Nick Holliday

Just a note that, I'm afraid, the E4 as produced by Bachmann represents the class after they were fitted with later boilers, which featured the extended smokebox. The Stroudley goods green and names. would have disappeared well before they got the new boilers. However, having seen your skills, I won't be surprised to see yours suitably and expertly backdated!

In the absence of a monograph covering the GWR horseboxes, I wonder if the HMRS book on Siphons can shed some light on this. According to it, the early 4 wheeled siphons originally had hand brakes, and the automatic vacuum brake was added in the 1880's. Presumably the later 6 wheeled siphons, from 1889 onwards, were fitted with the AVB from new, although this is not actually stated, although I can't tell whether the early O2 siphons, dating from 1879, were. In 1896 new siphons were fitted with through pipes for the Westinghouse system, and from 1897 they all appear to have been built with both AVB and Westinghouse gear. From 1903 they began to be fitted with through pipes for train heating, and between 1909 and 1917 most were fitted with either side hand brakes.

More critically, Webb surely had the patent for the chain brake, so he was receiving a commission for every one fitted. Perhaps he gave his part of the royalties to charity.

Probably the most comprehensive and lucid account on coaching stock brakes is in Mike Williams' superb volume on Caledonian Coaches. At eleven pages long it is impossible to précis it here. It is a very balanced account. Although the CR eventually settled on the superior Westinghouse brake it went through extensive trials to get to that decision. They also had to accommodate their operating ally, the LNWR, who parsimoniously followed the cheapest options, sticking with the less than perfect Clark and Webb chain brake for too long, and then eventually adopting the cheaper vacuum brake. The unfortunate Caledonian had to pander to their neighbour, fitting both types to some of their stock, so that through trains could be run.

Generally goods traffic from foreign lines to the Brighton was exchanged at Lillie Bridge, for GWR & LNWR, Battersea for Midland and GNR, via Snow Hill, New Cross for GER using the East London Railway. Vehicles were also transferred at Redhill from the GWR at Reading, and SECR workings.However, when there were races on somewhere on the Brighton system, the number of boxes expected usually warranted special trains, and one was timetabled to pick up an entire GWR horse box train at Kensington, and a Brigthon vacuum fitted loco was allocated for this working. I also recall reading, but I can't recall where, instances when GWR locos continued as far south as Redhill with their trains.

Just a technical query, as I am not in the market for such modern items, unless the LBSCR was well ahead of its time. Why do you think the bogie would be unsuitable for EM and P4 modellers? As far as I know, if using Gibson or similar wheels, the axle length is the same for all three gauges, so all that might be needed to be adjusted would be any brakes to get them to line up with the wheels. Or have you designed the kit to take a particular make of wheel with non-standard length axles?

Apart from the fact that the link doesn't work for me (I think the last L has been cut off) http://www.davidgeen.co.uk/index.html there is nothing in his 2009 catalogue that rings a bell with me as being in the Model Wagon Company range, which primarily featured Scottish and Welsh companies, although perhaps the NER wagons came from them, if they had produced any, since I didn't buy any of them because D&S had produced enough to satisfy me; and possibly some of the LNWR items, since, without checking, I cannot tell whether the David Geen ones represent the longer wheelbase types that MWC produced. Perhaps you were thinking of the Microrail range of etched kits which do feature in David's list, although I don't believe obtainable at the moment. It does nettle that his website still uses his 2009 pricelist, and when you see him at shows you have to be prepared to take out a second mortgage to cover his revised prices. An updated list and prices would be welcome.

That data sheet is one of my favourite reads. Regularly taken off the shelf and perused for inspiration. Sadly, I have never got round to actually doing any of the conversions for real, but it will happen, although why I need a B&M van (other lines are available) on an LBSCR layout only I understand!

Assuming we are talking about the well illustrated Hooper book, from Irwell Press, rather than Tatlow's, I found that out of 60 photos in NBR grey, roughly a third had the body ironwork picked out in black to some extent, yet I counted over 40 with white wheel tyres. Yes, they were almost all prepared for photography, but I don't see that the black ironwork was part of the process.Also the range of dates of blackened irons was quite wide, from before the turn of the century up to grouping.

All this talk of church layouts and alignments brings to mind a fascinating theory espoused in an intriguing book “Patterns of the Past” by Guy Underwood, which is well worth reading to provide an alternative perspective on the British landscape and early buildings. His theory involved the identification of a number of different underground “Earth Forces” or “Geodetic Lines”, which he was able to detect using simple dowsing techniques. He named three types: Water Lines, Track Lines and Aquastats, and he developed theories as to how humans and animals reacted instinctively to these forces. For example, he believed that animals would follow track lines, although they were not necessarily straight, and if you’ve ever walked across an open area of grass and wondered why the foot-worn path didn’t run directly from A-B, like a ley-line, but wandered slightly from side to side, with parallel paths of different widths which would combine and split seemingly randomly, then he would argue that these were directly following the complex subterranean track lines. Other features he identified, such as spirals, were associated with wells and springs, and in his researches he found that they often coincided with the locations of fonts in medieval churches, as well as with outbreaks of mistletoe. He mapped a number of sites, and at each he found the dowsing predicted the layout of the structure, with odd doors appearing where track lines entered the footprint, accounting for the individual nature of all of these early buildings. It even provided an explanation as to why some churches appeared too small for their original congregations, whilst others were cavernous spaces for only a handful of parishioners, as the outline of the building would have been defined by key geodetic lines and phenomena. He also surveyed a number of antiquarian sites such as Stonehenge, other stone circles and Cerne Abbas Giant, and his results appeared to correlate with current knowledge in a remarkable way, and potentially offering further insights into the original form. Underwood seems to have been sceptical of the more outlandish claims made for dowsing by people who we would now call "New Age". For him, dowsing was a skill that anyone could learn, and not the preserve of an elite claiming some mysterious special gift.

Ogee is an architectural term for a shape which comprises two arcs that curve in opposite directions, a sort of elongated s shape. Often used to describe arches and mouldings, it was also a popular shape for cast iron guttering.

The line all the way from Havant to Fratton was all Brighton. The Guildford Direct was a late interloper, hence the famous battle of Havant when the LSWR tied to run their first train through to Portsmouth. Hayling Island line pure (ish) LBSC, albeit originally promoted as an independent line.

The same seller has an old MSE kit for the Taff Vale CCT for nearly £40, although it is still available from London Road Models for a mere £28! And LRM's postage is less than half he is asking!

This is covered in some detail in Gordon Weddell's first volume.No 17 was built in 1884, one of six first class saloons. It is actually a bogie coach, 47ft 6in long, not a six wheeler as captioned, and had a normal roof. In 1887 it was reconstructed as a Royal Saloon, to replace an earlier 6 wheeled one, receiving the clerestory roof in the process. In 1913 it was altered again to become a less regal picnic saloon, and withdrawn from service in 1931. It was then bought by a young man for £70 and transported, initially by rail to Chichester from Selhurst, and then by road to West Chiltington, where it was placed on sleepers, where it remained until 1989, when it was due to be demolished. Although offered to the Bluebell Railway, they rejected it, but it was rescued, as the Flickr photo shows, but Gordon doesn't, unfortunately continue the story. I am sure I have seen an update, probably in one of the steam magazines, but I cannot recall where.

As the writer of the piece concerned, I apologise for not giving your range a credit. In my defence, you keep quite a low profile on the Internet, and I couldn't find any coaches amongst the cornucopia of riches of wagon kits on your website, once I got the hang of navigating round it. Thank goodness I model in 4mm or I would have to spend a small fortune to acquire some of the more exotic delights!Nick

Morden station at the end of the Northern Line has a number of platforms, although only single lines between them. Each platform face has a different number, and where they can, both sets of doors are opened.

Judging by the LBSC, which, despite its keen use of electric lighting on some fixed sets, still had a large fleet of gas lit coaches, it would be unlikely that each branch would have a gas generating plant. The Brighton had just 3 Pintsch plants, Brighton, Battersea and New Cross, and had a small fleet of just 15 tank wagons to distribute the compressed gas across the whole system. Other lines were similar, with the GWR having a large gas generating plant at Swindon. There would be incoming fuel to run the equipment, but the requirements were fairly small, as it only involved heating the naphtha to release the gases. Although shale oil was a source of naphtha, I don't think it was a primary one, although it's a nice ploy to justify a Scottish wagon in East Anglia. Naphtha was also a by-product of the coal-gas industry, and the vast quantities that would be available from the large coke and gas plants scattered around the Midlands and London would have been able to meet the local requirements. Since the Scottish shale industry virtually died out by 1914, there would have been a lot of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth if there had not been any alternative supply to keep gas-light coaches running for another forty years or so. The travelling gas tanks came in many guises, and I would suspect that the twin-barrel version, as modelled by SEFinecast (M&GN-ish) and David Geen (GWR), was more common than the multi-barrel type like the familiar GWR Cordon (other lines are available) or the single or triple type. In my opinion the single barrelled type, as per the suggested GER wagon, looks horribly modern and barbaric for such a genteel location and time. I can't speak for other lines, but the Brighton specifically noted that they must not be conveyed by passenger trains without the special authority of the Superintendent of the Line. The infrastructure for filling the tanks on carriages was usually fairly simplistic. Often there seems to have been just a length of hose with connections to fit onto the fittings on the travelling reservoir and the carriage tanks. Presumably the travelling tank would be placed in one position and the hose moved to reach each coach, as you can often see the hose looped back upon itself between tracks. At some locations, where the gas was generated, there might be more permanent arrangements. At Swindon, the generating plant was some distance from the station, and iron pipework carried the gas to a series of stand pipes by the tracks where the filling would take place. As for using the Pintsch gas for station lighting, I would have thought it unlikely, although not impossible. I suspect that the Pintsch gas would have been more expensive to produce than the cost of town or coal gas, and it was only used because of the special nature of carriage lighting, where its ability to maintain good lighting levels when the pressure ran low, as the tanks emptied, was a considerable benefit. Also the problems associated with oil lamps on the move were not significant at a station, where someone could easily light the lamps when it got dark, and fill them when required, and turn them off when no longer required. It probably gave the porters something to do between trains!

Frontispiece to Private Owners Wagons of Somerset, from Black Dwarf / Lightmoor Press

If you click on the picture of the tent wagon it takes you to the Black Dwarf page which has all the known details. It was produced as a RTR commission from Dapol by Wessex Models back in 2011. I am sure I bought one when it came out!

Found the Railway Modeller I referred to earlier, December 1963, over fifty years ago. Apologies for the poor quality reproduction, combination of iPad and old paper, with a soupçon of incompetence. Reading the article I discovered that it predated the issue of the Triang Rocket, and used the Kitmaster kits, together with a lovely Bury loco found in a toy shop for the equivalent of 12.5 pence! All push along until the Triang power unit turned up. I don't know if they ever got round to motorising the locos, but the current Bachmann US Victorian locos would have been a godsend, albeit the wrong scale.

Just in case people haven't got access to an LBSC album I have taken a few, fairly grotty, snaps of typical examples. Lollipop trees at Three Bridges Lineside allotments near Fishergate, note the trimmed hedges on both sides of the line The line of shrubs at Copyhold And finally, a commemorative bush planted to remember a platelayer who was killed in an accident, near Ockley, you can't get much closer to the tracks!

In a December issue of Railway Modeller towards the end of the sixties, they featured a layout, as I recall, 1830 and all that, based upon the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, with several Triang Rockets variously modified, with the track, I think, built using FB rail fixed to the base. It was built by a father and son team, the son being at my school, Wallington Grammar, as mentioned some time ago as being the alma mater of several RMwebbers.

If you look through any of the wonderful LBSCR photo albums, such as Klaus Marx's Bennett Collection, you will find the the Brighton did not have a scorched earth policy, with plenty of trees and shrubs remarkably close to the tracks, with a line of trees separating the Ardingley branch from the main line at Copyhold, and at Barnham Junction there are planted bushes between the lines. Also in many places there are lineside allotments. I seem to recall seeing a line of evenly spaced trees alongside the line, each trimmed to the same spherical shape, looking just like cheap Chinese models, and I think I have seen similar on other lines.

eInteresting that he has two of these altered locos, this one with a copper "chimney" and a second one with it in brass. The brass version is over £5 cheaper!

The Postcard Collectors' "Reflections of a Bygone Age" series of books could be a useful source of vernacular buildings. They comprise about 40 pages of A5 size for around £4 each, with up to 60 photos in each. The coverage is a bit random, some counties being very well covered, probably dependent on the interests of a few collectors, but I have found several of the Railway Station Collections very interesting, particularly where the area is unfamiliar, and in some locations, a small town, such as Horncastle in Lincolnshire, has an entire volume to itself (not necessarily the railway station). The majority of the photos are from postcards of the classic Edwardian era, often focussing on the old and quaint, but some feature more modern subjects, and, unfortunately, it is impossible to tell from the website, but at the current price, if there is an album covering your selected town or area, and you cannot find it in a local bookshop, a small investment might be worthwhile.