EddieB

Spot on. His apprenticeship was served at Ransomes & Rapier in Ipswich. The golden ochre livery was inspired by the gorse bushes of Norfolk. There's an article about his concrete station nameboards in the current issue of Backtrack (i.e. kcart), which is surprisingly absorbing.

No attempts? As ever, this has its roots in a British invention. This specific example was withdrawn in March 1868, the colony having joined the Dominion of Canada the previous July.

Time to call time on this one I think, given the absence of attempts. (I can't believe everyone's foxed - more likely no one wants to set the next question). James Lowe started his railway career on the Great Western at Wolverhampton, before moving to Swindon. He then moved on to British Timken, before becoming an Inspector for South African Railways and Harbours. He left the railways to work for Rolls Royce in Derby, setting up his own engineering company after the Second World War. He is best remembered for his book "British Steam Locomotive Builders", first published by Goose & Son in 1975, a Supplement by TEE Publishing following in 1984. So, we move on.... I'll try a new one, hopefully this is someone more widely known (or ought to be), and if you're current with kcart, you'll be well on the way there. To title him as Railway Engineer, Locomotive Superintendent and later Traffic Manager hardly does justice to the pivotal role he played for a particular company. He was born in Basel, Switzerland, where his father was professor of English, but came to Bideford in Devon aged just eleven following the death of his parents. He served an apprenticeship for a firm best known for making steam cranes, but who also built several small locomotives. In his mid-twenties he was appointed engineer and Locomotive Superintendent to the predecessor of the company he is best known for. He turned his hand to many aspects of railway engineering and took out patents for various things from fish plates to wagon brakes. The high cost of timber in wartime led to innovations and further patents in the development of reinforced concrete structures - including signal posts and station name boards (but not hotels). It is recorded that his wife came up with the distinctive livery bestowed upon the locomotives of his company, taken from the colour of a particular plant that grows widely in the region it served.

As credited at thwe end of the clip!!!

TPS is fine, but even inm the unlikely event a nuisance company is based in the UK they'll never reveal their company name and, as they call from withheld numbers, there is no means of tracing them. Generally as soon as you ask for the company name, they'll hang up. Many of these calls now seem to be coming from India. BT are powerless (or pretend to be) because there is no will to put "gates" into the network to jam nuisance calls. Until we can lobby our MPs to put our interests ahead of junkets to India and promoting Indian big business over here (Bliar, Cable, Hewitt etc., hang your heads in shame) there's very little we can do. The latest development is that some of these callers (usually the ones offering to "repair" MS Windows) can turn very rude when they encounter someone trying to give them the run-around. Were it not for Broadband, I'd have terminated my landline.

Erm, easy with that willow, Skip. At the risk of making a [silly] point, I think Father Time has taken the bales (sic) to somewhere long off and you've been caught behind! (Umpire helmie).

If that was all it was (thankfully we never got into filling the bog with "night soil"). New question then. What railway first was introduced by a Canadian colony* in 1860, and could be purchased for one cent? It spread to the USA in 1869, Mexico in 1895 and Japan in 1942, but Great Britain (sic) only by 1975. (The specific Canadian colony is needed for the full answer).

...and cotton bales used on the Astley Moss section of Chat Moss?

Giveaway time. The major reference work was first published in 1975 with the help of a gosling and its mother. The publisher of the Supplement has a railway connection to a Kraftwerk track.

Well, I'm giving up on the last bit - bed calls. There for someone to pick up.

So with one account, remember that "sleepers" was a generic term before it became specific to what the Yanks call "ties". Another says "wood and stone foundations". I think it was elsewhere that "faggots" of wood were used on a similar boggy stretch. To expand further, a "raft" consisting of heather bundles, brushwood mattresses and timber hurdles was laid, enabling the railway to float on the top.

Only things I can add are that the final section in Liverpool was rope-worked initially and that the line across Chat Moss was effectively floating on wooden sleepers - "hanging by a thread", if you may.

Not sure how Brain of Britain works, but I'm thinking Chat Moss (Kate Moss -1), which is a peat bog that presented an obstacle (2) to George Stephenson (3) during the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which was constructed principally for the textile trade (Manchester being the centre of the cotton trade was nicknamed "Cottonopolis") and Liverpool its major port (4).

All very quiet. If DS239 isn't around, perhaps time to set another question, Arthur?

No takers yet? (A gold star for anyone who can tell me where I've put my copy of one of the books referred to!)

Is what true? Well for starters, this person's name isn't Mike, Michael or any derivatives thereof....

Right, time for another Swindon man. He started his career as an apprentice at the GWR Locomotive Works at Wolverhampton, transferring to Swindon shortly after. He subsequently left the railway for British Timken and later became an Inspector for South African Railways and Harbours. Just before the outbreak of WW2 he returned to Britain, to Derby, but to the aero division of a major enginerring firm. He is best remembered for a work of reference on steam locomotives, published in the mid-seventies (with a supplement produced nine years later) and a more pictoral work towards the end of the same decade.

I think this is someone I was thinking of "doing" - Sir Sam Fay.

No, but you can park a Smart in the hole in the middle of the Polo....

Indeed it is. Back to you, Mike.

Phew, at last. Still going round in circles at Banbury on the other one. Well, have I exhausted all of Swindon's engineers in my previous series of wrong attempts? Perhaps not. This person began their career at Swindon, indeed their name can be found oin the "Wall" at "Steam" there (I checked). Although I never met him personally, his name was next to mine when I signed in the visitor's book at a major steam shed in the 'eighties. From Swindon he was seconded to Ashford as a draughtsman on the design of diesel-electric CC10203, and later to Nairobi where he was instrumental in the adoption of Giesl ejectors on EAR locomotives. Having returned to the UK after finishing his secondment, he emigrated in 1967 to a country where steam was still widely used, and continued to rove and report from all over the world in search of steam. Better known in more recent times as an author and photographer, his most autobiographical work includes pieces on Churchward and Ell (among others), and where I did first read about Zeiss optical alignment! On his death, and in accordance with his wishes, his ashes were scattered onto the fire of a steam locomotive in his adopted homeland.

Right, last shot tonight Kenneth John Cook, who introduced Zeiss equipment to align frames (trying to remember where I first read about that). [Edi] The book being "Swindon Steam 1921-1951", which just about catches the end of the Churchward era (and which is in the SLS Library).

No, William Stanier is tway oo obvious, shirley? (Play on "Steiner" optics?) I'm struggling to find any such book (even in the SLS Library Lists). As for the German optical hint, I've considered Schneider (who did write for IA, but on other subjects), Rodenstock, Leitz, Zeiss...

Brian Haresnape, then.

Me too - I was left in the corridor of uncertainty waiting for the punch line (me grandmother wi' a stick of celery could've come oop wi' it) Anyway, my ol' mate Google reckons it was GROTTY COFFEE BOY