bécasse

The link doesn't go directly to the correct photographs but when one finds them they don't depict a B-set but a pair of non-corridor carriages (a BT/BS and a T/S) which were specially modified (by having their ventilators located further from the roof centre-line than normal) for use on the Highworth branch which had a restricted (height) loading gauge. B-sets weren't permitted on the Highworth branch for that reason.

It is short term expediency which seems to work both ways at the moment (although the sender still has the chore of completing a customs declaration). We have been told here in Belgium that the "full-monty" of charges will be applied from 1 July, but I think that in the UK the implementation date may have been put back (three further months?). If you order from an approved importer (eg Amazon or Aliexpress), my understanding is that they will add the required charges to your original bill and you should get an undelayed delivery.

Sorry, I don't think that that is correct. It is well known that the GWR was using tins of ready mixed paint from about the time of the grouping, I forget the details but seem to recollect that the supplier was based in Torquay. I don't remember seeing a specific reference to SR practice (but i don't have a copy of the latest HMRS book and that may well have a reference), but I do remember from some 60 years ago a modeller who had worked at Ashford Works and who possessed a (legitimately purchased) tin of ready mixed early-30s Southern coach green (which he used to paint his models). So the SR were also using tins pre-war and the practice perhaps started when fairly minor changes were made to the green colour in the late-1920s. If they were using ready mixed for coaching stock they would have used it for goods stock too. I would be surprised, though, if independent wagon repairers used anything other than paint hand mixed from pigments even post-war.

The Railway Clearing House List of Stations book will provide an answer as it lists all the goods facilities at every station throughout the network. If none are listed, other than private sidings, no public facilities were provided. The book was reissued from time to time with intermediate updates by circular.

If they were on the same lever, they would have the same number, the numbers shown are the lever numbers. While 19 would require all the relevant stop signals to be pulled off first, the locking on 20 probably just depends on 19 being pulled off. It may seem superfluous providing separate levers but distants could be difficult pulls to adjust, having them on separate levers makes the technician's task marginally easier. I remember in the early 1960s being invited by the bobby at Andover Junction A box to pull off the distant (and it was distant because of the falling gradient) for the down ACE, I pulled the lever exactly as I had been taught and watched the indicator go from "on" to "wrong". Put it back and have another go said the bobby, I tried twice more but the indicator stubbornly stuck at "wrong". That's funny said the bobby, none of us can get it to go to "off" either, and the lineman has had half-a-dozen fruitless attempts at putting it right.

For the glazing, use a cocktail stick to draw some thinned pva adhesive across each spectacle. It will dry translucent (almost transparent, in fact) and once it is dry you can colour it with thinned (or specialist glass) paint. If you have never done it before, try practising on a spare etch arm, but it is easy enough, much easier in fact than trying to add "real" glazing.

One of the most instructive reminders from that era is the fact that all the wreckage from the October 1952 double collision at Harrow & Wealdstone, described at the time as being more tightly compacted than a car crusher could manage and incorporating the mangled remains of over a hundred fatal casualties (many of whom turned out to be railwaymen), was cleared, and all the tracks reopened to traffic, in under three days. with some tracks being reopened even more quickly than that. I wonder how many weeks it would take today?

You will be using exactly the same chairs as in P4 so the same potential problem exists, especially through pointwork, although tolerances are effectively a little greater in EM. Gauges which only hold the head of the rail may be OK provided that they do not hold the rail excessively tightly; you can check this yourself by seeing whether you can tilt a small piece of rail slightly while it is in the gauge. When threading rail on to the chairs, read carefully the instructions about chamfering the web of the rail to make the task easier (or rather a little less difficult!) but you will probably find that you will still bust some chairs as you try to thread them on to the rail. Keep any that you do bust as they can be useful in odd places on pointwork and you may also get away with using the odd one or two on straight trackwork.

R & H 48DS shunters are seriously small. While you can get a 3D-printed body, motorising it would be a serious challenge and incorporating enough weight to enable it to haul anything at all would be well nigh impossible.

I am not sure that that one actually is a powered capstan, it looks more like a static bollard to me. There were usually a mix of bollards and powered capstans in areas where rope working was commonplace - which could be warehouse complexes (with multiple wagon turntables) as well as docks.

Almost certainly pre-war, they wouldn't have excited comment if they had been seen during or after the war.

Since the issue was raised in the first place by some of the authors of the Oxford series of Southern Wagon books, I think that you can be assured that they were well aware of all the legitimate reasons why wagons that were apparently of Southern parentage could be painted grey rather than brown. The fact remains that there were sufficient reports from well-respected sources (who were mostly still alive at the time and could therefore be questioned on the subject) that odd wagons existed lettered in SR style but painted grey, to be certain that that was indeed the case. Enquiries among former employees of SR wagon works confirmed that these vehicles could not have originated from there, even in wartime (although given that the reports were often of wagons with full size insignia that would have been largely irrelevant). That leaves the repair of wagons off the Southern system as the only possible source of the grey paint. Most off-system repairs would obviously have been to running gear which wouldn't normally give rise to any need for body repainting, but there must have been other occasions when bodywork got badly damaged, usually as a result of shunting mishaps, and, so long as the cost of repair didn't exceed the book valuation of the vehicle, would have required a significant repair - and repaint. It is madness to suggest that such wagons would have been worked all the back to the Southern for repairs, that was what the multitudinous wagon repairers round the country were for.

I am not at all sure about the concept that company pooled wagons had to be returned to their home for repairs. For a start, it wouldn't have been possible for wagons that had been red-carded which had to have sufficient repairs on-the-spot to allow them to run at all - and, even after that, it was often only an upgrade to a red/green card which allowed haulage to the nearest wagon repair facility and not beyond. However, one of the apparent great puzzles of Southern Railway wagon stock is that a tiny proportion appeared in traffic painted grey and not the standard brown. Back in the days when there were still workshop men around who had worked on SR wagons, they insisted that the grey paint hadn't been acquired at any SR facility, so the only possible explanation is that these were wagons that had required repair elsewhere, and a sufficient repair to require a repaint at that, and that they had been dealt with somewhere (possibly a main line company works, possibly a wagon repairers) that was unable to replicate the SR brown paint and had used a more common grey instead. If one assumes that pooled wagons eventually got distributed over the whole British network, then SR (and to a lesser extent GWR) wagons were more likely to require repair far from any possible home base.

It is most unlikely that anyone would go to the effort of painting out the GWR roundels either during the war or during the period of austerity that followed it, although it is quite possible that any stock that was revarnished (rather than repainted) subsequent to nationalisation had them painted out. Both paint and labour were in short supply (which is why the roundels were discontinued in the first place) and would hardly have been wasted on such an unnecessary task. Photographic materials were also in short supply and most carriages had become quite dowdy (making the roundels less than obvious) and that almost certainly explains the relative lack of photographic evidence. There is, however, a Henry Casserley photograph depicting a 37xx pannier waiting to depart from Plymouth Friary for Yealmton in August 1945, and the first auto carriage is clearly displaying the GWR roundel.

A few photos of chairs and fishplates on SNCF double-champignon rail track. They were taken in the early 1990s on the erstwhile Rivesaltes-Carcassone via Quillan line in an effort to assist Gordon Gravett with the construction of his Réseau Breton Pampoul layout - although it was then discovered that metre gauge lines used a lighter weight rail and hence fittings. They may be useful to someone though. I have some drawings, too, somewhere and I will add them when I find where they are hiding!

Probably any of them. They rarely worked outside Kent, Surrey and East Sussex (plus the ex-SECR route to Reading) and there was a tendency for all of the non-specifically allocated coaching sets in this area to migrate around over time through inter-linked diagrams. Sets in plain crimson wouldn't have been seen anywhere in the late-1940s, most would have still been in a worn SR livery and any that had been repainted crimson (I am not sure that any were pre-1950) would have had waist-lining (which looked ridiculous on panelled stock which is why the practice was quickly abandoned).

When he reopens tell Chris Gibbon at High Level what you want the motor and gearbox for and he will be able to suggest the optimum combination. It is probably best to ring him. Note that he does a chassis kit for the 03 which can also be used for the 04, but you don't, of course, have to take that option.

Headcode 24 a couple of pages back was Bickley and London Victoria via Herne Hill so seen regularly during peak hours at Beckenham Junction. If the Charing Cross-Hayes via Lewisham service had been diverted to Beckenham Junction (as a result of engineering works, flooding at Clock House or w.h.y.) it would have carried head code 20 and, more importantly, it would have been in the Mid-Kent bay rather than on the up road. 4-EPBs (of both varieties) took over the suburban services via Kent House from the June TT change in 1959, prior to which they had been a right old mix of 4-SUBs, some Bulleid (including the "funny" 4377), some Shebas, some of both types of the 1925 sets and some of the late-formed 45xx ex-LBSCR overhead sets. There were also a few 2x2-NOLs. The Gillingham/Maidstone East trains (which didn't stop at BJ) had been formed exclusively of 2-HALs (including some of the Bulleid units) but were gradually changed over to 2-HAPs of both varieties as 1959 progressed becoming exclusively 2-HAP by the timetable change (when, of course, CEPs and BEPs became the norm on Kent Coast and a few (via Chatham only) Dover boat trains. Boat trains via Tonbridge or Maidstone East remained steam-hauled (or occasionally diesel-hauled by a Crompton) until June 1961. Hastings diesel units were seen very occasionally on engineering work diversions and also in the few days after the Lewisham accident of 4.12.1957.

I couldn't decide whether the horses are a touch on the lightweight side or whether my recollections have been coloured by only seeing Ardenne horses (which are real heavyweights and which are still used here on forestry work because they can go - and haul - where no motorised vehicle can) for the last decade. As to the "manure", if the local houses had even minute gardens, as opposed to just a paved backyard, any droppings would have remained in the road for seconds before being collected. It was a highly prized free "good" and I remember housewives dashing out front, shovels in hand, as soon as they heard the clatter of hooves.

Many years ago, certainly over sixty, I asked Sid Hunt, who was The Model Railway Club's Great Western group steward why his O gauge model of a GWR loco coal wagon was black when the other revenue-earning GWR wagons were dark grey (albeit tending black) and his answer was that that was how the GWR painted them. Sid was a meticulous modeller, if you ignored the fact that his locos were clockwork powered (he wasn't known as 'keyhole' Hunt for nothing), and would have known the real GWR well, so he wouldn't have got it wrong. Unfortunately I don't remember him having a model of a Cordon but my suspicions are that, as a non revenue-earner, it too would have been black. The GWR was known to be a significant user of black bituminised paint on its corrugated-iron structures (even being featured in trade advertisements for the paint) and I have often wondered whether that was what was actually used on its steel-structured service rolling stock as well.

Specifically, the Sheerness-on-sea branch which was (and always had been) single track north of Swale Halt over the Kingsferry Bridge and on to Sheerness with a passing loop at Queenborough. Apart from the lifting bridge, the post 1959 signalling was all controlled from Sittingbourne which I think was the first Southern box to use position-line subsidiary/ground signals as opposed to motorised discs.

One or more layers of ladies' stocking/tight material held firmly over the nozzle (use a substantial rubber band to keep it in place) will both reduce the effective suction and ensure that anything valuable that gets detached from the layout doesn't get sucked into the inner-parts of the vacuum cleaner. You will find that, at least to start with, you will have to clean your improvised filter every minute or two, although with the vacuum switched off cleaning isn't a difficult task.

| WOLVER|HAMPTON | | STORES |to be returned to| | WOLVER | HAMPTON | | |GWR when empty|

Very impressive. I have had success in the past in a similar situation to your washout plugs by pre-tinning the wire and then, when they are in place in the hole, just applying flux and heat without any additional solder. If the tinned wire really is a tight fit in the narrow part of the hole there should be enough solder on it to make a sound joint but insufficient to flood the broader part. If the solder on the tinned wire is insufficient for a sound joint, flood the hole (preferably just at the narrow end) with solder and then redrill it, then with both hole and wire effectively pre-tinned you should get a perfect joint.

Obviously a Sunday or Bank Holiday morning, the place would have been buzzing with activity in any early morning sunshine on working days.