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I seem to recollect being told almost 60 years ago (when there were people around who remembered these things) that the Loco Coal wagons were black because, being steel and carrying Welsh coal, the paint used had a bituminous content to mitigate against acidic corrosion, an explanation which seemed to fit well with what I was learning in Chemistry lessons at the time.

I don't think that I have ever seen a photo of a non-corridor Southern carriage with the upper lining so I suspect that it was dropped (for the very practical reasons outlined above) very quickly. The waist lining was applied for a much longer period and it isn't too difficult to find photos of vehicles so adorned. The settled practice for vehicles with mouldings at waist level seems to have been to apply it through the exact centreline of the mouldings unless any of the doors carried legends (typically "GUARD") when it was applied immediately under the mouldings. Motor trains used the under the mouldings position for both carriages, presumably to neaten the appearance but I am not sure that this rule was also applied to non-motor sets. There were very few examples of red Southern carriages with waist lining around in the mid-1950s so I suspect that any applied lining was painted out when vehicles came in for their mid-term revarnishing.

The Turnhoutsebaan, now the N12 and one of the main routes running east out of Antwerpen through Borgerhout. I was surprised to discover that the tramway is metre, rather than standard, gauge and it demonstrates how road vehicles have got wider since the 1960s. I have found it difficult to identify the precise location(s) but trams still run along the road there - and underneath it!

I can tell you that Wasserij Iris was, and still is, a small chain of launderettes located in several places just to the east of Brussels in what is today the Province of Vlaamse Brabant, and it looks as if this is their service van, probably somewhere in Brussels given the standard gauge tramway. A slight puzzle is that the type of paving round the tram tracks would normally only have been used for reserved track in an area where pedestrians could have access.

When the prototype cars were in use - they disappeared c1960 - carriage lighting was nothing like as bright as it is today. In fact, it would have been best described as dim and, although you could see from outside that the lighting was on at night, it didn't help you to see much detail of the interior - and, if it was cold and damp out, the windows would have all been steamed up anyway.

I think that you are misinterpreting this note in respect of the X marking, if I were to add the implied word "vehicles" several times as below with the added words in italics, I think that you can see that all the X means is that every seat has access to a lavatory (as opposed to those vehicles marked with an obelisk where only some seats have access to one). "The vehicles marked X are Corridor vehicles and Lavatory vehicles, and those vehicles marked [with an obelisk] contain Lavatory accommodation in certain compartments."

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It isn't an old OHLE structure - the only ones used as signal posts were used in situ, and, although they proved long-lived, I believe that the last one (east of Clapham Junction) was replaced quite some time ago. I am not even convinced that there is very much secondhand rail in its construction, some or all of the uprights perhaps. It has all the hallmarks of having been a one-off Southern Railway design for the specific location, the detail design of the deck, for example, corresponds closely to the designs used for the mid-1930s resignalling out of Waterloo. Assuming that is the case, it was brought into use on 17 May 1936 - still a long time survivor from the Herbert Walker era, though. He certainly knew how to deliver value to the SR's shareholders (and customers).

I am intrigued by the picture of the plain-lined "passive" point. Thinking back several decades when the Southern looked seriously at the cost of its existing crossover provision in the post local freight train situation, quite a lot ended up being taken out altogether, but some others were plain lined in a similar way but with the important difference that the point blades were retained but the crossing was removed and an equivalent length of plain rail substituted. I remember being told that the crossing, even in a trailing situation, wore much more quickly than the blades and was therefore the most significant maintenance cost item. It may have been the case also, although it wasn't actually said at the time, that reinstating a crossing that had been plain lined was much simpler than reinstating blades and stock rails, making it practical to reinstate the crossing temporarily for operating purposes during engineering works if required. I think that, in practice, the latter never (or rarely) happened because it wasn't long before all the retained plain-lined crossovers of that era were taken out altogether.

I don't disagree with your comments although in my experience slates that start to "warp" are actually life-expired and starting to delaminate (an effect which becomes quite serious when, typically, they near their centenary). However, as you suspect, and I stated, the Caley would have gone to considerable trouble to ensure that the roof of a significant signal box was in good order. I suppose that it is just possible that mining subsidence could cause the roof to warp, but if it did it would be causing much greater problems within the "delicate" machinery of the signal box (presumably concrete rafts were used as foundations for signal boxes in areas where subsidence was considered possible) and would be obvious from the general appearance of the box. In fact, the modelled box looks as immaculate as it should do.

I do know that some photographs have been passed to other photographic collections fairly recently via Richard's daughter. Mike Morant has certainly added some to his collection - I know because I recognised one and asked Mike about it.

Richard worked for me at Sealink for a while in the mid-1970s, it doesn't seem possible that is now four decades ago. At the time, I was slowly working on a 21mm to the foot model (to run on O gauge track) of the L&Y Horwich Works loco "Wren". There isn't much that you can miss out or fudge at that scale and, although I had a good set of works drawings and had paid several visits to first Clapham and then York to see it as preserved, there were a number of issues unresolved, particularly regarding the pipework around the steam dome which was almost invisible in published photographs. Richard kindly arranged for me to borrow all the relevant photos in his father's collection, including those portraying Wren's siblings, and, after much use of a magnifying glass, I eventually resolved how the pipework was actually arranged. The Horwich apprentices who restored the loco had made the pipework look "pretty" rather than anything like correct. As a final thank you to Richard, here is a photo of the completed model, it is battery powered, controlled by the regulator and reversing lever, only the steam brake is dummy!

I got to play with one of these at the Walferdange expo in the Grand Duchy in mid-November. It was absolutely superb, both in appearance and in running quality.

Many years ago Roy Link came up with the bright idea of soldering 4 lengths of brass wire into a rather shorter length of brass tube, the diameter of the brass wire varying with the scale/bulk of the model to be held. The wire is splayed out slightly, with the ends bent over outwards a few mm and sprung into the axle bearing cups of the model (obviously without the wheels fitted). The brass tube can be held (preferably in a rubber-gloved hand) or inserted into a suitable hole drilled in a block of wood, and the ensemble holds the model to be painted without impeding the paint spray. The raw materials are cheap enough to enable one to make up several holders if one is batch building - and painting. Otherwise it is just down to practice, although it can help considerably to have several spot lights focussed on the model so that one can readily see how much paint is actually going on the model, and getting the spraying distance right is probably the most crucial thing. Try clipping up a sheet of paper and spraying that so that you can see how the spray pattern works for varying distances - then apply those lessons to spraying the model. Making several light passes is often recommended but most times I manage with a single pass; if I know I am going to be using the several light passes technique (on an intricate model for example), then I use both red and grey sprays, alternating for each pass, as this enables one to readily see the coverage being attained each time. Red as the top (or only) undercoat can be very useful for locomotives or wagons that are to have a "dusted rust" on black finish.

I worked for a railway company which decided to poll the workforce anonymously on a whole range of issues including attitude to safety. A popular and well-respected personnel manager actually commissioned the poll and the company he selected didn't make a bad job of it (although I did have considerable professional standards misgivings about quoting verbatims from identified small teams, which risked the respondent concerned being identified or, even worse, mis-identified). However, the overall results from the survey were at complete variance with the views of the senior management team - how dare they say that our staff think that we are a load of w*nk*rs when clearly we are near perfect - and not only weren't they taken on board, but the personnel manager concerned found himself selected for compulsory redundancy only a few weeks later. What I would add, though, is that my view the issue of what caused the driver to "micro-sleep" was a total red herring. What caused the accident was the failure to foresee that some form of signalling was required in the area of the tunnels. The first stage of the Bruxelles pre-metro (tram in tunnel) had opened c1970 and, despite the fact that the Bruxelles tramway system already had long stretches of reserved track, it was considered essential to install an elaborate signalling system (displays include not only red/yellow/green lights in combinations but maximum permitted speeds) with system overrides to stop a speeding tram. The system was particularly pertinent because at the southern end of the pre-metro tunnel the tram lines turned sharply - a situation very similar to that at Sandilands (today's replacement Metro goes straight on). I would suggest, in fact, that the curve didn't just present a serious hazard in in its own right (as the accident has clearly proved), but also presented (and indeed continues to present) a potential serious rear-end collision hazard. Croydon trams normally run (other than on the common Sandilands-central Croydon section) at well-spaced intervals, but if delays were to occur at the Sandilands junction (and the juxtaposition of a trailing junction and highway crossing make it one of the more likely locations for delays on the network) the maps and photographs in the report demonstrate clearly that the driver of the following tram would have very little prior vision of the stationary tram ahead (and indeed might initially think that it was a tram coming the other way). Even with a 20 mph speed limit and the hazard braking facility a rear end collision would be difficult to avoid, limited signalling would avoid the risk. I am rather surprised that RAIB report seems to make no mention of the possibility.

I wonder whether you have a rogue tin - or nozzle? I have used Halford's primer, some quite old, on tiny O14 industrial models (which, despite the hugely greater scale, don't bulk out much bigger than most 2FS models) and am always surprised how well it goes on without hiding fine detail (or, sadly, some slightly less than perfect workmanship).

Indeed a typo, original post corrected. Thanks.

I have been a regular visitor since 2011. Although quite small, there are usually a fair number of interesting layouts, some of which I have seen elsewhere, and some that I haven't. Some of the small number of traders are German and don't speak much French. Quite a lot of secondhand stuff for sale upstairs, some new too. Food is excellent with a menu in French. There is another GDL show (Model Train Luxembourg) at Junglinster (Centre Gaston Stein) which is usually the first weekend in March, and where the food menu is only printed in Lëtzebeurghesch!

Indeed, but the individual wagon numbers should reflect the different build batches in that case. If, however, the different painting styles were intended to reflect a change in "house style" (perhaps as a result of a change of ownership), wagons with the imagined older livery (and single-sided brakes) should be more heavily weathered.

Slates don't lift slightly. They are laid with a considerable lap, ie the majority of any individual slate lies under other slates and that ensures that they lie flat. If a roof were laid with slates of varying thickness - and I think that very unlikely on any railway structure - it might just give the impression of "lifting" but the roof wouldn't be very watertight either. What you might just get is the odd slipped slate where the fixing nail(s) have rusted through. Normally they slipped straight down, constrained by the remainder of the slates. A slate that had slipped right out of position might well still lie on top of other slates on the roof, pushed around by the wind and so lying diagonally. The odd chipped slate is a possibility too - although really I would have expected the Caley to have ensured that slates on its signal box roofs stayed in good order.

Until about the mid-1960s, each Southern signal box with colour light signals was allocated a specific letter code which bore no resemblance to the box name, the very first codes had a single letter, then two letter codes were used, then (on the Eastern Section) a few three letter codes. Colour light signals controlled by boxes on the Eastern Section just used the appropriate letter code (noting that two or three letter codes never started with an A, C or W) followed by the lever number. Fully automatic colour light signals on the Eastern Section used the letter A followed by a number unique on the section. Colour light signals controlled by boxes on the Central and Western sections used the appropriate letter code prefixed with a C or W and followed by the lever number, there were in effect no single letter codes on these sections. Fully automatic colour light signals on these Sections used the letters CA or WA followed by a number unique on the section. Semi-automatic signals used the appropriate signal box code followed by the lever number but also carried a "SEMI" plate.

Getting slates right is difficult in any of the small scales and especially so in 2mm. A pile of old slates in my cellar stacks almost exactly 100 to the foot, so they would be no more than 0,02mm (or a bit less than 1/1000th of an inch) thick each in 2FS and that needs quite a thin sheet of paper if overlapping is to be represented - and that doesn't include any allowance for the finite thickness of the adhesive. I am glad that it is your problem rather than mine! What I can do, though, is to suggest the use of gloss acrylic artists' varnish, readily obtainable in small bottles from art shops or even some stationers, and applied by brush, which, by soaking through, should glue overlapping strips both to each other and to the brass base. I would sand the brass first to provide a key and possibly drill some random fine holes. The varnish dries quite quickly but should give adequate time for manoeuvring strips into their correct position. When completely dry it will give a good base for paint.

Oddly enough, Ogden's Cigarettes got it about right. Their artwork must be based on a pre-WWII photo as it depicts short-hoods (replaced by long hoods as a matter of extreme urgency once night bombing raids started in 1940). http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hFyqorvd_Fs/VVLRMCCfzyI/AAAAAAABNUw/khQ5upY5kus/s1600/Southern%2BRailway%2B3%2BAspect%2BSignal%2B1930s.JPG

When I was given a very thorough grounding in third-rail isolation by a friendly SM back in the very-early 1960s (when I was still a schoolboy but that is another story), not only was I taught how to pull hook switches safely (and made to keep pulling them until my tutor was satisfied that I had the technique right - they were pulled live in those days which could give some interesting pyrotechnics if you didn't get it right) but I was also taught to always apply a short-circuiting bar to prove that the section had been isolated (and, yes, I was made to practice that on a live third rail too, with more pyrotechnics). Some decades later when it was decided that I should have personal track safety training (on the basis that it was considered desirable for all senior management to have it in case they had to take charge in an emergency), my then Ops Manager was astounded to find that I knew more about the realities of third rail isolation than he did!

That would be impressive in 4mm scale, in 2mm rather you than me!