Edwardian

Excellent looking build of a very good subject.

Dear GCHQ Glad to learn that tax payers' money is being put to such good use. William Martley

Yes, thank you very much. I like Radials, but now I have a better idea of what else they can and can't be.

Royal Army Service Corps Deptford Special Reserve Depot?

That is a really great start, and I am sure will be a very impressive model on completion. I look forward to seeing it progress.

Bonjour Camille, Should I suffer a hernia from shifting gym equipment, I'll know who to go to for a truss. We are a hopeless bunch. And I am very much to blame. What with Kevin's négociations domestique, and my gym equipment invading Washbourne, and the Bournemouth Express crashing into Mikkel's Battersea, we demonstrate our collective ability to cause any topic to 'go Castle Aching' and digress, diverge and meander! Sir Daniel Gooch

Which scheme I now want to pinch and execute in 4mm! Very good plan, can already picture it. The warehouses modelled by you would be a sight worth seeing. Go on, you know you want to! Sir Vincent Raven

Apropos the late 1880s, there is the docks and grime of Sherlock Holmes's London ("never travel east of Aldgate without a loaded revolver"), but equally splendid is the contemporary comic muse. The book, The Wrong Box, co-authored by Robert Louis Stevenson, would you believe, is a firm favourite of mine. For me The Wrong Box (1889) forms a Late Nineteenth Century comic novel trinity with the contemporary Three Men in a Boat (1889) and Diary of a Nobody (serial 1888–89, novel 1892). Essential pre-Grouping reading! Aside from its other virtues, the novel centres on a Tontine, which were real, if macabre, schemes that had a certain popularity in the Nineteenth Century. Which student of the law relating to specific performance could forget the case of Ryan v. Mutual Tontine Association [1893] 1 Ch 116? The film (1966), is a fairly free adaptation, but great fun. The estranged brothers are played by Sir John Mills and Sir Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine and Nanette Newman are romantic leads, that's Pete and Dud you can see streaking past the wrecked carriages, Peter Sellers puts in a cameo as Dr Pratt (the "venal doctor" character does not actually appear in the book), and John Le Mesurier, Irene Handl and Tony Hancock also pop up! The soundtrack by John Barry is well worth a listen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvrvcEmnRms). The full film is currently up on Youtube. John Behrens Adamson

Rather more on point than the Bournemouth Express. John Audley Frederick Aspinall

Agree with both you and Alan. The chassis will be a valuable resource. I have hopes of a round-top fire-box Dean Goods conversion using the Oxford model, but, for a Belpaire, I'd go for the Mainline body over Oxford's every time. There must be a number of pre-Group designs with near-enough this wheel size and centres, and I am grateful to learn that Ramsbottom types are among them.

To top it all, had to tell the Bl**dy Woman that she got a 'Funny' post rating! Anyway, you married chaps will know that it is by myriad subtle signs, deniable at need, but, nevertheless, understood as clear, implacable and determined, that a chap knows the decision he is expected to take. Hence, yes, I did, indeed, volunteer to purchase said equipment and install it in the railway room, as opposed to purchasing insulation and timber, and installing that. Archibald Sturrock

Yes, there was a great boat yard scene in the first film. In the second there was a handsome 4-4-0 and a string of well-appointed corridor clerestories for the 'South England Railway's train to Brighton, as if the SER or LBSC ever had coaches of this type and standard in 1890! The Directors of these companies would have wept at the expense! More like the pre-1914 ECJS Flying Scotsman! Corridor trains are favoured for narrative purposes, as people can move around trains. Film-makers tend to assume corridor trains occurred were earlier and more widespread than was the case. The Wrong Box (1890s) film adaptation has some wonderful LSW corridor coaches on the ill-fated Bournemouth express!

Washbourne infiltrated. Apologies. There has been a security breach. Henceforth, and until such time as I can be confident that the 'heat is off' and the Memsahib is back in Horse-Heaven, where she belongs, I will end each post with the name of a Pre-Group CME, so you know it's me. Massey Bromley

Thank you very much, Fat Lieutenant, for the kind words. Apologies. There has been a security breach. Henceforth, and until such time as I can be confident that the 'heat is off' and the Memsahib is back in Horse-Heaven, where she belongs, I will end each post with the name of a Pre-Group CME, so you know it's me. Massey Bromley

Apologies. There has been a security breach. Henceforth, and until such time as I can be confident that the 'heat is off' and the Memsahib is back in Horse-Heaven, where she belongs, I will end each post with the name of a Pre-Group CME, so you know it's me. Massey Bromley

Ha. This here is whom Edwardian apparently refers to as the Memsahib. Please note that it is Edwardian's piece of gym equipment. He put it there. You should also note that we have several outbuildings, none of which apparently contain anything other than Edwardian's 'stuff'. It seems to occupy every nook and cranny of this house. B*gger

This has already happened to me! I have not even prepared the room or started on baseboards/frames for CA, and yet the promised workshop railway room now plays host to an item of gym equipment! My response, in due course, will be to build a second set of tracks, to be mounted above Castle Aching, positioned at the correct viewing height for anyone using said gym equipment. It would be a very simple watching-the-trains-go-by affair, upon which I am minded to place minimal scenery and a simple platform and shelter, which I will call Tread Mill Halt.

Fascinating. I agree with your conclusions; happily the map and the photograph are both more or less orientated north-south. I imagine that the line from the pumping station to the river bank in the 1875 map must have been in order to bring coal. No doubt horse worked. The 1915 map shows the link with the GW yard, and, if I relate it to the (frustratingly small) photograph, I see that the photographer is looking, more or less, north. So, behind the GW yard, on the extreme left we see the large reservoir, with the spit of land dividing the two pale areas of water clearly visible. This, as you say, is the site of the future power station. Next, to the left we have the rather domestic structure to the south of where the small reservoir should be on the map. This I take to be the foreman's house. This may be an underground or covered reservoir - no water is seen here in the photograph. The centre of the composition is an end-on view of the pumping station main complex. Next to it, on the right, is a chimney, corresponding to the square marked "Chy" on the 1915 map. Thus, we know, that the railway spur runs right to left just behind this chimney before heading straight away from the camera towards the shore, and is it the parallel tracks we can see running between the main complex and the chimney, receding into the distance? It is also interesting to note from the 1915 map that the various engineering works to the east of the pumping station seem to have their own, independent, short railway spurs leading from the shore, which, like the pumping station spur in 1875, must be manually or horse worked and have no connection with the railway system.

Tell us more. ... with pictures (If Mikkel does not mind)

Sorry, missed this - so, over the reservoir

I think the power station was built to the north/east of the pumping station. Someone more familiar with the site might better be able to orientate you. Mikkel has chosen the only bare, featureless place in London

Ah,

Ah

Or, placing children out of the way of electronics.

Ah,