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Tiles became the preferred roof covering within the LCC area, rather than slates, after the Great War. Not that tiles should be thought of as modern, they were the first building material to have a standard size imposed in Britain by law - and that was almost back in pre-history during the brief reign of Edward IV.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it beat carpets, probably in the main carpets from commercial premises, to remove dust and other dry matter. In the days before vacuum cleaners there was a significant requirement for such cleaning of those carpets which saw a lot of foot traffic. You could think of it as the dry equivalent of a (wet) laundry.

The subsidiary signal was just that, it allowed movements as far as authorised just as any shunt signal would. Without the locking diagram, I can't be sure whether it could be cleared without the subsidiary signal ahead also being cleared (exactly as the running signal would only clear when the running signal ahead was showing at least single yellow), if it could it was just to allow movements short of the fouling point and may well have required the station foreman to stand at the fouling point with a red flag/lamp to ensure that the movement stopped short; although it seems unlikely it is possible that such moves were allowed to better position a van in the train (the station was alive in the early hours of the morning with newspaper traffic). The "single" aspect signal that you think you can see is in fact a 2-aspect (and hence 2-hood) signal in a 3-aspect head - the Southern Railway didn't use 2-aspect heads (except, possibly, as IBSs or distants within a semaphore signalled area).

Yes, PSV licences required for both driver and conductor, and in London even tram drivers needed a licence (issued by the LCC). The route would have been numbered 297B in 1932 under the Bassam numbering system where each route had a unique number and the suffix indicated a version of short working - 297A was probably used for journeys extended further along Tufnell Park Road to/from Holloway Garage. I can only find one photo of a scooter with a Bassom-style number display (on route 109D on the SE outskirts of London). I suspect that the rear route number display was a large stencil. If you are making the run-out displays readable, Holloway garage was "J". York Way was also served by several Green Line routes (in the days when they were lettered rather than numbered) as there was a Green Line coach station at Kings Cross (which I believe can still be seen today unless it has been demolished recently). Although Green Line itself didn't start before 1933, the routes had been operated previously by private operators such as Queen Line.

John Hinson's website includes the diagram for the 1920s (post-electrification) colour-light signalling although it doesn't show the two "parcels" platforms 2 and 3 shortened as it should. Platform 6 was also effectively short although a narrow (certainly sub-standard width) walkway was provided throughout an 8-car length. There were 2-aspect (both running and subsidiary) R/G signals on each road that converged prior to fouling points, the running signals being unable to clear unless the running signal in advance was also clear. Quite an interesting bit of early colour light signalling in fact. The signalling shown in John Hinson's diagram remained in use until at least the late-1950s.

The 639 mentioned was a short-lived very localised route, although that number had indeed once been borne, not only by a trolleybus route, but by one of the very two trolleybus routes (the other was the 615) which passed the end of Calshot Street at the time that Keen House opened; it didn't serve York Way (the former York Road) though. Before WWII, York Road was served by single-deck route 239 operated by LT type buses (known as "scooters" because of their length - they were 6-wheelers) from Hollway Garage. It ran between Kings Cross Albion Street and Tufnell Park Hotel with a running time of only 13 minutes. Prior to the LPTB route renumberings of October 1934, it had been General route 297B. I don't know what operated the route before the scooters arrived in the summer of 1931 but there were single-deck versions of both K and S type vehicles, the older K is perhaps the more likely of the two.

Surprisingly though a number did survive in general service into the early 1950s. I have a vague feeling that I have seen a Roye England photo somewhere that showed one with a Wxxxxx number. There were certainly several in departmental use that acquired DWxxxxxx numbers.

Definitely just the axle box covers and even those were probably brand new from stock when first used on an SR underframe. The ex-LBSCR underframes used under (rebuilt LBSCR) electric stock were non-standard length and the last in use, under reformed 4-SUB units in the 45xx series, were withdrawn in 1960; the reformed interim units having been created precisely because their underframes were unusable under EPBs and yet had sufficient life to provide a necessary buffer while other older vehicles were withdrawn to enable their standard SR underframes to be reused under EPBs.

You may well find it quite difficult (if not impossible) to get 0,5mm ø wire into a hole drilled 0,5mm ø. I would recommend opening the hole out slightly using, say, a 0,6mm ø drill which shouldn't be difficult. It will also give the solder somewhere to go. If the steel wire will in fact go into the hole you have drilled, you could use Loctite 603 to fix it, just apply the tiniest drop (I use a pin to apply it) to the end of the steel wire and push it right home in the brass.

The first photo is pre-WWII.

I wondered if the loco is one of the NCC Jinties?

Definitely a BEC (ie Brush) car, and it doesn't seem to match any cars that ran on the IoM. Could it be Derby no.1 (now at Crich, although on a standard rather than 3'-6" gauge truck) prior to restoration?

It isn't just Customs' that will form an impediment from January to visits by Europeans to the UK for exhibitions, etc. It has been announced by the Home Office that they will no longer allow Europeans to enter the UK using their identity cards on the spurious grounds that they are less secure than passports (really, do you now have to have a police visit in the UK before you can get a passport - or move home?). The majority of Europeans don't possess passports, because the ID cards replace them for travel within Europe, and I think it unlikely that they will go to the trouble, and expense, of getting one just to travel to the UK. They will just forgo that "pleasure" instead. Personally, I should still be able to enter if I so wish as I retained my UK citizenship (one has to pay a substantial sum to revoke it) and the British Ambassador in Bruxelles assures me that British citizens don't actually need passports to enter the UK.

It isn't just the fact that duty - and VAT - will become payable on all but the tiniest consignments, every shipment will face Customs' delays and, even if they decide that duty/VAT isn't payable, there will still be a charge to cover the cost of their examination. However, that is just buying goods and books, what is, in many ways worse, is that exhibiting British layouts in Europe and European layouts in the UK will become unaffordable because the owners will need to obtain a Carnet de Passage en Douane, basically an insurance policy guaranteeing the payment of duty/VAT if the layout isn't, for some reason, returned to its home country after exhibition. Like many one-off insurance policies these don't come cheap, I've heard suggestions of charges of the order of £ 1.000 or more. Similar problems apply to musicians and their instruments, but at least there their representatives have some muscle and the EU seems to have put in place a scheme which avoids such costs - but it doesn't apply to model railways.

The Vennbahn may have criss-crossed the Belgium-Germany border (and indeed it did) but the railway line itself as far as its boundary fences either side and including all station yards was actually Belgian territory throughout (and was operated by the NGBE - better known to the British as the SNCB). The RaVel walking and cycling track that has replaced it is also Belgian throughout. One of the stranger territory incursions in Europe, which in this case resulted from the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

My rather simplified take on it in HOe for my contribution to Les Croisées de l'étroite, pictured here at the LR Presse Trainsmania exhibition at Lille in 2017.

I don't know precisely whose it was or where, but it is the lower deck of a double-deck tramcar (the far-end spiral stairway can just be see). If it is in the Isle of Man, it will be a former Douglas horse tram or Douglas Head electric tram, and if you were to spend time googling images from these you would probably be able to identify it. The object to the right of the photo is a telephone box.

The event was 115 years ago, but it was RAL's comment that is almost 50 years old, and so 65 years after the event. If I look back now 65 years, it is amazing what I can remember, and reasonably accurately date, from that time, far more indeed than I can from later years, and I take an interest in things that 'turn up' from that era. What I was suggesting was not so much that the SA itself could have provided a date (and it would seem it definitely doesn't) but that someone might have kept not just an SA but a notice that the crossing was in future to be controlled by the relocated box and that would have been dated. I acquired an old GWR rule book when my late father-in-law, a signalman on Reading Panel, died and he had meticulously kept every issued update during its validity - he wouldn't have been the only one to do that. If it was knee-frame then surely it came from the L&SWR's stock of such (component) items which, as you doubtless know, was renewed as necessary and often by a different supplier (but to the same basic design) each time on the basis of lowest tendered cost. That suggests that it isn't McK&H's records you should be looking for (although they might provide a "couldn't be before" date) but Wimbledon's, although there would presumably also have been a copy sent to Derby to justify the cost charged to the Joint Railway account. I vaguely associate RAL's name with the Midland in the back off my mind so perhaps it was the discovery of some record there that provided the source of his information - they may well have been turning out old records in the post-Beeching era, too.

I would suggest two possible sources, particularly bearing in mind that this was all but 50 years ago: 1) An S&DJR Sectional Appendix which included a dated amendment, 2) Information on the supply of a new frame for the box or other relevant information held at Wimbledon, which surfaced during a turn out and was "rescued" rather than being burnt. In 1977, when the S&ISD moved from 50 Liverpool Street to the former RCH building in Eversholt Street, I was given the task of "weeding" the former Southern Railway Shipping & Continental Department service planning files. Incredibly the files went back well before the Great War but my instructions were clear, space constraints meant that only the 1% relating to ongoing legal agreements were to be retained. I kept a few choice items for myself, checked that Porchester Road weren't interested - they definitely weren't - and the rest were burnt. I suspect that that was repeated a hundred fold around the railway as offices amalgamated and/or moved.

There is certainly circumstantial evidence to suggest that in the case of the District Engineer Exeter separate copies of linens were held at both Wimbledon and Exeter (the original was probably done at Wimbledon with a tracing sent to Exeter) and that they were subsequently updated quite separately with Exeter's tracing reflecting any actual alterations made on the ground while Wimbledon's would incorporate standard updates like titles but would be far more "hit and miss" in respect of alterations on the ground. If that is true for DE Exeter it is likely to be even more true for DE Glastonbury while it remained a separate organisation. However, are you sure that you haven't misinterpreted the purpose of drawing 1009. Just producing a significant drawing for historical purposes seems unlikely to me, particularly given the joint ownership of the S&DJR where I always get the impression that the owners kept a very careful eye on what the other was spending as a cost against the joint receipts.

I have a feeling that it was R A Lacey and I have certainly seen the results of other research in that name in the distant past - my brain keeps suggesting an HMRS connection but that might be wrong. The 7th September 1903 was a Monday and so a perfectly feasible date for the bringing into use of a replacement signal box on a line not open on Sundays. My experience has been that dates that are quoted fully and are feasible are far more likely to right, suggesting that they come from documentation, than someone's inspired guess of, say, November 19xx (with shadows showing that the sun is high in the sky!).

Interesting Chris. A couple of comments: S&DJR drawing no. 1009 would have been on linen and, like other signalling drawings, specifically intended to be updated as when required by scratching off outdated information and replacing it with current data. Sometimes the scratched-off data could be seen as "ghosts" on dyeline prints, sometimes it just disappeared, it depended on how good the draughtsman (or draughtswoman) was. It is surprising just how many times a linen drawing could be altered in this way before it needed to replaced - and I have seen patched examples. The result of this is that the information included in such a drawing, other than when it was first created, necessarily represented the current situation at each location rather than the situation that existed when the drawing was first created. I suspect that crossing gate targets with the white surround date from the introduction of enamelled steel plate, rather than painted wooden, targets. I am not sure when that was and it may have been a Southern Railway introduction (paralleling signal arms), it certainly became standard SR practice.

I can confirm that all examples with wooden cab droplight and(or) diagonal lighting conduits on the cab rear had bodyside panels with hinged straps (h/s) but without vertical grab handles (v/h) - so my black Bachmann specimen is unquestionably wrong in this respect, it shouldn't have the vertical grab handles. Certainly some shunters had unpainted coupling rods and varnished, rather than painted, cab doors and droplight. These may well have been only the Darlington built early-era ones but it is an issue which is difficult to check rigorously using contemporary black and white photographs and therefore I largely stayed quiet on the subject, particularly in respect of the varnished droplights. I did give comprehensive links to the photographic collections which I used, some of which offered surprisingly comprehensive coverage of early locos, and I suggest you might find some research among them useful. The varnished cab doors and droplights would indeed have been a wood-brown colour weathering over time to wood-grey.

I produced "source 2" and went to a lot of trouble to get it as correct as possible. Although it wasn't always possible to check precisely when features changed, any one batch was usually identical and where it wasn't I normally assumed that any locos built in a particular week would have been the same. The locos that had vertical/diagonal/vertical lighting conduits on the back of the cab were indicated as 4\ in the spreadsheet, those (later ones) with straight vertical/horizontal/vertical conduits by a plain 4. The spreadsheet was specifically intended to help me identify which locos had which features (and colour, etc, schemes when new). Some locos would still have been painted black at their first overhaul but it is impossible (I tried!) to be certain which they were, some would also have been repainted plain green.

Highworth comes immediately to my mind, which retained a Home and Starting signal to its end in the 1960s. It also had point indicators (very rare by that time) at the entry and exit from the run-round loop but no ground signal at the exit from the siding. It probably retained its signalling because it was actually cheaper not to make changes - and the signalling would have been ripped out if renewals had been required or if doing so would have reduced staff (porter-signalman) costs. It was also a bit of an oddity because it still retained the same layout originally inspected and approved as a light railway under the 1866 Act (which probably explains the lack of a ground signal at the exit from the siding). However, I wouldn't take it as prototype inspiration for a model unless you know what you are doing, even though 1866 Act light railways were far more common than many might suppose. (The LSWR's original route into Bournemouth was one, for example.)