phil_sutters

From Dad's albums - not the best shot, but the best there is!

Class R was a 4-4-0T. LNER classes Jxx were 0-6-0s. Those bogie wheels remind me of the pony truck wheels on the clockwork 00 Bing 2-4-0Ts I inherited from Dad and subsequently abused and chucked out. As we are on a Scottish theme - Happy Hogmany to all. The railway magazines often used to start the new year with Scots railway articles. E.g. January 1928 Railway Magazine - Notable Railway Stations..... Buchanan Street, Glasgow.

Could be loco coal! Frome shed doesn't look as if it would need more than a wagon load. https://www.facebook.com/fromemuseum/photos/pcb.2905380859710377/2905380463043750/?type=3&theater - may be that's the one wagon.

Would I be right in thinking that the MR shed at Bath also got its supplies from the same collieries? That would make sense practically and economically. I don't recall seeing any S&DJR wagons, including those being loaded with coal at Highbridge Wharf, marked Loco Coal, despite this being a major use of the imports from across the Channel - the Bristol variety that is. .

Well there's one loco coal wagon that made it to Barrow Road and will have a job making it back to the colliery!. Don't forget to leave your fire irons on top of the nearest handy shed.

1/43rd scale is not common for plastic kits. The nearest is 1/35th generally speaking. 1/43rd is more of a diecast scale. As far as the marque of half-track you could reasonably use, bear in mind that the majority of US supplied equipment used in western Europe, until well after the D-Day landings allowed French ports to be safe, would have been shipped through British ports. So whoever the end user was, their US vehicles may well have come in via west coast ports like Liverpool.

A couple of thoughts - if you stay with the level crossing, it might be more appropriate for the signal box to be nearer it, so that it can control the gates. If you are talking about Holcombe growing into a large market town you might want a larger cattle dock. Highbridge S&D's was 80ft long and the GWR had one as well. Is your coal traffic just for local consumption? I imagine that your area's main colliery and quarry output joins the branch further down, off-scene. So small merchant's office and some bins could be along the back of the goods yard alongside the store.

They are a bit grainy. I also have a project that has been stalled for a while! Since at least 2017! There is now a kit of the SP gun unit. The cabs are the worst section of these to get right.

I once made a Foden artillery tractor from the KeilKraft Foden tipper.

Highbridge's concrete bridge from the S&D to the B&E/GWR platforms had lights on similar hoops. At the S&D's closure they were probably electric, earlier they would have been gas. You can see two of them in this photo. There would have been a third as the tracks crossed the GWR lines. The lights at the foot of the S&D stairs were single post, rather than arched.

If anyone thinks that the garden walls look a bit chunky, take a look at this Google street view in Highbury. I used to live in Coleford and remember how thick our garden walls were. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.2428227,-2.4486132,3a,75y,52.53h,85.89t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sn3fsAO9V93XXSCpdryg3sw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu

There were situations where one needed to change platforms - for example where your branch line arrived at the junction and your onward train was across on the other side of the mainline. Not only were numerous stations not accessible to wheelchair users, but many carriages were not accessible either, even if a ramp was available to get to the doorway. If one could get aboard a non-corridor carriage you would take up about half the compartment, facing across the train, with the seats on either side of you inaccessible. Think of corridor carriages with fairly narrow doors into the compartments. The corridors themselves were often not very wide, so manoeuvring from the vestibule, into the corridor could be difficult and into a compartment virtually impossible. Toilets were totally inaccessible. In some cases people in wheelchairs had to be 'entrained' into the guards van through the double luggage doors and then sit in the luggage compartment for the journey. Their companions might find that there was nowhere in there to sit, unless there was a spare seat in the guard's section. The design of wheelchairs was also a factor. They could be far more rigid and cumbersome than modern designs.

My immediate thought was Spencer Colliery, but when I searched on that most references came up with Frederick Spencer and his connections to the Somerset coalfield and quarries. So a bit too far away.

Not such a busy line - only a couple of hundred yards to the buffers, where the line then ended, just before the promenade.

This rather grainy photo shows a barrow crossing a barrow crossing at Hereford, a moderately large station by the look of the track layout. If, on an exhibition layout, you have a dodgy connection and some paths through your station don't work, just park a trolley across the track. It looks as this one has got stuck.

With the choice of settings on some washing machines you need several degrees to work out which one would be best for your mixed load of clobber, towels and bedding.

A couple of shots taken passing Day's Aggregates earlier in the year.

Grateful you didn't use the snap of Boris strapped up and waving Union flags. Please don't. Sorry I mentioned it.

It is impossible to encompass a work that fills a whole gallery space and a bit of wall just outside in one photo. If you want to see more of my photos of the work, they, with snaps of other related works, are at http://www.ipernity.com/doc/philsutters/album/1356668 . ipernity is the photo-sharing site that I use. It comes up with a 'Not secure' notice, but that is because it cannot be used for monetary transactions.

But would you have remembered it if it was not on a railway locomotive? On a bus perhaps - or perhaps not. This bus appears to be very boringly advertising the London and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, one of the prestige creative institutions in England, while plastered very ineptly over a Routemaster celebrating an anniversary of the Great Northern Railway. One for the prototype for everything - put that on a model railway exhibition layout (scaled down --- of course) and look forward to the caustic comments, but they would be wrong - it was real. Del Boy would have done a better job.

I think I am right in saying the row of toys borrowed from Reading Central Library, were there to highlight the struggle that artists have, to balance their domestic chores and duties with the time they need to give to their artistic.work.

It's not the loco that's taking the mickey!

Which of these is the real work of art? Which just won the 2023 Turner Prize? Who wants to put the speech bubbles into photo no.1?