bécasse

Going to the pan: I reckon that the K.472 closet suite with the K.505 strong fireclay closet is the most likely combination in a station setting, noting that they meet LCC building regulations.

....... and some wall-hung ones too: I can remember a few rural pubs with those enamelled iron trough urinals wall-mounted in a lean-to shed out back - IIRC they were usually flushed (via a pipe from the gutter) only when it rained!

The catalogue entry gives all the basic dimensions except depth - 3'-6" tall (plus a further 3" for the divisions) and at 2'-0" centres (and thus stall width). The urinal illustrated is clearly set in a floor formed of 6" square tiles and this enables one to estimate the depth as 1'-0" for the stall plus a further 3" for the tread plate. Given these base dimensions (and their simplicity), it should be possible to scale off any further dimensions from the illustration. The Nicholls & Clarke catalogue illustrates some simpler urinals too:

I remember watching the ex-LNWR yard at Rickmansworth Church Street being shunted by a "Jinty" in 1960. It was a substantial train of mainly coal wagons with a few other open wagons (probably building materials) and vans. What is still impressed in my memory today, 60 years later, is how fast the shunting was. There must have been at least two men on the ground, perhaps, three, as there was a lot of fly-shunting - and subsequent noise as wagons buffered up none too gently. It was mid-morning so most, if not all, of the coal men were away on their delivery rounds, they certainly wouldn't have wanted to be around while the shunting was taking place. A lot of these pick-up goods workings were bonus turns by this period and the train crews certainly didn't hang around doing things gently.

At your convenience, sir, from Nicholls and Clarke Ltd Catalogue of Builders' Material No.30 inscribed March 1934:

You need a lot more trams for that, Tim. plus General NS buses on route 14 (there were 77 rostered Mon-Fri and with a 64 minute running time that makes one every two minutes in each direction).

The Southern Railway had a rule that at terminal stations the platform numbers should run from left to right when viewed from the concourse, and they actually renumbered the platforms at a number of stations to conform with this rule, usually when other work was being done anyway. I have a vague recollection of coming across an exception to this rule somewhere but I can't now remember where. The rule did have the rather odd effect that platform 1 was sometimes an obscure and little-used bay.

The presence of the home signal is an almost certain indication that shunting without the use of a locomotive took place at Wallingford. Probably a horse was used, either the railway's own or a trader's, but in later years (typically post-WWII) pinchbars were used - although I doubt whether much such shunting had taken place since the Great War. At one time this was a common practice, although perhaps more at intermediate stations than at termini, and it isn't that unusual to find stations on minor lines that had a signal box and signals even though the box wasn't a block post. It isn't very different to an intermediate level crossing protected by non-block signals.

My recollection of the period is that there were some similar special trains for Golden Rail. The Golden Rail concept had been intended to help fill existing trains but some destinations became so popular that special trains, much akin to the SAGA ones, had to be run. I have a feeling that some of these Golden Rail trains may have been composed of FOs. Like many good things, Golden Rail disappeared in the run up to privatisation, I have a note that I last went on a Golden Rail weekend during the autumn of 1987 although that didn't involve a special train.

You cannot copyright lists unless sufficient additional work is done in presenting or analysing them to create intellectual property rights. Ironically, that means that the originals in the NA or NRM cannot be copyrighted but that the sort of list which I think is being suggested would be because of the vast amount of (intellectual) work involved in sorting the entries out.

"Slicing" a building in this way, and modelling the exposed interior, is commonplace on layouts in France, at least from HO upwards - and rarely any plexiglass for safety. (Barriers of any sort are rare at exhibitions in France, visitors, even young ones, keep back of their own accord. I did once have a lady just touch something by accident while explaining something to her kids, it was only the lightest touch and certainly did no damage, but she spent the next five minutes apologising.)

That, doubtless, is the case today and probably has been for several decades, but Copenhagen Fields is set in the early part of the 20th century and the stairs were still signed just as "STAIRS" (perhaps TO TRAINS and TO STREET) even as late as the 1960s. There was remarkably little change in the internal (or external, for that matter) appearance of tube stations in over half-a-century. I worked for LT's Operational Research section in the late 1960s, where much of the evaluation work on the new gate development was done, and we remarked at the time how much the general signage resembled that which appeared in illustrations in Thomas' "Handling London's Underground Traffic" published forty years earlier (in 1928).

Tim, The stairway down to the platform would only have been referred to as an escape stairway once the station closed and the lifts were removed. While the station was open the stairway would have been usable by passengers and would have been signed as such. During the early years of my MRC membership I often used Angel station on the way home and, unless a lift was clearly about to descend (there were indicators showing the position of the lifts), regularly ran down the stairs to the platform even though Angel was considerably deeper than York Road. I don't think that I ever climbed them though, although I did climb the ones at London Bridge sometimes.

Oh yes it could, even if the Southern kept very quiet about it. As I said, 09s occasionally worked the Kenny Belle push-pull and the one I saw on a Hampton Court-Waterloo service was propelling the 4-EPB that provided the passenger accommodation. An 09 couldn't provide power for lighting (or heating) but neither could a 73 in diesel mode.

Or an 09. The Kenny Belle was occasionally worked by an 09 plus 4TC. 09s could work with emus too, I once saw one working a Hampton Court-Waterloo service when the power was off. It is also worth noting that the Gatwick Express (version I) wasn't a push-pull operation, the ex-HAP MLV conversion retained its motor bogie.

Assuming that the two gauges share a common supply.

Surely it was only transferred to the WR during the 1950s for commercial and engineering purposes (so any buildings repainted acquired brown and cream paint - and any new totems were brown too), but remained in the Midland operating area.

He is clearly interested in the fact that the presence of lifts down to the platforms means that he won't have to be carried on the escalators. Don't forget his dog ticket, though.

Were I to be asked about the colour of the van without any prior knowledge of S&DJR liveries, I would have suggested that it might be red or a reddy-brown, both of which would have been rendered dark by the limited photographic emulsions of the period, particularly taking into account the coal wagon behind. I do, of course, know that S&DJR wagon grey varied somewhat, but, unless it is a very dark, akin to GW, grey which I don't think the S&DJR colour ever was (and MR grey was fairly pale too), I find it impossible to accept that this van could be grey even though it has 3-link couplings. Could it, as a mail van, be red (or LSWR brown), if not I think that it has to be blue. One other thought, the "patch" around MAIL VAN appears to have been cleaned to allow the description to be seen clearly, that suggests that the paint work had a varnished finish and that, surely, suggests "passenger" colours.

Actually I suspect that there may well have been other reasons why Exmouth was provided with the additional homes which are now lost in the mists of time. Meldon Junction was the convergence of two single lines from the west but there the use of the warning arrangement was authorised to overcome acceptance problems rather than the provision of additional homes. Despite regular use of the arrangement, warning signals weren't provided at the preceding stations either, making them one (two?) of the few places on the Southern where you could regularly see a signalman display a green flag to "warn" a train. It may be, of course, that they were provided at Exmouth simply because a new box was being provided and the necessary levers could readily be included in the specification, certainly the signalling provision at the rebuilt station was quite generous.

The signal to the immediate right of the van looks interesting too.

Yes, these were the 58 Birmingham RCW 1927 "standard" stock trailers which were converted by Acton Works to form the "fourth" car in a four-car (otherwise 1938 stock) unit. I only remember them on the Bakerloo Line, which I think started with 6-car (3+3) 1938 stock trains because many of the original central London Bakerloo Line stations had been constructed too short to safely take seven car trains, even with use of the "end-doors" cut-out button. I think that these stations had all been lengthened by the time that the "real" war started in 1940 enabling seven car trains to be operated. It is possible that some of the "58" trailer units worked on the Northern but I certainly don't remember seeing them there and it would obviously have made sense from a maintenance point of view to have them concentrated on one line.

Sorry about that - too used to seeing mixed 3 foot/metre-standard track. Try this, you already have two out of the three necessary rail breaks, I have marked where you need the third.

Assuming that you are using the same supply for both broad and narrow gauge, the gaps, in rails as well as sleepers, need to be between the separate rails for the two gauges (which will electrically be as one) and the common rails. In other words, it is just like a normal point that happens to have two electrically common running rails one side. It would have been more complex had the narrow gauge split as well - and it would be a lot more complex if you wish to have separate supplies for the two gauges, best done by having common feeds which are switched according to which gauge is in use at any particular moment.

Sorry to have mislead you. I was merely trying to make the point that I have learnt (the hard way) to not even believe the attributed location on an unfamiliar photograph until I have checked it out, assuming that it matters of course. A quick check with the Old Maps' website usually suffices to confirm the attributed location, if not, a Google search for images can be quite enlightening too, if only to show why I am a doubter! Just occasionally though, one will hit a real puzzler which can lead to protracted learned dispute, and, as it happens I am currently involved of a three-month long email correspondence of such a case (not GW or GWGCJ) dating from c1880 (and of some importance historically) where I know the location as the result of equipment which is portrayed but which someone else, equally learned in the base subject, has convinced himself that it is elsewhere based on the partly hidden background scenery. On the different matter of the ballast, it isn't so much the basic colour as the difference in colour between the fast lines and the loops (and the entry to the up loop as well as the exit from the down - which, with trains restarting, might be better explicable). Those loops must have seen a good few number of trains for the ballast to get so discoloured.