Nearholmer

I’ve decided that the EST&T line will go into the FY, rather than simply wander off the edge of the baseboard. Now, the arc of movement of the turntable FY means that this road will only be useable in one position, but TBH that doesn’t matter a jot, and I’m even toying with the slightly radical idea of making the front bit of the FY scenic, to portray EST&T loading hopper. Imagine scenery painted on this sheet of plywood, and the “girder” at the front having been cut down to maybe c10mm high, so the siding appears to be running in a shallow cutting: That would only leave room for two FY roads round the back, and in practice would confine the FY to being used as a sector-plate, rather than a turntable, but given that I’m only ever going to need to store two trains (EMU and sand train) off-scene, that doesn’t seem to matter. Maybe if I’d thought this all through in advance, instead of making half of it up as I go along, I wouldn’t have bothered with a turntable FY at all, because one turnout would do the necessary! Incidentally, I subscribed to the Seven Sisters Country Park newsfeed, so now I get pictures of the locale every day. Here is one showing CVLRPS volunteers clearing undergrowth to allow work to start on extending a siding.

Wise precaution. Years back, I was involved in designing and testing SCDs, jointly between NR and LU, with the final functional tests taking place just south of Willesden Junction on the DC Line (naturally!). The guy who was actually applying the devices was an Irishman from the local pway, and before every application he would look up at a statue of the Virgin, silhouetted against the night sky at the edge of Kensal Green Cemetery on the far side of the mainline, ask for her blessing, and cross himself. It was evident that he wasn’t placing much faith in engineers!

If you like that one, you might appreciate it’s bigger brother.

To prove that this thread isn’t just about interesting diversions, here are some baseboards undergoing primer-undercoating, with the stowed-away 0 gauge in the background. I’d run out of my favourite primer-undercoat (Ronseal 10-Year Exterior Wood), and bought some Sandtex stuff that happened to be in stock, thinking it was a near equivalent, only to discover that it is oil-based, and truly horrible. It does the job, but the brushing-on quality, and ‘build’ is far less, and it stinks the place out!

If it isn’t looked after properly, yes, which is why there were “bond testers”, chaps with “ductors” (devices to measure very low resistances) allocated to look after each area. They went round checking the integrity of the bonding, testing any bonds that looked questionable etc, then arranging any remedial work. The guys who looked after this area were based at HaywardsHeath IIRC.

Yes. The loop resistance is that of the conductor rail in one direction, plus the parallel sum of however many running rails can be bonded on the return (which aren’t grounded in a conductor rail system, BTW). Without going and unearthing lots of old paperwork, I can’t remember what the resistance figures are for 106lb/yd conductor rail, or 95lb/yd BH, or what the starting currents or no-volt relay settings (400V iirc) on the old trains were, but I know without checking that such a long, single-track section would be a challenge, even limiting to two cars. The other issue is providing short-circuit protection, so being able to circulate enough current through a fault at the remote end to trip the circuit breakers at the feed-in end. The breakers installed in the 1930s were the most elegant and ingenious contraptions imaginable, but their lowest settings were quite high compared with the sort of short-circuit currents that would be involved here, and when long single-end feeds were involved, protection got quite tricky. Later, devices that monitored current, then later still current and voltage, part-way down the section and signalled back to the substation were introduced, but I don’t think that was done until the 1960s, maybe even 1970s.

Thats with disc brakes!

Chalk is absolutely treacherous in winter, incredibly slippery, so descents are potentially quite dangerous. Having had a couple of “exciting” moments on the Dunstable Downs, I now won’t go on chalk in winter at all.

Mud up the back. It’s very clayey in places near where I live, and fitting mudguards just causes everything to jam solid with mud, whereas with no mudguards, it mostly self-clears, or can be poked clear with a handy stick. But, sometimes it all just turns into a giant mess:

Not only happy people, but happy bikes. Here’s mine sunbathing after thrash up to the top of the Downs.

Last time I drove back from visiting family, early December last year, the A27 was flooded at that point and multiple others, not deep flooding at that point, maybe three or four inches, but up to sill level in others. Traffic was being permitted on a single-file basis down the crown of the road. It would be super boring to go into more detail, but that trip took seven hours , including a half hour PNB, for 130 miles, and the previous few were similarly dire, so I have now sworn off driving it at all, and will use train, or train and bike if I’m on my own and weather is good, for all trips. I do not intend to build a small layout set during winter flooding, BTW, because I want the little plastic people to look happy.

I’ve got a couple of photos, very poor ones, that I took of D7018 sometime around then at Redhill, where it used to materialise fairly often on the freight from Reading. It lives at Minehead now, I think, but I seem to remember it spent a while stored at the old gasworks at Reading along with another loco (or am I getting mixed-up with D7029), then went to Didcot, after it was withdrawn from BR. PS: D7029 and D821 were the ones at the gasworks.

A lot less. Even the TfL journey planner, which sets a really low walking pace, says 1h32m to walk. I’d say an hour is more like it. TfL gives the train trip time as 21m, including a 4m allowance at each end that I think is “street to train”.

We had spring on Friday, and especially yesterday; today it is early February again, steady rain, so although I’ve just run a couple of miles errand on the bike, I wasn’t motivated to extend it.

I’m highly sympathetic to that line of argument, but despite arguing with Phil about the particulars of various crossings, I agree with him that LCs are a potential safety problem, and that when they are as close together as on this line, the signalling arrangements necessary begin to restrict the throughput of trains, in this case by pulling the speed ceiling down, so they aren’t by any means great things to have around.

Well, you’ve drawn a lot of red lines on aerial photos, and an entire team of designers at EWR did much the same, but at a far greater level of detail, to preliminary engineering design and costing, and the upshot of your red lines, or their work would be the same: lots of cost, and lots, and lots of construction time, in several instances in the teeth of very firm opposition. Which isn’t the way to get a project delivered. As I keep saying, my bet is that some of these flyovers will come back on the agenda once people get fed-up with sitting in their cars at level crossings. Some of the ones towards Bedford might also go, one at a time, because the number of new houses, and other things, planned in that area is huge, which may push road traffic levels over the brink for LCs. Incidentally, Ridgmont baffles me; I can’t see why the LC is now needed there at all, because there is road access out to the main road on either side of it already.

Of course it’s not SW London, but neither are several of the busy LCs in places where a flyover could be put in without massive intrusion, which is the key point, and why the flyover proposals created such opposition. The busy LCs aren’t in the green bits, they’re in the brown bits. Woburn Sands is possibly one of the more challenging, in that the road is plenty busy, and this is what is looks like: Fenny Stratford is a much less busy for through traffic, but gives access to several large builders merchants, so a lot of lorry movements, and the space for slopes up either side is very restricted (there’s a junction with the old A5 just off the bottom of the photo): Some of the others aren’t so challenging, and one, Bow Brickhill, could probably have been created already with a bit of forethought, because an area of land there is currently being developed as yet another warehouse estate, and a road realignment etc could probably have been terraformed into that, but there are reasons why EWR has backed-off from the earlier proposals: cost, time, and the opposition provoked by intrusion of big, tall structures in low-rise places. The service now proposed on this section is 3TPH in each direction, so even with a more modest line speed and very smart signaling the barriers will be shut for a fair proportion of each hour, so things won’t be painless!

SR power supply department used to use them for concrete troughs too, but ours were the ones with a centre door, rather than drop sides, and were hand unloaded. I spent many a night supervising such operations in the early 1980s, and have plenty of memories, good and bad, for instance a wagon that, as it was gradually emptied over multiple stops proved effectively not to have a floor - there were so many bits missing that it’s a miracle the load hadn’t tumbled down onto the track. Mind boggles at the mentality of whoever loaded it at Taunton.

Oddly enough, following the new A421 alignment probably wouldn’t have provoked anything like the same challenges, because of where it is, i.e. sweeping past the back of most established settlements. The road, which is very wide fence-to-fence, was built without a great deal of controversy. The thing about the railway is that it is right in the middle of several places

It isn’t a “fundamentally rural landscape”, as in no houses or anything else for large distances around though, is it? Look at each LC on the route in turn, and you will find that several of the really troublesome (as in busy road traffic) ones are in places where sticking a big flyover in would create immense intrusion, which is why the consultation yielded such negative feedback around those options. If you don’t know the areas well, come and have a proper look to understand the implications at places like Fenny Stratford and Woburn Sands. Tunnelling under the railway might work at some of them, but I have a feeling that the width needed for the above-below transition points at either end, so as to continue local access to places immediately adjacent to the railway, would created major difficulty in just the same way that over-bridges would. And, it would still cost a fortune and take ages. The FPs and bridleways could and should be transferred to bridges, although even a couple of those will get expensive because the lie of the land will make them awkward in terms of the approach ramps. Basically, it’s easy to think of things that could be done, and much harder to decide what should be done. It is a very tricky section indeed.

From a railway throughout perspective, possibly, but the reason this is so complex is that the railway runs through real places, with real people living in them, who don’t necessarily want whacking great bridges plonked in the middles of their town or villages, and have made that very clear indeed in every consultation so far. Met H is right about the emerging scope, which is driven by the combination of feedback from consultation, potential cost of all the civil engineering that was in some proposals, and likely timescale to deliver all that civils work. As I’ve said before, I think some bridges will come back on the agenda at some stage in the future, because however good the signalling can be made, a more frequent train service will cause huge road traffic jams at some of the LCs, which will gradually turn the balance of local residents from anti-bridge, to pro-bridge in a few places.

Yep, it exists alright, as a huge problem in the middle of the Oxford-Cambridge route. Working out how to upgrade it to meet all the competing needs, wants, wishes, and whims that are in play is a job possibly best given to the former staff of Bletchley Park.

If you’d be content with old-fashioned Hornby-style ones, a block of wood with printed paper overlaid, then a chap called Graham Lock supplies them. The email given in the HRCA spares directory is grhmlock@yahoo.co.u You can also get the wooden blocks, proper Hornsby shape and dimensions, I think from Bruce Palmer, vintagetoytrains@btinternet.com , using those and a PC with home printer if you have one, you could create something very ornate if you wanted.

A bit further on. I think this track-plan works for the purpose, and if I resist any temptation to stuff the scene with too many things, it should look spacious in what is a tiny area. Next operation will be “Primer-undercoat; grey; baseboards for the painting of”.

Isn’t that the form of words one uses to recycle an old promise, to make it sound like a new one? Like announcing to the family: “I will spend £50 paying the gas bill next month, supported from existing budgets!”, and expecting a round of applause. He’s either already committed ages ago to spend it, or is using some of the money not going towards the northern bit of HS2, I reckon.