Guy Rixon

What's the typical inspection-regime on a preserved railway? Do the working teams self-assess their work for safety, or is there a designated officer to certify the work?

The GNR depot was just to the west of the curve from the Widened Lines to Snow Hill. The MR depot was slightly east of the GWR one. AFAIK, the railway was below ground level at both these locations, so at least the base of the depots would have been underground. There was also the Met's own depot at Vine Street, slightly further west, on the north side of the Widened Lines, with rail access from the cutting. This was tiny, with two tracks each holding seven wagons, and storage space above, at street level. It was possibly the only general-goods depot in the UK to be worked entirely by electric engines.

The energy-absorbtion specifications for trains have gone up dramatically in the last 25 years. I remember a column in Modern Railways discussing a procurement requirement to absorb 3GJ in a frontal collision (I think that was early in this century, but I can't remember the exact date or context). That's a horrendous amount of energy: enough to vaporise a human body if it were all dumped into one person. It's too much to absorb in a cab assembly and forces the leading vehicle to be a DVT.

These are the closest transfers I can find that cover all three classes (HMRS LMS sheet only has 1st and 3rd, of course). They are SECR from the Maunsell-era period. The letter forms are about right but they are more yellow than gilt. I may use these and touch up the yellow with some gold ink.

Penlan, many thanks for all that. I had the shot of the carriage roof at Broad Street (although your scan is clearer than mine), but not the side view of the NLR equivalent. I knew about the roof boards and the side boards but not the end boards. The number on the end boards is a set number, presumably? My set will have different roof-boards reading "Willesden, Euston, Strand and Cannon Street" for my contrafactual railway.

I am building a train of LNWR "Mansion House" coaches, as used on the Outer Circle service, and I'm stuck on details of the livery. I know that they were vanished teak with the classes of compartments shown by large, gilt numbers, but I don't have a photo that shows the numbers clearly enough to select transfers. I'd particularly like to know how the numbers were shaded. Does anyone have information or good pictures?

Probably worth getting a buffer-height gauge. There's one in the Bedford range, sold by Eileen's.

Concerning Minks of V4 and V5, some details, paraphrased from Atkins et al., GWR Goods Wagons, 1998. V5 were introduced in 1902. They were 7'0" high inside and had DC1 brakes. In 1905, 200 taller vans were built as lot 476. These included two different body-heights. The first 178 were 8'0.5" tall inside and rated at 10 tons; the last 22 were 7'6.5" tall inside and rated at 9 tons. Both types were later assigned to diagram V4. The tall 10-ton V4 were altered "almost immediately after construction" to DC2 vacuum brakes with 8 shoes (i.e. clasp brakes). I suspect, but cannot confirm, that this rig has a fixed vacuum-cylinder and moving piston, as opposed to the Dean moving-cylinder arrangement. This matters slightly for appearance as the cylinders look different. V4 did not have shuttered, louvred vents in the ends. They got twin bonnet vents after grouping. Atkins et al. reproduce a photo confirming a V4 with clasp brakes, DC brake lever at right-hand end, bonnet vents (so after grouping) and the V hanger for the main brake-shaft centrally under the doors. The latter point is important, as slightly-earlier vans with clasp brakes, such as Y2 fruit vans and X1 meat vans, had offset V-hangers (vacuum cylinder centred under doors) and lever handbrakes. I assume, but have not proven, that the fitted V4s had 3'1" spoked wheels rather than 3'6" Mansell. Again, this is a change of practice from earlier, fitted vans. Coopercraft sold kits for V5, tall V4 and lower V4. The tall V4 has, correctly for pre-group, ends without vents, but not the clasp brakes; after-market parts are available to simulate the latter. The low V4 has incorrect ends with louvred vents (so my old model is all wrong, dammit). I don't know what they did to the V5.

Concerning the GWR ventilated van, bad news, I'm afraid. Although they were built unfitted with DCI brake-gear, very soon after building they were vacuum fitted for use in the express goods trains. Therefore, for almost any period when the van could have appeared it will not have brakes as in the model and will not have a swan's-neck lever either. This is from memory - I'll look up the detail in Atkins et al. this evening.

My Railmatch cans are marked 1407 for the matt and 1408 for the satin finish. Testors I have not used. I don't see why it should not work over enamel provided that the paint is properly cured.

Try a Railmatch spray-can for varnish. It's easy to apply, dries clearer than Humbrol, and is kind to transfers. You have a choice of matt, satin or gloss finish. To spray safely indoors, get yourself a cardboard box to catch the overspray, newspaper under the box to catch the over-overspray (spray-can paint really wants to be free) and a vapour mask so that you don't breath the aerosol left in the air. Spray the model, open the window and go down the pub for an hour while the aerosol clears. (Remember to take off the mask or the bar staff may refuse to serve you.) The one problem with the Railmatch cans (and other rattle cans from the model trade) is that the spray nozzles clog after some time. They can be detached from the cans and cleaned by soaking in white spirit.

The Ince Wagonworks book has reproductions of some of the spec. drawings, but not all the component drawings and not the wording of the standards. If there's something specific you wanted from a drawing I could look it up for you.

For ambient sound, I suggest just running a track on a music player placed on the floor under the layout. I don't see the need to build a sound system into the baseboard. If you player is some cheap old digital kit, then you can mix your ambient track digitally. You can get basic sound-mixing software for free, I think. Probably not much mixing is needed, but you would want to form your sounds into something that can be looped. By that, I mean fading the volume up from silent at the start of the track and down to silence at the end: this avoids an obtrusive glitch when the player restarts the track. The big problem is choosing which sounds to play. Are you playing the sounds that would carry from the environment visible on the layout? That would be noises that carry some distance, maybe 100 feet or more. Alternatively, are you playing the quiet sounds that come from close to the observer's position, away from the railway. You might find that if you take your smartphone and record an ultra-boring video while sat next to a river then you can rip out the audio track to use with the layout. No mixing needed, and nobody can say it's not prototypical.

Further up this thread, there's an assertion that one can't solder to dirt. I'd like to qualify that. You shouldn't solder to dirt, but you can, sort of, and that's where some of the beginner's problems come from. In a proper joint - a strong one that conducts electricity - the solder forms a thin layer of alloy with the metal on either side of the joint. If the surfaces are very dirty, then this alloy can't form. However, if the dirt is crusty enough then the solder can congeal around and between the dirt particles. This gives a weak joint, which does not conduct much. Usually, the joint falls apart immediately. Sometimes, if the universe wishes to mock you, it holds until the part is removed from the jig for cleaning and then gives up. Sometimes it lasts a lot longer. An important edge-case is where the joint is mechanically strong enough, but the dirt layer stops it conducting. This is the classic "dry" joint.

Really? I'd always understood that the originating system provided the wagon and the receiving system had to return that wagon promptly, were it not common user. Never heard of doing the other way around. If you have citations for that it would be grand.

Is this note passed directly between the LBSC and SECR or is it an RCH thing? I've never been clear on how far the RCH was involved in the day-to-day business.

Hmm. IIRC, the Cambrian used white and purple lights in its signals to avoid possible confusion with red and green lights on costal shipping. If that's accurate, maybe they also used odd colours for the signal arms?

I wonder if this relates to control of liability for damage? That might be tricky to sort out if the load is transhipped. E.g. I send my less-than-wagon-load of writing slates from Wales to Ashford, say, it is collected by the Cambrian, handed over to the GWR, who tranship it to build up a full wagon-load and later hand over to the SECR, who eventually deliver broken slates to the consignee. Who's at fault? I guess as customer I seek compensation from the Cambrian, but perhaps it gets delayed while the Cambrian argues blame with the other two. Alternatively, the service may be aimed at goods that are hard to replace in a timely way: e.g. any custom order of expensive stuff. The special conditions then would be to ensure that the load does not travel in a sheeted open (because sheets sometime leak and the risk of water damage is unacceptable, even if the railway pays for it). Excluding tranship is not fear of clumsy porters but to make sure that the load doesn't get moved to an open somewhere en route. Note that tranship inside the Cambrian network would be OK because the company could rule that loads under the special service had to go in vans. Tranship on other railways would be excluded. Finally, does anyone know if the Cambrian operated "road vans" to pick up part loads of premium goods?

Bear in mind that people were shorter in the first quarter of the 20th century. In particular, urban, working-class men tended to be shorter than middle-class men. It was noted during WW1 that the junior officers were often taller than the men they led. Therefore, one might predict the heads behind first-class windows to be higher up than those behind third-class lights.

No reason not to have a tandem turnout in a running line if it helps. Compact layouts at principal stations often have them. 3-throw turnouts (where the two sets of blades but agains each other) are rarer and not usually seen in running lines. PW engineers would not design a full-size layout with a tandem unless they were short of space, so you need a cover story for your layout to be plausible. That could be a site cramped by the landscape - e.g. hemmed in by steep hills, or by water ways, or by roads that can't easily be bridged. Alternatively, the original layout of the station might have used up all the spare space and then more sidings were added at a later date forcing the use of a tandem.

The traverser has two rails above rail height of the siding, to carry the flanged wheels and two outer ones matching the siding rail-height and carrying flangeless wheels. It neatly avoids having to cut the siding rails, building a pit for the traverser substructure, and having to make the traverser n+1 roads wide to serve n sidings. I expect to build a traverser on a restricted site and I'd quite like to model this kind. Does anybody know of any drawings? I expect to

Most 19th-century coaches had lower footboards level with the axleboxes. Most railways removed these in the early 20th century, certainly before 1940. Lower footboards were typically only kept below guard's compartments, and occasionally on coaches for light railways where there were low platforms. Do you know if your coach was still air-braked in your period? Could it have been converted to vacuum brake by the LNER? This would radically change the underframe equipment. I have some detail photos of GER coach underframes, taken last year at the East Anglian Railway Museum. These show coaches restored to roughly the condition of the early 20th century. I could dig these out and post them if they help.

I've never been sure about the unpainted interiors. I've seen a few references to early wagon being creosoted rather than painted. I speculate that this was done both inside and out, but customers started complaining about contamination of the load and orders went out not to treat the interiors. This custom continued, perhaps, after the switch to painted exteriors. Rotting of the floors of timber-carrying wagons, and of OCTs and their like, seems to have been a recognised problem. Some companies left gaps between the planks to improve drainage. That said, I've never heard that the floors were painted. Googling suggests that cattle actually like the taste of lead and will seek it out. Leaded paint on cattle wagons may have been recognized as a hazard quite early on. Wikipedia suggest that most of the serious research on lead toxicity happened in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s; the primary citation for lead poisoning of cattle seems to be a 1975 paper. It's possible that the effects of high doses of lead were known historically and the 20th-century research brought out the dangers of light doses, as in fumes from petrol. I suspect that the cattle wagons were not painted inside.

Re siting of AA batteries: remember that there had to be coordination between the guns and fighter command to avoid "friendly fire" and that was seriously difficult with 1940s communications and command structures. IIRC, 11 Group of Fighter Command had a "no-fly" zone in a belt south of London and the AA batteries in the belt could fire at any aircraft. I would expect that this was repeated around other cites. This, IMHO, makes it less likely to find single AA guns in rural locations. Re AA rockets: Churchill was extremely keen on these. Either he dreamed up the idea, or promoted its development (can't remember which) and would not let it go. The rockets appear frequently in his war memoirs as "unrotated projectiles".

I've been painting interior ironwork black. The logic is that it needs some paint to protect it from corrosion and black-leading was a standard finish for metalwork. I would expect all the ironwork to get painted when it was made and put into stock, possibly some time before fitting to the wagon. The external ironwork typically got painted over in body colour, but I would not expect the painters to do the internal ironwork. It would be extra work for no real gain. BTW, I sometimes use black ink in a drawing ("Rotring", but mine's a cheaper brand) pen to colour the internal ironwork. I find it easier to get a neat edge to the black with a pen than with a brush. This is particularly helpful when colouring the side knees, where I need to blacken the parts on three faces. The pen is also good for dotting in bolt heads on the inside of the wagon.