bécasse

M19116M was a Fowler LMS non-corridor lavatory composite to diagram 1686, built 1929 and withdrawn from traffic in October 1964. We can see the end with three 3rd class compartments (two with side-corridor access to a lavatory), the next carriage also appears to be to diagram 1686 and, as it is the same way round, we are looking at the end with two 3rd class compartments (followed by three 1sts), the panelling variation is obvious.

If a carriage was to be used at all for revenue earning purposes, its roof had to be watertight. That might be achieved with a new coat of white-lead paint or it might mean recanvassing (which again would result in a freshly painted finish).

The EMU drawing was for one of the flat-fronted sets built new for the Southern in 1925 and intended for use on the newly electrified ex-SEC suburban network. That rang a vague bell in the deeper recesses of my memory and I suspect that I may have seen the resultant model when I was but a lad, probably on the Southern static models stand at MRC Easter show at Central Hall in the mid-1950s (I went each year from 1954). I think that one of the Gauge 1 lads had a similar, but distinctly larger of course, model and that made it stick in my mind - I would have been familiar with the (augmented) prototype.

The Pullman Car company provided the catering staff for ALL trains with such facilities on the Southern's Central and Eastern (and possibly Western) Divisions, even where the rolling stock was wholly owned by the Southern Railway. As well as the Kentish Belle (and it's winter part-Pullman equivalent), Pullman Cars had continued to run in many trains (and not just boat trains) on the South Eastern Division - and Pullman Buffet Cars were used on the Hastings line almost until the DEMUs took over (and seven of them were 6Bs with a buffet car incorporated).

I wonder if they might be Sid Dent's work, he was certainly working in 2mm scale in the early 1950s and was, through and through, a Southern man having once worked at Ashford Works - where he purloined sufficient genuine SR green paint to ensure that all the models that he (and a few friends) made during the rest of his lifetime were an authentic colour. By the time I knew him ten years later he was a 7mm modeller and it came as quite a surprise to me (and to the late Alan Blackburn who knew him even better) to discover that he had worked in 2mm scale, but his models were of sufficient quality to get a mention in the Model Railway News' write-up of the MRC's Easter show at Central Hall so they must have been good.

The bogies, the use of a pin & bar centre coupler and presence of an air pipe, and, perhaps above all, the overhead power lines and their support poles, suggest an American prototype prior to the use of buck-eye couplers.

Yes, sorry. I will amend the original post!

They may have officially been land drains, but "open sewer" was how the local I was working with described them!

White carriage (or wagon) roofs had very little to do with frequency of cleaning but everything to do with the quality of air in the areas where they worked (notably the concentration of H2S) and how recently they had been repainted. The white paint used was a white lead-based paint and as such subject to chemical conversion of the white lead oxide component to very dark grey lead sulphide. How quickly this happened would have depended on air quality, gas woks were notable producers of low atmospheric concentrations of hydrogen sulphide (hence the typical gas works smell) but so was much marshland, so vehicles used only on country branches could be as susceptible to darkening roofs as those based in urban areas. The darkening of roofs had little to do with soot, except perhaps close to the chimney on rail motors, as rain would wash most soot off when it fell. It seems likely that there was also a white lead component in the cream paint used on GWR carriage panels and it was this that caused those same panels to darken over time as a result of the same chemical process, inhibited to some extent in this case by the varnish coating.

The LH blind could display A (not used), B for passenger trains or C for ecs. The RH blind displays were used to indicate the destination of the train: 1 Euston Watford Junction from New Line stations 2 Broad Street via Primrose Hill Watford Junction from Broad Street 3 Not used on NL electrics (reserved for Belmont and St.Albans branches) 4 Broad Street via Hampstead Heath Richmond Willesden HL from Richmond 5 Willesden HL from Broad Street 6 Willesden New 7 Harrow 8 Bushey 9 Croxley Green Watford Junction from Croxley Green 0 Mitre Bridge shed (only with C prefix) X Dalston Junction sidings (only with C prefix) Y Croxley Green shed (only with C prefix) Z Stonebridge Park shed (only with C prefix)

I visited one of those areas of Hull with "traditional" housing to help "knock up" on behalf of the successful candidate at the 1966 Hull North by-election, (one of the very last such traditional events with bell-ringers and torch lights, by the way). Knowing that there had never been canals in Hull, I was rather bemused by the sight of what looked like filled in canals and the remains of bridges over them. I asked a fellow local helper what they were and was astounded to be told "Oh they were the open sewers, filled in last year".

It is a coincidence that you should offer Pendon as a comparison. In the mid-1960s, when I was an Oxford undergraduate, I used to sometimes help Roye England with the showings at what was then a very different Pendon. Although Roye would never say it to visitors when he proudly showed them his illuminated and carefully modelled interiors (which he had recorded as methodically as he recorded the exteriors, often decades earlier), he was concerned that the level of illumination was excessive, but accepted that that trade off was necessary if visitors were to be able to see anything of them. Rather sadly, I eventually came to realise that the one major flaw in his brilliant long term plans for Pendon Parva and its Vale setting (now quite close to fruition, of course) was that it would be near impossible to see any detail of interiors once the buildings were in situ within the village, no matter how well they were illuminated.

Quite apart from the logistical difficulties involved in adding lighting, it shouldn't be forgotten that in the inter-war period lighting would have been far more subdued than tends to be the case today. The majority of lighting, in both premises and streets, would have been by gas; indeed many premises would not have had electricity supplies at all. The two tube stations would have stood out as being electrically lit but would still not have been beacons of light, while the lighting in passing trains on the surface would have been so dim that it would have been difficult to see that they were lit.

I chatted fairly frequently with CJF from 1964 until not long before his death and I was one of the builders of the first P4 layout to hit the exhibition circuit (in 1971). At no time did I get the feeling that he was very sceptical about finescale railway modelling let alone all fine scale railway modelling. What I do believe is that CJF thought that it wasn't for the "average modeller" (as the byline on the Railway Modeller front page used to put it), and I am not all sure that he wasn't right then, and would be even more right today with such fine OO and N (and even O) offerings available from the trade.

I wondered whether the station at Wall Grange had been altered at some time in the LMS era. Certainly it originally had a loop and two platforms, one of which was wooden, but the platform in the photo looks new so it could be the result of alterations. Unfortunately, given the lack of detailed mapping in the UK for the four-five decades after the Great War, it is surprisingly difficult to check on anything that didn't survive into the new mapping era (which was effectively post-Beeching). What does seem to fit well with Wall Grange, and is checkable, is that pair of bridges.

Number 12 seems that it might well be Wall Grange station, looking west, on the line from Stoke-on-Trent to Leek/Waterhouses, a logical route for any inspection trip to see the dismantling progress on the L&M. Number 15 is doubtless somewhere along the same route.

Surely the fixed distant signal visible in photo 15 is an LMS signal. I have never (knowingly) seen a photo of an LMS fixed distant before but they must have existed in considerable numbers and I had rather assumed that they were normally the same as working distants but without the operating rod or balance weights. However this design, similar to the GWR arrangement, would clearly be more economical and, so far as I can see, all the fittings, including notably the post cap, are standard LMS items. That, and the fact that they were batched with the L&M photos, might suggest that 8, 12 and 15 were all taken on the same occasion as the visit to the semi-dismantled L&M - from an Engineer's Saloon, perhaps. A very quick glance at the 1947 1" OS maps didn't produce an obvious location for 12 with its platform and two bridges but I didn't look very hard.

Sydney could be a bit wicked at times. It should be remembered though that Peco was doing a lot to support the finescale end of 4mm modelling long before Streamline came along. And returning to the subject of names for the newsagents, Freddie Cockman was editor of the Bulletin, then monthly, for quite a long period in the late 1960s and early 1970s (and he also wrote the odd railway book) and thus one of unsung heroes among MRC backroom workers.

I would be inclined to try soldering nickel-silver strip to the copper-clad first.

The car stop signs were blue throughout the suburban electrified network which largely got the third rail in the 1920s including the SE Division. The blue totem signs at Woolwich Dockyard clearly dated from that era and, at least as far as the eye could judge it, were the same colour blue, definitely not faded green. The other signs on the station "WAY OUT" etc were standard SR green at the time. Most people passing through the station on trains wouldn't have noticed, the station was largely in a cutting between two tunnels, of course, but once you did notice they stood out as being different and when I went down the Woolwich line I used to look out for them. They were eventually replaced with BR-style logos which were green, around 1960 at a guess. A few other SR enamelled signs were different "colours" - "ALL SEASON TICKETS TO BE SHEWN" signs were white on black (with green wooden surrounds) and some safety signs were red on off-white.

The Southern faced the same problem (with several platforms) at Holborn Viaduct and, with several suitable alternative platforms available just accepted that the short platforms were only usable for parcels traffic. In fact, IIRC, out of six platforms only three ever saw electric passenger trains.

C.J.Freezer, or else whoever was Bulletin editor when Copenhagen Fields first burst into skeletal bloom.

There were some blue signs (with white lettering) as well as green ones. One is familiar with the "CAR STOP" signs being blue but there were also a few examples of that same blue being used for totems in the earliest days of electrification. Either only a handful of locations had them experimentally for evaluation or most were eventually replaced by green versions, but Woolwich Dockyard certainly retained several examples (but there were some green ones there too - post war replacements?) into the late 1950s.

There was a more "modern" equivalent. Southern Region (and possibly other Regions) resignalling schemes of the late 1950s and early 1960s used location equipment cabinets with a stalk on top which terminated in a light. If a there was a problem with the signalling equipment in the new "power" boxes, the signalman could throw a switch that caused all the lights on cabinets in the box's area to start flashing, indicating to the lineman out and about on his rounds that he should phone in to ascertain the problem.

The prototype https://www.welshhighlandheritage.co.uk/gallery/cambriancrossing.html did it with longitudinal timbers under each rail. "£1.38" has already outlined the practical considerations that make that, starting with a solid copper-clad sheet, the desirable option for a model too.