4069
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Posts posted by 4069
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I was recently given the box set of the BBC's first (Ian Carmichael) version of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories. In 'Murder Must Advertise', made in 1973, one of the characters meets his end by being pushed in front of a train at South Kensington. The station is a thinly disguised Horsted Keynes. The train, which is on screen for less than two seconds, is an extraordinarily convincing substitute for Metropolitan 1913 stock, which would be absolutely right given the story is set in around 1928:
It's actually the Bluebell's LBSCR Directors' saloon, but doesn't it make a splendid Underground train!
Stuart J
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Cant rail? On an open wagon?
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Very nice, but Duchess of Atholl can't have been at Shrewsbury in 1935- it wasn't built until 1938!
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I'm pretty sure the signal in 15 is GW/WR- the finial has been cropped off the photo, but all the other elements of the signal are standard products of Reading works.
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Handrails and the associated knobs are a very noticeable improvement in the last 20 years on both Hornby and Bachmann. The others have not all followed- the Rapido Stirling single is very much spoiled by overscale handrail fittings, in my view.
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That bracket doesn't look remotely GWR.
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Guildford, 1981. A particularly apt poster:
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It looks as though the gantry originally spanned three or four tracks, but by the time of the photograph the additional line on the up side had been taken out- see here
The post on the left could have been for a signal applying to that line.
Although the SRS diagram is dated 1945, the interlocking changed quite soon afterwards as a result of the accident described here (sorry about the poor quality of the report printing - a wartime economy measure). To try and make sure that if a train left the terminus against a signal at danger, it would be routed onto the up line rather than into head-on collision with an arriving train, the Southern rearranged the way the pointwork in the station throat was controlled. The technique became known as "Caterham locking", and is still sometimes referred to as such today- see here (paragraph 11) for how it didn't quite work as planned at Bognor Regis in 2008.
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11 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:
The gantry itself seems very strange - it looks like there are two poles ahead of the gantry on the up and down lines, then the main arch whose horizontal bar extends wider than the legs, and then yet another vertical leg on the far left. None of that makes much sense to me, any advice would be gladly appreciated.
I think what you are seeing is stay-poles for bracing the gantry, one either side on both sides of the line. The whole thing is freshly painted, and the stay-pole on the right of the line, this side of the gantry, is almost hidden from view by the end of a building.
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Oxford University Railway Society, actually- but presumably you all knew that.
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In print, "Samuel Telford Dutton" by Edward Dorricott, pub. Signalling Record Society, page 96.
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3 hours ago, Wingman Mothergoose said:
Yes I'm aware of that, but I was using it as an example.
Would have been easy enough I suppose for London Transport to raise the track a long time ago but they chose not to.
That line isn't owned by London Transport/London Underground, it's a part of the main line system which LT trains run over. Those platforms are also used by Euston - Watford services, which is why the platforms remain high. There are 'compromise height' platforms on Underground lines which are used by both Tube and Surface stock, such as Rayners Lane - Uxbridge (Metropolitan and Piccadilly).
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I'll stick my neck out and say no, such a thing would not be prototypical. Intermediate sidings on single lines existed, but they were there to serve sources of traffic: factories, wharves, military camps and depots. Refuge facilities would always be, or be associated with, a passing loop, for the signalling and operating reasons that others have mentioned. There were, on the GWR, some crossing loops not at stations (Leigh Bridge and Kentford on the Minehead branch, for instance), but those facilities were provided to enable extra passenger traffic, rather than freight. But hey, rule 1 applies.
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2 hours ago, Tony Wright said:
That signal would look so much better if the white stripe were just a little further towards the post. It's a tiny thing, but the proportions of a signal arm can be made or marred by the position of the stripe- it's a bit like the 'face' of a loco, which looks wrong if the hinge straps are not in exactly the right place. From the end of the arm, there should be 12" of red, then an 8" wide white stripe.
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Another Zenith EM user here. 1/60 at f1.8, nine o'clock on a wet January morning in 1982. It shouldn't have worked, but...
We thought it would be the last time we would see a Deltic on the main line. Hard to believe it is getting on for forty years ago!
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4 hours ago, Titanius Anglesmith said:
In the example below lets assume the FPL lever 3 stands out when locked
Some helpful replies here, but let's clear one thing up: when it says on a (usually Southern) box diagram that FPLs stand "out", it means that the FPL is unlocked (ie out) when its lever is normal (ie standing) in the frame. The alternative is that the FPL stands normally "in", ie it is locked when the lever is normal. So "stands out when locked" is not a phrase a signal engineer would recognise.
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Since the stone shades were made by (basically) mixing white lead with iron oxide, a pinkish tinge is surely fundamental?
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10 hours ago, NCB said:
One thing has always puzzled me. I have a copy of Model Railway News, from the late 50s, which has a letter from Roye England, no less, asking if anybody has memories of the colours GWR stations were painted in the 1930s. At the time there seemed to be an assumption amongst modellers that the GWR used chocolate and cream. As far as I recall (I haven't the copy to hand) England said that on examining some faded paintwork he was wondering if it was something else. The puzzling bit is that as one renowned for observation he couldn't with confidence remember.
Nigel
That prompted me to look up Roye's memoirs ("In Search of a Dream"), and in 1958 he records a visit to south Devon, and finding Yelverton station "still in Great Western colouring that I thought I should never see again". He goes on "Although there were stations in Devon still in the 'light and dark stone' of the GWR, this tended usually to be somewhat faded and I was anxious to get a colour photograph of a really fresh, 'live' example. To my joy, I found it on a tiny single building at Marytavy". The picture he took then was subsequently used as a colour reference for Pendon, which has models of Yelverton and Ivybridge station buildings.
Stuart J
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Didcot, May 2010. Just a favourite picture- no special reason, but the combination of blue sky, a clean locomotive and a tidy shed just gels.
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Inspiration comes in many ways- here's a press cutting unearthed during a lockdown clearout session, from the Daily Telegraph of 23 April 1973. Easter, Central Hall, one of the first trips I was allowed to make on my own- and the following morning my parents got proof that I was really there! I am the boy bending down to look closely at bottom left, and I remember being awestruck at seeing my childhood heroes in the flesh, and in the metal/plastic. Does anyone else recognise themselves, or indeed recall gaining inspiration from this layout?
Stuart J
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By remarkable good fortune, I can narrow down that time window even further. This is a detail from a PJ Garland/Roger Carpenter print dated 23 April 1962 (Easter Monday), in which the down main junction signal is clearly in undercoat, with a light coloured patch of recently disturbed ballast around its base. So it has been renewed since you were there on Saturday 7 April, just over two weeks before!
On your point about a possible change in working arrangements in 1958, when the frame in North box was replaced in July 1958, the changes to the outdoor signals were small, but did include adding calling-on arms below the up starting signals reading onto the platform line. This may have been accompanied by a change in the signal box instructions/practice relating to running round trains, but I don't know for sure.
Stuart J
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23 hours ago, jointline said:
Yes, I find it a bit confusing. I took the first picture attached on 7th April 1962 showing the up starter/junction signal. However the Middleton Press book has a picture taken on 20th May 1962, showing a lower quadrant replacement (copyright etc with Middleton Press, and acknowledged). Perhaps this was the actual window of time in which it was replaced? This picture shows the home for the down bay still as upper quadrant, so that may have been the last one at Risborough.
I'm fascinated by this. Your picture shows the north box down main homes, still upper quadrants. The Middleton press picture of the replacement looks as though the signal structure is still in undercoat, so it could well be brand new. It was certainly painted black and silver-grey later on. The weathering on the water column is identical in the two pictures, which supports the dates quoted. Up to now I had been under the impression that signal was replaced in 1958, but that's evidently not the case.
When you refer to the home for the down bay, do you mean the splitting starting signal visible between the loco and the signal box? I agree I have never seen a picture of it as an LQ.
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2 hours ago, jointline said:
Just another quick note about Risborough; the track diagram in R A Cooke's Section 26 (page 26/4) omits the line between the down bay and the down relief, which is a strange omission.
That error was corrected in Cooke's supplement number 3 of 1977. The latest (1992) edition of Cooke section 26 has Risborough on page 26/5, and the connection from the down bay to down platform line (not relief) is shown, with a note that it was taken out of use on 7.2.1964
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Re-Opening the Fawley Branch to passenger traffic.
in UK Prototype Discussions (not questions!)
Posted
Gate wheels are interlocked with the signalling, and when gates are replaced by barriers they are also interlocked with the protecting signals. At Moreton-on-Lugg the signaller replaced the signal to danger immediately in front of the approaching train, and then raised the barriers. The missing element was any form of approach locking which would have prevented the barriers being raised with a train closely approaching. It wasn't WR practice to provide this at the time the crossing was converted to barriers in 1975, and it was never included in any subsequent upgrading works.