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A device called a selector, linked to the relevant points, determines which of the two signals will go off when lever 14 is pulled. Similarly, the interlocking will incorporate some conditional interlocking (again determined by the N/R position of the relevant points) so that the appropriate complete route is locked (and conflicting routes locked out) when the lever is pulled. Only certain types of mechanical interlocking, most notably tappet locking, could provide conditional interlocking, but if the interlocking was suitable or could be made so, the use of selectors was a convenient way of providing extra signalling functionality when no spare levers remained and extending the frame would have been at best expensive or at worst impractical.

For obvious reasons, stock worked out from its home depot on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and returned on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays (although the timings might well have been different on Saturdays). Some weekly inter-regional trains worked out Friday or Friday night and back on Saturday (and were thus only ever formed of their originating Region's stock), others worked in both directions on Saturdays using stock from each end which was berthed (or borrowed locally) during the week - thus alternating on alternate weekends (and sometimes incurring ECS working at one or both ends of the period of operation).

Two other features to support the LBSCR origin of the vehicle, it is fitted with standard destination board clips (which, so far as I know, weren't fitted to GW siphons) and the very centre of the horizontal planking has been boarded over to allow an "S R" insignia to be painted on, although it is a slight puzzle that no trace whatsoever of painted legends is visible in the photo.

Probably post-war, and certainly post-nationalisation, catering on ordinary services on the South Eastern Division was limited to buffet cars, some of which (normally on the Hastings line) were Pullmans (styled "Refreshment Car" IIRC) which were themselves eventually painted green after inclusion in BR stock. Many boat trains included a Pullman Car and the Night Ferry conveyed a catering vehicle for WL passengers which could serve breakfast. Pullman trains were limited to the summer only Kentish Belle and the Golden Arrow boat train (which at times conveyed ordinary stock as well), although two Pullman cars were attached to a winter TT train which ran in similar timings to the Kentish Belle and these probably served at-seat meals. On 6-PUL/6-PAN electric services on the Central Division, the Pullman crew provided an at-seat refreshment service into the 1st class compartments of the adjacent ordinary vehicles ("Coffee for you, sir?") and this continued on the short-term 4-PUL sets of the early 60s. The mid-Sussex line had 4-BUF (and the two prototype 4-BEP) sets included in their formations.

Actually the very earliest 04s just had a hole on the bonnet top for the exhaust to escape, at least originally.

Having first travelled through the Tunnel on the Tuesday, I then travelled Waterloo to ET Coquelles again on the Grove on the Friday (which was 6th, not 5th May, 1994 - see photo) and its subsequent return working (without HMQ). The resulting bad heads seem to have been universal, I was chatting to Adele Biss (then a BRB board member) during the inauguration ceremony and she was certainly "enjoying" the hospitality. I remember that we were officially given a special day's leave to attend in order not breach the no-drinking on duty rules.

Not so far removed from the antics that G P Keen and his friends used to get up to rather more than half-a-century ago, although they used finescale O gauge models rather than tinplate.

I travelled (on duty) from Waterloo to Coquelles ET terminal and back on Tuesday 3 May 1994 on what was the first train to carry a significant number of (invited) passengers through the tunnel. Although I had been inside a TMST before, I had never been in one in motion and I too remember being absolutely astounded by just how well it rode on "Southern Region" track (although it was routed via BTR1 each way and thus not via Maidstone East).

Great Western Railway Journal (Wild Swan) issue no.23 (Summer 1997) contains an article on the working of the (Banbury-) Kingham (pick-up) Goods by Michael Clifton. It is by a long way the best detailed account I have ever come across of how a typical "cross-country" pick-up goods was operated, noting in particular how empty wagons were left positioned after shunting on the outward journey to simplify their collection on the return journey. If you ever doubted that railwaymen on the ground always found the easiest (safe) way of doing a job, reading this article will convince you that they did. The line concerned was a GWR secondary through route which has already been mentioned in this thread, so it is particularly pertinent, but in fact the story it tells would have been replicated a thousand times a day across the whole country, and not just on the GWR.

The trick is to try to replicate the real thing. Try to find some thirties' photos of the interior of York station, there are bound to be a good few around, and then seek to create similar groupings of people in similar positions along the platform. Saturdays (and Saturday afternoons in particular) tend to be over represented in pre-60s photographs and I would anticipate that they were probably the busiest times of the week then at York, consequently you shouldn't be worried by having a lower passenger density than the photos depict.

Class 313 electric units started an interim public service between Drayton Park and Old Street (only) on August 16 1976, the full service from Moorgate via Finsbury Park to Welwyn Garden City and Hertford North followed on November 8 of the same year. Diesel services to Moorgate via Kings Cross were withdrawn permanently from the same date.

And I wondered if it was added to provide 1st class accommodation on the service working, although it could also be just to cater for a 1st class through group, plenty of those travelling around the "glorious twelfth".

Pop off to the Isle of Wight Steam Railway and you will find some in service. The Southern Railway added gangway connections to ex-LCDR stock used for pull-and-push trains to facilitate ticket issuing.

You are lucky to have model railway exhibitions to go to, albeit at some risk. The last I was able to go to was at Junglinster at the end of February 2019 and everything at all local has been cancelled ever since. Even the big Modelspoor/TMM biennial at Leuven this October has been cancelled (again).

The late Right Reverend Eric Treacy held clerical appointments variously at Keighley, Halifax, Pontefract and Wakefield during the BR steam era and was a prolific photographer of steam trains including on the S&C. He published several books of his photographs - Roaming the Northern Rails is probably the one closest to your spec, plus there was a small 1946 publication of LMSR photos published when he was still an army chaplain.

Ah, I had rather assumed that it might be that, hence my comment about Halle being in Vlaams Brabant. On the rare occasion that I catch a train from Marloie to Bruxelles, there is always an on-train announcement in Dutch alone as the train passes briefly through the Gordel, thatdespite the fact that the train doesn't serve any station there and there are probably ten times as many passengers on the train for whom Lëtzebeurgesch is their first language than ones for whom it is Dutch. There is, in fact, a direct ERTMS connection. A very early aspiration was that, with the system, signalling communication should ultimately become linguistics-free. The railway standard language does serve quite well, particularly with a constructive approach on the part of users*, but it still needs a lot of learning and it is always potentially subject to problems in areas where the pronunciation of a language is heavily accented - few Frenchmen would readily understand the Belgian French spoken by locals where I live, for example, because it is pronounced as if it were Lorrain Wallon. (*Hence horse with a pantograph, covering an omission that partly comes about because there is no simple French translation for the English word deer.)

Until 1956, three years after the closure of the Freshwater branch, there was, of course, a triangle in the Isle of Wight - Newport, Ryde, Sandown - and O2 tanks, usually the ones allocated to Newport (and therefore the very locos that worked the Freshwater line) certainly got turned at times working trains round it. Ryde Works could only accept locos with their bunkers facing north, so if a loco needing works attention turned up the other way round, it was put on the Bembridge branch turn and turned on the turntable there at the end of the day before returning to Ryde (goods to Sandown, LE thence to St.John's Road); as you suggest that Bembridge turntable was only otherwise used as a central-pivot sector plate.

It might have been helpful if you had mentioned that Lochmaben was on the Caledonian (even if nominally independent initially) and thus would have been signalled in that company's fashion (with later LMSR influences). I don't feel qualified to comment on CR signalling practice, although I believe that there might have been a recent book on the subject, but doubtless there are others who would be happy to. If not, reference to contemporary photos of similar size stations can often be helpful as can accident reports, and also the diagrams and other information available on John Hinson's excellent "signalbox" website.

The earliest verifiable date that I could find for a LSWR lattice post was c1893 (as the North Cornwall line crept its way towards Wadebridge) but Newton Toney on the Bulford branch, opened October 1901, was initially equipped with wooden post signals - hence my "turn of the century give or take a few years". They continued to be installed as single posts (including on the former SECR and LBSCR lines of the Southern) until the middle of 1926 when concrete posts were used instead, they in turn being replaced by rail-built posts at the beginning of 1930. None of the dates should be considered as absolute, new works usually got the latest style a little earlier than random renewals. It is interesting that you should have found LSWR lattice posts attributed to Dutton as one doesn't usually associate that company with lattice posts. However, the LSWR is known to have regularly asked around for tenders for the supply of standard signalling equipment to their design and that is obviously what happened here, although Dutton wasn't absorbed by Pease until 1899 and it is possible that contracted equipment (like these posts) continued to be manufactured bearing the Dutton name until 1901 when Pease themselves were absorbed into McK&H.

Given how solid the black-painted base of the post looks in the photo, there is no doubt in my mind that this is a wooden post. It probably isn't as tall as it seems, say no more than 30 feet. Remember that the LSWR only started using lattice posts around the turn of the century, give or take a few years.

I can't remember now when Malcolm's team were finally integrated into the EPS. It certainly wasn't in 1988, I then covered my professional speciality for EPS from BRHQ and was distinctly surprised to be told in the November of that year that my post was being transferred to EPS at Waterloo that week on the personal instruction of DDK. I was then the ninth member of the EPS team including the two secretaries. Malcolm, of course, had been involved in planning for the Channel Tunnel services even when he was SR GM and it became his full time role in 1982 when the Sectors were created. Problems, real or imagined, with Thameslink paths at Herne Hill were long in the future then, they would have got short shift from DDK on corporate interest grounds in BRB days. I remember sitting in in a meeting where he was present as VC (but not as chair), I can't remember the subject now, when there was long diatribe from one of the Sectors (you can guess which one) on what they were going to do, and when the speaker finished, DDK quietly said "Mr B... that is not in the corporate interest and it will not happen". You could have heard a pin drop. I am intrigued by your mention of problems on the Tournai-Ath-Halle line, I worked closely with the SNCB/NMBS and don't remember anything being mentioned other than the problems associated with Halle being located in Vlaams-Brabant and possibly the rail access to the platforms at Midi/Zuid. One early meeting, at the Shell Centre (by Centrale station) comes particularly to mind. I travelled over via Harwich-HvH and arrived at Centrale about 45 minutes before the meeting was due to start, giving me just time to look over Bruxelles from a nearby vantage point. There I experienced the weird sensation that I had "come home", almost a premonition of the fact that three decades later I would be a Belgian citizen, although I had absolutely no inkling of that at the time.

Malcolm told me, probably in 1988 about the time that work started on WIT, that the very first off-peak timetabling constraint that they had identified was the stopping service through the Weald of Kent and once that had been (sort of) overcome by flighting, all the other possibilities, notably the acceptability of the single reversible line approach to Waterloo and the minimising of the cost of Eurotunnel paths, followed on. There remained, of course, the problem of peak hours which could only be solved by the partial use of the Maidstone East route. The timetabling constraints imposed by the need to operate over SNCB ligne 94 shouldn't be forgotten either.

The flighting of Eurostars originally came about to minimise pathing constraints on the third-rail network and at that stage it was planned that TMSTs would pass through the tunnel at the same speed as the vehicle shuttles. However Eurotunnel's financial problems resulted in a downgrading of the service speed of the shuttles (adding just four minutes to the minimum throughout transit time for cars which had been planned as one hour) and it was at that stage that the already planned flighting of Eurostars optimised their use of tunnel pathways without reducing their planned tunnel transit speed. Because they are largely hidden from sight, Eurotunnel's operations get little coverage and yet, at busy times, the amount of traffic pushed through the tunnel in both directions is quite remarkable.

On the Southern Region, at least, TOPS loco numbers were applied en mass during December 1973 and January and February 1974. The locos would have borne their E50xx numbers until then (or E61xx for those rebuilt as EDs).