Fat Controller

Would this coach have had loose armchair seating? I remember such stock on the Poole- Newcastle workings in 1982.

The RH&DR may not have its school specials any longer, but the old SE&CR carries heavy loads on its Ahford - Dver section.

The coal from South Wales to Scapa Flow was Welsh steam coal, not anthracite. Outside of the exigencies of WW1, anthracite did travel a fair distance, as it was popular with maltsters and brewers due to its clean-burning.

They did a 21t fitted coal to a similar spec; they also did what seemed, at first, to be a Plate, but turned out to be an OCEM low-sided open.

There might be something on the Barrowmere site:- http://www.barrowmoremrg.co.uk/Prototype.html

I don't remember that one, but I do remember the EE Type 3 in the South Wales valleys. The loco was eventually recovered , using half a dozen locos, a stationary winch , and,( it was rumoured[) a military armoured recovery vehicle\.l eys

It wasn't Cricklewood, was it? It looks as if it's the same wagons. (May 1985)

Don't waste too much sympathy on the scrappy; he'd have managed to sell the load at least twice. I spent Summer 1974 working at a BSC foundry. where part of my daily duties was checking weighbridge tickets for scrap delivered. against scrap consumed and stock on the ground. We rapidly realised that there were flat spaces where there should have bea]s. The lorry delivering the scrap would go to the slag heap, where a digger driver would put a thin layer of slag on top of the scrap load. He would drive out, receiving a chit for the amount of slag removed. At the yard, the lorry would tip the trailer, where the scrap would be separated, using an electro-magnet, then reloaded and taken back to BSC. They could have carried on for ages, but. as so often, greed and carelessness crept in; ( though not before they'd made off with a lot of scrap (and consequently charged for removing tonnes of slag which had never moved)

There were a pair of 42' wagons on 4-wheel bogies, known as Lowliner A ,and a pair of 60' long wagons on three-axle bogies, known as Lowliner B. They were built at Ashford in 1971-2. I believe they spent their working lives in Northern Scotland. 'Freightliner ; Life and Times' has more details

I thought that was the Ostend branch?

We used to send a few to the fiddle yards, or 'National Railways', as management used call them....

That wasn't Simon Parks who did a model of Newhaven, was it?

'Popular musical entertainers, m'Lord..' Regarding last night's airing; ;the better half took one look at the track-plan, and said 'he's going to get bored very quickly with that'. It should be said that her first train-set was the Channel Tunnel...

Didn't Marc Brunel have quite a lot to do with 'industrialising' the block-making process?

I believe the name was 'Pure'. You can get an idea of the smell if you stay in the wrong bit of Marrakesh,

Was it 'Luton Hoo'?

In my home town (Llanelli) until WW2, a horse and cart would collect the contents of public urinals to be used in the 'picking' of steel sheet, prior to coating with tin..

Tyneside had several Conflat ,Ls, as well as Conflat As for uses as runners/match wagons. These could be identified by the presence of diamond-shaped holes in the floor.

I wonder if it's a ply-bodied GW-designed Shoc-Van? It seems have vertical white stripes on the side.

Tonbridge West Yard and Hereford both had examples for this sort of work.

I watched it being done at a couple of locations using a pair of bottle-jacks ands some heavy wooden packing. In later years, locations where this was done frequently enough received a concrete pad for the jacks to rest on. This happened at Burry Port and Llanelli.. When roller-bearings were fitted, they seemed to arrive ready-fitted to the axles.

It would depend on the tipper, I think. Quire a lot had a parallel 'by-pass' where the loco would run on a rigid rail.

Was that the one that went up in smoke?

There were enough Scandinavian ships and crews to justify a Norwegian church and welfare near the main dock entrance. One of my ancestors was one of the 'Vikings'

I thought he'd actually bought Liomel when they ran into difficulties? Next week's programme features Francis Rossi; at least, at least that who Lynne identified him as being.