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As you are clearly competent at doing this, isn't that the best starting point, followed by soldering a ring of appropriately sized hard brass wire round the edge of the disc using a high-MP silver-content solder. Filing the wire down should produce just the size beading you require (and it would even polish up as brass if that were required for a Dean goods, which I am sure it isn't). Finally create the splashers by cutting up the now "beaded" disc in the normal way.

I would have expected the local ASLEF branch to insist that the shed painted over the brass/copper shiny bits even if they had emerged from Swindon shiny. Moving steam locomotives are obvious enough from the air without making Luftwaffe pilots' jobs even easier by having shiny bits reflecting the sun. Remember that it was being machine-gunned that worried the crews, it was a common occurrence during daylight raids, even if has been largely forgotten today.

Make up six inverted-U "hoops" using 0,3 mm ø brass wire and then file (or razor saw) three notches in each of the two water delivery pipes. Solder the hoops into the notches from above so that the hoops are ⅓ to ½ proud of the pipes. At least a few of the hoops will need holes drilled in the aluminium roof to keep them in place, but I would be inclined to do the initial setting up using a small piece of MDF which can be easily and accurately drilled and won't be significantly affected by the soldering work. The bits of the hoops that you haven't drilled holes for in the aluminium roof can then be trimmed so that they just sit on the roof surface. I would probably make up a quick jig to help bend the hoops accurately as you need six of them.

A view of St Pancras from (approximately) the position occupied by Keen House, the Model Railway Club's headquarters, for the last 60 years - and home for Copenhagen Fields for the last 30 plus!

Salmon pink?

Surely the Moretonhampstead branch saw 70 foot auto trailers, for which the locking bars would have to be a minimum of around 60 foot long.

My memory suggests that the deicing-fluid tanks were gloss black when the units were first built - it is, though, a long time ago.

The Ribble Vehicle Preservation Trust might be a good starting point if you don't get any answers on here.

But the signalling on the London Underground is very different to that on the main line railways, especially today of course, but historically too.

Given the provenance of the Isle of Sodor, I think that we can take the Isle of Man (where, admittedly, the railways were three foot and not standard gauge) as the best guide. Even Douglas, which was quite a substantial station with two arrival and two departure platforms (as opposed to your single dual-purpose one), had rudimentary signalling despite its large Dutton-provided box. Following such a guide you would only need three signals, a platform starting signal plus an advanced starting signal and home at the throat, the latter two probably combined back-to-back on the same post. There would be a fixed distant too - but off-layout. The quarry siding might well have a fixed "STOP" board, much as Awdrey (whom I knew incidentally) indicated himself - see the painting above.

It looks as if this kit entered the Kibri range around the year 2000 and is no longer in production. A quick check of several of the larger German model shops' websites suggests that nobody still has stocks of it. Examples do surface on eBay from time to time and Google will find any on eBay.fr and eBay.de as well as the British site.

IIRC there was a large elevated concrete water tank within the works complex, between the running lines and the sidings within the works (and orthogonal to them) and rather closer to Okehampton than to the viaduct. That would have served all the water outlets in the area, and it would certainly have made sense to locate the loco supply within the loco shed where it could be easily protected from freezing up. Meldon Quarry was located in quite an inhospitable location high up on the northern fringes of Dartmoor. I have tried to check the location but have had problems getting onto the Oldmaps website today.

The Longmoor Military Railway was used to train specialist soldiers in how to run a railway under war conditions. As such it had a considerable mix of signalling systems included "improvised" board signals. Among that mix, it certainly had some two-wire signalling which was quite common in some parts of continental Europe but rare (but not non-existent) in the UK. As you rightly surmise, balance weights aren't required for two-wire operated signals, and the associated lever-frame looks quite strange to British eyes.

Not air brakes, vacuum brakes!

Only a best guess based on one of the St.Pancras photos in Nock's article, lower (subsidiary) arm centreline 3'-6" above the bracket walkway, upper (main) arm centreline 4'-6" above that (ie 8'-0" above walkway), both dolls the same.

I have never seen full drawings of the 100hp pre-war industrial type (of which the LMS had one - 7164, later 7184/47184), only ever the side diagram which the above link links to. That makes me suspect that either they no longer exist or that they exist somewhere where they are inaccessible.

What the map shows is that any down freight train working the sidings must have been heading towards Polegate. There was still regular freight to Newhaven as the Senlac was bunkered using oil from rail-borne tanks, and my suspicion would certainly be that down traffic for the cement works sidings was worked via Newhaven so that only one call was required. Even in the "good old days" it was surprisingly common for yards to be worked in this way.

We have already told you that the Midland, and the LMS subsequently, would have used miniature semaphore arms (not the Midland hammerhead ones but the same size without the hammerhead) mounted underneath the main running signals on each doll to control admission to the siding (even though it is to the right and not, as is more commonly the case, to the left). Incidentally the dolls each side of the bracket would have been the same height and the height of the main and subsidiary signal arms would also be the same on each of the two dolls. I now realise that you have gained the impression from LMS Signalling that discs would have been used but this would only have been the case if the signal applied to moves (part-way, doubtless to a SHUNT LIMIT sign) along the arrival road, but your's doesn't because it applies for moves into the siding (albeit briefly via the arrival road). Disc signals mounted on the bracket would be wrong, disc signals on the ground would be even more wrong.

I am not sure that that is correct. I had aways thought that the Midland used a small subsidiary arm, painted in the same way as a main stop signal, mounted below the main arm on the post/doll (or on a separate doll but that is unlikely here) to control access to sidings whichever side of the line those sidings might be. All the (relatively few) photo references that I could quickly find seem to support that opinion.

If you know the numbers of the BR built Fruit Ds look for photos. Electric lighting is usually fairly obvious and it is very unlikely that if any were built with gas lighting they were later converted. If you find a photo of one of the first batch of the BR-built ones with electric lighting, you need look no further as that will indicate that they all were.

Apologies for the delay in coming back on this. !, 3 and 5 would be 4-aspect running signals, 2 and 4 might be provided as dollies depending on the distance to 7 but probably wouldn't, 6 is required as a dolly controlling access to the siding (and probably removed when the siding was). 20-23 is a single dolly without a route indicator (but possibly with a separate lever for each route depending on the locking requirements), and 24 and 25 are dollies (but 24 would be lower down the frame, effectively grouping all outbound signal levers together). 7 would be a 3- or 4-aspect running signal (most probably 4). 30 and 29 would be 4-aspect running signals and 26/27/28 a single 3-aspect running signal with a theatre-style route indicator (probably with a separate lever for each of the routes). The layout would be track-circuited throughout and the points motor-worked (eliminating the fpls and their separate levers). Fouling bars might still have been provided at several locations along each platform with post-mounted marker lights showing their positions, effectively reinforcing the track-circuits. The dollies would have been two-aspect miniature signals for pre-1937 installations and motor-worked floodlit discs for subsequent installations up to 1958. In 1920s installations some or all of the running signals would have had cluster displays. Post-1940 all the running signals would have had long (ARP) hoods. About the only notional places that could have had pre-1970 c/l installations AND might have been served by HALs and BILs would have been LSWR terminals at South Kensington or Southwark Bridge, both proposed at various times but neither actually built (other than in model form). They would have been a c1937 installation with floodlit motor-worked disc dollies. Subsequent edit note: The signals that I have suggested would be 4-aspect could all have been 3-aspect, it would have depended on anticipated traffic density (which would probably have been high or the scheme wouldn't have been agreed in the first place). As a prototype example, Brighton had 3-aspect signals on the main and east coast routes, 4-aspect on the west-coast route.

There is a standard railway "rule" to cover situations where precise instructions are lacking (and safety isn't critical). The men on the ground always did the job the easy way, which might suggest painting ironwork covering body panels the body colour. However, it is also true to say that the "easy way" was to some extent situation-dependent so to a painter who has just been painting chassis components black and has a brush wet with black paint, the easy way is to paint the body ironwork black too. Careful examination of the painting schemes for signal boxes (albeit with specialist S&T painting gangs) suggests that, if very precise instructions weren't given, the job was sometimes done one way and sometimes the other.

Until probably the mid-1960s there was no checking of trains at the approach to a terminus even with such (few) colour light signalling schemes as existed, although position light calling on signals would have been approached controlled from (probably) the late 1950s (furthermore the yellow running light equivalents on the Southern certainly weren't approach-controlled, the last such new installation being at Cannon Street in 1958). Drivers knew that they had to slow down approaching a terminus, it was part of their route knowledge - and their professional approach to the job.

File up a small piece of black plasticard (or several pieces laminated to make up the thickness is necessary) until it is a perfect but slightly over-high and perhaps wide fit and then use a mite of epoxy resin to fix it. Finally file it down to match the rail height (and if necessary the rail side profile) - which should only need a few strokes of the file. Scrap plastic from a kit sprue or similar could also be used subject to it being a suitable colour.

The colour-light signalling of a Southern location would be surprisingly different to the semaphore signalling of an LMS location (and even there it would probably vary according to which pre-group company it had been unless it had been totally resignalled by the LMS). Inter-alia, you don't get outer-homes with colour-light signalling - they are all just "signals" using Track Circuit Block and with trains just described forward to the next box.