Tom Burnham

Kent Archives have some very early registration records - up to about the early 1920s at least - as handwritten ledgers. Other county records offices may well have similar for their own areas

No, not that I saw. I think the owner had just picked up some items he liked the look of - there was also a 15 inch gauge Cagney 4-4-0 (built in America and retrieved from an amusement park in Peru I believe). The main feature was the extensive 2 ft gauge system and this was just a sideshow... Tom

This very fine large-scale model of a Caledonian 2-4-0 was in the museum area at the Richmond Light Railway (mid-Kent) when I went to their annual open day a couple of weeks ago.

The Sheerness branch, which was pretty busy in its middle years, was single track until it was doubled south of Swale Halt for electrification in 1959. It had a reasonable passenger service (including two boat trains each way daily) and a fair number of excursion trains. Apart from general goods and domestic coal, it served the naval dockyard at Sheerness and (from the early 1900s) several factories and a coal wharf at Queenborough and Ridham Dock. When it opened in 1860, most of the structures apart from the road/rail lifting bridge were built wide enough for double track, although it was nearly 100 years until advantage was taken of that.

There were plans of the LBSC van in an old MRC - late 1940s maybe.

Edited by Bryan Morgan. When I was young I really loved his "The End of the Line" and a few years ago I was able to pick up a second hand copy.

Unfortunately you won't have been able to see Terrier "Poplar" (aka Bodiam) working following damage to a connecting rod. :-(

I once saw a headline in the Aberdeen Press & Journal that referred to Stonehaven as "down south".

Is there much interest in pre-Revolutionary Chinese railways? The Chinese Eastern Railway circa 1912, with its combination of Imperial Russian and US practice would make an interesting prototype, but the current Chinese authorities might take exception?

Yes, particularly in terms of transporting goods for local industries and farmers. Steam traction engines and trailers were available for heavy loads but tended to damage the roads. They were expensive to run and the highway authority was liable to charge you for damage to the road if you were moving "extraordinary traffic" in the meaning of the Highways Act. And if a farm was more than two or three miles from a station, it was reckoned it needed to keep an extra carter, wagon and team of horses just for transport. This was all gone into in the debate before the Light Railways Act of 1896.

Indeed - as I understand it Victorian accountancy wasn't able to allocate costs and revenues to a particular line or service (and maybe not until the last 50 or 60 years). When the LCDR was discussing at a shareholders' meeting whether to take over the Sittingbourne to Sheerness branch, one of the shareholders said branch lines were usually spoken of as feeders, but in his view they were often suckers. Thus some people in Victorian times were dubious about the policy of expansion but generally didn't have the data to prove their case

Our shaded garden thermometer was showing 38.5 in semi-rural Kent yesterday afternoon. But some spectacular lightning last night, which wasn't forecast.

I think HFS was regarded as strict but fair by the longer serving staff. And generally helped out where a loyal employee had problems. Admittedly very paternalistic by modern standards, but that would have been regarded as the mark of a good employer in the early c20.

Thanks, DY444!

And some horses too. At least the blokes all kept their hats on.

The SECR had some ex LCDR 6 wheelers rebuilt with gangways for ticket issuing by the guard on the Sheppey Light Railway - these may be the ones that ended up on the IoW in SR days, converted to 4 wheelers.

The ex-Brighton lines in East Sussex used SE&CR Trio-C 3-coach sets (mostly with 'birdcage' lookouts) increasingly from the late 1920s. Ex-SE&CR locos also appeared. There were some M7 tanks used also, although they're said to have been unpopular with crews used to the H class. The Southern converted a lot of compartment carriages from all 3 constituents to electric units (details are complicated) and this had an effect on the carriages used on the remaining steam services, especially in Kent and Sussex. Also there were width restrictions on certain lines - Maunsell corridor carriages were built to 3 different profiles reflecting the restrictions on the pre- Grouping lines.

And I think there's a railway connection with the first photo, which looks like Hammersmith Terrace, childhood home of Colonel Holman Stephens, doyen of light railways.

I think dead-end branch termini were very much the exception in rural East Sussex away from the London suburbs and the coastal belt. Possibly because most secondary lines in that area were aimed at protecting "territory" rather than just serving a town bypassed by the main line. Brighton Kemp Town might give inspiration, with the line disappearing into a tunnel in the cliffs.

There seems to be a view that the Lord Nelsons were only moderately more powerful than the Maunsell King Arthurs in everyday working.

Thanks - when we are that way again we'll try to see the layout in operation - 4pm to 5pm Wednesday was the only time we were able to go there on this visit. I should say I was also impressed by the view of the Study Centre through the glass door.

Two more.

We were in Derby recently and visited the Museum of Making (used to be the Silk Mill). A couple of photos of the Kirtley Junction layout, 0 gauge, showing Midland Railway practice of the early 20th century. Evidently some work to finish reinstating it (no signals yet, for example) but it should be very impressive.

I believe Denmark built some main line diesels in the 1930s. My vague recollection is that they were generally boxy in layout, rather like the early US designs.

In other news, did it stay dry for the picnic on the village green? Ours was on the recreation ground on Saturday and it didn't rain until after it was over, although perishing cold