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Wagons standing on the wagon TT will indeed overhang it so you need to keep the immediate surrounding area flat (say everything within a 20mm radius to be on the safe side). A few railways, the GN and Midland come to mind, sometimes placed wagon TTs close to goods platforms and these platforms always had a corresponding cut-out to ensure that wagons being turned didn't foul them. Incidentally, wagon TTs were rarely used to wagons (except some early vans which had doors on only one side), and it is much easier to arrange a model TT that only moves between the various roads that it serves (typically through a right angle). If it only serves two roads (whether these continue both sides of the TT or not), the movement either way can be limited by adjustable stops under the baseboard, for which 14 or 16BA screws, together with lock nuts, are ideal.

The style of Southern Railway colourlight signal heads (inter-alia, almost everything related to c/l signalling schemes changed too) was altered more than once during the Southern Railway period. You need to think through where your layout is "located" and then look for Southern Railway or early-Southern Region period photos showing colour light signals for schemes which might be related. For example, the earliest schemes (which included some cluster signal heads) were in parts of the SED inner-London area, then there were schemes related to the Brighton line electrification - but only for its "country" parts, the SWD London area and the Portsmouth line electrification. One defining feature change which cuts across your specified period and which affected ALL SR colour light signal heads was the very obvious change from short to long hoods. This was implemented as an emergency ARP requirement in late 1940 - a task considered so urgent that the actual work was continued even during air raids.

The simple way to do this is to file a (very) slight rounded depression in the rail head. Temporarily tack the two rails that you are going to fit on the TT alongside each other and then used a fine rounded file to file a slight depression in both rail heads at just the right place for the wheels at one end of the wagon to drop into, 0,1mm should be sufficient. It is best to choose to put the depression in what one might term the "stop" end of the rails, but the system does work either way.

It was in the April 1973 issue of Model Railways

I have very successfully used 4mm driving axle bearings for similar purposes. It is possible to buy 2mm I/D ⅛inch O/D top hat bearings which sit perfectly in the more common 1/8inch I/D bearings. A bolt can be passed through the centre of the 2mm I/D bearing to hold the whole thing together. Interalia Branchlines sell suitable bearings.

There was a drawing of a GER wagon turntable in Model Railways somewhen about 1970.

Scotland Street yard was bigger than you might think. Someone, a club probably, made a nice 4mm model of it in its entirety some 20-25 years ago and it was on the exhibition circuit for a while and the model was surprisingly large. I seem to recollect seeing it at the Manchester show at New Century Hall.

Someone made a very convincing model of Snape in 3mm scale about 50 years ago! It was written up in the Model Railway News at the time. IIRC the owner had had to build a J17 to work it rather than the prototypical J15 simply because it was impossible to shoehorn the commercial motors available at that time into a 3mm scale model of a J15 - miniature motors have come on a bit since then!

Generally, the SR used specific sets for inter-railway working which had been specially built for the purpose. The SR (and LNER) used "Pullman" gangways for the corridor connection between their carriages while the GWR and LMSR used "Standard" gangways which were a different shape. The two different types of gangways could be coupled using special adaptors but it wasn't very satisfactory and so the dedicated SR sets for inter-railway working had Pullman gangways within the set but Standard gangways at the outer ends and were never used on internal SR workings.

I would have expected pit props to be conveyed on the railway as "finished" pit props semi-upright in open wagons. Forest felling almost inevitably produces quite a lot of pit prop diameter timber which is most easily handled in shortish lengths and hence is "finished" (debarked and sawn to length) where it is felled. Even today, it is quite common here to see huge stake-sided timber lorries conveying loads of pit prop sized timber (although god knows what they actually use them these day). The great lengths of timber conveyed on timber bogie lorries (the almost exact equivalent of bolster rail wagons although the road bogies are coupled only by the load and cables for the electrics) are almost always of a greater diameter than would be used for pit props. Those wagons are really nice though, most fine scale 4mm modellers would have been proud to produce something looking that good.

It wasn't just in the 1960s that a single roof board each side per carriage was carried as perusal of available photographs suggests that this practice applied pre-war as well. Indeed, there is a photograph of a Southern Belle working of a 5-PUL with only single roof boards (which presumably read "SOUTHERN BELLE"). I would suggest that one possibility is that paired roof boards were introduced with the restored service after WWII but were eventually reduced back to a single board simply because of the amount of work involved in removing and replacing them. This would have been required each week for the unit(s) which worked to Eastbourne on a Sunday. Annoyingly, I can remember seeing the Sunday train arrive at Eastbourne, probably in 1956, but have no recollection whatsoever of what roof boards, if any, it was carrying.

Careful measurement of some nearly end-on photos suggests that the motor cars are twice the width of the track gauge, i.e. around 1,8 metres or perhaps 6 feet (1,83m). I get the impression that the trailer cars might be marginally wider - 2 metres?

When I built the various buildings on Bembridge some 45 years ago using, admittedly in 4mm scale, the then brand new Slater's brickwork, I painted them overall with the colour(s) that I wanted the mortar to be, let the paint dry thoroughly and then scraped it off using a scalpel blade. This had the double effect of flattening and tinting the moulded brick faces and leaving appropriately coloured "mortar", even mossy mortar can be reproduced if green is used as the initial colour. The effect worked well then and I have used it for other scales since including 1:160. The only refinement to the method that I use today is to finish with a very light burnish with a large fibreglass stick which helps to ensure a natural matt finish. In fact the bricks on the real station building at Bembridge (demolished during the course of the model construction) had been fired with a lot of impurities in the clay and there were significant patches of dark blue within the faces of many of the bricks. After some head scratching, I tried lightly dabbing on some ultramarine cellulose paint (more easily obtained in small quantities then than now) as a first stage. This of course reacted with the plastic but not so much as to destroy the moulding and, after I was certain that it was not only dry but that the plastic had rehardened, I commenced the procedure outlined above. The result was very convincing from a normal viewing distance.

There can be no doubt that the L&SWR occasionally received Stevens-style signalling equipment with Scottish detailing because I have seen odd photos of lattice posts in L&SWR territory with distinctive Scottish-style finials (although they were clearly never numerous). I wouldn't therefore be surprised to find the odd Scottish-style ETT-6 machine since there don't seem to have been any compatibility issues.

Except Chris, that if you look at the photo of the model ground frame in post 96, the right-hand-most red lever stands in mid-position so it must be a push-pull lever. In fact, the use of such a lever to control the arriving home and departing starter is not only legitimate on a light railway, it simplifies the locking (since the points need to be set exactly the same way for both arrivals and departures and, since they are both on the same lever, you don't need to lock the home and starter against each other), and was actually recommended to the NBR by the Inspecting Officer at Lauder. The blue fpl lever standing a little out is a bit odd but could perhaps be explained by the lever having a dual frame lock and facing point lock function, which was a common enough feature of ground frames although not at terminal stations.

I am not at all sure that Hither Green had a GNR coal depot. There was a small coal yard on the up side immediately south of the St.Mildred's Road bridge (where a Hastings diesel came to grief one Sunday evening in 1967), however the access road definitely had SE&CR gates complete with cast plaque. Hither Green SORTING SIDINGS were certainly served by numerous trains which came off the GN main line and ran through the Widened Lines, Snow Hill (or Holborn Viaduct LL) and the either London Bridge or Nunhead. In early BR days these were worked by J52 0-6-0STs but by the time I started spotting in the early 1950s the motive power was J50 0-6-0Ts. The wagons from these trains were then tripped to yards all over the South Eastern Division. There were similar workings from Willesden and Cricklewood, usually via the West London Line, and powered either by W 2-6-4Ts or Stanier 2-8-0s (or very rarely a Crab 2-6-0). Coal from South Wales came via Feltham Yard.

The "problem" with that arrangement, Jerry, is that those "Stephens'" back-to-back railcars were so light that they couldn't handle any form of normal tail (or, by extension, in-between) traffic. There were wagons that could be inserted between the two railcars to carry goods, milk churns, passengers' luggage, etc., but they were so lightweight that they were more platelayers' trolley with sides than wagon. I believe, though, that there is at least one view of one such "wagon" conveying a very large (but lightweight) load of hay, duly tarpaulined, and no doubt such a load could be used to hide a motor if necessary.

Is my ageing memory playing tricks on me or am I right in thinking that Triang did a clockwork as well as 12v DC version of this loco?

I rode behind it from Bath to Evercreech one Saturday in October 1965. It was in terrible condition, taking the best part of twenty minutes to clear the tunnel even on a short train.

Did any late BR-period plain green (unlined) liveried WR locos subsequently go into lined green (other than perhaps in preservation)? I would have thought not but would be happy to be proved wrong.

I strongly suspect that the main components of Torbay Bright Red were lead tetroxide and linseed oil. Various mixes of these two components were once much used as a tough and long-lasting anti-corrosion red paint for metal in situations similar to point rodding and the like. Lead tetroxide was so much more resistant to attack by hydrogen sulphide than white lead paint (which quickly blackens as a result of the formation of black lead sulphide) that the main weathering effect is likely to have been from the slow degradation of the linseed oil component of the mix. That said, I doubt whether it was ever as bright as it appears in the model photo despite the commercial product name. I can, just, remember my father applying it to something and I would have said that it was close to bauxite, but not only does that vary considerably but memories of paint colours are notoriously fickle.

Plenty of Southern corridor carriages never made it into blood and custard as photos (correctly) dated 1955 and 1956 will show.

If it formed part of the opening sequence of the Titfield Thunderbolt film, it must have been 1953 (or just possibly the previous year). The coaching stock confirms a 1950s date.

Well I lived alongside that part of Hither Green Sorting Sidings at that period and my father's allotment was actually taken back by the railway to provide part of the site for the Continental Freight Depot. There were two "wired" areas, one on the upside providing the reception roads for Continental Freight Depot and the other on the down side much closer to Grove Park which provided the egress from the down side sorting sidings towards Kent and which is where a little string of 71s was often stabled awaiting their next duty. I can't make the photo fit either area, especially with the lighting tower (the southernmost one of the two being very close indeed to my home), nor can I reconcile what appears to be a home and distant signal in the right background although the area retained semaphore signals until the winter of 1961/62.

Looks like Hoo Junction. The CE's yard reception roads were certainly wired and the general "scenery" fits.