undoubtedly yes. It wasn't just Swindon that lined the earliest repaints of non-corridor bogie stock into BR red, so far as I have been able to establish all the works concerned did it and I assume that bogie NPCS received the lining too. Judging by the scarcity of photos of lined red vehicles, the practice ceased very rapidly although at the time the repainting of non-corridor vehicles was probably well down the priority list anyway. Perhaps the majority of non-corridor stock in service at that time was panelled and photographs show the lining was placed through the centre of the waist panelling where it looked awful. I have always assumed that that was the major reason why the practice of lining red vehicles was abandoned. Interestingly, when the colour changed to maroon in 1956 non-corridor vehicles didn't receive lining initially but practices changed again, perhaps because panelled vehicles disappeared rapidly with the onset of dmus, and lining reappeared in due course. It can make identifying paint schemes in photos difficult but if a vehicle in a photo has waist-lining and the painted number at the left-hand end it is in red, not the later maroon.

In the mid-1960s the standard station dwell time for SR electric trains was actually reduced from 20 seconds to 15 including during the rush hours.

Concrete sleepered stretches could be found on secondary and branch lines by the 1950s but these stretches retained chairs and jointed bullhead rail giving a distinctly different appearance that I don't remember ever having seen modelled. The stretches concerned would have been relayed by hand so they were typically quite short, representing a few Sundays' worth of work by pw gangs. The sleepers I remember were manufactured by Dowmac but other manufacturers may well have produced suitable sleepers too.

My first thought was that they are CCW kits which were commonplace in the early post-war years but which disappeared some six decades ago.

Thanks, interesting that today's railway has to use something so unsophisticated and, dare one say it, cheap.

The middle wheel set of the visible bogie of the left hand loco looks as if it is mounted on a skid. If it is that would account for the difference.

I remember as a train-spotting youngster on a first visit to (the old) Euston being very puzzled by the sight of these ECS trains descending Camden Bank without any loco on the front. (Albeit that the train engine was attached at the rear.)