runs as required

Am I correct in remembering this to be quite a common way of resolving buffing forces in C19 waggons? I'd like to ask you 'mech. eng' modellers whether this might have been an early way of tightening a night mail train buffer to buffer for passenger comfort. I can still remember the brain numbing crashes one could suffer being given "a late night lift home" in the brake van of a long loose coupled train of empties. dh

I’d have liked that simulation to emerge out down at Crown Street. I used to cycle to’ classes in Abercromby Square past the station (still much of its track work, multiple tunnel openings and turntables in existence in the mid 1950s) off the top of Smithdown Rd without realisation of its significance until several years later. 2 I’ve been a bit “Yonderly” as they say in N Derbyshire, recently. So I’ve missed all this research about early underframes and running gear on this thread and just cogitated over the week-end about the CA Friday posts of the new Hornby carriages and the York exhibit (that I reasoned to myself must have been sectioned). Extract of CA post here: I assume we all must think that, it being the Stephensons, they’ll have settled into a single preferred type of waggon (by keeping a watching eye on emerging practice around them) and made it common to all classes and types of body carried above. And despite the danger to full skirted passengers, they didn’t bother with any kind of protection over sole bars, springs etc when climbing those tiny steps - or the Brandling style continuous footboard. Incidentally the T L Gooch who was the engineer assigned responsibility for the Sankey viaduct masonry design by the Stephensons, (see current ‘Backtrack’) one of the Bedlington family? dh

Are they all pictured here ? The PSV Fodens I remember most vividly were the (sometimes) rear engined 2 stroke supercharged ones that had weird bodies built like the Bulleid DD Dartford units. You could hear one coming half a mile away! dh

It is probably way too late now (due to the momentum this thread suddenly gathers) but I have had this analysis on my Photoshop program since Saturday morning The image on the right is what I think I see in the pic (lower left) posted earlier in York NRM i.e. a U shape casting/forging in which the axle box slides up and down as the spring flexes. James's beautiful Hornby model (top left) clearly re-creates this exhibit. What I'd like to ask is this exhibit actually what might have been the waggon on which the carriage work was mounted? Because it seems to me that the cut-aways under the two outer doors in this exhibition replica may be there just to reveal the shaft connecting the "buffers". a) there doesn't seem much depth of plating material left to the side-frame; b) the cutaway sections occur where a lady's skirts could get horribly entangled exactly where she is ascending a pretty perilous pair of steps (which would have been invisible to her looking down as she climbed because of her full skirts.) dh Um ... I also realised I actually had no certainty about a 'trunnion' I've just hyperlinked which got mentioned earlier.

My younger son, (who survives precariously doing H&S stuff all round the world on old bits of ‘sold on’ North Sea kit), has a colleague who has a gizmo on his cat that he can home into wherever he is abroad (typically in a Singapore shipyard). They will be sitting in a bar after a hard day of working with shipyard guys tearing stuff apart when Dan’s mate will suddenly exclaim “Oh no! Toots is trying to cross the M25 ! “ apparently in the vicinity of Westerham. Dan argues it would be better not to know and to allow the cat to preserve its alte ego. But I’d still like to have some sort of fish that would tell you what the cat was actually saying about you

I find it extremely difficult to date those US (normal control) vehicles from the 1920s. There seems little difference between long distance inter-state and intra-urbans - any hints? 2 Might that Dorset chara be a Morris Commercial? (from the look of the rad badge) 3 I’m not sure I go along with the generally accepted term of ‘PRESERVATION’ when used about vehicles. So many unique survivors seem to get scrapped subsequently. I suggest ‘currently restored’ to be a less absolute term. The loss I most regret is an example of a BMMO REDD which at one time (in the late 1950s) was recorded as PRESERVED. dh

Names Please ...

Lets face it: pet pics always get more 'likes' even on CA than leaky steam glands :-( dh Edit I really meant to say that even up here on Tyneside we've had a couple of windswept looking primroses shyly peeping out - at least 6 weeks early

Gosh! I can't remember over 60 years ago with any trustworthy accuracy. My copy of 'Landscape with Machines' I must read again - it doesn't have an index - perhaps Harry Rogers lived up in drier Coalbrookdale. Tom Rolt was actually most kind to me - via a group of friends at the Column Group. During a horse boat trip along across the Glyn valley and Pont Cysllte aqueducts he urged me to inflect my project to a Regional Museum with its base in Ironbridge between the Church and the Tontine pub (architecturally on axis with the bridge) to house a library and research core and to compile an Regional Inventory. This appealed to me greatly. He took me out in his unrestored green Alvis to Telford's Longdon-on- Tern, then claimed to be a "world first" in cast iron canal aqueducts. I was hooked as a total Rolt disciple. He advocated a kind of Betjeman style 'Shell Guide' one picked up at Ironbridge and set off to explore. This seems an outrageous idea now - actually contriving ways of increasing the sale of destructive fossil fuels! dh

I think it just as insane not to stick with the Joeuf HO and enjoy it in an otherwise only very slightly lager built environment.I enjoy this thread best through half shut eyes regarding posts of the various elderly kit versions off eBay of the same Kirtley 2-2-2 I’ve been on an absolutely brilliant day out today along the Roman Wall from home on the Military road from Rochester to Greenhead then via the A69 overlooking sinister RAF Spadeadam (home of the aborted Bluestreak British dominance of space) to the M6; down to Penrith; to a pub lunch rendezvous with my sister and friend on the south side of Pooley Bridge and then back home via Blind Jack’s Hartside Pass, Hexham and Wylam. Competitive health banter is supposed usually to be the main topic but today it was all about floods and Ironbridge. They remembered I had lived on the Wharfage about 6 doors down from the Tontine pub in preparation for my Final year design thesis* and went to work each morning behind a Collet 0-6-0 + 3 GW coaches to Shrewsbury to work in Salop CC at the column. Even then (1959) the row of brick buildings regularly flooded and we just retreated upstairs. The same was true of York when I taught at Kings Manor, the pubs along the river were rather proud of their flood marks. I think the solution for steep constricted valleys such as the Calder valley is to abandon the lower terraces as picturesque water-washed garden ruins. This can be seen at the Torrs in NewMills Derbyshire wher the Sett flows in to join the Goyt and also up here along the banks of the Tyne beside the High Level Bridge under the castle keep. * I did really badly at this - the external said a museum of the industrial revolution could never be a viable project - especially built of cast iron :-(

What I love about Berlin (as a rail enthusiast you understand) is the way DB ICEs snake through the centre on the Ubahn via Friedrichstrasse and across Museum island. Us oicks waiting for the Ubahn trains can watch little 'cameos' of OTT stars in their furs being helped aboard into the First Class with their poodles and hatboxes bound for ... where ... ? With completion of that horrendous multi level Hauptbahnhof will this sort of running be a thing of the past? I can remember my old Planning professor arguing that public transport had to be 'attractive'. He lived in Hoylake and enjoyed the ferry into L'pool the days he showed up. dh

Those with knowledge of Liverpool may recall the chapel on Breck Road in the 1960s that had a poster pasted up: WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF CHRIST CAME TO LIVERPOOL ? over which was scrawled: "Move St John to centre half and play him centre forward" dh edit I having been immersed in 1:1 scale things recently, what a joy it has been catching up with the Parish mag. Thank you.

That is very true of folk I know (including my one son still based here in the NE - working in the offshore Fossil fuel as well as Renewable Energy industries) i'd like this to put paid to Heathrow expansion, but I am not sure how efficacious these flows are in terms of carbon capture. dh

This is the perennial argument between planners (aspiring to future-proof) and those who advocate "the Hidden Hand" of Adam Smith and the Market. The latter have been in the ascendancy in the UK for the last 40 odd years - whereas planners have held their own in Holland and France. As for the future: I do hope 20-30 year strategies for the North do attempt to balance connectivity and carbon neutral environmental transformation. (did anyone hear Jim Al-Khalili on Radio 4 this Tuesday 18/02 ?) Someone a few pages back mentioned "flood- proofing" (it being uppermost in our minds now ). How is this done engineeringwise? For example on (electrified) existing transPennine lines - and on up to Darlington and across to Hull? HSTs often ran through quite deep water on the ECML around Croft Spa. dh

Oh dear! Please don't be a modern Dr Dionysus Lardner doom-monger. Wiki is a wonderful institution if used intelligently - a whole university library accessible even in bed by an invalid. Medics tell me that Wiki is essential for them to keep up - by accessing for example the latest practice heart and brain surgery via videos - even laypersons can access the same tutorial material to reassure themselves after receiving bad news in a consultation. The essential trick (learnt at school by my grandchildren) is not to use just one source but to triangulate* - especially about HS2 and choices about the environmental future. dh edit * But hang on ... Sorry, i now see you are doing exactly that in the preceding post

As a town planner (that had most expertise in rail) I would always argue for high density multi-use renewal in urban centres (cf Urban Splash in Manchester or Brindley Place in Brum) for a 40/50 year lower energy consumption future. The ready cleared HS2 terminal sites would be far more cost effectively redeveloped for medium/high rise mixed use and much cheaper shed-style OOC and Brum International stations used instead which would also be subsidised by the yields from the terminus sites. Euston could get a decent Euston Square and a re-ected/recreated Arch. West Midlands could then get its much desired integrated intra conurbation system. I’d do the same flanking alignment around Great Manchester, use the old route around to Staleybridge and on into Yorks, avoiding huge amounts of Piccadilly and M Vic reconstruction. Evergreen tree shield planting would lessen environmental impact (true also around many existing intrusive urban rail line e.g. in S London)

Can I please ask for help. While driving I heard a fragment of an interesting interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme last week (3-7 Feb) with an Engineering Professor - from Cambridge or U of London - about his Research group's study which had established there to be an inevitable 'human and administrative' lead-time associated with major UK projects compared to other nations (eg Thailand and Bangkok's new multi modal station referred to above). Can anyone readily recall this - or perhaps offer a name? I should very much like to pass it on to a friend, without ploughing through hours of 'listen again' dh

Gosh! ‘Where the wild things are’ all around this tread in recent days. Rather shocked at the Aching shed pic. I can remember my mum and her war ‘girlfriends’ renting a water mill (Shilla Mill) behind Polzeath in N Cornwall to escape the 44/45 year of the random V2 attacks on NE London. I found it all huge fun, The living room wall was living slate rock with plants growing on it either side of the fireplace. A water channel ran along the base, around the hearth slab and out under the wall into the mill race. (I constructed cardboard MTB boats and RAF air/sea rescue launches to float down and out into the garden - Poo sticks style - , to catch at the very last mo before they pitched into the race. Quite frequently we had to roll up the mats and retreat upstairs for a day or so. Only much later did I come across Frank Loyd Wright and the millionaires “Falling Water”. I really wanted to post about last night’s Agatha Christie ”The Pale Horse” on BBC TV. It was supposed to be (as ever on TV) somewhere around rural Boxhill In Surrey in 1961 but it clearly wasn’t. Neither was it London where the doomed protagonists lived. I hoped James had watched because I thought it might be his native SW Leicestershire (and the metropolis might have been Stamford) with roofs of Collyweston slabs. Daughter lived in that rolling ironstone landscape for a while adjacent to the GN/LNW joint line, the branch from John O’Gaunt to Belgrave Road - and Rutland’s very own Seaton Junction. dh

I always enjoyed the parodies. I've just tried unsuccessfully to Google Frank Muir and Denis Norden's old London Transport opera that included "Take a Six to Kensal Rise" (to Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes, The Gondoliers) It looks like you can buy it in Australia! dh

You might suggest she opts instead for a decent little s/h Fiat lux dh

That is more or less true for these 4-8-2+2-8-4 beauts . I watched them being towed along the East Lancs road to Liverpool docks in the mid 1950s as a student - and got to ride behind them up from Mombasa around the northern slopes of Kilimanjaro in the late 60s/early 70s. They were 4 cylindered oil fired metre gauge and in effect 2 cylindered (for each articulated 'engine'). Orders for EAR&H after that IIRC were single cabbed English Electric diesels usually run in multiple like BR class 20s dh

That was frequently inscribed above those old style railway lavatory pans where you looked down through vertiginously to the track below. And back in the compartment the heating control lever might also be doctored to read EAT < > tOFFee ONions dh

Interesting range of buildings which would all be listed now in that Sheffield pic, do you know the name of the place? I used to know Sheffield quite well, both from Sat. nights out as school boy, later professionally: I worked on station improvements to Sheffield Vic. just before it closed! 2 Do I spot an XK120 fixed head coupe and an NSU in the centre parking strip? dh

I'd say growing up around Coleshill is more to blame for you being crowned incontestably King of all things Midland here on rmWeb. I'm putting in a plea for a Timeline in the CA thread, having half listened to Melvyn Bragg's "in our Time" this morning while starting 'work' for the day. It was about Alcuin of York (730 - 800 ?) a Northumbrian who apparently introduced punning as a way of embedding learning in students' heads to Charlemagne's court. Last week, thanks to Melvyn Bragg, I was able to recollect 1870 ,The Franco Prussian War, the Siege of Paris and The Commune etc. Briefly. Having lived in Northumbria since the mid 1970s and at York (Kings Manor) until retirement, I really can't unravel clearly the centuries (or boundaries) from the sixth to late sixteenth Early Railways: Oswald, Aidan, Cuthbert, Bede, Hilda, Whitby, Grosemont, Prince Bishops ... dh

Wow Are Sexy Metros and Maestros making a comeback ?