whart57

In the Netherlands bikes from at least the 1930s on had something called terug-trap which translates as back-pedal for braking. You can free wheel but if you pedal backwards you apply a small drum brake inside the backwheel axle. There are still bikes around with that today and it was certainly still standard on the ordinary go-to-the-shops sort of push bike in the 1990s. Never seen them in England though, which made the bikes my mum and dad brought over with them in 1955 somewhat unique.

I found an old pic of a street near where I grew up that was taken in 1960. Only when I looked at it closely did I notice the bicycles and how their owners had left them while they went into the shop. I'd completely forgotten that was how we did that sixty years ago. Wheels in the gutter, one pedal pushed down against the kerb which couldn't move without turning the back wheel. I've never seen that on a model, nor have I seen a bike parked like that for a very long time.

Good article on the frustrations of the Championship clubs in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/nov/24/there-isnt-a-plan-frustration-and-defiance-in-rugbys-championship

The SECR proposed petrol railcars for the Sheppey Light Railway and had a couple on trial. One was too small, only seating four passengers, but the other was big enough for the level of traffic expected. Starting on cold mornings was found to be one problem, but fortunately there were steam engines at Sheerness to provide a push. What prevented the SECR following this up though was their inability to recruit a mechanic to service the vehicle. Motor mechanics were rare beasts in early Edwardian times and they couldn't find one prepared to move to Sheerness.

The Dorking show was an interesting experience, and back at base we had time to reflect. One surprising area of interest for visitors was our timber work. The Club chairman had offered us a curtain to modestly cover the baseboard legs but we turned it down, thinking that the "layout under construction" tag was better met by having everything open. It turned out to be a good decision. Many people asked about our designs. The baseboards were discussed in an earlier blog, but as a reminder I'll post a picture from back then. The main bearers are from two 100mm wide parallel strips of 6mm ply kept in alignment by regular wood blocks. Cross members are glued and screwed and triangular bracing beams keep the corners at right angles/ This structure means we can have a curved baseboard edge which is not only more aesthetically pleasing but breaks away from the parallel to the edge trackwork that screams "model!" When this photo was taken the boards were mounted on a frame built for another layout. Since then our carpenter, Lee, has made a set of legs specifically for this layout. As with the baseboards, strength comes from shape rather than heft. The legs are tee-shaped, formed by taking two relatively thin timbers and glueing and screwing them to form a tee-girder. Two legs are them mounted together with cross braces, again from relatively thin timber. Screw-in feet allow for height adjustment. Hopefully the diagram will make this clear, the right hand diagram is the fixed leg structure. The fixed legs support either the end of a baseboard or a suitable cross-member. Removable bracing, secured by 6mm bolts with wing nuts for rapid assembly/disassembly, connect the fixed legs together. Since the dimensions between legs will vary, each set is built individually. Clearly marking up which goes where is something we have painfully learned is essential. The result is a layout infrastructure that is light but strong and rigid. As the club meet in a church hall and layouts need to be erected and taken down each working session, minimising weight is very important. Some of our boards have to be lifted onto a six foot high shelf, and the legs similarly hand on a high hook in the store. However this has proved a successful design

All piston engines use a smaller driver diameter as a way of coping with gradients or hauling heavier loads at the cost of speed. Only with IC driven cars and trucks that is hidden away inside the gearbox.

But this is a model railway discussion board. When we build layouts there is only a limited amount we can do to fix the location, fixing that is usually done through landscape or building design. Many of the suggestions made here would simply be a model of a real railway with different nameboards. More creative would be imaginary railways that are totally imaginary, like the London and Surrey Railway I have proposed either here or on other forums. Or they would be based on a real company but pushed out far from its home base, like the Horsham SECR example I have posted. Where I proposed the SECR station would be would be in a part of town where the architecture is unmistakeably Sussex. Or perhaps the imaginary part of the layout design allows a depiction of an unusual railway feature that is of interest. I have provided an example of this with my suggestions of there being a thriving town instead of a hamlet and abandoned church at Reculver on the North Kent coast and that this is served by neighbouring terminals of the SER and LCDR, which go on to be a terminus with both third rail electrics and DEMUs on a non-electrified route. We have had the another GWR branch line terminus "imaginary" layout in the hobby since the 1950s, in fact ever since Cyril Freezer proposed Ashburton as a layout design in one of the earliest Railway Modellers. I like to see imaginations rip and fly further than that.

A question. Is suggesting an extension to a branchline that would be indistinguishable from a railway company's other branch lines really an "imaginary railway"?

The scope for imaginary railways can be increased if you are prepared to imagine alternative histories. For example, what if the Act of Union in 1707 had never been passed, or that it was repealed, as it nearly was, a few years later. The result might have been a Scotland united with England under the same monarch but with its own Parliament in Edinburgh. Not dissimilar to what we have today. Then railways north of the border would not have been part of the LMS or LNER but an entirely independent Scottish network. As a smaller country Scotland might also have followed the Belgian or Dutch examples of a state railway (still privately owned in the latter case but operating the state owned lines). Say it followed the Dutch example, then private companies would build the lines from Glasgow and Edinburgh south to England and probably some of the more profitable connections in the Central belt, but the Scottish government would end up having to build the lines north or across the Borders and then set up a company - Scottish Railways - to operate them. What would that company look like, what sort of loco policy would it have? Going further would it be an early adopter of electric traction using hydro-electric power from the Highlands? Would it fall into the trap of thinking narrow gauge was the answer and build a network of metre gauge lines in the Highlands. A dual gauge station in Stirling or Perth might be an interesting project. Metre gauge wouldn't necessarily mean small tank engines though. This picture shows a metre gauge loco actually built in Scotland by the North British company but used in Thailand

There was a photograph in a book once that showed how the sharper curves of narrow gauge made gradients less fierce and reduced the need for earthworks. The reason is that sharper curves meant a line could hug the contours better and thus stay at the same level for longer rather than either going up and down or requiring great chunks of hillside to be dug away.

Up till now I've concentrated on electrical pickup. The bogies are rigid frames so this means that the slightest unevenness in the track causes one end or other of the bogie to lift off the track. Good pick-up across all wheels is essential but amazingly hard to achieve with these bogies. Maybe the 00 versions are better but mine are for 9mm gauge track. The wheels, worm and gear are also on very tight, as I found trying to correct an under gauge back to back, so disabling a worm might not be that simple. I'll give it some thought.

I have a number of Bullant six wheel motor bogies that are not performing very well. They are so-so on DC but once connected to DCC they are frustratingly bad. They seem to have to have a very high voltage on them to run anything like smoothly, the knob on the DC controller is two-thirds of the way round just for walking pace. Over on DCC that really is bad, I've had to turn off the acceleration option and set a high value for start voltage and the bogies still stop and start. I wonder if part of that is inherent, three worms introduce a lot of friction. Getting the pickups sorted is not easy, and of course that is more friction. The motors run very hot too.

Not narrow gauge, but a quartet of lines that were, and still is in one case, closely associated with beach holidays. The Dutch North Sea coast is typified by miles of sand dunes running from Calantsoog in the North all the way down to the Belgian border. Sand dunes lead to sandy beaches and ever since beach holidays started to become popular that coast attracted visitors. Thousands of them. Away from the beach though the sand dunes are infertile and unstable, farming is impossible and aside from the occasional sand quarry there is no industry. So for a couple of months of the year, passenger traffic is high, but for the rest traffic is minimal. That led to the Dutch building some lines out to the coast but only operating the outermost parts during the summer holiday season. Three of the lines were standard gauge light railways - lokaalspoor in Dutch parlance - running out from Alkmaar. From south to north they were the lines to Egmond, Bergen and Schoorl though in the latter case the line turns back in land and continues further. The villages all lie on the landward side of the dunes and for most of the year the stations of Egmond and Bergen are the end of the line. The Holland Railway company however provided an extension through the dunes to the beach at both seaside resorts, and these extensions carried heavy traffic in summer months. Summer trains were long, five or six carriages, so platforms were long and the stations had to be provided with places for travellers to queue for the next train. This postcard showing Bergen aan Zee station gives the idea The NS 7700 class 0-6-0T was closely associated with these lines in North Holland, and one of them, No 7742, is still preserved on the Hoorn-Medemblik heritage railway. In the early years however the typical locomotive would have been a Holland Railway "Animal" class 0-4-0T like this one photographed at Egmond aan Zee in the years before WW1 The situation at Schoorl was slightly different. The line from Alkmaar reached the village but then it turned inland to head towards Warmenhuizen and, originally, Schagen. There was no line to the beach. And no road either. Even today the beach at Schoorl aan Zee can only be reached after a 4km cycle through the dunes. Summer trains to Schoorl were typified by the long string of goods wagons attached which were filled with visitors' bicycles These days all three lines are no more. The Bergen line lasted longest for passenger traffic, but closed in 1955. The line to Schoorl lasted until about 1970 but as a goods only branch serving the vegetable growing area around Warmenhuizen. The fourth example is different. It was a mainline, and was the extension from Hoek van Holland harbour, where the ferries to England depart from, to Hoek van Holland Strand. The line was electrified in the 1930s. However these days the North Sea ferry traffic is cars and lorries so there is no longer demand for mainline trains to Hoek van Holland. Thus a few years ago the line was handed over to Rotterdam and it is now part of the Rotterdam metro system. However this picture shows what it was like in later NS days.

Re: the Sheppey Light Railway, I've dug out my copy of Bradley and the only solid reference of an O or O1 on the Sheppey Light was No.99, an un-rebuilt O based at Faversham. Just after Grouping the suburban services in south London were intensified and that meant 0-4-4T locos of classes Q and R1 had to be pulled back from local duties in Kent. Q class number 73 went back to suburbia and O class 99 took over on Sheppey. The other thing Bradley does say is that O1s were increasingly rostered for slow passenger work. Relevant here is that one of their regular trips was Strood to Sheerness. Numbers 3 and 380 were allocated to Strood in the 1920s, and later on 1003, 1007, 1238, 1396 and 1434 were at Gillingham (SR numbers were 1000 plus the SECR number). If an O1 were to drift over to Leysdown because of a loco failure or similar it would likely be one of them.

And it's a ten from me (slipping into Strictly-speak). My first successful loco build was making an O out of a Jidenco O1 kit. This loco is the cornerstone of SECR and Southern Eastern section layouts. Much more so than the C or D class. The O1 turned up everywhere, even on the light railways of Kent. The East Kent had one, plus a couple that were rebuilt Os without being the full O1, and a trio were kept at Dover shed for Tilmanstone coal traffic until the end of steam. The K&ESR never had O1s but when BR took over O1s operated the Headcorn to Tenderden section while Terriers took on the Tenderden to Robertsbridge bit. It could be argued that the O1 was a SER loco rebuilt by the LCDR to become an SECR loco, in that the changes made on rebuild came from Longhedge rather than Ashford practice. Just as the C class was mostly an enlarged LCDR B class.

Well to many people it would seem bizarre to have a grading system where performance on the field counted for little. Or even nothing. As it happens London's response is positive. Knowing that there is no point trying to finish eleventh they are going to avoid the temptation of hitting the transfer market. The coach told the Guardian that the players who got them out of the Championship will all have a chance to play Super League. These days that is rare in those professional sports that have promotion and relegation, more typically half the team that won promotion stays in the division they came out from but with other clubs. London is also happy to adopt IMG's franchising model, but I can't help but think what a poor fit that is for rugby league, a sport much more closely bound to their communities than nearly any other. When Sky tried a bit of franchising 25 years ago clubs turned round and said they'd rather be relegated than lose their local identities in a merger. You could say Catalans, Toulouse and London are franchises but in each case they built on something local, the French RL amateur sides with the first two and the in the third case, the various re-incarnations of Fulham RL, kept alive by a small number of very dedicated enthusiasts through some pretty dark years. Actual franchises like Paris SG and Toronto didn't last long.

Well I must post a plug for my local club, Horsham, who went up the M1 last night to play League One Barnsley in the FA Cup and came back with a 3-3 draw. And nothing flukey about it, no goals off the striker's arse though the goalkeeper did play a blinder. The Radio Sheffield summariser remarked that Horsham's game plan of forcing Barnsley to shoot from distance - 26 shots, only thirteen on target and three goals - had been well-executed. Two goals scored from fast breaks and another from a stone-cold penalty when the Hornets striker was upended near the penalty spot is not your usual non-league at league club fare. In a pre-match interview one of the BBC commentators said to Barnsley's manager that sixth and seventh tier teams contain a lot of players who failed to make the grade as pros and who go into matches like this with a few points to prove and asked whether his young side were prepared for that. They clearly weren't.

A story from over in the 13 man code suggests bizarre decisions on who gets to play where aren't unique to rugby union. London Broncos have against all the odds won promotion to Super League via the play-offs. They achieved this with a team that came through their academy and contained no Northerners. However they are certainties to be relegated back at the end of next year as IMG is deciding the 12 who make it into Super League are the top twelve in their grading system. London could win the Grand Final and become champions and they would still not acquire enough grading points to make the top 12 - they sit at number 24 in the provisional gradings. Nor do they get any credit for having an Academy capable of producing professional players a hundred miles or more from the RL heartlands. Isn't that "expansion"? Having a big social media presence does count apparently.

And there is the problem. Those rules were crafted to ensure directors didn't pocket the profits and not pass on profits made to shareholders. Those rules were not made to make the sole purpose of a company the making of money for shareholders. All companies have to set out what they are for. Over the last forty years though the interpretation of those rules has been hijacked by the asset-owning lobby - who now own the Tory Party - to mean what you think. That's wrong though.

If you want to be a bit more creative for your electric loco then it's easy to imagine a pantograph on this beast: Also in passenger service These diesel electrics were built for the Rotterdam Tramway Company, which wasn't the street trams of the city of Rotterdam but a light railway serving the polders and islands of the Maas delta to the south of Rotterdam. After service there they went to Dutch Flanders, which also had 3'6" gauge tramways surviving until the 1960s.

This book might be of interest https://tramwaytrails.blogspot.com/2013/05/freight-on-street-tramways-in-british.html

Surely though, if the freight traffic was substantial the line wouldn't be a light railway? Unless it was Swiss.

I'm not sure, but I don't think there were many examples of electrified tramways/light railways retaining steam locos, or even acquiring diesels, in order to provide a freight service. If there was a significant amount of freight traffic then the line was not electrified. In the Netherlands for example the NZH, which before c1930 had run steam tramways in the Amsterdam and the Hague areas, electrified some and closed the rest. North of Amsterdam for example the NZH electrified from Amsterdam to Edam and Volendam and the line to Alkmaar as far as Purmerend. North of Purmerend the line was closed and buses took over. However there was still some freight traffic, milk, cheese (guess where from) and fish, mainly eels, from Volendam. The NZH had kept some wagons from the steam era but either attached them to passenger trams or hauled goods trams with motor cars taken out of passenger service and assigned to the engineering department. Another Dutch tramway, the Eastern steam tram from Utrecht to Arnhem, went through a two stage process, with petrol-electric locomotives replacing steam before a full electrification a decade or so later. Unfortunately this line ran through the Dutch defensive works and suffered badly in the Nazi invasion in 1940 where some of the heaviest fighting of the five day war took place. The coup de grace was four years later when the bit that ran through Oosterbeek and the paratroop landing sites of the Battle of Arnhem got terminally mangled too. In England the Black Country tramways had a couple of special parcels tramcars, essentially a goods van on a tram truck with a trolley pole and driver's positions. In a more exotic location, the Paknam Railway - Thailand's first - electrified in the 1920s. It too carried the small amounts of freight in goods wagons attached to electric motorcars. When Thailand's railways were nationalised the Paknam line didn't last long. It was separate from the rest of the system, used non-standard equipment and needed investment. The government thought road transport would be better. Cue Bangkok's notorious traffic jams and exhaust fumes .... As an aside my Maenamburi layout is an imagining of a different history for the Paknam line, one that imagines it being extended beyond Paknam to Chonburi, Pattaya and Rayong while linking up with the rest of the network at ChaChoengsao Junction. At least that is what the stock I'm building is supposed to serve.

Not strictly true. Companies have to declare a purpose other than just get rich in order to get registered. Granted the system for setting up companies in this country is very lax but if it worked as it's supposed to then businesses have made a contract with the state to deliver certain products and services. Just rewarding shareholders is not really enough. The issue is that government has shown little interest in enforcing that bit of company law.

I was told thirty years ago by my manager, who to be fair was merely passing a message from the Chief Exec down to the minions, that our job was not service to the customer but it was to increase shareholder value. If you want to know the reason why everything is so these days that's it in a sentence.