phil_sutters

Nobody was saying that the 32 were all that lived there, only that 32 had been reprimanded, for being in your words 'off piste'.

Has the SER office entrance gone? It was an impressive bit of railway architecture and I know that Historic England (as English Heritage now is) weren't pleased that it was marked for demolition. Photographed 10.4.2006 I don't know if this shot is of any interest. It was kicking around in a London Bridge file 'unprocessed' As usual it's after your period - 2009. I came across it while looking for stuff to upload to the Historic England site.

There weren't any Anglicans in his day as a Cluniac monk. He might have been a lapsed monk though, as the Castle Acre website quotes an ancient source saying 'In 1265, for example, the 32 monks were rebuked for ‘the habit of journeying and riding about the country, eating and drinking indifferently in the houses of laymen and secular persons’. Perhaps he had been put on the sign post as a penance, but he looks in pretty good nick if he has been there since 1265.

Meanwhile round the other side of the station there have been these delights - fortunately after your timescale

Although I knew that there was a tiny glimpse of Titfield Thunderbolt rolling stock in this photo taken at Bristol Temple Meads, I didn't realise that filming had taken place there at 'Mallingford station', until I was doing search engine cheat, looking for film locations.

I have no idea what, apart from me, was being filmed here!

The Sweeney swarmed all over Peckham Rye station in one episode

The highlight of my CCF time was a naval aviation course at H.M.S. Ariel, Lee-on-the-Solent. Two memories persist, or perhaps three if you count a CPO's choice vocabulary when not getting an adequate response to a question in the class-room - 'Don't sit there with your finger up your a***hole and your brain in neutral!!!' One was at the end of the course, as we sat down for our exam, the CPO looked at the questions and remembered that he hadn't taught us about the different methods of air-sea rescue recovery - single strop, double strop & scoop, so he set to and gave a quick version of the lesson. We all passed! Our flying experience was in the station's transport, a De Havilland Dominie, the naval version of the Rapide. We set out over the Isle of Wight, banked one way over a go-cart track and then banked the other way to go round the other way and at that point my greasy naval breakfast ended in the paper bag, supplied for that purpose. We went down more often to H.M.S.St. Vincent the initial training unit at Portsmouth. Their breakfasts were even greasier - the fried eggs were cooked in big trays swimming in fat. They were served up by cutting the solid mass into squares, so you might get a yolk, or two or none!

From the guide to protecting your station from pigeons! Cover the lighting in plastic spikes and leave the ornate clock to fend for itself. It actually looks pretty clean. (Edit Given that it was taken at 14:57, both faces show the wrong times!)

What I think is a wheel drop, on the Isle of Wight Steam Railway

Heaven only knows why I took this photo - but it has come in useful now

An elaborate pill box down here on the south coast is the one on top of Bishopstone Station, overlooking the entrance to Newhaven Harbour. This photo shows the inland side of the station. There are another two gun positions on the other side. Given Newhaven's strategic position, I suppose the most likely function for this pill box could have been in countering a commando raid. Did the Germans ever make any such raids against the UK? There is a much larger fortification across the bay at Newhaven Fort.

What Bath Spa? I don't suppose that there is a bloater among those vans?

How can you sell 'used' decals? They may be secondhand, they may be slightly soiled, although they look OK, but used????

Volks Electric Railway runs at 160 volts. It is very lightly fenced off. Whether that is changing with their Lottery-funded upgrade, now under way, I don't know.

You could always get a 3D scan done by Modelu of this lot, seen on our way to the 2014 Brighton Modelworld. Don't let's get into a massive debate on the shape of their helmets! Of course there is already a railway in Brighton whose name can be traced back to the Saxons -

For a while I stopped reading this thread, as I spent far too much time wandering off into its side turnings. Now I seem to have returned and taken another trip down a lane, that I had ambled down in the past but got lost. I took this photo at the late lamented North Woolwich Transport Museum - I think it was transport, but it might have been railway. As the pride of place went to GER 229 I had assumed that this passenger brake van was also GER. Seeing the Joseph Wright coaches, which look to be of a similar construction and period, I thought I would see what I could find about it. Looking through my 1850 - 1925 Vintage Album by J.E.Kite, I have found out that it is in fact a North London Railway brake. There are two photos of the type on one page near the centre of the book. I am puzzled by a few of the features of the van. One is the raised round areas on the lower door panels. Another is the appearance of a hinged lower section in the end. I can't see any evidence of upper doors, which it would have if it acted like some sort of covered carriage truck and in any case the flap must have opened upwards. Very strange as that end would have been the in-board end in a suburban set, with the birdcage at the outer end.* The far end seems to have, possibly, a dog box, judging by the lower louvred panels, and has an odd little window high up. I have had a quick look to see if I can see where this relic now resides, so far without success, but I expect someone hereabouts knows! *edit - I have just had a thought - perhaps this was recovered from a farmyard and had been used as a rather grand chicken coop, with the flap inserted to allow for the collection of the eggs.

A valid point. I should think that the minimum of non-essential painting was done and things would have got shabbier and shabbier. So weathering skills needed! Here's a photo from 1946 - I think that the second coach could have been brown & cream (Edit - the more I look at it the more I think that the first coach could be an even dirtier brown and cream. There definitely seem to be two shades there. I initially put that down to the light falling differently on the vertical upper half and the curved lower part. Now I am not so sure.) Ex Taff Vale 409 Cardiff 21.9.1946

Michael Harris (GW Coaches : 1890 - 1954) says that apart from passenger luggage vans, which were brown from about 1935, the brown and cream remained in use, until the cream paint supplies ran out in the war. 'From 1942 a standard wartime livery, described as a red brown, was introduced' with a single bronze waist line..

I put this one in, although I think I may have used it somewhere on RMweb already* - I'll now go and look for some more - of course most of Dad's photos are black & white, but I guess that's cheating! (*edit here on 'the close to water' challenge or something similar) Perhaps I had better offer this one

I like the blue one over at the back - it could serve quite a useful rescue and repair function.