webbcompound

If you are looking for a not very expensive heavyweight passenger car for your mixed service the Rivarossi "combine" is a Rider Car (2602-2608) originally built for the ATSF Fast Mail (LA to Chicago). Just needs a bit of strip along the sill to replicate the ATSF girder (?) sill. I don't know how long these were in service. A very similar car, which was 5' shorter than the Rivarossi, but otherwise pretty much the same was combine 2548 which lasted until 1971 in coach green

Being a sensible railway the LNWR had break vans for guards on goods trains, and other vans for smalls. Much of the smalls traffic would appear to be carried in passenger break and luggage vans and compartments, of which there were quite a lot, or in (D60) 7ton tranship vans of which 348 were built from 1862 onwards, with some of the earlier ones being renewed on the same number. Some of the tranship vans had screw couplings and some were equipped with vacuum brakes, so these latter were clearly intended to run on passenger trains (as there would be little point putting them on express goods trains). Vans would appear to be assigned to specific routes. the last vans were built in 1893 and the last replacement in 1901. The tranship process was radically altered when the Crew tranship shed was built and from that point they gradually disappeared into the general wagon stock, or were converted to tool vans.

Of course "stray" traction currents can be quite useful, as I found when I was in charge of some of these things: a tram that has jumped the rails can usually be rerailed using only a crowbar and a bucket of water.

Well of course it depends which theory you support but there is quite a strong suggestion that nothing much changed day to day, but we are looking at quite long term change. Esentially in the Lloegyr (the much Romanised middle and East bit of Britain, as opposed to the more Britonic North and West) the power base was local landowners (villas) ruling with under Roman control, with largely Germanic military support. When contact with Rome was severed the Roman influence declined, so the power base shifted towards the Germanic military. A lot of what we see in graves is quite likely to be the same people just adopting the cultural trappings of the increasingly dominant group. This is certainely the case in the North of Gaul, where the Germanic group is referred to as Franks. In Britain, where little documentation survives there is evidence of Frankish, Jute, Angle and Saxon cultural groups in different parts of the Lloegyr. Over time the Saxons become dominant (hence the Welsh term for the Lloegyr people as Saesneg, and the Scotti term as Sasenachs). The term Anglo-Saxon is a modern invention. the easy division of the country into Welsh and English is also a modern fiction. The Cumbri (Cymry) living in the see of Glasgow were certainely keeping some reconrds in Cumbrian (=Britonic="Welsh") as late as the 11th Century, and there were Norse and (in the West) Irish settlements all over the place, and by the time of the Norman invasion very little of the North of "England" was actually English.

Without going full capstan or turntable, I would link the loco shed to the runaround loop. this would mean that the loco could propel wagons into the loading bays, and draw them out again without having to go into sheds or under canopies. As it stands the loco would have to regularly back into the outgoing goods shed to get the empties from the incoming shed onto the exchange siding loop

Very nice, and an excellent example of how to use branded rolling stockj and locos without modelling the home factory. I fear, however that the track layout was designed by a visiting American.

Interesting layout. Each loop contains a hydraulic wagon hoist, the full wagons enter on one track, are fed past the hoists and deposited on a different track. Must have required considerable pre-planned co-ordination (though obviously the same every time). Perhaps each hydraulic tower had its' assigned gang of shunters/pointsmen to achieve this.

And then in the end the Midland won, despite some saying its locos were too small, and others that its carriages were too luxurious

Much of this discussion concerns routing and choice of exchange points, but in the case of smaller companies there would be little choice, and it looks likely that the senior partner in the exchange would decide how it would work. The WM&CQR carried a fair amount of brickworks traffic in LNWR wagons. The wagons would arrive empty at Connah's Quay, and were loaded at the various brickworks on the Buckley branch. There were in principle two exchange posibilities. The WMCQR had a series of loops behind the LNWR Connah's Quay passenger station which were accessed from the main line going towards Holyhead. The LNWR had a handfull of sidings linked to the WCQR and accessed from the main line going towards Chester. In addition the LNWR goods facility for Connah's Quay was further back along the line towards Chester, but accessed from the line going towards Holyhead. Exchanging wagons behind the station would have been fairly simple. The WMCQR engine could draw the wagons in, then run back round a loop to pick up the brake van. Alternatively for empties inbound it could run a brake van into a loop, run back to draw out the empties and then back them onto the brake van. The LNWR would simply need to have the empties at the front of a pick up goods heading towards Holyhead. The engine would halt the train, move forwards with the empties and then reverse them into the WMCQR loop. There would be no need for engines of either company to move off their own rails. The sidings on the Chester direction line appear to have had little use for exchange purposes, and this was probably because the layout would have required more movements, and engines from the WMCQR would have had to enter LNWR rails.

Re GWR wagons 1919/1920 Might not be a misprint, but if it was an error say for 161, which is only an increase of 57 wagons (and so total also in error because of just adding the erroneous figure. This could pretty well match the overall increase in wagon stock of around 1300 wagons). Perhaps an increase of up to 60 special wagons might be accounted for by the return of specially built heavy bogie flats from the War Office. Finding a reason for building 1500 special wagons in a period of reduced trade immediately post war is otherwise a little difficult.

And in the context of the other nautical references throughout the song this makes eminent sense. Unfortunately the first verse blows it "By the old Moulmein Pagoda Looking eastward to the sea There's a Burma gal a settin' And I know that she waits for me" As we know the Burma gal would be looking westward. What this tells us is popular song is not a reliable source of navigation advice.

In fact no-one does. The main reason for this is that if you were looking from the road to Mandalay across some kind of Bay you would be looking West towards the Bay of Bengal and the line should read "The night comes down like thunder over India cross the bay, which wouldn't scan unless you used the Imperial pronuciation of InJa rather than In-Di-A and would have little poetic value. Such is life.

Seasonal local produce such as soft fruit (which as we all know had specific trains and traffic flows) and from the countryside to the towns produce such as fruit and vegetables. The most well known items (to buyers of RTR wagons) of long distance food which you would have thought would be easily produced locally were sausages and biscuits (you know the names). In fact the availability of railway transport encouraged local specialisation and branding of produce which could be distributed to a wider market, which pulled in the opposite direction to self sufficiency. The dairies in Wensleydale being a case in point. the Edwardian period was also the start of some big brands: for example Oxo, Cadburys, Typhoo, Marmite. Unless you lived next door these came from outside your region by rail.

Worse than the cheese issue is that despite the fact that it is our national drink we import 100% of our tea. Whjat is wrong with Yorkshire tea eh? Whatever happened to Tetleys?

Well then as you probably know the company's board of directors is the primary force influencing corporate governance, and in the sort of structures I described the governance structures will generally end up deliberately muddy, opaque and seriously compromised. By the way, your original comment was lightly humerous, as was mine, because we are posting on a comedy thread about a fictional railway.. This isn't a class in management procedures, which was part of what I did for a living before retiring. The whole thread is enjoyable precisely because it is just a series of tangents.

If this were really a modern British entity the council would be wholly owned by an independent company whose secretary would be an old lady in Dagenham, and its board would be made up of placeholders representing entities registered in the Cayman Islands. These in turn would be under the control of entities registered in Luxembourg, and these in turn would be under the control of entities registered in Jersey. The corporate headquarters of the West Norfolk would be in Dublin, and the name would be a trademark owned by an unknown person, but whose income would be paid into a numbered Swiss bank account. That income would consist of 100% of the profits of the West Norfolk, paid as fees for "use" of the trademark. Do keep up. I know much of this because I spent some time researching ownership of a North Pennines grouse moor.

Maybe not the major companies, but a number of companies had a colour which fell within the lake, rather than the red, spectrum, which can on occasion be described as purple, certainely being almost identical to porphyry which was used as a purple stone for statues of emperors, imperial thrones, or in the case of the humerous/insulting gift from Constantinople to the pope, described as a throne, but actually an imperial birthing chair.

Moderators commenting that they consider the page to be legendry?

As already stated it was Queen Empress that was painted white, she that went to Chicago. The idea was that three engines would be painted in the colours of the Union Flag. Greater Britain was painted scarlet. Empress of India was the blue engine of course but she was of course lost in the Atlantic so no engine with this livery ever ran on the LNWR..

After the succesfull exhibition of the Queen Empress at the Chicago World Exposition in 1893 the Empress of India was also sent to America where it was believed to have influenced the Baldwin Company who were designing an new loco for the Atlantic City Line. The loco was aboard the SS Hanoverian, an Allen Line ship which set off from Baltimore for Liverpool in the summer of 1885. Unfortunately the ship went down and the locomotive was lost.

I used bogie instead of truck, but then all bogies are trucks in North America, and cannon onboard warships are mounted on trucks, and the diagram clearly shows radial axles. Even O.S.Nock (in discussing the Precursors), although admitting that they are "in the strictest sense not bogies at all" nevertheless goes on to refer to them on his plan as bogies, whilst elsewhere referring to them as radial trucks. I would submit that therefore the diagram shows neither a bogie, nor a truck, but a pair of radial axles.

I fear you are sadly mistaken. the sainted Webb did produce an Atlantic, prosaicly known by the LNWR as the "Improved 6'0" eight wheeled compound engine" (because ten wheels was an improvement on eight), but known more usually as the "Empress of India Class" Technically, with its radial bogie and compound drivers it was a 2-2-2-2, but to all intents and purposes it was an Atlantic, and as it was designed in 1894 it beats everyone else. This diagram was produced by a junior draughsman at Crewe in 1907 and he made a right horlicks of the measurements. He subsequently became a porter on Shap station.

When I said that the Edwardians were 20th Century, rather than Victorian I am bemused as to why it seems people thought that my implication was that this was necessarily a good thing. The 20th century is not particularly better than Victorian, just differently bad, but definitely more modern. We have invented new and wonderful methods of slaughter and slavery, and great wealth is still achieved by ignoring the welfare of those who create it for the wealthy. The reason we hark back to the railways of this time is merely that they somehow seem more stylish.

With regard to all this music, people often think of the Edwardians as a kind of additional Victorians, but in all senses they were in fact the beginning of the modern 20th Century