wagonman

Much as I love them, I would hesitate to call Beyer Peacock locos 'elegant'. Normally they remind of awkward teenagers with severe acne (all those snap head rivets). Now Sharp Stewart on the other hand produced some wonderfully elegant locos, like svelte young ladies... Better let that analogy lie.

But note the caveat regarding weight... Shows how well built the Met's Brill branch was!

Looks a bit like something Jeremy Corbyn would wear... The Bullards' pub in the background of the East Quay photo was arranged with its back to the water right up to the time it closed in the 1990s (I've forgotten the exact date). That it has now been converted into flats is testimony to a missed opportunity!

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The E W Cooke etching of a collier brig being unloaded by 'jumping up' dates from the 1850s or thereabouts but much the same technique was still being used at the turn of the century where cargoes had to be offloaded into lighters for onwards transport. This happened to cargoes destined for Cley Quay at this time as the Glaven had silted up noticeably, coal being trans-shipped in the area known as 'The Pit' which had relatively deep water even at low tide. The barges would then be quanted up to Cley on the next flood tide. Blakeney Quay still saw ships of around 100 tons tying up – one of them was a steamer http://www.thenuclearfamily.co.uk/cgi-bin/viewp.cgi?code=14&m=23&title='S.S.+Taffy'+of+Blakeney&date=1905&capt=Capt.+L.+Thompson – and there was a small steam tug (paddle) operating there from the late C19 (I have the dates somewhere...). Trade at these small Norfolk creeks was killed off by a combination of factors: creeks getting smaller, ships getting bigger and trade going to the railways. Wells is the only one that survived WW2. PS: some really wonderful photos turning up here!

The holes in the solebar were indeed for horse hooks.

I was staring out the window of our holiday cottage which just happens to be a couple hundred yards from the GWR main line near Chippenham when the procession of HSTs was interrupted by a steam engine! Must have been Flying Scotsman though only the top half was visible. Very impressive, though I was less impressed by the maroon 37 tacked on the rear...

Slight typo crept in there: internal length should be 14' 6" of course. Nice work there which might just inspire me to tackle my own kit-mountain!

It's clearly an LSWR design signal box so somewhere on the MSWJR seems right. Grafton S Junc as suggested. And yes the other photo is of Savernake High Level.

Tyling, even as a terminus, was bigger than the OP's plan – it had an engine shed and a kick-back siding as well as a headhunt for the goods yard sidings. There's an image which sticks in my mind (perhaps an RM cover shot) of Tyling looking from above the inevitable tunnel: there was plain track leading to the station with a road bridge across the station throat under which the main line passed, sandwiched between two sidings – the headhunt and the engine shed kickback. Tyling was a good layout for its day. PS: Auto-correct keeps trying to change the name to Typing... PPS: apparently it was featured in the April 1957 issue of RM and the layout was built by Ken Payne.

'Eric Plans' were landscape format books of drawings produced by Peco (?) back in the day. The structures drawn were mostly/all GWR. All this from memory – I have a set of them somewhere but not seen in maybe 20 years!

And don't forget the MSWJR carried through coaches from both the Midland and the LNWR... Who could ask for more?

The Birmingham trains that I observed in Norwich station in the late '80s were always class 31 hauled. They usually consisted of 5 coaches and a couple of vans. They were replaced by regularly overcrowded 2 coach sprinters and a fleet of lorries. Ah, progress!

Actually, Don, we do follow rules just as Simon has outlined, at least in Standard English (or RP) if not always in dialect. None of which has any bearing on the wonderful Castle Aching saga... Richard

Traffic in and around Cambridge is equally disastrous – which is why most students still seem to favour the bicycle, preferably one with a basket on the front.

That's the chocolate company pronunciation!

The M&GN used gravel in places as there were a couple of ballast pits near to Holt station in Norfolk working gravel deposits. The gravel would have been glacial in origin as the Holt-Cromer ridge formed part of the terminal moraine of the North Sea ice-sheet. Whoever said Norfolk was flat? PS: there is still sand (and gravel?) extraction at Middleton, near King's Lynn.

If the dimensions you're quoting are from the Ship's Register entry then the last figure would be the "depth in the hold" (i.e. from the top of the keelson to the underside of the deck) rather than freeboard. Not a very useful figure if you're building a waterline model!

As well as the full width end compartments, there should also be a dividing partition between the rwo toilets! Obvious when you think about it....

Indeed it was, along with a few others..

There's a photo of one of the Thirds in Russell Vol.1 (page 15) so the sketch in Jonathan's other thread is 'accurate'. Richard

The panelling arrangement is rather similar to that of the early coaches for the SMAR/MSWJR which were built by the Metropolitan Carriage & Wagon in Birmingham except that (some of) the upper panels were recessed. Can the Silhouette cut grooves? if so the lower beading could be represented by a groove filled with round rod of a suitable diameter – I'll let you work that out! More choices than with half-round. It is theoretically possible to apply a two-colour livery with contrasting 'beading' on totally flush sided carriages as the GWR did precisely that between 1922-27. Come to think of it, Hornby also did it on their mainline clerestory coaches, unfortunately. Right pain in the proverbial though... Richard PS this was reference back to the Felixstowe discussion. I can't keep up with the pace of this thread!

The second one is definitely D633 as it is clearly longer than the D299. I can't remember who did the kit in 4mm. There was a white metal kit in 7mm from Oldbury.

"- the station made in the form of mating locusts (in post 536) has a local resonance: the Gresham family, of the eponymous bank and the posh school in Holt, used this insect as their symbol - most famously at their banking premises in the City, at Lombard Street. Though I suspect that that station design would not necessarily fit well with your overall concept." I think it's meant to be a grasshopper rather than a locust, but depending on one's political outlook vis-à-vis bankers/public schools/etc a locust might be more appropriate symbolically... :-) Richard

Looks like something that E B Wilson would have built...