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For coaching stock, the SR/BR(S) painting cycle was repaint after 6 years, revarnish with paint touch-ups after 3, although stock that was little used and whose paintwork remained OK would go longer. Obviously this hadn't been followed during the war years but I doubt whether much remained in olive green for very long after the post-nationalisation red livery was introduced in late 1949(?). Carriages that had been repainted in malachite would have retained that colour throughout your period although the insignia may well have been altered to one extent - there was real mis-mash of lettering and numbering schemes on stock at that time. An M7 would have been in BR (not SR wartime) unlined black bearing the insignia BRITISH RAILWAYS, there may have been a handful in malachite with BRITISH RAILWAYS either in "sunshine" or on Gill Sans lettering - it depends precisely when they passed through works, unlettered is also a possibility as are s---- rather than 3---- numbers (and numbers on front buffer beams and bunker backs). To be certain, you really need photos, but it does mean that it is difficult for someone to challenge what you choose to do unless they have photographic proof that you were wrong.

While I have no direct experience of building these, can I remind you that LNER/BR(E) ground signals, unlike those of all the other companies, were upper quadrant so the red or yellow bar went to the NW-SE diagonal, so as to speak, when the signal was pulled off - quite a distinctive feature.

"Not a staff station" means that the station can't be used for passing trains travelling in the opposite direction (whether passenger or goods), whereas "not a block post" means that the station can't be used either for passing trains in the opposite direction or for breaking up the block section and thus allowing two trains in the same direction to follow each other (using, for example, staff and ticket or divisible METS).

Such levers were often the key to much simplification of the interlocking for the whole layout, the term "direction lever" often being used for the FPL lever concerned.

So far as I can remember there were no signals of this type along the length of the Quarry Line which was largely in broad cuttings through chalk - and the only place where there was a narrow "cutting" was through the erstwhile covered way at Coulsdon and there were no signals there. I have remembered, and found an online (lower) photo of, the girder-based colour light signal gantry at the southern end of Penge Tunnel which was erected during the winter of 1958-59 as part of the Kent Coast scheme, but, although in a tight cutting, it still had upright supports at either end of the horizontal.

Because that is what the Southern Region were fitting to their colour light signals at that period - and it makes them very distinctive. Incidentally, at that period colour light signals were as distinctive to their BR Region as the semaphore signals had been before them, so, although you might get some inspiration as to how a problem was solved elsewhere on another Region, the detail of that solution would be all wrong for your location and would have to be rethought - rather like ARP hoods! Note too, that the Southern had their own distinctive black on white number plates for colour light signals, which were prefixed C for the Central Division and W for the Western Division (and not prefixed for the Eastern Division - they got there first) followed by the one or two letter signal box code, while automatic signals were prefixed A, CA or WA. Plates for automatic signals also carried a black horizontal bar and those for semi-automatic signals the symbol SEMI .

If you assume that the signal was erected in the first half of the 1950s, a rather neat solution would have been to let a concrete bracket into the brickwork. I don't think that it was actually done anywhere but it would certainly have been possible and, incredibly, a few of the (free standing) concrete brackets are still in use today. This webpage gives historical details, including a dimensioned drawing, but be careful with the photos which show the current signals (and safety barriers) mounted on them and not what would have been there in the 1960s. Three things to note are that there would have been a ladder fixed to the cutting wall to allow S&T technicians to access the signal head(s), there would also have been a "signal post" telephone recessed into the cutting wall, and finally the red lens would have been the lowest of the three or four in the signal head (which would also have had long "ARP" hoods). https://hydeparknow.uk/2020/12/05/seventy-years-of-main-line-signalling-in-london-2/ This page, from the same group of web pages, includes a number of contemporary photos of the concrete brackets: https://hydeparknow.uk/2020/10/01/seventy-years-of-main-line-signalling-in-london/

It definitely had both box and signals up to passenger closure (although the signals may well have been oou by then) - the box retained its SE&CR name board (blue condensed lettered on white enamel) right up to the end, it wasn't the only example but they were very rare. Colyton, on the Seaton branch, was another example but only during the summer months and I have a sneaking suspicion that it was set up in such a way that two identical tablets could be out for the long Seaton Junction - Seaton section with trains carrying the same tablet right through rather than giving up a tablet and receiving a new one at Colyton.

Surely the answer with at least the more common and semi-standardised road vehicles (buses and taxicabs in particular) would be 3D printing.

In the old days, entry to sidings remote from a signal box was usually controlled by an adjacent ground frame, released either electrically from a box or by a key, and there would have been no fixed signals at all. Even today it is still a possible arrangement.

Looking at that photo, the (dark) blue of the tricolour flag just impinges on the name board. That blue is clearly darker than the livery blue of the loco but when you compare the difference between those two blues and between the colour of the flag and the name board, it becomes obvious that the name board and the loco livery are quite different and I would say that the name board is green rather than blue.

Excellent. Almost certainly winter 1956-57. It wouldn't have been much different - some diesels, most carriages in maroon - when Keen House opened three years later.

For much of the pre-war period ex-LSWR T9 4-4-0s (but with 6-wheel tenders), shedded at Brighton, monopolised the Brighton-Bristol-Cardiff workings between Brighton and Salisbury.

However, the two routes highlighted in that official Brighton holiday guide were both served by regular timetabled trains. Rather oddly, the Brighton-Salisbury section of the Cardiff route was the regular haunt for several years in the early 1930s of the T9 class 313 which is pictured at Hatton in one of those Warwickshire Railways links.

I agree with Mike that the full run-off siding would be needed in this case. In similar situations that I was familiar with, the sand drag in front of the buffer stop extended the full width of the permanent way and fully covered the rails (although not by too much, there was apparently a fine margin between having enough sand to help bring an errant vehicle to a stand without doing too much damage, and having too much causing the errant vehicle take off like a plane). I suspect that the example illustrated where the sand was confined closely to the rails was a special case because there was insufficient space to provide a proper run-off track, but perhaps Mike might like to confirm that this wasn't yet another example of the GWR doing things differently to everyone else.

Not very common in Southern practice, the LNER was a fairly avid user of them, calling them derailers. The photo probably dates from the 1980s or possibly the late 1970s.

In which case it would almost certainly have used the coaching stock of the company (GWR or LMSR) where the traffic originated as the use of Southern stock would have entailed a lot of ecs running. There may, though, have been occasions where an odd Southern vehicle was used to strengthen a return formation or to replace a defective carriage.

Birmingham was hardly noted as a holiday destination for those living along the South Coast either. I don't deny that such holiday trains existed but, unlike the daily through trains which were usually (but not inevitably) worked alternate days with carriage sets from one company or the other, they were commonly worked using stock from the area where the traffic originated - as is seen in the photo of a train with GWR stock. Military, and naval, trains were used to move battalions or ship's companies and much of the traffic originated on the former LSWR, notably from around Salisbury Plain (where the Bulford branch had effectively been built to facilitate such traffic) and from Portsmouth. It was normal to use non-corridor stock for such trains with the first class reserved for officers and it was equally normal to use the stock of the originating company, ie the Southern - it is these two factors which strongly suggest a military or naval purpose for the train that was depicted. The other possibility is that it depicts a special excursion, advertised or privately sponsored, from Southern territory to an event in the West Midlands.

A minor correction to an old topic. The layout would not have appeared at Central Hall in 1968 as the Model Railway Club's Easter show that year (and in 1967) was held at the New Horticultural Hall, also in Westminster. The availability of that hall was governed by flower shows and it proved impossible to stage an Easter show there in 1969 forcing the MRC to move the date to August. That proved to be one of the best shows that the MRC had put on to date (and it was the 44th) but was a financial disaster. The MRC moved back to an Easter show at Central Hall in 1970 but, with the lower hall no longer available, it was necessarily rather smaller. It is perhaps interesting to recall that, with the show open five days 10.30-21.00, somewhere between 40 and 50 thousand people paid for admission.

Given the ex-LSWR non-corridor stock and the location, in my opinion they almost certainly depict military specials. Don't forget that the British Army occupied significant tracts of former LSWR territory and that that army moved around quite often for training purposes.

The Brighton Circle's website suggests that 4mm scale locomotive name transfers have been available from Emily Street Transfers in the past but are unlikely to still be so.

Looking at one of the aerial photos above, it seems that the non-fouling capacity of the platform was five U-vans (or Cavells as they were known to the staff), or four with a pilot loco attached. Anything more, attaching a loco for example, would foul the adjacent platform but not (within reason of course) the throat and so could be allowed, but normally only briefly. Does the BTF film "Terminus" provide any insight?

But that isn't the way that it is done, and even if the signal was back in rear of the points the diverging route signal arm would be a small "subsidiary route" one. In practice, that signal would be back beyond the tunnel with a track circuit locking the facing point lock on the point.

I have taken the liberty of adding some dimensions to your photo of the fixed distant signal. These are based on the LMSR standard but, so far as I can see and certainly within modelling limitations, these are the same for the LNER.

Looking at photos of 377S, and, although it had only been allocated that number in 1947, it retained it (rather than DS377) until at least 1954, it would appear that the numbers and letters, including "BRIGHTON WORKS", were all the same size and had a distinct shine. That suggests that they were "gold" rather than yellow, and yellow probably wouldn't have stood out sufficiently against the Brighton "yellow" paint scheme anyway. The originals were almost certainly sign written by hand.