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RJS1977

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  1. RJS1977
    I was just reading a discussion on the IRSE Facebook group about Scunthorpe PSB. Apparently the panel in the box is the second one, as the first was irreparably damaged en route from Chippenham owing to striking a low bridge!
  2. RJS1977
    I think CloggyDog and I (plus two layouts) went under that bridge on the way to the Beckenham show yesterday.
  3. RJS1977
    until
    The Kenavon Model Railway Exhibition will be held on SATURDAY 22nd FEBRUARY 2025. The exhibition will be held at The Warehouse 1a Cumberland Road Reading RG1 3LB Opening times:10am - 4:30pm Adults £4:50 Seniors £4:00 Children £2:50 Families £10 Proceeds to the Cholsey & Wallingford Railway. Limited parking in the church car park off Norwood Road, or the venue is on the following bus routes: 4, X4 - Reading/Wokingham/Bracknell 13, 14 - Reading/Woodley 17 - Tilehurst/Reading/Earley 127/128/129 Reading/Woodley/Maidenhead 702 Reading/Bracknell/Slough/London 850 Reading/Twyford/Henley/Marlow/Wycombe Rail Air 1 Reading/Heathrow Alternatively there is Pay and Display parking available at the Hope and Bear inn on King's Road, or up to three hours' free parking at Palmer Park (10 mins walk away). 20 layouts including: Quarry View (O Gauge) - Railway Modeller December 2024 Selbourne (009) Earldean (00 GWR) Castle Hill (N) Horsebridge Wharf (EM) Rossiter Rise (00 London Underground) Egham Hill (00) Los Tanimals (American N gauge) Seacome Tramway (009/Minic Motorways) Wallingford (00 Preservation) Potomac Street (American H0) San Rocco (Italian H0) Black Fen (00) Albert Road (00) Criel Plage (French H0) Trade support from: Neil Cresswell JB's Model World Reading Transport Group Refreshments available. The venue is fully wheelchair accessible.
  4. RJS1977
    I think any through north-south route in Wales will be slower than the existing route via Shrewsbury - indeed anywhere north of Dovey Junction would get to Cardiff quicker via Shrewsbury than via Carmarthen. The fact is that the basic geography and topography of Wales will always mean it is a lot easier to cross west-east (i.e. to England) than north-south. So whilst there may be some benefit to local traffic of connecting the University towns of Aberystwyth, Lampeter, Carmarthen and Swansea by train, any sort of viable through route from the North coast to the south is "getting into the realms of fantasy", despite the Welsh "Government" having added at least an hour to the road journey from north-south.
  5. RJS1977
    I remember reading in a book (unfortunately I can't remember which one, probably one of my father's books that we donated to the Gwili Railway last month...) about a junior grade officer at Paddington who was told to go out and identify a suitable spot to erect a signpost pointing towards the station. He went to the road junction concerned, found a convenient lamp post the sign could be attached to and worked out the best height to attach it for pedestrian visibility. He went back to the station, filled in the necessary paperwork and a few days later a group of workmen attached the sign in the prescribed location. The following week, the junior officer was called into his boss's office. On the desk was a somewhat battered sign. What the junior had failed to appreciate when surveying the site was that the lamp post was situated on a corner where double decker buses did a very tight turn.....
  6. RJS1977
    My father and I went to it when it was held at the motor museum at Gaydon - the combined entry fee for the museum and the exhibition was less than the normal entry fee for the museum! Somewhat bizarrely, going round the museum we came across a rebuilt garage that had originally been just round the corner from my parents' bungalow in Pembrokeshire!
  7. RJS1977
    I don't think it's inconceivable and it's possibly only down to location of where accidents have taken place. It is a testament to the crashworthiness of modern rolling stock that only one passenger was killed when a Pendolino rolled down the embankment at Grayrigg. Had there been pedestrians in the field, or had the Pendolino rolled on to a road, there could have been more casualties outside the train than on it. Remember too that at Potter's Bar a pedestrian was killed by masonry dislodges from a bridge by a derailed train. Indeed, in the 1895 Montparnasse derailment, there were no casualties on the train but a pedestrian outside the station was killed by falling masonry - had the street been busier, maybe many more would have been killed.
  8. RJS1977
    That's a different kind of disaster movie altogether!
  9. RJS1977
    The trouble is that we, the knowledgeable ones, know that the scenarios - at least those relating to train operation and safety - are completely ludicrous and wouldn't happen in real life, but the majority of people watching it don't. Programming like this - whether intentionally or otherwise - send out a message that "railways are dangerous", and with the UK rail network still struggling to return to pre-pandemic passenger numbers, the last thing it needs is unnecessary negativity.
  10. RJS1977
    Remember though that 00 track is 2mm too narrow. To my eyes, 00 track with "scale" sleeper spacing doesn't look right, as it emphasises that the track is too narrow!
  11. RJS1977
    Yes, I had a thoroughly enjoyable time too, learned how to use a bow pen (and that what I'd bought some years ago thinking it was a bow pen wasn't!). Got six carriage sides lined (seven if you include my practice piece which I will be cutting up and repainting at some point so no loss if I messed it up!).
  12. RJS1977
    Though Swansea does have splitting and rejoining again now - at least on Summer Saturdays. The SSO Paddington-Pembroke Dock service is now made of 2 x 5 car Class 800s, one of which is detached at Swansea with the other reversing and heading out west (and the reverse happening in the opposite direction). There are also now more London services terminating at Carmarthen (reversing at Swansea) than there have been in recent years, whilst several DMU services from the West run on beyond Swansea - some as far as Manchester! It's quite common to see two DMUs stacked in the same platform. There are plans for a daily through service from London to Tenby from summer 2025. One downside of the current mode of operation at Swansea though is that DMU services from Pembroke Dock now tend to terminate in Platform 1 rather than 2, so that rather than passengers for stations east having a simple cross-platform connection, they now have to walk right round the end and arrive on the platform just in time to see the London train depart!
  13. RJS1977
    Of course a lot of coal traffic pre-1948 was carried in private owner wagons belonging to the coal mines, industries, and coal merchants. That the railway companies didn't introduce bigger wagons pre-War was largely down to the track layouts at the coal mines and industries. It probably didn't make a great difference to those industries whether the wagons were carried in four-wheel wagons or larger ones, but it would have required them to spend large sums of money rearranging their tracks. The GWR attempted to get the South Wales mines to use long wheelbase steel wagons like the ones the GWR used for loco coal, but the benefit to the mines was minimal and they just weren;t interested. And of course the local coal merchants who only had one or maybe two wagons (one in the siding being used as an unofficial coal staithe and one on its way to the colliery for a refill) didn't need bigger wagons.
  14. RJS1977
    Last year I viewed a house with a 14' lean-to alongside the kitchen and bathroom, with a view to being able to set up the main station of my late father's "Templebar Junction" layout there (minus the "south loops" which form part of the layout's continuous run). The automated "north loop" would have gone in a shed at the far end of the garden, with a stretch of outdoor running connecting the two. The addition of one crossover would have converted the station into a "straightened Minories" and I would have looked to have set up some sort of automatic operation for what would have become a terminus. Unfortunately that idea was not pursued as the rest of the house had too many problems!
  15. RJS1977
    Whilst there have been a number of accidents at Penistone, it is unclear that any of them would have been prevented by continuous brakes. Bullhouse Bridge, 1885. Caused by broken crank axle. 24 killed. Barnsley Junction, also 1885. Caused by broken axle on a coal train whilst passing a passenger train which was hit by the derailed wagons. 4 killed. Huddersfield Junction, 1889. Loco jumped points following axle failure. 1 killed. 1897 - Light engine collided with a stationary carriage. 1 killed.
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