jazzer

More than just a Motor/ lorry person , he was at one time Managing Director Of Marples Ridgeway, the motorway construction company and made a lot of money from building roads. . However upon becoming Minister Of Transport he transferred all his shares to his wife so there was no question of conflict of interest. In fact Mr Marples was as honest as the day is long. The fact that he eventually fled to Monaco at short notice to avoid prosecution over alleged unpaid tax , was, I am sure, some sort of misunderstanding.

Hi Andy , there are enough prototypes around for you to have an engine/carriage shed or not have one as you think fit. At the majority of branches the first train of the day would be the early morning newspaper train, the locomotive of which may or might not take the first up train back . As for loco sheds, Swanage is an example of one where the loco shed was outside the station throat and was therefore “off-scene “ from modelling perspectives. Swanage also had no carriage shed but two through coaches for the “Royal Wessex “ were stabled in the bay platform overnight . The first Up passenger train of the day on the Buntingford branch actually started from Buntingford but there was no loco shed there even though it was listed as a sub-shed of Hertford East, so either the loco started from there or travelled 17 rail miles in from Hertford. Almost certainly coaches would also be stabled in the platform overnight. And of course Rule 1 always applies i.e its your layout , run it however you like !

Hi Gilbert , Are you sure the Thompson was 22 ft longer , not 22 inches. I can’t locate any details of length of the Thompson but according to the LNER on line Encyclopaedia the overall length of the A4 was 71ft 3/8 inches, and as the Thompson only had a couple of feet longer wheelbase it’s difficult to visualise it being a difference of 22 ft overall.!

The buffer stop in the goods siding looks very convincing Andy. Where did it come from .

I guess it must be 8.30 ish , the Director having taken the best part of three hours , to cover the 78 miles from Grimsby. The spotters are out early this Saturday morning. Good to see at least one of them seems to be sensibly wearing his school Macintosh with the belt done up, socks pulled up to the knees and wearing his school cap.You couldn’t trust the British Summer in the pre-global warming days of 1958 !

Hi Andy . I am another one finding the Videos useful , especially the tip about cleaning the paint off the track with a piece of wood as I am just about to embark on that exercise myself. Whoever wrote the music and played guitars on the backing track did a pretty good job as well 😄

Where do I find your banned band video on YouTube Andy ? I did a search for Andy Peters and got Peter Andre ! I can see the the resemblance between you but I don’t think you’ve ever been married to Katie Price , and I think he is more of an LTSR fan 😆

Probably my only recollection of PN is of the original blue Deltic being given a push by an N2. I don’t know whether it was a standing regulation to push anything over a certain load or whether they just had a spare station pilot with nothing to do , whether the diesels did sometimes need a push before the track layout was changed or indeed whether the Deltic had an engine problem .

That brings back memories for me Gilbert . I only ever saw a handful of V2’s in service but my memory of 60889 is probably clearer than any other steam loco as that was the one that took me on my longest ever steam hauled trip , to Doncaster, on the 8.25 am KX - Hull. Tim’s weathering of 60829 is so close to my memory of 60889 ( also black) it could almost be the same loco. If you put 60829 at the head of the early morning KX - Hull, due at PN just before 9am it will be a great recreation of the real thing !

Well , I would agree we deliver better Justice in this country than most, perhaps all others but from experience I think lawyers and judges are like most other professions in that there are some who are absolutely on top of the job but others who, frankly are so hopeless they shouldn’t be there, some are incredibly polite and understanding while a few others seem to go out their way to be rude. I am happier in the world of toy trains,

Hence the old lawyers joke that the main civil courts in the Strand are officially known as the Royal Courts Of Justice but Lawyers call them the Law Courts. The reason is if you go there you’ll definitely get law, but you might not get justice !

A matter of time perhaps then, before we see a 9F pressed into passenger service on a summer Saturday , or a Britannia being secretly tested on a KX- Cleethorpes before they became regular ? Not that I would ever wish to see the end if the B1’s of course !

That sounds like my kind of coffee break ! The surface effect achieved in superb, excellent !

Remember this is 1958 before the “ Game Keepers Arms “ was turned in a Chinese Takeaway. No doubt Farmer Greenacre , Tom Muck-Spreader, and a few others would be burbling their own unique version of the “Lincolnshire Poacher” as the staggered contently home after 8 pints on a Saturday evening, as was the won’t of country folk in the days of yore.

To be fair, that tennis tournament must have been a high standard. Djokovic only missed two shots and went out

Yes I agree. We’ll stick on the list of apologies demanded, along with an apology from Hornby for their 2022 price list

"Let the winds blow high, let the winds blow low, Off to Glasgow in his kilt he'll go, All the lasses shout Give Us A Show ! Morty where's yer troosers ? " (with apologies to Andy Stewart )

That was never a problem with the Gresley Pacific’s that the Deltics replaced , but I guess that’s progress for you

I didn’t know you were a rivet counter

Look the track layouts and photos of the real thing and first decide decide which you like best and which comes closest to what you have in mind. You will probably have to make a number of compromises because of space etc and it may well finish up rather different to your prototype as a result but something that is at least based on the real thing I say likely to look far more convincing than starting with a blank sheet of paper and drawing the first thing that comes to mind. Something like Ashburton might be a good place to start, or you could probably take somewhere like St Ives, then straighten the platform and shorten it without losing too much of its atmosphere, bearing in mind that for most of the year the service would in real life be worked by a small prairie and two coaches. You only have two feet of width so remember less is more and don’t clutter it. I look forward to seeing it develop.

Yes, you are in part correct but you have to remember that in the 1950’s the nationalised railway came under the British Transport Commission so basically civil servants were calling the shots under the influence of politicians. It’s Chairman was Sir Brian Robertson, a military man with distinguished army service in two world wars but with very little experience of running a railway. There was also strong opposition from the road transport lobby who had a very powerful voice in Parliament. The point of the 1955 Modernisation plan was indeed to save money but those in charge had no real idea how to go about it. They basically thought that if they set strict budgets the railways would somehow comply with them. The diesels promoted the modern image to the media but far, far, more money was wasted in other ways. The biggest folly was the construction of 30 new marshalling yards at a cost of £ 85 Million (nearly 2Billion in today’s money ) at time when wagon loads were decreasing and most were closed within a few years. While these were being built little was being done to improve passenger services Taking Gilbert’s point, 26 different classes of diesel locomotives were ordered, many before a prototype was even built , when 5,or 6 properly evaluated would have been sufficient . As a result breakdowns were frequent. One WCML manager tells of an occasion they were warned that a culvert was in danger of collapse but his budget didn’t allow for it to be repaired. Eventually it did collapse causing more disruption to services than the cost of repairs. And so the befuddled thinking went on. Personally I fail to see why the other regions should not have followed the example of the Southern and taken it all a little more slowly instead of going for the quick fix. These examples all come from Christian Woolmar’s excellent book , “Fire and Steam “

I think the Whistling things give an insight to the befuddled thinking of BR management in the 1950’s . They knew as early as about 1951 that they would need a power unit of at least 2,500hp to show a significant improvement on Steam times and loading. The prototype Deltic was first up , LMR didn’t want it but were told to use it , and then they still didn’t want so it was sent to theECML where it became the jewel in the crown later backed up by the class 47’s. BR and especially the LMR lurched into an order for 200 class largely untested 40’s . They do have a sort of charismatic look about them but as a power unit one wonders how they were ever ordered in large numbers. One can at least say the Warships did some sterling work when used in multiple. Almost brand new steam locos were sent to the scrap head to be replaced by something little or no better on performance.

Hi Gilbert.Just curious about loco movements. I wasn’t aware of any A4s being at Nottingham. Did go from Grantham to pick up the Nottingham portion, or did it do the Newark shuttle or did it come on at Grantham with other locos doing the Newark and Grantham ? This is the sort of train movement I tend to associate with the Southern and GWR rather than the ECML so I am quite curious. It’s one of those things that goes beyond pure modelling which makes PN so interesting as far as I am concerned.

And there’s me thinking they were diligently observing the Winter Solstice. Beautiful dogs .

That really is the nub of the issue- it was an accident inspectors recommendation , so at least some effort had to be made to comply with it. When we look at the validity of the drivers complaint of lack of visibility, it is worth first considering a comment made by Clive Groome in his excellent book based on his diary of his driving experiences in the last three years of steam. He recounts one experience where he forgot a loop at Wimbledon had a 20mph limit and went through it at 40mph , breathing sigh of relief when he got through without coming off the rails. Bill Hoole's book also mentions one or two minor collisions caused by his error. I suppose it seems likely that in a 40 year career on the footplate working shifts at all sorts of hours most drivers made mistakes and many got away with them. Transposing those thoughts to the Milton crash I suppose it is possible that the driver simply made a mistake and as an afterthought added the claim that his view to was obscured to cover his back when perhaps the handrails had little to do with it. The truth is we will never know. Only the driver will know and it is all to easy to speculate from the outside with hindsight.. The fact is the accident inspector accepted the drivers version so we really have to do the same. However safety on railways is invariably of a fail safe or "belt and Braces" nature and from memory I seem to recall that there was also some problem with the track circuiting and the signalman was also a secondary cause but I cant remember all the details now . Mostly railway accidents involve two or three factors coming together . With regard to hand holds yes they did start to appear on other regions but often when Locos were transferred away from the Western . The thing with the railways in the fifties was that there were workshops all over the place mostly operating to different working practices and and local habits. Its more than possible that after the Milton crash there was some tough talking done at Swindon but elsewhere on regions that were still to some extent seeing themselves as separate companies, the practice of fitting cut outs never had the same impetus . The fact remains that at this distance of time none of us will ever really know some of the details. Just one final comment on the quality of the Brits though. In Stuart Cox's book on the design and testing of the Standards, he mention two letters he received , on from the Eastern and one from the Western. The Eastern mentions the high standard of performance nine sets of men got from them on the Liverpool St -Norwich route , while the letter from the Swindon basically said that some men liked them and some didn't, so much really came down to the attitude of the footplate crews, which ,I suppose, is the whole epitaph of steam.