bécasse

Out of copyright in May 2023, seventy years after first publication.

When the need for traditional goods yards largely died out, typically in the mid to late 1960s, some were certainly retained for engineer's use and, given that in many places the engineer only needed short sidings and that there was pressure to release land for other uses - car parking and/or redevelopment, it was unusual for the retained sidings to be significantly truncated/rationalised. The short sidings proposed here certainly wouldn't look out of place if the scenery was arranged in such a way as to make it look as if the yard had once been much larger but had been truncated - just a modern (for the 1980s) fence across the end might well be sufficient.

The Somerset Levels would have been significant producers of hydrogen sulphide (in addition to any gas works) so the resultant darkening effect may well have affected the Prussian Blue paintwork of locos and carriages allocated elsewhere than the Bath end of the line. The oily rags used to clean steam locomotives may well have produced a subtle tinting of the colour too, certainly the Southern Railway's white lining quickly turned a pale beige colour for the same reason - contemporary reports having been validated by experience with working preserved locos. Jerry's comment serves as a useful reminder that, although one thinks most of hydrogen sulphide darkening the white-leaded canvas of carriage and van roofs, it would have had an affect on coloured paint too - as would brake-block dust (although that would have been more important on Westinghouse-braked lines than vacuum-braked ones like the S&DJR).

Drawings being printed to the wrong scale (although usually less than 10% out) in model railway magazines is an occupational hazard brought about by printers not realising how important precise scaling is. I always check, the wheelbase is a good guide on locomotive drawings as it has usually been published somewhere as a dimension and is long, and visible, enough to be measurable with some degree of accuracy, but a quick check on height is advisable too as it is possible that "stretch" has taken place in one dimension but not another (and this will often be the case with photocopied drawings). With respect to the balance weights, I would be surprised if any of Don Townsley's Hunslet drawings were incorrect in this respect, given his professional background, but don't forget that the 16" Austerities were built by a number of builders and that, whilst they were all to the same spec, there are minor variations. Could this be one of them?

I wonder if one solution might be to cut up some sticky labels as richbrummitt suggests but to only place them every alternate plank, having already primed the metal. Then paint the area with a fairly thick paint which is left to dry very thoroughly before pulling the label strips back off (leaving alternate painted/primed-only "planks") and then paint the area again.

Not just a chance to show off their abilities, for skilled sign-writers it was almost certainly quicker and easier to paint the tare, which would have been different for every vehicle, by hand than to get out the relevant individual figure stencils. Rule number one of traditional railway work - do the job the easiest way (providing that that was safe, of course).

...... and, thirdly, which pre-grouping railway company is assumed to have owned the station. By and large, right up to the end of local freight services, stations, and especially terminal stations, were signalled in a way that was typical of their pre-grouping owner ....... and no other company. Generally, grouping and subsequently nationalisation brought (some) renewals and sometimes rationalisation to reduce operating costs, but the influence of the pre-grouping company remained clear to see and even renewals and rationalisation would have been typical of those applied to other lines of that company. Today's railway is very different but the massive changes have all taken place over the last few decades with a different type of distinctiveness largely relating to the era when modernisation occurred and the contractor who supplied the new signalling (if any) - and, since rationalisation/modernisation probably arrived in several different stages, there is often a rather different complex of overlapping styles apparent. However, with local freight sidings you are not modelling today's railway so that is all irrelevant, as almost certainly, would be colour light signals.

I did warn you! Those 1950s photos of Bridestowe show the station painted in chocolate and cream because at the time it fell within the commercial remit of the Western Region. Signs would have been chocolate and cream too. As you are aware, if it had been in Southern Railway or Southern Region colours the doors would have been all-green just as the paint specs show.

The motormen's cab front is from a 3-SUB (later 4-SUB) of LBSCR origin, the flat roof profile is quite distinctive. They were some of the last wooden SUBs to survive with a number of reformed (all wooden stock) sets numbered in the 45XX series, they finally disappeared, I think, with the service cuts implemented with the winter TT 1958/59.

The normal arrangements in such circumstances were to share the stock working on an alternate day basis. This was quite sensible because, if stock originated on its home territory on a Monday morning, it also finished there on a Saturday evening (and, of course, Tuesday and Thursday evenings). Any observed stock working of through trains would, of course, have been complicated by the fact that other portions were often included in the train for parts of the journey, and refreshment facility workings would have been made more complex by the need to match the provision every day and not just alternate days, and the fact that the two partners may not have had equivalent vehicles available. Sometimes provision of individual vehicles was linked to a desire to match vehicle mileage proportionally to the mileage of each company's track that the train traversed, although this was more often done as an accountancy exercise than a physical one.

I assure you that it did clear the locking and that the train was able to depart on its correct route well before any two minute delay device would have struck in. I thought at the time that it wasn't the first time that the bobby concerned had done it. It probably saved him from a Form 1 too, although it is possible that the train was wrongly described on the describer.

I am inclined to read the description as "Nr Munich", the nearest large German city to Austria, so not perhaps a bad fit with some of the rest of the collection (and also in English).

Conversation overheard: Driver to bobby - "Hallo signalman, driver of 2B13 standing at XX154 at xxx station. I have a green aspect without a feather and the road is set straight on, am I being required to divert?" Bobby to driver - "Sorry driver, my mistake, set the wrong road, go forward one coach length and then set back into the platform. That will clear the locking and I can reset the route immediately. Proceed as normal once you get the aspect and feather."

Yes, I saw that too and puzzled over it somewhat. I am sure that grey is more appropriate. Ultramarine pigment seems to have been very stable when fired, notably on vitreous enamel signs, but not otherwise which is why blue was rarely used for paintwork prior to modern times (when paint technology changed greatly, although, as the BR experience proved, blues generally remain "difficult").

Memory, for what it's worth for just a small patch in a long gone livery, suggests a milk chocolate shade, perhaps GWR carriage brown with a touch of white in it. I doubt whether you will find anyone who could tell you it is wrong and even if you find a colour photo (always just after you have painted the model, of course) there is no guarantee that the colour rendering is accurate.

I don't understand why you intend to use a red primer (which I use for black locos as it helps to give that slightly rusty tinge that the real locos tended to have), I would always use a grey primer under a colour like Midnight Blue. Incidentally, colour variations in S&DJR blue may well have been largely the result of weathering as historically blue probably weathered faster than almost any other rich colour - remember how quickly the BR 1966 blue used to go "off" even after they switched from applying it matt to applying it gloss.

I suspect that vans used on longer distance main line services were turned as, if they weren't, photos showing them wrong-way-round would be much more common (even though many such services ran at night).

Boat trains normally conveyed 1st, 2nd and 3rd class accommodation (in addition to any Pullmans which in most cases were there to provide catering) in 1927-28 and, indeed, until June 1956 when 2nd class was abandoned in Europe and 3rd class became 2nd. Carriages which were described as "nondescript" were precisely that and could be used as 1st, 2nd or 3rd as the anticipated demand required. Normally paper labels were used to indicate the "class of the day" although antimacassars were added to seat backs when a carriage was used as 1st class. You are correct in assuming that specific vehicles were allocated to the boat train pool but that there were no boat train sets as such. (Specific vehicles, "swingers" was the everyday railway parlance, were however allocated to the Night Ferry service when it started and this practice continued well into the BR era.)

Based on memory, so dangerous I know given the length of time that has passed, the "tavern" end was basically the standard blood and custard colour scheme although the pale colour outlining the bricks made them appear lighter than the standard crimson - I don't know what the pale colour was but it may well have been the standard cream. The "timber" framing was black and the "wooden" door on one side brown up to 2/3 height of the side, cream above.

Fruit Ds were fairly uncommon on the Southern as the staff on the Region much preferred the Southern's own "U-vans". One major problem, however, being that so did everyone else, and so it was quite difficult to keep them from wandering. It perhaps isn't surprising that they continued to be built new over some four decades having originated as a SE&CR design before the Great War.

While I have no idea whether it is the current position, one did find APL signals mounted under or alongside main running c/l signals which had all three lights, the bottom left one displaying C (for calling-on) when lit with the other two. I am unsure whether examples with S or W existed, I certainly don't remember seeing any.

I am sure that that is the correct conclusion and, of course, it was a process that was carried out more than once. The L&SWR probably initiated the process with their limited range of stencil letter head codes*, some of which were meaningful and some weren't, which was then adopted (for 3rd-rail electrics) by the Southern Railway, who then started adopting stencil numerical codes with the Brighton Line electrification, and finally, post war, started using roller blinds which carried similar, but not identical, characters to the numerical stencils. Finally, with the advent of the class 33 locomotives and the need for blinds to show alpha as well as numeric codes, a smaller font was universally adopted which was certainly similar to that used for 4-character head codes elsewhere on BR, but not, I suspect, identical. * One should not forget, though, that back-lit stencil route characters had already been in use for a couple of decades on trams and buses.

Indeed, and neither did any of the Southern 2-character ones (whether blinds or stencils), but the scaling down design issues still apply.

Furthermore, if you look through the official British Rail modern image handbook which was "published" as a working bible in the mid-1960s, you will realise that many minor variations of the font existed. They were all intended to look the same but in order to do that in every size and in every situation (particularly with reference to the background) detailed differences in dimensions (and sometimes even shape) applied. Such variations would undoubtedly be required to make head code characters look right in our small model scales (as precisely scaled ones would look wrong to the eye, particularly with background illumination), and the amount of work required to do this - and get it right - would certainly be sufficient to create new intellectual property and hence copyright. It could be argued that Ceptic did this, and he certainly seems to have understood the issues, but I am not certain that all of his expanded font is yet perfect (although it is certainly pretty good).

I noticed, without doing a systematic search, that ST no.4, when it started to be reused to a limited extent from, say, c1930, seemed to be applied to areas of woodwork that might have been more susceptible to rot than normal. That made me wonder whether it contained an extra preservative component, although I have seen no documentary evidence to suggest that it did.