Wheatley

It's whitemetal - low melt solder or epoxy. I think it was designed to fit the old Tri-ang generic 0-6-0 chassis, we'll see if it fits the current Hornby one when it gets here !

http://www.sefinecast.co.uk/Locomotives/Bodyline Locomotive Kits 3.htm F119 LMS Caley Tank (which might explain why you can't find it as it isn't listed as "782 Class" ! Sorry ). Site's a bit clunky and you have to send them an actual cheque.

I can't remember if you've already got these: Std Class 4 tank - 80117, 80119 at Stranraer, 80023 and one other I forget (80079?) at Dumfries to choose from. The Stranraer pair were only there for the last couple of years though, refugees from the ER. LMS Fowler 2P 4-4-0 - Staple power on local trains until 1962 and used to pilot Jubilees on the boat trains. LMS Ivatt 2MT - 46467 was a Stranraer engine. BR Std 2MT - 78016 and 78026 arrived in 1964ish. If you fancy a kit challenge, South Eastern Finecast do a Caley 782 Class 0-6-0T, Stranraer had one for a while as an alternative to the Hunslet. Whitemetal body, it should fit a Hornby Thomas or Bachmann Pannier chassis (I've one on order, I'll let you know). After that you're into kit building DJH Jumbos and Class 439 0-4-4Ts

Flat earther ? Or just very good at parting flat earthers from their money to pay for his toys ?

I once shared an office with a conspiracy theorist and a Freeman of the Land. Whoever invented ipods and headphones has my undying gratitude.

D&G Council 2014 Masterplan - move the station towards the town end of the pier (not right next to the town, that would get in the way of the supermarket development !) and fill the rest with housing and (maybe) a casino. Or an open air museum. Or something: https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/factsheet/2018/06/dumfries-and-galloway-council-planning-authority-core-documents/documents/stranraer-waterfront/stranraer-waterfront/govscot%3Adocument/SG%2B-%2BStranraer%2BWaterfront.pdf The station is on page 47. Wikipedia (yes I know) reports that since then the money ring-fenced for the new station was spent on something else, and that Network Rail did not own the station according to their 2018 Network statement.

Sheringham cost a million, and it has 5 times Stranraer's users.

Coventry Arena £4m, Horden £10m, Kenilworth £14m. Knock a bit off for just one platform but not half, the cost is not just in the materials. Your estimate of the traffic potential from the surrounding area is probanly accurate. There isn't a great deal going on in terms of passenger potential.

I think the root of the problem is that, if you were going to invest the millions required for a new station in Stranraer (even a new old station), you wouldn't build it in Stranraer. It would be better in Cairnryan where the ferries are, with a halt on the outskirts of Stranraer for the handful of local users. There's a reason the connecting bus goes from Ayr. Much as I love the place only 10,000 people live there and they can't all want to go to Glasgow or even Ayr that often. For those that do, the old town station is just as inconvenient for the town centre as the harbour is, just less windy. The landward end of the pier would be a better option. Edit - Great minds !

The drops are still there, sort of. The lower level of the Acpoa car park on Leeman road is fitted in around the remains of the coal cells, you can drive around it on Google earth. It's not ideal bit it will at least give you an idea of brickwork, general layout etc. The buttress nearest the ramp up to to the IECC is a recent replacement (it's hollow so not entirely sure whether it's actually holding anything up !) but the others are the cut back remains of the coal cell crosswalls. Incidentally, the stables further up Leeman Rd, increasingly dilapidated in recent years, was surrounded by scaffolding this afternoon and sporting a very fetching NER red/cream colour scheme. Really enjoying this thread !

It has been illegal to use it for potable water pipework for some time. It has been illegal to use it in the manufacture of electronic goods for some time. It was illegal to sell it from 2006 but there was an exemption from for 'hobby purposes' (RoHS, presumably because we don't use that much in the grand scheme of things. ) It is now illegal to sell it to anyone except a professional. (REACH 2018). Edit - in the UK.

Surely the definition of 'professional' is irrelevant in it's wider sense. My point was that it appears that the policing appears to have been left to retailers (it's illegal to sell it not to buy it) and they appear to be doing that by selling only to business or trade account holders. How easy it is to get a trade account I don't know, B&Q will accept sight of a business card according to their website and you can get them anywhere although you might not get very far with your stag party "Boob Inspector" one.

All my loose controllers have jack plugs (3mm rather than 1/4" but only because I bought a job lot) it makes life much easier when one packs in or I need to rig something up temprarily. The main layout has a Gaugemaster hand held built in but still has a 3mm jack socket as a stand by so I can nick the lad's train set controller in an emergency. If I was starting from scratch I would probably go for XLRs.

Stanley knife gently rolled on the bench every time here. Works up to about 3mm dia with no problems. Needs to be a chunky blade, not your smallest X-acto though.

When the firdt lot of regs arrived in 2006 (RoHS?) there was an exemption for hobby use. This is what the "Stock up on illegal substances" ad alluded to above was all about. The latest regs (REACH) ban sales to non-professional users from 2018. How you define "professional" appears to have been left to the retailer to decide. It has been banned for potable water pipework and in manufacturing electronic components for some time. I'm still using the same 100g reel I bought from Focus 25 years ago and there's loads left.

Seconded. He was my Director 25 years ago, an absolute gentleman and quite the most astonishing manager I've ever worked for. Very sad.

I wondered about that. But the curve was singled in 1965, admittedly month not known, and would the Gresley brake second still be round in at that date ? I believe the Scottish allocation was withdrawn in 1963, no idea when the last ER one went. I completely missed Jamie's Type 2 pic despite it being right next to the one we were discussing ! That does suggest it was a regular working, although how regular is a good question - what we don't know is how far apart the photos were taken. There was some major work being done in 1962 on the Cree Viaduct (Swan again), I doubt that was the only engineering work on the route but that at least would have required a line blockage as Swan shows some sort of tracked plant sitting on the viaduct during the 1962 works.

"LM Steam North of the Border" :-) It isn't identified in that book but the same photo is in another book with it identified as 73100 - I could have sworn it was in Swan but on looking just now I can't see it. Edit - Found it ! "BR Steam in Scotland" by GC O'Hara, plate 163 - "44957 and 73100 make very easy work with a lightweight service from Stranraer Town to Dumfries near Gatehouse of Fleet on 26th April 1963". The late Mr O'Hara could also be a bit creative with his captions sometimes but it didn't extend to making up engine numbers as far as I know. Of course, if it was a Corkerhill Std 5 you could just paint it grot all over and not worry about the number, they don't look as though they were cleaned from the day they were delivered.

Anecdotally, and we've been here before, Kingmoor quite liked them because they were rostering them on Class 6 turns, not putting them on Class 7/8s and wondering why they couldn't perform. The ScR Duchesses were withdrawn at the same time. Was this the point at which Kingmoor itself was transferred from the ScR to the LMR ? I lose track...

That is interesting. According to the entry for Hawkhill Junction that curve was closed to passengers in 1951 and singled in 1965. https://www.railscot.co.uk/locations/H/Hawkhill_Junction/ So assuming the caption is correct, that's a pre-1965 photo (so the Port Road is open) showing a passenger train on a goods only route. That would be permitted if necessary, passenger trains could operate over goods lines if a person with a sufficiently large hat authorised it, so my guess (and it is only a guess) would be that the train is diverted off the PP&W by engineering work. I'm assuming for the purposes of this guess that the second coach is in crimson and cream, not blue/grey !

Beware of captions in books and magazines, unless you know who wrote them. There are some Port Road photos in a Steam Days article from a couple of years ago - either one of the locos has been misidentified or 45480 had a boiler swap one afternoon at Dumfries. Explanations of workings can be even more fanciful, there is a caption in one of the Booklaw volumes on SW Scotland showing some end door vans 'going for trip round the G&SWR triangle to turn them' - they aren't, they're going to Metalbox at Carlisle from the Carnation Milk plant in Dumfries. For modelling purposes I generally rely on photos where I can read the number for myself, although I confess that my 73100 is based on a caption !

Similar. Big windows but no nets or tracductors (I need to add the latter from one of the spare etches in the HR kit !). The best collections of published timetables I've found are in the two staples - "Branches & Byways - SW Scotland" by Robotham, and to a lesser degree "The Port Road" by Swan. Apart from photos most of the rest is odd snippets picked up from magazine articles and filed away over the years. There is a working timetable for Newton Stewart but I confess I just lumped together all the best bits from the various BR timetables regardless of whether they were summer, winter, SO, SX or whatever ! The real Whithorn branch timetable, for example, gets quite dull after 1959.

It was the first issue, sorry ! It got renumbered to one of the Sc allocation, it shares the duty (or will if I ever get NS working!) with a kit built Highland Railway one which seems to have got lost a bit. Again, somewhere I've got some workings for the Down Special (I think) TPO showing which vans were dropped where en route, pretty sure one was dropped at Carlisle for Stranraer. If I find it ...

The Newcastle trains are a bit of a nightmare once you get into the various onlys/excepteds. In short (very short, because I never did get completely to the bottom of it) you can have all or any of the following depending on the day/time of year: A four coach Carlisle - Stranraer working, usually with a Kingmoor Black 5 and LMS stock. Apparently extended to Newcastle in the summer with LMS and LNER stock used turnabout, but I've yet to find evidence of a 4 coach LNER set or more than 4 of LMS stock, apart from obvious strengtheners where non-corridors have been added to the normal 2-3 coach Dumfries-Stranraer set. Up to 8 or more LNER coaches worked through from Newcastle, both overnight and during the day, by a Black 5, Jubilee or Clan. The composition appears to be day coaches regardless of the train time, mostly TKs with the odd CK. I have some carriage working notes somewhere, I'll dig them out. There is at least one relief to the overnight Newcastle train in one of the 1960s timetables, goodness knows that that was made up of or how often it actually ran. TPOs - Peter Johnson ("The British Travelling Post Office", Ian Allan, 1985) says this: "Galloway Sorting Tender - commenced operating between Dumfries and Stranraer 1st May 1871. Extended to Carlisle 1st July 1885. Designated a TPO on 14th July 1930. Ceased 1940." However, the Summer 1959 timetable (reproduced in "Branches and Byways") shows a 4.15am departure from Dumfries described at 'POSTAL - LIMITED LOAD' and arriving in Stranraer Harbour at 6.22 am. That was enough excuse for me to buy a Bachmann TPO but in practice I suspect it was a BG full of mail bags attached to a couple of passenger coaches. No photographic evidence unfortunately.

Officially ? I expect an early official use of the term was for cataloguing stationery, forms etc, BR.29964, BR.3185 etc. Every bit of stationery on the railway had a catalogue number so you knew exactly what you were ordering. I have a sheet of BRITISH TRANSPORT COMMISSION headed memo paper in front of me with a "BR 2/7" cat number on it. Unofficially, from the time the first civil servant / railway clerk / officer had to write down the name of the new organisation and decided to abbreviate it. At the very latest I would say about 10 past 9 on whatever the first working day after 1st January 1948 was.