Nearholmer

Page 16 of this gets into soup:

Jam, or tinned fruit pie filling, the latter being a very “period” thing, and either would draw upon local produce. Baxter’s (iirc) had a soup factory in Kent that sent stuff out by rail into the 1970s, possibly even 1980s. PS: To get right on theme for the train spotting community, how about it makes Lyon’s Fruit Pies? Somewhere, there must have been a factory supplying about a zillion a week to Travellers Fayre.

Cam Prysor has an obscure, but important, place in model railway history, because back c1938, when a model railway was all track, signals, and stations, often lots of each crammed into a small space, and no scenery, someone (under a pen name) wrote a very far-sighted article in MRN or MRC (I’d have to ferret it out to check which), proposing a room-sized, fully scenic layout in 4mm/ft scale, featuring this simple location, and a lot of damp mountains. The proposal was to have only a couple of trains for the layout, modelled in detail. It was an utterly revolutionary concept, decades ahead of its time, the sort of thing that if built now would be straight into MRJ. This was pre-Madder Valley, and I think before news of the Gorre & Daphetid reached these shores. I only hope that someone picked-up the baton and built it.

Does anyone now exactly when steam did finish on services from Calais, Boulogne, and Dieppe?

Half way there: where in the photo is the shed? At the same time as the Listers, they also had a plate-frame MR, which I was always impressed by as a kid when we went fishing there, because it was a “convertible”, in that they used to unbolt and remove the cab when the weather was nice. They also had a habit of driving locos about off the track, especially the smaller of the later BEVs; if they wanted to take a short cut with a loco, they would nudge it to one side and set off across open ground.

SR one peeking into view at the left. I think this is an earlier design than the flat roofed hut at Groombridge, but ‘Southern Nouveau’ would tell for sure. It had a door in one end, facing the ‘box steps, I don't remember any widows, and iirc there was a bench down one side, and drum stand on the other, and a big sign on the outside of the door warning ‘no naked lights’, An incidental thing I’ve just noticed is that there is a loco shed in this picture. I offer a prize of a photo of a five pound note to the first person to identify it.

I have a feeling that, like milled peat, it can self-ignite as it decomposes in the presence of the right amount of moisture, at the right temperature, too.

Sports bodies will define “sports” to be what they fancy them to be. Dictionaries will define “sports” in accordance with common usage, allowing a bit of latitude for change over time. Historians and etymologists (entomologists too, if butterfly catching counts) will have things to say about how we got from one meaning to another, the social settings, and a heap of other stuff. Me, you, our former PE teachers, and a bloke at the bus-stop will all have opinions. To paraphrase Humpty Dumpty: sport means what I say it means.

Funny lot PE teachers; some strange ideas.

Slightly off-piste, but: In the early days of railways, many termini, including some quite small ones, were arranged to have an “arrival side” and a “departure side”, and such point-work as there was (a lot of shunting of trains was by turntable in the very earliest days) was arranged so that only arrivals could arrive on the arrival side, and departures depart from the departure side, a feature that was especially important before facing point locks were invented>reliable>mandated. Such termini often had carriage sidings between the arrival and departure roads. Some stations hung onto the basics of this layout for a surprisingly long time, even though it was inefficient in space and shunting terms. I think Euston was one that did for long-distance trains, for instance, probably because nearly all main-line trains went to and from the carriage sheds/sidings between turns. Departure-only platforms sometimes also existed to deal with one-way traffic like newspapers, where the empty vans were propelled in from nearby sidings.

Are these the ex-LSWR coaches that have been discussed in respect to the IoW? Or, are they GER ones?

There always seemed to be a cultural divide among enthusiasts in the early 70s: those from the southern regarded DMMUs and DHMUs as utterly uninteresting, almost beneath contempt, and certainly not worth the bother of learning class-designations, spotting features etc; those from elsewhere were similarly disposed towards EMUs, they just didn’t “get” them.

Oddly enough, that would complete the change of meaning that has been going on since the middle-ages, because hunting with a primarily pleasure focus was top of the list of sports back then, certainly among the well-off.

We just have to live with the fact that the meaning of the word has changed, narrowed greatly, over time, and that things which acquired the label “sport” some time ago, while the meaning was much broader, and have kept that label, now seem incorrectly labelled.

Nay, Sir! At least, not for the amounts in question here. Try “Al’s Hobbies” at Wolverton. He specialises in materials for model boat and ‘plane makers, and his prices for plywood are very good indeed. Multiple thicknesses, several board sizes, and the best quality he can source (be prepared for a very long chat about how the Russian invasion of Ukraine has affected quality!).

What happened to good old plywood? I love the stuff.

As in hairdressing?

Sport as a word comes from ‘disport’, which meant a pastime or entertainment in a broad sense, and that in turn came from ‘desporter’, meaning to take pleasure. Not necessarily competitive, and not necessarily entailing getting puffed-out. So, I’d say that ‘sport’ covers a whole lot of things, but not coarse fishing, because that’s as dull as staring at ditchwater, and therefore a penance, rather than a pleasure.

Looking at old pictures of Outwell Basin, the only taller trees seem to be at the edge of the churchyard, and even they are below the height of the tower.

I’m sure I cycled right by it several times when I used to volunteer at the KESR and commute to Rolvenden by a circuitous route that went past Hawkhurst station.

Not good at all for the confidence thing. They’ve been pushing the £1 fares hard for the half-term week, and I can imagine people having taken advantage of the lovely weather today to go on local outings - until a family commitment arose at the last minute, I was intending to do so myself, by taking the train to Bedford then cycling over to Sandy Heath.

I love all this Wealdenry, being a native of the district. You’ve really captured the essence in that small space. Pattenden is a fairly common name in the area; is your version an ancient form of it?

Given the the fairly straight, and open lower-trunks, I think they’re either beech or elm, and since I suspect that is Elm Road, I’d wager the latter.

I met an impressively big deer while cycling from Cambridge to Ely by way of Wicken Fen. It looked pretty “fenny” round there to me, but it might have ranged out from Thetford Forest, I suppose.

It was frequently more or less completely deserted too. Brimming with atmosphere, especially when it got dark, but not exactly brimming with trains, passengers of staff.