The Pilotman

Can’t help with any details but I do remember that the standby generator on the ground floor at Reading Panel made a pretty impressive sound when the S&T dept. performed their routine test on it (usually at around 0100 on a Sunday).

That’s a very smart 43088 in C7658, but clearly it wasn’t in such a good condition mechanically. I’m not very familiar with York station but is the photo of the arriving class 45 in C7674 taken from the end of one of the “Scarborough” platforms?

One of the first bits of railway “gobbledygook” I came across was the term “two do, nine nein”. I don’t know if it makes sense to anyone else but it was a way of remembering the headcode for a tamper or other on-track machine. So, a 45mph machine that was guaranteed to operate track circuits would get the headcode 7Z02 and one that wasn’t, 7Z09.

Actually, German is deemed to be one of the easier languages for an English speaker to learn. There are lots of European languages which are harder (Finnish and Hungarian, for example) but the hardest overall (Arabic, Chinese; both Mandarin and Cantonese, Japanese and Korean) would take you 3-4 times as long to master as most European languages. Sorry for the thread drift. Time to check the Metal Mickey.

Bagged China clay. I have seen pictures of these wagons in Cornwall in trains hauled by classes 37, 47 and 50 (they came after 45s disappeared from Cornish workings) at least but can’t remember where I saw them.

Other milk-producing mammals are available

Thanks for that. I thought for a moment that it might have been something like a latent attempt to get the West Country to London milk traffic back onto the rails.

Milk? Any idea where that would have been going from/to?

Thank you all for the excellent selection of informative posts! So, from what I have read here, it seems to be possible for two 20' tanktainers to be loaded up to around 30 tonnes gross each, and conveyed at the maximum permitted speed on a 60' flat wagon with the middle position left empty. That would imply that the tanks are not full. In that case, what stops the liquid inside from “sloshing around” and destabilising the wagon? Are they fitted with baffles of some sort? And can anyone say when, approximately, tanktainers began to be used in the UK? Thanks again.

Could any of m'learned forum members answer these questions, please? 1) are any 20' tanktainers currently used to carry foodstuffs by train in Britain? 2) have they ever been used thus? 3) could you have 3 fully loaded 20' tanktainers on one “Freightliner” flat wagon (eg. PFA/KFA/FGA etc.) and still run at 75mph (ie. is there any speed restriction above a certain weight)? Thanks.

They may have traversed the section from Exeter to Yeovil on a diverted Speedlink (if, for example, the line was flooded north of Exeter); the Burngullow to Irvine “Silver Bullets” train was certainly recorded taking this route. Otherwise, I really can't see any reason why they would have strayed from their usual route between Cornwall and Scotland. China Clay traffic was not unknown on the Southern in that era (Sittingbourne and Quidhampton, for example) but that was in slurry form and so travelled in tankers.But that doesn’t stop you from buying some

Given the huge amount of guff purporting to be fact that exists online, that is probably very wise.

Indeed it is! Perhaps even more surprising is that Edinburgh (on the east coast) is further west than Bristol (which most people would consider to be in “the south-west”), and is at about the same longitude as Cardiff.

The body is available on Shapeways (for about £14, I think) that is designed to fit on a Peco 15ft chassis. Not perfect, but maybe good enough?

There are at least seven in that second photo (half the entire fleet!); I don’t think I’ve seen any pictures with more than that. And given their dedicated flow and unless anyone can prove otherwise, I’d be very surprised if they ever turned up on the SR.

That looks to me like it could be a wagon (or perhaps even an 08 shunter) in the yard behind the Ben Ellerman container.

Plymouth to Derby, non-stop? Must have required a robust bladder on the part of the driver. Which depot would have that sort of route knowledge?

I’m not sure what you think is wrong, Jonny, but Mike is spot on with his location identification. It is definitely taken from Westbury Lane overbridge at Purley-on-Thames, between Tilehurst and Pangbourne. I lived for several years near there and spent many hours on that bridge when class 50s were still running.

He's just out of shot on the left, eating a pastie.

Indeed. I think there should be an element of “cutting your coat according to your cloth” in all this. When I came back to the hobby after a considerable gap I had enough space for a layout in N or OO. I looked at what was available for the area/era I wanted to model and it so happened that more of what I wanted was available in N. So that's the route I took.

What were you worried about Jonny; the structural integrity of the building, or the moral integrity of the locals?

Grabbers! I haven’t come across that term in a long while. I’ve worked with a few; people who regard having to go home as an inconvenience.

Some top-notch atmospheric shots there, Trevor, and impeccable timing with the side-on views.

SLU = Standard length unit; 21 feet

For a minute I thought that 66 in post #4885 was named Phil Parker...