runs as required

I remember being chastised at school by an austere communist history mistress about trying to argue “what ifs” in history. But WiFs do still fascinate me. I worked a fair bit in Tabora, Tanzania in the 1960s, This German railway town had been selected to be the future capital of Deutsches Ost Afrika - due to be opened by the Kaiser in the autumn of 1914 - for which a beautiful Bavarian Summer Palace had been readied, on axis with the railway station. By the 1960s the whole ambitious town planning project had matured as a gigantic Canberra-like plan of radiating tree lined avenues seen from the air. Down on the ground, in reality, they were double rows of mature mango trees planted at a pfennig or so a bundle by local Africans, whose descendants still lived in the scattered indigenous compounds in the scorched semi desert in between the lines of trees. Tabora had a ghostly air because of the appallingly brutal asymmetrical war (still very much remembered) fought successfully by Von Lettow-Vorbeck across East Africa until (still undefeated) 1918-9. A team of 3 from Horwich lived well (enjoying Manx kippers for breakfast) in the Kaiser’s Palace, then a EAR railway hotel - while maintaining the EAR very beautiful shiny red Garretts In terms of the UK, I imagine much more electrification would have taken place (with the continued influence of the German Siemens company). Perhaps also less of today's imbalance between north and south (that was induced after the rapid growth of arterial roads for WD surplus road transport radiating from London). We may have had a longer survival of Chamberlain Brum style City (Regional) governance with electric transit development of inter-urban networks (eg South Lancashire & Notts/Derbys). There were turn of the century diagrams by visionaries like Ebeneezer Howard and Patrick Geddes advocating such rail based networks based on German ideas. Letchworth the first Garden City was a product of such thinking. dh

Might the T Fords be destined for WD use as staff cars ? Later edit there is a video somewhere of a large centenary assembly recently in Dorset of WW1 WD vehicles including traction engines hauling artillery and an early tank. I seem to recall WD khaki model Ts darting hither and thither in the footage,

Very frightening! I thought it was just us along the N&C past Gateshead Metro Centre who still ride Pacers, not the plush gWr lot out of Paddington. dh

The detailing on that 00 Terrier is extraordinary. How does that get produced in volume James? I am looking at the lining around the top of the cab sides, the copper and steel handrails, and the exquisitely shadowed B o x h i l l on the tanksides ? Is any of it actually handpainted? dh

William Beardmore & Company of Glasgow built ships 4-6-0 locos for the GER and LNWR, aeroplanes, flying boats and motor bikes besides those rare slightly 'wrong' looking taxis

Many thanks for that pair of links, most interesting information. It does prove one can't rely on memory - I was sure the open stair Abridge buses were not 6 wheelers. What was a STD ? Was it a diesel engined ST - or a version of an STL? I had no idea the route 10 from tiny Abridge to Victoria actually crossed into South London over London Bridge to LB station and (via the Elephant & Castle on Sundays) crossed back over Lambeth Bridge up to Victoria station. We never rode it past Aldgate. dh

This is all getting to read like a tribute to Billy Connolly !

Thanks Phil for that note on wartime and after LT buses. Yes I realise we only just missed the RTs - for we still had both sets of grandparents left in SW and E Essex - and spent a fair amount of school hols shuttling north-south either on the A5 or Oxford via Victoria coach station What I've been trying to remember was the difference between the 10A from Epping - Leytonstone and the much longer 10 Abridge - Victoria journey. I'd say both were four wheelers - the 10A I recollect had an enclosed straight stair (with a very straight backed body) - similar to the six wheeler green Country buses (LTs ?) in Epping Garage. I thought the 10 was also four, not six, wheeled with an open curved sweep of staircase; this I particularly remember because I was made to spit out of them back into the wind by the scary older boys The irony was that the most modern of all - the elegant trolleybuses never got past the Wake Arms in Epping Forest along the concrete New Road as far as Epping. The journey to Grandma's family of goats out in the sticks was always exciting - it might on rare occasions include enormous brown City coaches with twin front wheels - Leyland Gnus ? dh

A lot to digest in those postings above: 1 Preston‘s bus station only very narrowly avoided demolition, I’m glad to recall. 2 We moved from NE London to Brum on the day of Princess Elizabeth and Philips’ wedding in 1947. Going to school, I entered a world of seemingly futuristic Midland Red front-entrance S series underfloor engined buses, from 1930 petrol engined single deckers on route 250 Epping-Hornchurch - and Victoria-Abridge, on route10, even older open staircase AEC (ST ?) buses It seemed years before LT and Tilling caught up with BMMO 3 Birkenhead Corpy Massey bodied blue and cream ‘over the water’ always seemed more prosperous than plain Liverpudlian Corpy green 4 Was there really once an Eastern Coach Works droopy windscreened coach body on a Foden chassis or was that a very “special” yellow breakdown rescue vehicle project? dh

This bit about memory is getting a bit Lewis Carroll dh

Didn’t realise waxing dated back to Victorian times. in the pic above she looks to being played by my heroine Miriam Margulies Best Wishes to you all dh

Interesting that the tramlines in Genevieve include that central slot for the LT pick-up in the posh bits of central London. Down in Sarf London and up by Kings Cross trams were once more using their their trolley poles. But is this technology along to the ‘new’ Waterloo bridge actually ‘post Grouping’? dh

unamusing? My grandchildren used to laugh uproariously for hours on end at the Keystone Cops antics with Model Ts and trains can't see 'owt wrong with this! Shurely more a virtue. What would Colonel Stevens have turned to? dh edit: thinking more about this ... without dipping into Wiki, didn't the Irish do some rather rustic adaptations of Model Ts into rail motors on their various gauges before becoming the cockpit of invention that lead to the application of DMUs to British Rail?

Lovely pics. Was it "The Pictorial Encyclopaedia of Railways" by Hamilton Ellis, published by Hamlyn? It was a favourite in our family. I've never been out of NYC in the US, but Mexican railways still ran a lot of old US cars when I worked there briefly in the 1970s. I don't think I ever realised before how exclusive those Vista dome cars in the Canadian pics were - only 2 in a 19 or 20 car consist (?) dh

Ugh! Strines was where the most feared teachers at New Mills school lived when I were a lad. The nicer ones lived further into the hills - in the Wash and Chapel en le Frith. PS Wot's gone wrong with those WNR points? I'm sure I once saw them working ! Is it just a bit of fettling? In which case HTH in the New Year... dh

The Thanks to Stephen and to you for those informative replies. Along that stretch of the Goyt Valley the Midland and the LNW were climbing to Peak Forest and Buxton on either side of the valley. By the 1950s the LMS 2-8-0s had effectively taken over: both on the ICI Northwich lime hoppers as well as the lime traffic on the LNW (with John Axon's 2-8-0 demolishing Chapel South signal box). It was the pre-grouping Midland engines I was recalling. A piano front 0-8-0 LNW compound's boiler exploded disastrously at Buxton in the 1890s, but the rebuilt simple Buxton 0-8-0s were much in evidence as stalwart climbers around past Combs up to Doveholes through the 1950s - and over the Ashbourne line and its residual limeworks stubs. I can't actually recall double headed Midland goods working - though do remember LMS Garratts running via the Hope Valley to Chinley/Gowhole. My real point was that it was never thought necessary by the Midland to evolve differing locomotives for its Pennine lines as opposed to the lowland England routes (whereas it willingly varied the mix for subsidiaries in Somerset, Eastern England and Ireland). dh

1 Well done James for that chassis mod; I prefer it to the Hornby version (which inevitably has an over-manicured out-of-the-box look to it) 2 About Midland boilers: Having lived most of my UK life near the hiller bits of the former Midland, it never seemed that Derby boiler design was over-sensitive to the needs of hard slogs against the collar on long grades - which what some of the discussion about US loco boilers was alluding to. On truly awful cross-country runs from school up Chinley Churn (to Pingot) high above Gowhole sidings, we used to gaze down upon the most antiquated collections of 0-6-0s stationary gathering breath or imperceptibly slogging southwards around the opened out cutting of the former Bugsworth tunnel. Derby, it seemed, was more inclined to smaller drivers on their passenger locos on the S&C. dh

I note that it was posted by ovbulleid I’d like to think that the original Oliver Bulleid would have found it a huge joke. After all he did do that horrendous (half coach length) half-timbered bogus Elizabeathan Tudor tavern car as a lightener to that dour sequence of 1940s post-war years. dh

So is each note the same shot/pitch - only dependent upon length the key is pressed? So you could play any music manuscript with the same train and horn notes assigned to each key? Very clever ! dh

That is a remarkable photo of the last Claughton on Dillicar Troughs in 1946. It survived until 1949 in BR days, by which time I was at school in NW Derbyshire. A good many of the male teachers were rail mad and the English teacher brought along a eulogy about the passing of the last Claughton in the Manchester Guardian. After his explanation about the engine, we were set to analyse the passage in tabular format in our exercise books. To my juvenile mind, the Claughton with its long irregular slotted side skirts above the drivers, had a scrappy unfinished look. It was as if a Decoration had been stripped off as punishment for being a damp squib of a finale to a long line of thrashed black Crewe runners. dh

What a wonderful way to see a Black Dog off, with its tail between its legs, scuttling up over Stainmore Summit into next year ... scare it with a yella injin hanging over a bridge! dh

I agree, one positive outcome of last Friday 13 is James back into his superlative paper modelling. The fragility is so appealing in the face of “stokerproofing” against Bullingdon Man. dh

what is the provenance of the above pic (where the driver has a sabre scabbard slung around him and the #16 lorryload all seem to be aiming at the Chatsworth Anarchist picnic ) please? dh

Reminds me of returning home for lunch in Africa and wife reports she has Just been for coffee with the Barclays Bank managers wife. He returned as they were leaving to report getting a radio message that there’s been an army coup in the capital. dh edit and the consequence was I was woken by a soldier with a machine gun two days later and marched across to a Brigadier who had taken over the VC’s residence!

Derbyshire dialect - as in “ Nar then Siri !” (Hallo Mate !) has been filched by Silicon Valley/Apple. It’s the rest of us they are after robotising next ... dh