Fat Controller

A couple of odd ones were to be seen in the East Kent coalfield, working from Sheperdswell exchange sidings to Tilmanstone. They were ex-GWR fitted 'Toads' with footboards removed, presumably because of clearances in Golgotha tunnel- I'm not sure whether they were used as brakes at the end of trains, or as 'brake-force' vehicles at the train head, as the photos I've seen show them standing in the exchange sidings.

Post Office Supplies:- they used to supply everything from stationery to telephone exchanges. There was a depot near Stone (Mill Meece, or somewhere near), in Staffordshire, where I recollect there was also a training facility. In latter years, they were big users of Seddon-Atkinson artics. The 'Stoke' picture of Merfyn's is taken at the former Full Loads Terminal at Longport- I worked there for a while, back in 1980. The 'building' was roofed, but open at the ends, and with sides that only came down to wagon floor level- freezing in midwinter..

The only time I can remember seeing 40' Freightliner boxes going through the tunnel would have been in the very early days- I believe they were used on a block train to Italy for the MoD, for onward transport to the Balkans. If my memory serves me correctly, they were loaded with Scimitar or similar AFVs.

I liked the film about Hither Green- I did get the feeling that the idea of palletization hadn't quite sunk in, however, as they put stuff on to pallets in the van, moved them around the depot, and then handballed them on to a lorry. Mind you, I remember unloading some allegedly palletized bags of plaster that had been sent via the train ferry- as the load hadn't been wrapped or secured, only a minority of the sacks were still on their pallets. Where at Hither Green was the Continental Freight Depot?

One of the Redcar ones apparently derailed and overturned whilst loaded- it couldn't be righted and so was cut up in situ. I was struck by how quickly they used to move them around the site- rather more quickly than the ones that BR used to send to Consett, which had a 25 mph maximum speed, IIRC.

I presume the use of 20' flats means that they can use a standard skeletal trailer to transport the wheelsets, rather than having to have a dedicated flatbed.

It was your post that prompted me to notice this box, Merfyn. I wonder what the stores they send around the country are, if they justify a 40' box....That's a heck of a lot of toilet paper.

I'd assumed that, with the shift to maritime traffic, Freightliner had long since ceased to operate their own boxes. However, at Milton Keynes on Tuesday, there was a 40' example on the rear of an Up Freightliner. It carried their red livery, with white lettering. There were an awful lot of Intermodals around during daylight hours, both on the way to Stoke on Tuesday, and during the return today, with most being well-loaded.

One of the GLE 48DS was used at Eurotunnel's Cheriton terminal during track laying, along with one of their Walrus wagons. Quilter-Hall did the body shells for Eurotunnel's tri-Bbs- they then went to Marcroft for painting, before heading to Brush at Loughborough for final assembly. The ET tourist rakes (or at least the carrier wagons) were built in Canada (body shells), then fitted out at Bombardier's plants at Crespin and Nivelles. The tourist loader wagons, and the HGV trains, were built by Breda in Italy. All the stock arrived in Calais by barge, as they were too high for the motorway bridges.

I saw the 'Bullets' at Frethun yesterday- someone must have spent their Christmas hols polishing them. Still, they'll soon look like your models again- you've done some beautiful weathering there.

1607, which seems to have been a Llanelly (87F) loco for its entire BR life, ended up working for the NCB at Cynheidre- this was on the same BR branch as it spent its BR career. It, with two of its classmates, would have hammered past my primary-school class room several times a day, to the annoyance of Miss Jenkins. I wonder if Llanelly had the largest concentration of 16xx, as both the L&MMR and BP&GV branches relied on them from their introduction until the mid-1960s.

They could be used, subject to recommissioning (they haven't been used in the time since they were installed and tested, I believe). The problem is that since the start of Section 2 of HS1 is that the passenger services on the NLL have increased so much that pathing an incoming working from HS1 on to it could cause delays on HS1 inbound as far as Ebbsfleet.

I've seen shots of similar cranes elsewhere; they were mainly used inside the larger goods shed to lift objects that were too heavy to be manually handled. If the jib were kept horizontal, then it could be used to access the inside of a 12t van. They were quite common in locations like engineering works as well. The Coles shot is definitely at Tyneside Central Freight Depot (which was in Gateshead, not Newcastle..) The old buildings to the right were part of Cowans-Sheldon, but the side specialising in derricks and winches for ships, rather than the railway crane side.

Oddly, I've never seen any reference to it being rail-served, though the timber yard on the other side was at one time. I have a feeling it either made cheese, or simply supplied areas like the South Wales coalfield, rather than further afield. I did quite a lot of both paid work (building a gauging station for the Welsh Water Authority) and fieldwork for geology and geography around Llangadog in the early 1970s, and never saw anything to suggest there had actually been a rail connection. I've not seen any mention in anything I've read on the Central Wales line either.

There was one at Cricklewood, opposite the station; one at Wood Lane (the siding still been shown in my 1980 Baker, as is Ilford); another at Morden. All of these were terminals attached to bottling plants, and so had steam-cleaning facilities and so on. Vauxhall is the only one where I can't visualise any sort of cleaning beyond a simple flush-through with water. My recollection of the loading terminal at Carmarthen, which was between the station and the inevitable traffic-jams on the approach road to the Towy Bridge (and thus viewed often and closely..) was that all road and rail tankers were steam-cleaned after unloading or before reloading. It is possible that the cleaning of the empty tanks from Vauxhall would have been undertaken at the loading terminal.

I've only heard of Kenny O acting as an assembly point for milk trains; certainly never heard any mention of a dairy/bottling plant there.

Between the J69s and the 08, Liverpool Street had a BTH Type 1 (Class 15)- this was always immaculate, which is probably an indication of the time it spent standing around. At the same period (late 1960s, when I visited the Great Wen for the first time), Waterloo had a Class 09, which lurked in the sidings where Waterloo International was built, whilst Paddington was just getting shot of its Class 22s and gaining 31s. I can't say I have any recollection of seeing pilots at St Pancras or Kings Cross.

The Waterston- Albion 'Gulf' tank trains, which ran past my school from 1967 onward, used to load to 11 wagons with a single Brush Type 4. These tanks were black or grey with a Gulf emblem; tanks from Esso, Shell and Mobil of the same period seemed to be similarily clean and branded.

A lot of MKs were used by Regional Electricity Boards, Post Office Telephones etc for jobs such as post-boring and replacement, 'hot-wire' line crews etc. Whilst nominally 'ex-military', most had been stored from new at dêpots such as Marchington; the vehicles they replaced were normally various older Bedfords of similar origin (RS?), and their replacements were often Unimogs. The MKs often went on to a third life for operations like geotechnical survey teams, tree surgeons etc. At one time, I recollect ex-MoD vehicles had 'Q' plates- when did that change?

Could it be that gunpowder van that is in some of the other shots be what was used for the forklift garage? It looks to be in about the correct place, and the arrangement of the upright members on the side looks the same- I can't think of any other van body (apart from the SR 12t one, and the roof's wrong for that..) that has uprights, but no diagonals.

And there's me thinking Heath-Robinson was British! It looks like something the school groundsman would get out if it had been raining all week and there was an important match on Saturday...

Those milk tanks look just as I remember them on the Whitland- Kensington workings in the early 1970s. I wonder if one of the etching suppliers might be persuaded to do some of the various combinations of ladders and platforms which were a characteristic feature of these wagons?

It's a very early Matissa tamper, isn't it? A bit more primitive than the current types...

According to the plan in 'Great Western Stations, Volume 2', Torquay had a middle siding, a loop, which lasted as such until 1965. After this, it became a single-ended siding, accessed from the Down end. Neath (not S W England, I know) had a through road with a double-slip at the Up end, with access from both Up and Down Main part way along its length. The part of this siding between the platforms lasted until 1967, though the section beyond the double slip was taken out-of-use a few years earlier. What was the arrangement at Frome? I believe this kept the Brunel roof until recently; indeed it may still be there.

Owens operate a national logistics service, so you see their lorries all over the shop- we even get them through the Channel Tunnel. Their base is in Dafen, Llanelli, but they have a depot at Corporation Road, Newport, which is a stone's throw from where your layout seems to be based. If you want more gen on them, have a look at:- http://www.owens-logistics.com/default.aspx Mind you, from what I saw of the queueing lorries at CELSA last week, you could have vehicles from all over Europe. Sadly, Llanelli hasn't had a steelworks since the days when Phil Bennett, Derek Quinell and Ray Gravell played for Scarlets- all that's left of the steel industry there is Trostre tinplate works. The rest's a park and a golf course now.