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The big problem with that timeline is that I regularly helped Roye England with (usually) Saturday showings while I was an Oxford undergraduate and I went up for Michaelmas Term 1964 and went down after Trinity Term 1967, after which I was a very infrequent visitor to Pendon (although I remain a Friend to this day). The museum was hardly overwhelmed with visitors in those days (fortunately) and so I had plenty of time to study, and talk to Roye about, the Madder Valley layout. Not only do I have no memory of the layout in a U-shape, other than from the odd published JHA photo, but I have very distinct memories of a short bare stretch where the layout had been altered from the U- to L-format - and the interesting discussions I had with Roye as to how that section might be treated in full accordance with the traditional Ahern approach, which of course was very different to that taken by Pendon for its own scenery. My recollection, after almost sixty years, is that that bare stretch had an open framework with basic 00-gauge connecting track (Peco Individualay perhaps) but was very short. Perhaps the simple answer to this conundrum is that we are both more or less right, with the layout temporarily converted from U to L almost upon its arrival at Long Wittenham but not then permanently converted to its current L-shape until 1972 et seq. It is certainly not impossible, and quite likely in fact, that in 1964 there was a corner section stored and not incorporated in any way into the displayed layout.

Set 436 was an 8-car SWD special trafic set throughout its BR life. It had been an all-ironclad set but towards the end individual ironclad vehicles were gradually withdrawn and replaced by Maunsell or Bulleid loose vehicles. In its original formation it had an FK plus (additional) TK instead of the two CKs. As an educated guess I would suggest that its main use had been on race traffic.

I suspect that it is a concept model, made to show what an initial design would look like and which was then modified fairly substantially before being actually built. The Nostalgic Picture Library has a couple of photos, from contemporary postcards, which show the station in the final stages of initial construction in the autumn of 1923 and certain similarities with your model are much more obvious in them than they are in later photos when the station was enveloped in further development.

In my experience it is an effect best built up using black powder applied in many passes of a very soft brush. I use black powder poster paint (from a tin all but sixty years old) and a cosmetics brush intended for applying powder (but not this particular powder!) as face make-up. If one is applying it to modelled cement rendering it is best to find a period photo of a suitable prototype to ascertain the desired effect, finding such photos isn't difficult as there many were taken during the flush of postcard production in the Edwardian era. I also have an equally old tin of pale grey powder poster paint which I often use in the same way to tone down the effect of the black that I have previously applied, it is remarkable how quickly a totally realistic effect can be achieved in a way that wouldn't be possible with paint, even sprayed very thinly.

It is, perhaps, worth a reminder that next-to-no BR steam locos were fitted with speedometers and that, therefore, observance of speed limits, plated or not, was down to a driver's estimation of the train speed. Those same drivers, retrained to drive diesels, probably took some time to get used to keeping an eye on their speedometers, particularly as their new steeds rode far better than steam predecessors. One of the most frightening sights I ever saw on the railway was a long train of empty mineral wagons heading west from Didcot to Swindon in the mid-1960s behind what memory suggests was a Western and clearly doing well over 60 mph. The only thing that was keeping the bouncing wagons more or less in line with the track was the drawbar pull, sparks from the van wheels showing that the guard was doing his best to brake the train.

That isn't just true of 2mm/N but of larger scales too although the depth modelled in 2mm/N is often greater (especially true of CF of course) and that too calls for that lighter touch. The one thing that modellers of "historical" (say pre-1970) urban landscapes tend to get wrong is that they depict the sides of buildings in too light a shade. Roofs, and especially slate roofs, got washed down regularly by rain (and to some extent bleached by the UV rays of the sun) but the rough surfaces of brickwork and cement rendering collected soot from the atmosphere and had been collecting it in most cases since they were built. Indeed in some industrial towns like Stoke buildings would be encrusted with a measurable layer of soot and appear all but black in consequence. The Clean-air Acts that followed the dire smogs of the early 1950s have totally changed the situation today as wind and rain over the years have gradually muted the colour effects of the soot, making it easy to forget how things were. Some "public" buildings were actually physically washed down in the 1960s and for them the change was dramatic.

While I don't know what the situation was on the Eastern Region, the Southern Region certainly imposed general speed limits - 85 m.p.h. for steam trains and 75 m.p.h. for electric trains with a lower limit of 60 m.p.h. for both within a defined London suburban area. These limits were printed in every Southern Region Working Time Table. I would have expected every Region to have similar (but not necessarily identical) limits to facilitate signal planning - and especially the placement of distant signals to allow adequate braking distance.

This was just after the 1896 Light Railways Act had been passed and there were a large number of (hare-brained) schemes spread round the country. A fair number gained LROs, fewer were started on the ground and even less came to any sort of fruition. Examination of the relevant 25" OS maps (fortuitously revised just after the turn of the century and available for viewing on the NLS site) shows no evidence of land purchase, always the first step after an Order had been granted.

Indeed! The very sort of hybrid DMU which, if you put one out on an exhibition layout, would produce a queue of people telling you that such combinations didn't occur on the real railway. I seem to remember coming up from Cambridge to Kings Cross one Saturday evening in a very similar mongrel unit in, I think, the latter part of 1974.

The LNER of the 1930s was very much the railway of its pre-grouping constituents but with a different livery and lettering. Which of the pre-grouping companies are you trying to represent? and presumably this is a rural branch line?

The so-called Munich Crisis, which started on 17 September 1938 when Hitler's forces embarked on a low-key occupation of parts of Czechoslovakia and concluded (for the time being) with an international agreement (Mr. Chamberlain's "little bit of paper") on 30 September of that year which effectively allowed Hitler to do what he wanted, can be taken as the point at which the authorities started to take seriously the threat of a forthcoming European war. Prior to this ARP measures, for example, had started to be evaluated but little concrete had been done (sorry for the pun). Just how seriously the Munich crisis was taken can be illustrated by the fact that LPTB's Northern Line, whose under-Thames tunnels south of Charing Cross were considered particularly susceptible to enemy bombing, was suddenly closed at that point to enable concrete plugs to be inserted - during the middle of an evening rush hour.

The NLS does have end-of-Victorian-era town plans at a much higher resolution for Newcastle although unfortunately the "crossings" area does come at the junction of several maps (all of which are available). These may be for a much earlier period but the very complexity of the p&c means that it can't have changed much over time.

The book mentions it and gives the works nos. of the two R&H locos known to have worked there - 183725 and 244564. I certainly wouldn't buy the book just for that mention. Incidentally I was the only passenger on the last scheduled train* on 27 May 1966 worked by D9500 itself. I was supposed to have a brake van permit but what awaited me at Stroud (ex-GW) when I arrived from Oxford to catch the train was a loco cab permit, not that I was complaining. There was an amusing sequel a couple of weeks later when a letter arrived from Bristol Division apologising for the fact that an error had been made - and refunding the fee I had paid! * As was normal, a clearance train, worked by a 350hp shunter, ran the following week.

CCTs and other 4-wheel vans (notably SR U-vans) would have been seen in trains that conveyed both passengers and parcels, often at one or other end of the working day, but such trains tended to become much rarer as the 1960s progressed. An example familiar to me was the 7.12am Holborn Viaduct (NA)/7.24am London Bridge to Dover Priory which was formed of a MkI 3-set and a whole string of vans, mainly 4-wheelers, and hauled by a D1 or E1 4-4-0 (or even a C 0-6-0 on occasions), an E5000 electric loco taking over haulage from June 1961 until the train's demise the following year. The return working in the early evening ran via Redhill and East Croydon into Cannon Street, worked by a Crompton from June 1961.

There was, of course, the occasion several decades ago when it was wished to operate an enthusiasts' special round the Circle Line in London using Sarah Siddons on a rake of borrowed Southern Region MkII stock. Officially the MkIIs were within the specified loading gauge but dynamic envelopes can be funny things and it was decided to do an out of traffic hours trial run with a single brake vehicle which quickly produced a number of scrape marks on the coach concerned, seemingly from signal equipment. Since the envelope of the C69 LT units was officially larger than that of the MkIIs that raised some interesting questions as to why they weren't encountering the same problems. Further detailed investigation revealed that they too were indeed scraping the same items of equipment but because they were unpainted no one had noticed!

Discs alongside running signals would normally have red and green aspects once the post-grouping norms started to be applied. In broad terms the GWR white aspect was used either where the other companies used yellow shunt signals (typically at exits from sidings where there was also a shunting neck) or where they used running discs between running signals (the running disc being cleared before the appropriate running signal).

Yes, but it is well reasoned logic given firstly that the GWR were known to be keen users of the stuff, even allowing their name to be used in product advertising, secondly that it fits the known colour of the wagons, which were darker than the dark grey used for normal freight stock, and thirdly that steel wagons used only for coal would have been very prone to serious rust damage and they don't seem to have been in practice. For comparison on this last point just consider the vast BR 16 ton steel mineral wagon fleet where the floors started dropping out after barely a decade of use.

I have long suspected that it was bituminised black paint which the GWR was fond of using on its corrugated iron structures (even to the extent of specifying c/i which was already so coated). That would have started life a very distinctive black (especially in comparison with the dark grey used on freight stock) but would gradually have faded over time much in the same way, but much more slowly, that road surfaces do. Using it would obviously have been more expensive than using ordinary paint but the whole life cost would have been lower, especially for wagons intended to carry and hold coal.

Sealink as a (very clever) brand name came later, in January 1970, following on from the establishment of a dedicated Shipping & International Services Division at the beginning of September 1969.

I was glad to see from your FB post - and the second photo above - that you are getting on top of the problem of depicting the prototypical "pools of light" along tube platforms of that era. Photos of the real thing are rare for obvious reasons (photography used to be banned underground without a permit and supervision) and most of those that exist had much of the pooling effect washed out by their necessarily long exposure (shots with trains were almost always posed even if the train's position might suggest it was moving). However, the shot reproduced below shows the effect well - it is actually of the Central London Railway terminal platform at Liverpool Street c1920 (and long out of copyright). but all the Underground group stations would have had similar lighting effects.

The 4-8-2s Samson and Hercules were built with a purpose in mind. There was a proposal to extend at the Hythe end of the railway up to the main line at Sandling Junction and this would have entailed a fair climb, particularly in comparison with the relatively flat run of the rest of the railway across the Romney Marshes.

The Tanat Valley line seems to have retained several 4-wheelers until c1950. I am not quite sure why as the brakes had been bogie vehicles for some time. The policy to retain them must have been deliberate as 1313 was repainted all-over brown at a relatively late date pre-nationalisation.

With many men (and later single women) away in the forces, only essential cleaning tasks would have been undertaken - and there may well have been a feeling too that a dirty loco was marginally less obvious from the air than a clean one. Wartime photos are obviously rare but shots from the early post-war years tend to show grubby locos (and most other things too). In the photo I mentioned before of 638, which I suspect may have been taken by the late Henry Casserley, the number and the SOUTHERN legend can only just be made out and, if it were in colour (which it wasn't) I suspect that it would have been very difficult to determine which green it was in, or, indeed, whether it was green rather than black. As you suggest, doubtless all very reminiscent of the mid/late sixties era.

It still looks like a wheeled barrow of some sort but probably for some specialised purpose, carrying milk churns between cart/lorry and train came to mind, especially if the platform is quite low.

Given they that are unlikely to have been kept clean - the photo that I have seen of 638 would put most model weathering attempts to shame - it might well have been difficult to see which green was actually used or, indeed, whether it was actually mixed to full specification. It would, though, have made perfect sense to use up old stocks on locos like the A12 class. With hindsight, it is probably remarkable that they were painted any version of green during wartime.