bécasse

The width of the river visible in #23 rather suggests the Scheldt in the vicinity of Antwerpen, probably downstream rather than upstream and likely to be in the area which has changed totally today with the modern development of the port.

It depends on the era, but from the 1930s onward it may well have had no signals at all (bar a fixed distant).

Mr Angerstein's railway was the most significant stretch of OHE as the whole branch was wired. I never saw an electric loco working on it though - I did see them with the pantograph up at Hither Green sidings.

It wasn't sulphur dioxide (or even sulphuric acid) that turned white lead paint a dark grey. The villain of the peace was hydrogen sulphide (H2S) which turned the white lead carbonate to a darkish grey lead sulphide. Hydrogen sulphide, albeit in minute concentrations, was an escapee from the manufacture of coal gas, then a common process in small as well as large towns and cities, but which was also produced naturally by decomposition processes in marshland. The rate of the colour change would have been dependent on the extent to which the white paint was exposed to the gas leading to a situation where the roofs of goods vans often stayed white-ish longer than the roofs of carriages. It is as well that the concentrations of the gas were tiny as it is extremely poisonous. When we were allowed to work with it in fume cupboards there was a strict rule that as long as you could smell it (bad eggs) you were safe but that the moment the smell went, you, and everyone else in the laboratory, evacuated immediately.

The problem with looking at views like that and comparing "grey-ness" is that upward facing surfaces tend to reflect the sky above them. If you don't believe me just look at the upper parts of the boiler of the adjacent steam locomotive, I doubt very much whether it had ever been painted white!

I have never come across a shunt ahead signal that wasn't mounted below the furthest advanced starting signal which controlled entry to an absolute block or single line section. While it is possible that that signal could have been a colour light signal (normally two aspect rather than three or four), colour light signals were, and still are, most commonly associated with track circuit block, and I cannot see that the concept of shunting ahead on the running line under the authority of a subsidiary signal is compatible with track circuit block and I am very doubtful as to whether an Inspecting Officer would have permitted it. I do know of one place where it was done (on parallel fast and slow lines) and the signals concerned were in place for less than eight hours before they were spotted by an incredulous Inspecting Officer. He took the view that they allowed permissive working on a passenger line and insisted that they be physically removed immediately while he watched.

There is one potential difficulty with that. If you gap them after soldering down the rails and find that the rails are not electrically isolated from each other, you will have a huge problem in determining which sleeper (or worse - sleepers) isn't properly gapped. I see no problem in gapping the sleepers after they have been glued in place, I do it myself, but I always put a meter across every gapped sleeper to make sure that they are all properly gapped before any rails are soldered down.

Some LTM images are accurately dated, some aren't. I, myself, have wondered if it dates from after the conclusion of the General Strike when the station remained closed, presumably with the intention on the part of the Underground Group of permanent closure (although, following pressure, it did reopen in October 1926). If so, the boxes could well contain the ledgers, ticket stocks, etc from the booking office. The fact that most of those were "locked stock" items would have probably weighed less heavily, security wise, than it might in later years - after all, one might expect anyone preferring a ticket from York Road after its closure would be apprehended immediately.

It has just been announced that the major biennial RAMMA show in Sedan, France, scheduled for mid-October 2021, has been cancelled as a result of the Covid-19 situation. The LRPresse À la maison layout building challenge that was to have been held there will be transferred to the exhibition at Chambéry later the same month (if, of course, that is able to take place). There are always a few British attendees, both layouts and visitors, at RAMMA which is normally an excellent show with, by British standards anyway, quite remarkable attendance figures. The next show will be mid-October 2023.

Gates that close to a terminus on a single line would almost certainly have to be interlocked with the signalling with the home placed before the gates followed by one or more running shunts at any points facing an arriving train. The gates would have to be locked shut before either the home or starting signal were cleared, but that doesn't mean that the gates could not have been worked by hand, particularly if road traffic was meagre. I tend to favour the option of operation of the gates by a porter and it is, to my mind, improbable that he would have been provided with any shelter. Crossing keepers, typically the wives of pw men, weren't paid much but the porter would have been paid anyway so he came "free".

Yes, I am absolutely certain about this, it was standard Southern Railway practice (no doubt derived from LBSCR practice with semaphores) from the installation of the very first colour light signals in the mid-1920s and it continued with the Southern Region right up until the installation of the emergency replacement box at Cannon Street in 1957. The later 1962 Kent schemes introduced position light (w/©-w) calling-on signals both in running situations (where motorised floodlit discs with a "C" on them had been used before including in the earlier 1959 Kent schemes) and at the approach to terminal platforms - in the latter case the running signal became R/G two-aspect - but there was no retrofitment of previous schemes. Finally, post-Moorgate so about 40 years ago, that two aspect became R/Y (and the preceding signal in 4-aspect areas became Y/R/Y instead of R/Y/G).

There are plenty of very fine sewing threads, certainly fine enough to represent sheet ties in 2FS, around but you may have to look for a specialist shop to find them in the UK. (Here in Belgium, where women are still adept at sewing, etc, such shops are commonplace and one would probably even find suitable threads for sale in a supermarket.) Before the Great War, sheeted opens were (almost?) more common in ordinary goods trains than vans.

I have added a picture to my previous post. The Southern had used similar floodlit round discs, red/white or yellow/black, as part of colour light installations since Waterloo (terminus) box was opened in 1937(?), having previously used miniature light signals.

1. There was no bidirectional signalling of normal running lines on the Southern in the 1960s. 2. The platforms are numbered the wrong way round, the Southern standard was that the left hand platform as viewed from the concourse was platform 1. 3. The Up Main should just be the Down line and the Down Main should just be the up line (unless this is meant to be a central London terminal à la Holborn Viaduct - but the use of "line" rather than "Main" still applies). The Southern, where there was more than a single running line in each direction, used the terms "Through Line(TL)" and "Local Line (LL)", although these may have been changed (under BR standardisation) to Fast Line and Slow Line by the end of the 1960s. 4. The "approach" signal would have been three aspect with a theatre type indicator, clearing to green for a clear platform or yellow for a partially occupied platform. 5. There would have been a w/r-w gpl as an approach signal on the departure line to permit shunting, not a running signal. It almost certainly wouldn't have any route indicator and it would have been located close to the toe of no.11 points. 6. The two gpls that you do show at the exit from the sidings either side would both have been y/w-w, only clearing when exit from the sidings was required. 7. If the installation of colour light signals predated c1964, the gpls would have been motor-worked floodlit discs. Yellow discs had a black background, red discs a white background, the attached photo shows (bottom right) a floodlit disc at Sheerness (installed 1959).

Given that there was only a single platform, and with the gates replaced by semi-automatic half barriers, the most likely scenario if the line had survived for passengers into the 1980s would have been singling back towards Hull, any remaining sidings accessed using the key on the single line token (possibly with a lock-in instrument depending on the extent of the remaining passenger and goods traffic) and the elimination of all signalling and the signal box. The only other possibility that I can see if there was, for some reason, a lot of goods traffic at Hedon (a fuel depot, perhaps, or a supply depot for the North Sea rigs), but none on towards Withernsea, is that the southernmost line towards Hull would have become the single passenger line and that the northernmost running line would have become a long siding for the goods traffic (with a run round incorporated). Neither would have had any signals bar, perhaps, a "STOP await instructions" sign on the goods line approach.

Tim, The photo shows the Cally in horse-tram days. When the tramway was converted to electric traction, the track would have been completely relaid (incorporating the conduit) and the immediate surrounds of the double track would have been granite setts as was LCC Tramways standard practice. Given that that would have made quite a mess of the existing wooden block road surface (one of its downsides was that it was difficult to lift a small portion cleanly, the other major downside being that the road surface tended to float if the road became flooded for any length of time), the LCC may well have chosen to resurface the whole road with setts - hence what Grahame's map shows. CF is, of course, set in a period subsequent to the electrification of the tramway (I gave up trying to work out the exact date that electric services commenced but it was somewhere between 1907 and 1909).

Having in the past spent a lot of time looking at road surfaces in old postcards and datable photographs in order to establish some sort of chronology, I discovered that granite setts, where they existed, can usually be distinguished over at least part of the road surface. Furthermore the road surface between and 18" either side of tram lines has to be some sort of hard surface, ie setts, hard wood blocks or (very rarely) concrete, this was a legal requirement that dated from horse tram days (when it was fair enough) but continued with electric traction. In this picture there is no clear delineation of the 18" strip so the whole road surface is of the same material, either granite setts (which I would expect to be able to distinguish at least in part) or hard wood blocks. The latter were particularly commonplace on busy routes in the LCC area because they were almost as hard wearing as granite setts but significantly quieter hence my suggestion that that was what we see here. Ironically, hard wood blocks are much easier to model than granite setts as, once they were tarred over (as they were) it was almost impossible to distinguish individual blocks and wear was pretty even. It was by no means unknown for busy junctions (or places where horse drawn vehicles would stand for some time, such as taxicab ranks) to have granite setts while the surrounding linear roads all had wood blocks; very narrow streets also often had granite setts. I certainly wouldn't think of suggesting a change to CF now but it might be worth noting for the future in case any of the model road surfaces should get damaged and need replacement. Incidentally, because the LCC had to wait for a lease to be given up, many of the tramways in north London, including those on Caledonian Road, were converted to electric traction quite late - say 1907/8 - so the postcard could date well into the Edwardian era. However I still think that there is something about it that suggests the turn of the century with Victoria still on the throne.

Turn of the century or earlier. I am a little unsure about the road surface but tarred hard wood blocks are perhaps most likely.

A Mac enables one to simply add lines like these, arrows, text, balloons, etc, (even a signature!) to any of what one might call the basic set of files (.pdf, .jpg, .png etc), and indeed to interchange the same file between formats. Although it is a bit basic (certainly compared to what one could do with a drawing package), it is quick and simple and I use it all the time. I rather assumed that Microsoft must offer something similar.

It looks to me as if the most likely problem is that the rail forming the upper (in the photo) part of the knuckle hasn't been bent to a sharp enough angle and consequently stands proud of where it should be as part of the knuckle formation.

There are some good photos of the unusual Ironclad bogies (after conversion for engineering use - but the bogies were unchanged) in this topic, oddly also originated by Mallard60022, albeit some years ago.

Sets 381-385 were all converted from ex-LSWR Ironclad carriage two-sets (which had previously formed through branch line portions on main line trains). There are drawings in Mike King's book on Southern Pull & Push sets and I am sure that Mike sells drawings of them separately too. The Ironclads were distinctively "different" carriages, even the bogies were unusual, and I am not sure that any suitable ready-to-run starting point exists. Although they bear some superficial resemblance to the early Maunsell low-window carriages, a superficial resemblance is all that it is.

If it had survived until c1980, it seems improbable that it would have had colour-light signals installed, even though a form of CTC had been proposed as a cost-cutting exercise prior to the Beeching report. The most likely scenario would seem to be singling throughout with, perhaps, one passing loop retained, although probably not at Hedon which is markedly closer to Hull than Withernsea.

They were popular for pick-up goods workings in colder areas - it was easy to keep the small van warm.

It wasn't just a variation in the colours as mixed (which would, of course, vary in perception even more as they weathered over time) but that the precise areas to which those various colours were applied varied according to which painting team (or foreman?) did the job. Despite apparently precise specification, careful study of individual locations over time has shown that, if the specification could be interpreted in more than one way, it was, with repainted structures often having slightly different applications of the specified colours to those that had been there prior to repainting. Sometimes this was no more than a colour change starting at, say, the seventh plank up rather than the sixth, sometimes it was a little more drastic.