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Locking Table as a .jpg attachment.

It is possible to file a taper on two brass L sections and then solder them up to provide your hollow tapered post. It is actually a little easier than it sounds as two out of the four tapers that need to be filed can be done after the two L sections are soldered together.

I have seen a photo reliably dated to 1929 which happens to show an oil drum abandoned out of use round the back of Boston Lodge works on the FR. I have always assumed that they started to appear in the UK after WWI when there was a huge growth in the amount of motor traffic. Early motor vehicles tended to "drink" lubricating oil and I imagine that much of it was necessarily conveyed in steel oil drums. They may well have been used for tar as well - and tarmacadamed roads were also a new feature of post-WWI life.

Anything painted in even the later 1930s may well not have been repainted until the early/mid 1950s, other than having black patches added on which the number, tare and capacity, etc were painted in white. Early BR practice was to leave the majority of unfitted wooden goods vehicles unpainted as contemporary photos will show. Black patching started in the very early war years and applied to PO wagons as well as those owned by the rail companies, pre-1948 ownership details were included in the details on the patches.

One fastening inside the rail, two fastenings outside, with a very decided rib between those two fastenings. Keying was outside. I suspect that the fastenings were trenails rather than bolts but I couldn't find a photo that was sufficiently clear to be certain - the difference is unlikely to bother modellers. NBR chairs were very distinctive, quite unlike anything installed post-grouping, although examples could still be found in use on sidings into the 1960s. The NBR also used flat bottom rail on minor branches and it wasn't unknown to find stretches of track with round-topped sleepers, especially in sidings.

The very extensive photographic collection of the late W.A.Camwell ("Cam") is held by the Stephenson Locomotive Society and a comprehensive listing (the "C" lists) with actual or approximate dates appears on that Society's website. The Bethesda photo is, for example, listed there as being c.1947, so 24/05/1947 is probably the correct date for it. http://www.stephensonloco.org.uk/SLSphotocollec.htm I have long worked on the basis that I never believe a published caption unless I can find corroborating evidence, many, even in well regarded historical tomes, are often clearly wrong.

Surely the answer with the Redruth yard layout as drawn is not to include that 3-way point as an actual point but to use a sector plate to select the appropriate road out of the three. You would still need to build 3 crossings (or frogs, to use the old modellers' term) but no point blades. The point for the fourth siding is separate and would still need to be built as a complete point.

Looking for something else, I opened a dusty box the other day and out tumbled a couple of "skeletons" - two scenic items for a never completed and long lost American layout in NFS. Back in 1974, having just exhibited Bembridge in P4 at Central Hall for the second time, I was looking for a new finescale project that I could manage on my own. I quickly realised that the American model trade produced some excellent offerings, both locos and stock, in N or 1:160 scale where the 9,00 mm track gauge was as close to the real thing as 18,83 mm was in P4. Furthermore, KD offered working buck-eye couplers that actually looked like the real thing, and one UK retailer (Millholme) offered code 40 FB rail which, soldered to specially-ordered scale copper-clad ties, would produce track which was very close to scale too. The wheels on the trade offerings left something to be desired but I reckoned that, by joining the 2mm Scale Association, this hurdle could be overcome fairly easily too. The Model Railway Club library subscribed to both Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman, and a trawl through back numbers quickly firmed up the idea of modelling a simple short-line depot which took up little space and could even be easily transported without a car. I was working in the Kings Cross area at the time and lunch time visits to Bernie Victor's little cubby hole (the rest of the shop sold vinyl records) in Chapel Street market quickly convinced me that the proposition was workable. I built a baseboard - and hit the first snag, Millholme had no code 40 rail and said that production was so erratic that it might never appear again, so I used code 55 rail instead which still looked a hell of a lot better when laid than the code 80 rail typically used in N at the time. I scratch built a 4-wheel caboose and a snow plough to prove to myself that I could scratch build rolling stock in the scale, and both looked nice and certainly ran well so I started to acquire freight stock, largely but not totally, box cars and a loco. Ideally I would have acquired a SW1 for the sort of short line I had in mind, but nobody made one and I had to make do with an Atlas SW1500 which wasn't too far off in appearance but was really too modern - snag number 2. Those MRs and RMFs provided me with scale drawings for scratch building both items of rolling stock (that caboose and snow plough) and for suitable buildings and these were the next to be tackled. The depot building, a water tower and a through girder bridge (from a Heljan plastic kit) were built. Then I started to get cold feet, the code 55 rail looked over scale for a short-line, the SW1500 didn't look quite right either, work started to get very busy and I moved from the London suburbs to Hove and became a "long" distance commuter. Eventually the layout stalled, although it was only actually thrown out when I moved to Belgium some years ago and the "skeletons" that fell out that box are all that remains now. Inevitably, they have sustained some damage during the course of four decades and three house moves, and I could certainly make a better job of that tarred-felt roof on the depot today, but when I looked at them I was astounded by the standard I could reach then, I am almost certain that I couldn't do it today in that small scale. They were almost totally constructed from Plasticard and other Slaters' products - micro strip and rod.

I had known Richard, on and off, for all but 50 years and have always been a great admirer of his skills in creating atmospheric models, and in his ability to produce a amicable glass of wine for a "friend" whilst exhibiting. Rather more than 30 years ago, I became a senior member of BR's HQ fares team (producing inter-alia the National Fares Manual) and at an early stage it became appropriate to do a "meet the troops" tour of the various Regional fares offices where the real work was done. One of these was the Scottish Region office in Buchanan House in Glasgow, and, whilst there, my assistant and guide happened to mention my interest in model railways, the young lady who was head of section replied "Ah, you will be knowing our Mr Chown then!". Indeed I did, but I was amazed that his exploits in that footbridge in Edinburgh should be so well known that a young lady whose career had been in commercial departments in the "other city" would know of him and his "work", he was, after all, an engineer - and obviously a legend in his own time.

Set 503 was definitely in crimson by May 1952 when the late Pat Garland took a number of photographs on the line. The carriages were unlined and the paintwork looked fresh so they had probably been repainted during the preceding winter.

What about the smoke pouring out the mouth after the passage of a train? I have only been through the real thing a couple of times, including one Saturday lunchtime ex-Bath when the loco, a BR standard 2-6-4T IIRC, wasn't in the best of condition and took well over 20 minutes to clear the tunnel. The atmosphere in the carriages was pretty dire, so I hate to think what it was like on the footplate.

It works OK for me, Chris.

I believe that C.R.Clinker did much of his research in the 1930s when he was a GWR employee. It is quite likely that original papers from the 1860s (when the line was worked by the B&E) were still "archived" somewhere in the GWR empire at that period and would have been accessible to someone like Clinker. Mondays in December 1861 were 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd and 30th, but, given that timetables usually applied for calendar months at that period, Sunday 1st or Monday 2nd seem the most likely dates. The 3rd of April 1891 was a Friday, the Friday of Easter week in fact, and, IF the file refers to a traffic notice concerning the opening of the siding, that would suggest an opening date of 6th April 1891.

My understanding, which came from someone who worked at Lancing, was that the SR standard was revarnish after 3 years, repaint after 6, although this was to some extent governed by condition, and stock that saw little use, the long-sets for example (if any of their constituent vehicles lasted long enough), almost certainly went longer between repaints. Stock that was stored sufficiently close to the shore line to be affected by salt spray carryover (and that might apply almost anywhere on the IoW) probably needed repainting (or patch painting) more frequently however.

What I was hinting at is that I think that there is a good chance that neither year is correct, but possibly 16 April is. The "problem" may well stem from an indistinct handwritten date. If I knew which day of the week was most likely for an "opening" on the S&D, then it wouldn't take me long to provide a list of years in which 16 April fell on that day.

To which might be added the comment that the Island doesn't seem to have made any attempt to keep carriages in green, as unquestionably happened (at least with corridor stock) on the mainland, so red became pretty standard by 1956/7 - when green not only reappeared but became standard again remarkably quickly.

16 April 1861 was a Tuesday and 16 April 1891 was a Thursday, both of which seem a bit odd for a station/siding opening. In both years, Easter fell at the end of March so that wouldn't have had any effect.

To add to my previous comment, the BR-built Euston-Watford 3-car sets were fitted with standard BR(S) tall-digit roller blinds (including the top bar which wasn't actually used, although it may have been the original intention to do so since they could display "- -" which wasn't a standard Southern display at the time). The left-hand (viewed face-on) blind displayed only the class of train letter A, B or C, but the right-hand blind displayed the numbers 1 to 9 and 0, white and black blanks and the letters X, Y and Z, which is only one letter less than the blinds I believe the E5000 class locos were originally fitted with.

It certainly looks very nice. I await Bachmann's doubtless imminent announcement of a Graham Farish 1:148 model.

Although I would be happy to be proved wrong, I have always believed that the original "tall digit" head codes included very few alpha characters in addition to the 0 through 9 numerics and black and white blanks, indeed I am not at all certain that these blinds included red blanks (although the initial experiments on Hastings diesel sets certainly included red and/or red/white diagonal stripes on tall digit blinds, but no alpha characters). It was my belief at the time that the "short digit" blinds were introduced because the red blanks and additional alpha characters could be included on blinds which remained much the same length and therefore still short enough to fit the standard rollers. Initially, the letters A, B, C and G were used with numbers to replicate the disc head codes (alpha-numeric for trains in classes 1-3, numeric-alpha for trains in classes 4-9/0) and I suspect that only these letters appeared on the tall-digit blinds on the E5000 class. Later, with short-digit blinds, the letters D, E, F, H, J and K were added, plus the red blanks.

That is a very interesting point (sorry!) that Mike has made there, and it set me wondering whether that was actually true generally across BR. I can certainly remember plenty of facing point locking bars in the early to mid 1960s, but with closures, rationalisation and modernisation, the majority would have disappeared anyway by the 1970s, and I can't remember any other location where they hadn't been replaced by track circuits. Doubtless there were still a few around (away from the heritage railways) but I reckon that anyone modelling a fictional location from 1970 onwards (and perhaps at any time in the "blue" era) could safely ignore the need to provide them (and to allow the space they necessarily took up).

Quite apart from it sounding like an accident waiting to happen, I suspect that a major issue that you won't have thought about is thermal expansion of the rails. The answer is to firmly anchor the rails immediately either side of the baseboard join and allow them to slide as they expand and contract with temperature changes, so the other end of the rails will need to "fixed" in rail joiners which incorporate a fair expansion gap. Googling will give you values for the coefficient of thermal expansion for the type of rails you are using and it is best to assume that viaduct won't move (it will but much less than the rails). This is less of a problem in the more normal situation where tracks are fixed directly to a solid baseboard because some of the expansion is contained by increased stresses in the rails. However, on a "timber" viaduct, those stresses could be sufficient to distort the viaduct or even destroy it. This is particularly important if the layout might ever be exhibited, or if it is housed in a loft or shed.

By pure chance, the prototype vehicles were fairly rare beasts, there is a photo of a nice 4mm model of one, built from a D&S kit and in LNER livery, on page 490 of the June "800th" issue of Railway Modeller.

This drawing shows a junction signal (where the subsidiary route diverges to the right) and would be quite wrong for a bracket carrying starting signals from two adjacent platforms where the arms would always be mounted at the same height, typically around 6 feet above the walkway on the bracket. Southern Railway practice was to not provide secondary ladders for posts of this height, although signals of this pattern erected well into the Southern Region era (e.g. at Weymouth) did have secondary ladders.

It is an ex-LNER GE area 4-wheel van (intended for milk in churns I suspect). D&S used to do an etched brass kit in, at least, 4mm scale. It's number appears to be E70116 and from the style of lettering I assume that it is still in the "teak-alike" brown used by the LNER for lesser coaching stock vehicles. The photo probably dates from c1949/50.