Tom Burnham

I expect 100 years ago people were tut-tutting about how young people nowadays didn't know what to do if a horse bolted, and it showed how common sense had gone out of the window...

I believe the SE&CR tried Kent coal and weren't impressed, either for locos or steamships. Not to say it was never used, but certainly not a first choice.

But where would that put it in that GER statistical return?

I wonder if agricultural limestone was classified with "manure"? Stone for roadmaking would have been delivered to various locations to the order of the highways authority. Individual lots might not have been very large, so possibly smaller wagons would have been used sometimes (3 or 5 plank).

When I was at the Spa Valley earlier this year, work on "Sutton" (32650 etc.) seemed to be going ahead, so maybe one of these years!

The Kent & East Sussex had a couple of internal use cattle trucks which saw little use after the first years. There was the occasional truck with cattle or sheep to or from Tonbridge or Ashford markets. However, the annual Biddenden Fair could result in 40 of 50 cattle trucks being handled on a single day. The one day of the year when the 080T Hecate was really useful!

Yes, that was quite a significant test. I think it was also a question of not changing all the insulators - the 25 kV insulators had noticeably more "rings" than the lower voltage ones - from vague 50 year old memories more like 4 as opposed to 1 or 2. There are probably OHLE experts around who will give chapter and verse.

Indeed they did - SE&CR special traffic notices referred to "officers' chargers" - horses were good enough for the other ranks.

And are any still in runnable condition? "Cambria" was torched by vandals at Robertsbridge some years ago.

Am I right in thinking that on the original Festiniog line, gradients were slightly steeper on curves, to compensate for the additional friction with gravity trains, the opposite of usual practice when laying out locomotive worked railways?

As I understand it, most of the sections that were originally electrified at 1.5 kV DC were converted to 6.25 kV AC (rather than 25 kV) as the clearances and insulators were the same.

And the same thing happened with a FTSE 100 company I worked for in the 1980s. Buy any equipment you need as long as it's invoiced by Friday...

I'm no sort of expert, but I wonder if the exponentially increasing amount of electronics and similar gadgetery on "modern" rolling stock (say post-Mk IIA) will be difficult to keep working reliably, given that it'll be sitting around in a damp siding much of the winter and spares will be difficult to source?

I recall reading a complaint in a Gravesend local paper circa 1912 about wagons of manure being left on the through road between platforms at Gravesend Central during the morning peak .. I'm not familiar with the RCH rates classification, but as I understand it the term "manure" was often used to cover also what would now be referred to as fertiliser, so could include imported guano, superphosphate and the like as well as horse manure. So some of the traffic listed under "manure" might actually have been fertiliser in sacks

But perhaps the layout and typical train length hadn't changed much?

This photo recently appeared on the Norfolk Orbital Railway Facebook page, captioned "A freight passing Melton Constable West signal box, about to travel under the Hindolveston Road bridge and into the station yard. The train is travelling in from the Fakenham direction, the Holt section can be seen at the top of the picture. Photographer and year unknown." Not so many photos of goods trains around, so may be of interest in relation to recent discussions on the WNR's goods services. I guess post-WW1.

One of the sources I looked at certainly suggested he was quite the social climber and a regular attender at titled ladies' parties. The LFB had a fire boat named the Massey Shaw which saw a lot of use during the Blitz and was the subject of a Salvage Squad programme some years ago. I expect someone will know where it is now.

There was the Portmadoc, Beddgelert and South Snowdon Railway, which was intended to be electrified, and in fact several locomotives were built by Bruce Peebles & Co (a Ganz licensee) but never delivered. I believe some of those behind the scheme were also involved with (hydro) electricity supply in North Wales and with the Dolgarrog aluminium smelter.

There were a couple of articles on the Potts in the Rly Mag around that period by T R Perkins, as I recall, as well as a number of shorter observations. The line attracted a certain amount of interest around that period as abandoned railways were not at all common and there had been some interest in an earlier revival scheme (as Shropshire Railways). I came across the attached article in a 1909 local paper which is a bit of a period piece. potteries-walk-1909.docx

Nearly 30 years ago I was reading the John Betjeman letters and found one referring to a visit he'd made in 1944 to his friend George Barnes, who lived in a farmhouse named "Prawls", between Wittersham and Stone-in-Oxney. He wrote "The Kent and East Sussex was rather cold but very beautiful." Betjeman didn't get round to recording his journey in verse, so I thought I'd do it for him: Shivering in a first-class carriage Of the eleven twenty train Sits JB, on faded moquette, On his way to town again. Church bells ring from great St Mildred’s, (Rebuilt in eighteen sixty-four), Then the ancient engine whistles, The green flag’s waved and shut the door. Faded signs pass by the window, Suttons Seeds and Eiffel Tower. As the train sets off for Headcorn He hears the clock strike the half-hour, And to him the church bell calls, Come back again to us at ‘Prawls.’

From 'Summoned by Bells': Great was our joy, Ronald Hughes Wright's and mine, To travel by the Underground all day Between the rush hours, so that very soon There was no station, north to Finsbury Park, To Barking eastwards, Clapham Common south, No temporary platform in the west Among the Actons and the Ealings, where We had not once alighted. Metroland Beckoned us out to lanes in beechy Bucks - Goldschmidt and Howland (in a wooden hut Beside the station): 'Most attractive sites Ripe for development '; Charrington's for coal; And not far off the neo-Tudor shops. We knew the different railways by their smells. The City and South reeked like a changing-room; It's orange engines and old rolling-stock, It's narrow platforms, undulating tracks, Seemed even then historic. Next in age, The Central London, with its cut- glass shades On draughty stations, had an ozone smell - Not seaweed-scented ozone from the sea But something chemical from Birmingham.

Yes, if you have to have footnotes to explain the allusions it rather destroys the effect. The same may go for the contemporary references in Gilbert and Sullivan (well, Gilbert really). We recently went to the ENO Iolanthe where Captain Shaw is mentioned as unable to quench the fire of passion in the Queen of the Fairies. Massey Shaw was the first head of the London Fire Brigade and would have been familiar to the middle class audiences of the period, as I believe he was quite publicity conscious. The ENO got over it by having someone dressed as a fireman appear at the start, introducing himself as Captain Shaw and he also came on with a hose whenever fairy magic created flames.

North Kent still had coal arriving by coastal shipping at small ports like Whitstable and distributed from there by rail in the early 1900s. You'd think that gasworks would be near the railway as far as possible, but that wasn't always the case. Staplehurst (pop around 1200 pre WW1 I believe) had a mid-Victorian gasworks nearly a mile from the station, even though the station was on the edge of the village and a site could have been found. Not a question of minimising the length of gas mains, either, as they'd have gone quite close to the station whereas the actual works site was some way beyond the last house on that side.

We visited friends at Longhoughton earlier this year and rode on the Aln Valley Railway, which is making good progress from a modest start. They are cut off from the original Alnwick station by the A1 bypass, so the terminus and base of operations is on the Lionheart industrial estate. At Alnmouth, the original bay platform is no more as a result of track realignment, electrification and resignalling, but they have some thoughts on what to do about that. As a Southerner, I'd endorse the beauty of the Northumberland landscape and also praise many of the smaller towns. Alnwick can get quite busy with all the visitors to the Castle gardens. I'd recommend Corbridge, which has an excellent independent bookshop in an old chapel, as well as other non-chain shops.

Hmm, some detailed research needed on this. At a first glance, there was a Bill deposited in 1860 for a West Midland, Shrewsbury and Coast of Wales Railway which aimed to build a line from Portmadoc to Shrewsbury with branches to Corwen and Porth-y-Waen, with connections to many other railways, existing and proposed. The idea was to join the Welshpool line near Red Hill and run into the joint station at Shrewsbury. There was perhaps a hope that the project would be taken over or at least worked by the West Midland Railway. This Bill didn't succeed for whatever reason. A number of Acts were obtained in the early 1860s for a (more modestly titled) West Shropshire Mineral Railway which seem to have been more or less limited to the line as actually built. The company was renamed Shrewsbury and North Wales Railway, and then Potteries was added. They would have needed to get powers to use Shrewsbury joint station for the line to have been any use as a through route, which was always strongly opposed by the owning companies.