bécasse

It is interesting that Rydes Vale layout always seemed to be between the two sets of steps up to the dais on the upper floor of Central Hall, very close to the kid-carrying live steam tracks - and therefore situated in an atmospheric environment that included vaporised cylinder oil as well as incinerated tobacco products, etc, etc, and yet, to my memory, it not only worked but worked well.

My recollection is that the layout ran throughout two MRC Central Hall shows, although it was a long time ago I stewarded at a nearby stand at both. It is perhaps worth remembering that these shows weren't for wimps, attendance was between forty and fifty thousand over a period of 52½ hours (in five days), plus an additional 90 minutes on the Wednesday for members' evening, and the MRC had scrapped the concept of "demonstration periods" for layouts by then so they were expected to operate continuously throughout the opening times. Rydesvale certainly did despite the considerable strain placed on the minute models - and their operators.

I remember visiting the Dubonnet production facility at Thuir in June 1981, home to the world's largest wooden wine vat. It was linked to the rest of the SNCF network by a very long and winding roadside tramway from Perpignan which had once also seen passenger services but is today long gone. In the Dubonnet yard being loaded was an early bogie Cargowagon ferry van, I was somewhat surprised to find that it was consigned to Dover.

The white-lead based roof paint would gradually have darkened (fairly universally) as the result of a chemical reaction to the hydrogen sulphide traces in the air and this wouldn't happen with modern paints. The blackening effect of smoke smuts emitted from the funnel would be overlaid on this and there would probably be little difference in this effect between now and a century ago.

From the Railway Magazine October 1927: Having checked back to January 1923 I couldn't find any other references to the change of distant signal colours on the GWR. There were several other references in the autumn of 1927 to the colour change on the SR which suggested that a patchy programme was underway there, for new works it may well have coincided with the switchover to concrete signal posts which seems to have started in summer 1926 although the first colour-light signals were installed rather earlier in 1926.

I have already looked at the appropriate 25" OS map and posted above that the building did not exist prior to the building of the flyover.

A quick check on the cab layout of a Brighton terrier suggests that the LB&SCR was also a LHD railway - but that, like the L&SWR, could be described as a Scottish railway from a locomotive point of view.

And there is another difficult dating exercise, when exactly did distant signals in general start to be painted yellow? One or two railways, the Great Northern is a notable example, started painting distant signals yellow during the Great War, but the vast majority seem to have waited until the recommendations of the various committees of the 1920s made their final recommendations in the last years of that decade. With a fair amount of work, it is possible to chart fairly precisely when, for example, upper quadrant signals started to be installed (but not on the GWR, of course), but distant signals were photographed more rarely than stop signals (especially in precisely datable new works) and the best date that I have been able to come up with so far is around 1930.

It didn't exist before Worting Flyover was built, so it is probably a compressor house for the electro-pneumatic signalling installed in the early 1900s. I have (very) vague recollections of a similar building being located near Salisbury East signal box when I visited it in the early 1960s.

The tie bar/pin soldering shown in the photo won't be silver soldering per se, but it could be high-melting-point silver-content solder which, given the lack of any significant metal "heat sinks" in the vicinity, should respond to any ordinary iron. An iron with a temperature-controlled bit will need the temperature set to, say, 370° but should offer a quick in-and-out job. I always use the HMP silver-content solder for such tasks as it makes for much stronger joints (and, with a temperature-controlled bit, one can use 145° or 188° MP solder in its vicinity with near impunity). It is much used by amateur jewellery makers.

Quite possibly axle-loading, the French lignes de grande vitesse were built with a very low maximum permissible axle load which even the 373s only just met when fully loaded - there was even a restriction on the amount of liquid that could be carried in the buffet cars! When I was involved with international high speed trains in the 1990s, DB was having problems getting the ICEs to conform although they obviously managed it eventually; pressure sealing was another issue with the ICEs at that time.

Hither Green Sorting Sidings were split into up and down side yards either side of the four track main line and at the London end of the up side sidings there was a small general goods and coal handling facility with quite an elaborate gated road access. Post WWII I doubt whether it handled much more than domestic coal, there was no goods shed or crane (although there was a coal office), but it lasted until domestic coal traffic ceased in the early 1960s even surviving the building of the adjacent Continental Goods Depot which otherwise subsumed the upside sidings (and my father's old allotment). Which just goes to demonstrate that generalisations are just that - generalisations - but still provide firm guidelines for anyone planning a fictional model railway layout. Incidentally, I totally agree with Mike Romans, the vernacular term for anything significantly more than a couple of loops was always "the yard".

Naming of yards where freight trains were remarshalled generally depended on the name that they were given when they were first constructed and thus, in the majority of cases, reflected the naming policy of the relevant pre-grouping company. As an example, the substantial yard between Hither Green and Grove Park stations in south-east London was officially Hither Green Sorting Sidings, the name it was given by the South Eastern Railway when first built.

I had often wondered that too and eventually came to the (rather obvious) conclusion that once wagons were pooled any system which relied on boxes rather than clips would be rendered useless. Interestingly, I assume that Station Trucks were effectively non-pool as they were allocated to regular circuits, sometimes daily, sometimes alternate days. This is only my assumption, though, I have never tried to verify it by looking at datable photos.

I suspect that with such a short 6-coupled wheelbase an inside cylindered loco isn't practical. There just wouldn't be sufficient space to fit in workable valve gear - which is why the LMS dock tank was outside cylindered with outside Walschaerts valve gear.

If I actually prepared a drawing of the concrete hut at Morden South, I couldn't find it. I did find my original notes (of 22 March 1969!) and have appended them and also a note on the sizes of the comparable, but naturally smaller, fogman's hut. The additional height of the apex of the roof is necessarily an estimate. I think that the dimensions are a good match with the apparent size of the hut at Downton.

There is a loop or refuge siding hidden by the train too, the near dolly being the obvious clue but a hint of a point blade can be seen under 4080's bogie too. I was going to suggest that the train looked far too long for a Cardiff-Brighton but then remembered that there would have been a Portsmouth portion as well. It is definitely Southern Region stock. Sadly I don't recognise the location but it must surely be somewhere between the Severn Tunnel and Westbury.

Taking the two photos together, I wonder now whether it isn't one of the standard concrete storage huts with the back concrete wall substituted by a timber framework with vertical timber planking mounted on the inside of that framework. The reason for doing so isn't obvious but it may be that there was an identified potential need to subsequently locate the doors there (instead of on the far side of the hut) - swapping the timber "wall" and the doors would have been a relative simple task well within the capability of the local pw gang. I think that I made a drawing of the storage hut that was located on the island platform at Morden South, if I can find it I will post a copy here.

While I have never seen a hut of this precise design before, and I started looking out for LSWR/SR/BR(S) concrete products almost sixty years ago, I can confirm that it is definitely an early Exmouth Junction product, probably pre-1930, the roof design is definitive and was used on both small fogman's huts and rather larger storage huts, both of which had plain panels for their three walls plus wooden doors. It may have been an experimental design which demonstrated that plain walls were better than panelled ones even if they used more concrete in their construction and were therefore heavier to handle. I have come across odd one-offs before during my observations and it is clear that the civil engineers were continually refining the design the products turned out by the concrete works. One interesting aspect of this (which you won't find mentioned in Southern Nouveau) is that the majority of designs were subtly, but obviously, revised immediately after WWII. It would be easy to assume that this was a result of nationalisation but in fact the majority of the revised designs first saw the light of day in 1947 or early 1948, and I now suspect that the redesigns came about as a result of the need to reduce the amount of steel reinforcing (in short supply post war) included. Another interesting initially prevalent but short-lived Exmouth Junction product was the concrete signal post, distinctive because it was solid without lightening holes, which started to be used in the summer of 1926, initially for new-works but very quickly for wide scale replacement of pre-grouping wooden posts too, but which was suddenly superseded by rail-built posts at the end of 1929. Very similar concrete posts continued to be used for yard lighting, and those signal posts which had been installed often survived for forty years, so there was clearly nothing wrong with the concrete post structure per se - my suspicion is that the relative difficulty of making S&T alterations led to their fall from grace. Returning to the depicted hut, I suspect that it is larger than you think and perhaps to the same overall dimensions as the plain-wall storage hut. I wonder if other photos exist showing the hut from different angles but, sadly, photos of any of the stations on that line are rare.

A statement you need to be a bit careful about, Tim. Kings Cross "girls" did indeed have a bit of a reputation, one which originated from the cheap availability of otherwise unoccupied compartments in quad-art sets coming in from Finsbury Park off-peak and which, when quad-art sets were gone, moved to the then cheap run-down housing stock of the KX area. Of course, the area is very gentile now and any red-light is probably the result of someone playing with the remote control for his LED lighting, but back in the days of CF things were different. Had CF been built by a French club (and there are quite a few capable of building layouts that match CF's high standards), I have little doubt that at least one of the trains would have included a depiction of a KX girl at work with her client! Indeed I have a recollection that one of your predecessors as MRC President had a rather larger scale model of a WL sleeper which included just such a (static) depiction. David

My apologies for the delay in replying but there proved to be rather more work involved in preparing this reply than I had anticipated. The drawings below which are approximately to scale (with each "box" representing a square foot in 2mm scale and a two-foot square box in 4mm scale - or 152 feet square in reality) show as much of the real history of the Croydon Central site as I have been able to ascertain, plus a fictional sequel that would have facilitated its survival into the modern day. Although I have taken it no further forward than the introduction of colour light signalling in March 1955, that layout and signalling, had it been installed, would almost certainly have been retained unaltered until 1984 when signalling control of the whole area was transferred to Three Bridges. The fictional sequel assumes that, when the station site was sold to Croydon Corporation in 1890 for the construction of a new Town Hall, that new Town Hall ended up being built elsewhere for one reason or another leaving the station site unused, other than for a sunken public garden, until well after the Great War. During that war, two adjacent RFC/RAF aerodromes had been built west of Croydon at Beddington and Waddon and in 1920 they were integrated to form London's first civil aerodrome under the name Croydon Airport. Somewhat rudimentary at first (as were the planes that used it), by 1925 there was an urgent need to upgrade it and the Croydon Airport Act of that year facilitated the construction of proper runways, plus terminal buildings alongside the new Purley Way. The two Great War aerodromes had been built with the aid of a railway siding which joined the LB&SCR west of its Waddon station, however this was unsuitable for passenger use and in fact the new Airport remained unserved by rail. However, with the former Croydon Central station site effectively unused and East Croydon soon to be part of the new 3rd rail Southern Electric network, it is possible to imagine a new electrified branch being constructed through the old station site to the new Airport terminal buildings on Purley Way. Less than two miles long, with a new 520 foot island platform Croydon Old Town station facing on to Croydon High Street, it would have been quite simple to construct and would have entailed surprisingly little destruction of property. This new station would have been provided with turn back facilities for both multiple-unit and loco-hauled trains. The line would have seen steam-hauled goods trains serving new factories located adjacent to Purley Way as well as a regular service of electric suburban trains and would have opened on 6 March 1928, the same day that 3rd rail electric trains started running between London Bridge and Caterham/Tattenham Corner via East Croydon, and only a few weeks after the new Airport terminal itself opened. The LB&SCR had always retained the land between the Park Lane bridge and the main line and had gradually developed a significant civil engineer's yard on it, known as Fairfield Yard. This would have been retained initially, with modified connections to the new branch, but subsequently became redundant, closing in February 1933. Subsequent to its removal a new electrified lay-by loop would have been installed on the north side of the branch between the Old Town station and the junction. When the Croydon area belatedly received colour light signalling in May 1955, the new East Croydon box would have assumed responsibility for the points and signals at Croydon Old Town, working Sykes Lock and Block to Croydon Airport which would have retained its 1928 mechanical signalling, albeit doubtless upgraded to upper quadrant.

About the same time, following the removal of most suburban goods (coal) yards and their attendant part-time signal boxes, the Southern Region retained the trailing crossovers for use in emergencies and during engineering possessions by clipping and padlocking them. It didn't take long (five years, perhaps?) for the penny to drop that even unworked they wore more than plain track so they were taken out (although I believe that at least a couple of standard crossover formations were retained in store for a while ready to be dropped quickly into place if an emergency occurred).

Mounting the motor with its other face uppermost should change the direction of rotation to your layout standard. Obviously, since you have applied superglue to fix it in place, you won't wish to do this at the moment but if it ever becomes unstuck, it might be worth trying. And talking of "unstuck", are you sure that the motor will run cool enough not to break the superglue bond, or are you using a glue that is impervious to at least low levels of heat?

The E5000's were only suitable for yard to yard working of freight trains and then only when the yards concerned had wired reception roads, although there were more of these than one might assume (they even included the length of Mr. Angerstein's railway in SE London). Almost all such workings ran during the night hours when the number of passenger trains was minimal - hence the lack of photographs. I lived alongside Hither Green sorting sidings and the only E5000-hauled freights that I actually saw were the rakes of ferry wagons to/from the new Continental Freight Depot there which were able to run fast enough to be slotted into daytime timetables. There were, though, always a handful of the locos siting in a wired siding on the down side at the Grove Park end of the yard. The other E5000-hauled working* that I saw regularly during the 1961-1962 timetable year was the 7NA12am Holborn Viaduct, 7.24am London Bridge to Dover which was formed of a BR MkI 3-set and innumerable vans, prior to electrification it had been worked by a D1, E1 or C. It didn't run on Sundays or public holidays. * Apart from the Night Ferry and Golden Arrow, of course

I couldn't help wondering whether the "easement" largely existed to permit the conveyance of odd (loaded) cattle wagons by passenger trains.