The Johnster

Most interesting and an illuminating comment, thanks Deeps. I’m assuming that the reactor, once commissioned, runs more or less continually until it is decommissioned at the end of the boat’s service, and supplies all the electrical needs of the boat once it is at sea, and that the backup diesel powerplant drives a generator in the same way as on a loco of it is ever needed, but surely that would compromise the boat’s ability to stay submerged and quiet (don’t answer if any of this skirts the boundaries of Official Secrets!)?

Friend of mine, Tina, an inveterate stoner and as usual high as a kite on this occasion, was a passenger in my car on a drive home from a band jolly in Cornwall. The car had got mucky over the weekend and I took it through the car-wash at Exeter services when we got to the M5. Watching her spliff-induced reaction to the experience (she was a car-wash virgin) was, well, wonderful. Like, woah, dude, amazing…

It is, beyond doubt, the oil that makes the Polish language run smoothly…

It does on the face of things seem strange that a power unit so universally unsuccessful in locomotives should have had such a good reputation in submarines. After all, the last thing you want in a submarine is an unreliable power plant! The difference, aside from the constant throttle and load changes of railway work compared to the hours of constant revs and load at sea, is of course the ERAs. And, possibly, the culture of the Royal Navy, in which officers expected performance from the men, and the men strove to provide it. It may be that the Crossleys were rubbish in the submarines, but that in order to have a quiet life, the ERAs coped without complaint, so the officers were not ever fully aware of any significant problem. They therefore reported up the line that the power plants in the submarines were performing perfectly and can we have some more like this, please... Rum, , and the lash.

That would make complete sense, and be in line with the formation of the Red Dragon at this time. IIRC this train also got mk1 catering stock in 1958.

Cwrfa sounds a bit more Welsh, but it is established as 'Dimbath no.1 Pit' (see what I did there, called into imaginary but necessary existence a 'Dimbath no.2 Pit) and nameboards have been printed. Note the pit manager's name and phone number. Kurwa!!! It is a superbly explosive and expressive expletive, and I have come to use it a lot.

The fireman would be expected to drive the train to the next open signal box, at reduced speed if he is not passed for driving but even inexperienced men would have spent time driving under the tuition of their drivers, where he would report the incident. The priority would be to stop traffic and search the line at reduced speed for a man who may be injured and could be saved. The next stage depends on the location, so let's assume we are out in the country somewhere. The now driverless train must be provided with a driver, or, if the fireman is passed and signs the road, a new fireman. Is there a goods that can be put in a siding or a loop and the crew commandeered to take the train on? If not, a crew must be sent out to the location to relieve the fireman with a fresh driver or provide him with a fireman if he is qualified to drive the train. Exingencies of the service prioritise such a move, which might be on a train passing in that direction or, in extreme cases, by taxi. If it's a passenger train, there may be crew travelling home on the cushions that would be available, or even off-duty men volunteering their services. Once the initial report of the incident is made, Control will be informed, and it is they who will make whatever arrangements are necessary to replace the missing driver with a man who is passed for the job and has the requisite route knowledge. In steam days traction knowledge was not an issue, as all steam locos were similar enough to each other to enable any driver to take any of them on at any time without prior notice (which sometimes didn't work out as well as everybody thought it should), but diesel and electric traction is more complex and a man who signs the traction as well as the route is needed or a traction pilot found. In the case of MAS signalling, the train will be driven to the next signal, where there will be a telephone to the panel signal box. At that point the procedure becomes very similar to the above, but instructions are relayed by telephone. One of Prof. Tuplin's novellas about the Great Central has a tale in which a driver leaves the footplate of a loco on an up winter evening express from Leicester to climb around the tender with the intention of perving on a young couple who had installed themselves in the leading compartment of the train and were clearly going to play 'beast with two backs'. He instructs the young fireman to leave the controls as he has set them and blow the whistle to attract his attention approaching Rugby, where the train was booked to stop. It was more than a fireman's job was worth in those days to question your driver, and the fireman carried out the driver's instructions. Upon blowing the whistle approaching Rugby on time, and finding that no driver returned to the footplate, he shut off steam, put the loco in mid-gear, and braked to a standstill at Rugby. No sign of the driver, who by now had been missing for some time. Of course, it had to be reported immediately, and another driver found to take the train on to Marylebone. Plenty of staff around at Rugby and the train proceeded without any delay incurred. The original driver, what was left of him, was found when the line was searched, only a few yards from where he'd left the cab. The point Tuplin was making was that GC 4-6-0s could be left to run at certain gear and throttle settings and required little attention from their drivers, or from their fireman beyond putting an occasional round on, but I would point out that a) so could most classes so long as the regulator handle is secured in position, and b) Tuplin is entertaining as a writer of fiction. Nobody knows what happend to the young couple, but one hopes their journey was pleasant... Tuplin does not comment on whether the fireman was reprimanded or praised for his action; he should of course have reported his driver missing immediately, but had been instructed not to by a man authorised to instruct him and in charge of the locomotive.

Coming back to the habit of leaving the cab to 'oil around', I would expect drivers to wait for an opportunity to present itself just after a train had passed on the opposite line before venturing out on to the rh side, as there would at least be a few minutes before another one passed. As this applies to the Ais Gill accident, I read it as the driver going out on to the rh side of the loco approaching Birkett Tunnel, as you wouldn't want to be on the lh side in a tunnel, just after traffic had passed on the adjoining running line, to make his way widdershins around the running plate. I once read the job of the engine driver described as 'stopping the train at the times and places specified in the working timetable', which is a somewhat different way of looking at it (can't remember where I read it, it sounds like Tuplin) . He has to start the train and make it move at a speed consistent with the timings in order to do this of course, and his responsibility is to obey the speed limits and the signals, as well as to manage the engine. It is not diffiuclt to imagine situations in which these responsibilities conflict with each other. The fireman's job, as I read at the same time, to ensure that there is a sufficient level of water in the boiler at all times, which is again a somewhat different perspective. He is also of course required to provide the driver with enough steam at enough pressure to perform his function of stopping the train at the times and locations specified in the working timetable, and to assist the driver in observing signals. But his first responsibility is to the fusible plug, and failure to discharge this particular responsibility will not only require the train to be stopped and the fire dropped as a matter of some urgency, but make him a marked man for comment and ridicule for the rest of his railway career. Drivers will be reluctant to work with him, and the stigma will never leave him; I worked with a Canton man who had dropped a plug on a Britannia at Llanharan in 1954 who was still hearing all about it a quarter of a century later... There are plenty of things that can happen in a steam loco cab that might be reasons for missing signals, and injectors were always dodgy things which sometimes required expert persuasion to work properly, which took time and sometimes the attention of both fireman and driver. Reasons for missing signals are not excuses for missing signals, however. One begins to see the value of the GW ATC system, when a crew might be distracted by injectors or other problems over several sections and at speed, but are re-assured by the bell that the distants are off, or alerted by the hooter to one being on, and a glance at the sunflower would confirm the situation. This was cutting edge stuff at the time of the Ais Gill accident, but this was not to be last occasion on which crews were distracted from signal observation by problems in the cab. There is a sense in which crews were being asked the impossible, to manage the loco and to observe the signals, and getting away with it most of the time, but to absolutely guarantee successful loco managment and 100% signal observation is a very big ask. I think most people would say that signal observation trumps loco management, but it is not such a clear-cut call aboard the loco! The blunt fact is that, at Ais Gill, Caudle missed the signals he was responsible for observing, but one has to have some sympathy with him; he was under pressure, doing his best, and got it wrong when on a thousand other occasions he'd have got it right. Apportioning blame in accidents was rarely as simplistic as either the BoT reports made it out to be, and never as simplistic as press reports; railway accidents seem to generate a plethora of instant experts!

Be careful of this exchange siding business, J; mine expanded into a colliery by order of The Squeeze... It happened like this, I had a colliery exchange loop where empties were left by BR locos, then collected and taken to the colliery fiddle yard (you'd call them staging roads) by a colliery loco. In town one day I saw a rather nice Hunslet 'Austerity' saddle tank in a 2h shop for a reasonable price, and it came home with me. No hiding railway purchases at my place, which is a small flat, The Squeeze is supportive, and I was about to find out just how supportive... The layout lives in the one bedroom, and perhaps germane to this is that The Squeeze is Polish and her father is a Silesian coal miner, both facts of which she is rightly proud. I explained the purpose of the new loco to her, and the response was 'but where is colliery?'. 'No room', quoth I. 'Build colliery', she says, 'I want photos for my father'. 'But it will have to go here, and the fiddle yard will go here, in your way to get to your dressing table and the wardrobe'. 'How big you think is my dupa (bum) (I know the answer to this, it is silence and keep your head down), build the kurwa (not translatable on a family forum) colliery!'. So I built the kurwa colliery; this one's a keeper!

I believe so, but the Class 28 Crossleys came out in one lift as a complete power plant, with generator, a feature inherited from the submarines. When the HSTs were introduced on the WR, we were told that a complete power plant exchange could be accomplished in about 20 minutes with an overhead gantry crane.

Quite. But at least some are honestly and obviously incorrect, like the minerals with stretched bodies on the wrong wheelbase (Hornby, Airfix, and Lima were guitly of this as well).

Well, bits of it are! Hopefully without the Mittelengelander marketing. Once you leave the village and walk down to the castle itself, it is a properly spectacular place, on it's headland above the Atlantic. It is almost a shame that it is conflated with all the Arthurian stuff, itself mangled beyond any hope of getting any solid facts out of it by various medieval writers of both psuedo-history and romances. My view is that there very probably was an Arthur, The Bear, who successfully resisted the Saxon overlordship of what is now England for a generation in the late 400s/early 500s. The battles of Badon Hill and Camlan probably really took place, Badon Hill being very probably at Solsbury Hill, Bath, a location that makes sense strategically, but the medievals have done us no favours. Tintagel is the sort of visually impressive location that is almost bound to become associated with legends, and there was an Iron Age structure there that preceded the current Norman ruins, which are of course far too recent to have had anything to do with Arthur. Iron Age fortifications on Cornish North Coast headlands are more or less obligatory, and appear at Port Isaac, Trevose, Bedruthan, Newquay, and other places as well, all of which could easily be associated with Arthur, but the ruins at Tintagel give it the edge in this regard... The clincher, IMHO, is the poem 'Y Gododdin', a bardic account of a very real historic 6th century battle in which a warband of elite warriors are feasted at Dunedin (Edinburgh, then part of the Brythonic kingdom of Strathclyde) for a year before unsuccessfully besieging a Saxon stronghold at 'Cathraeg', quite possibly Catterick. The Briton warband is wiped out. The bard, Aneurin, writing in old Welsh and transcribed into later copies, names the heroes individually but ends each description with 'but he was not Arthur, and he fed the ravens on the walls of Cathraeg'. This seems to relate to Arthur as a more accomplished warrior who had perhaps existed within the living memory of older people at time of the poems' writing. If this battle took place at Catterick, then the resounding victory for the Saxons should be celebrated to a much greater extent in English history; certainly to the extent that it is mourned in Welsh-speaking history (it is little known amongst Welsh monoglot English speakers like me). It would have broken the back of Brythonic domination of the island, clearing a path of Saxon-occupied territory to the Irish Sea in what is now Lancashire, dividing Brythonic territory into southern and northern parts. Not long after this, the Saxons had advanced to Gloucester, and within 50 years to Exeter, dividing the Britons into three areas; Strathclyde/Cumbria, Wales, and Cornwall. Only two of those remain as distinctly Brythonic in character, and their borders are in much the same locations as they were at the end of the 6th century.

Had one as a teenager, great little guy, natural comedian, highly affectionate. B*gger for pulling on the lead, though, never really got the hang of that.

The 'performs better under a steady load/throttle setting' syndrome also apparently affected the Crossley 2-stroke power plant in the Class 28 Co-Bos. The Vickers part of the Metropolitan-Vickers combine had apparently built a highly successful series of diesel- electric submarines for the Royal Navy, and considered that this power plant was ideal for the Modernisation Plan Type 2 diesel-electric, right power output and about the right physical size and weight so they put in a tender which was acceptted, but the generator was a bit of a lump hence the Co-Bo arrangement. A feature of these locos inherited from the submarines was that the engine bay roof doors were large enough for the entire power plant to be lifted out in one go, something not repeated until the HST power cars. Of course, on the railway, two things were radically different in service practice to the submarines; firstly, the locos needed constantly changing throttle settings in traffic which the engines didn't like, and secondly the locos did not have experienced and highly capable Naval Engine Room Artificers on hand in the engine room to mollycoddle them in service to keep them running, or clean up the oil leaks that caused the fires. The torpedo tubes and conning tower were apparently removed before the locos entered service...

It got fairly close to the sea at Swansea St Thomas…

As in, you’d be daft paying money for that…

Nah, the beef’ll be in the fridge or on the fresh meat counter…

Not backpack-boy's fault if the greed of the supermarket owner dictates that the aisles are too narrow. If you can't get a pack through, then passing trolleys are going to be a problem.

There are Thai ladies who could probably advise...

IIRC (and perhaps I don't R quite C) the aircraft and other RAF associated names were given to locos built during wartime, and Castle production continued until 1950, by which time the Castle naming sequence had been revived. Bit of a gap in Castle production during the Hawkworth County era, which may explain the hiatus; of course, RAF-connected names had by that time appeared on Southern light pacifics. Mustang, Liberator, Catalina, Lightning, all used successfully by the RAF, and all good names, especially Lightning, which appeared on a Brit eventually.

The train formations as requested by Traffic Dept specified only the accomodation, not the actual diagram of coaches used. The 'Red Dragon' for example ran for some time as a set of Choc/Cream liveried mk1s, but with a Hawksworth refurbished Collett restaurant car in matching livery, eventually replaced by a mk1 RMB, the opposite situation to the consist of the 'Torbay' referred to by Innerhome (The Squeeze says that's where I ought to be, in a home...) But named trains were usually given specific sets of whatever the latest stock at the time was, so the probability would be a chronological sequence of styles. If you start at the grouping, that would be Churchward toplights, Collett bowenders, Collett 'sunshines', Centenaries on the CRE, Hawksworths introduced between 1946 and 1954, and mk 1s. There were no Hawksworth catering vehicles, he refurbished Colletts, giving them a rather different appearance with sliding ventilator windows. Named trains on the Bristol and South Wales routes started getting mk2s in 1966, retaining refurbished 100mph RMB catering, progressing from 2b to 2e, with the airco mk2s running with mk1100mph BG brakes ; the West of England trains retained refurbished 100mph mk1s until replaced by HSTs. Outside the heady glamour of named trains, the rule seemed to be that no stock of a matching style should ever be coupled together unless there was absolutely no alternative, in which case it was essential that the liveries should be different. Ordinary GW and WR express trains were a wonderful mix of styles, liveries, and outlines until the late 50s when a lot of the earlier stock was culled. The Hawkworths were extinct by 1966, and some were scrapped with less than 10 years service. By '66, a program of refurbishment of mk1s was underway, with new seating, formica panelling, and flourescent lighting along with repaints into blue/grey livery and B4 or Commonwealth 100mph bogies, with some stock repainted into blue/grey but retaining the B1 bogies, original wood panelling, and seating; this was 'B' stock, speed limited to 75mph and used in excursion and charter traffic.

100% with you on this one, John. Before high-intensity lights on locos the lamps, if lit, could not be discerned in any but the very poorest daylight; the marker lights would illuminate perhaps a dozen sleeper in front of the loco, dimly, not much use at 90mph. The filament bulbs used to illuminate (probably not the right word, illumination was more of an intention than a fact) until the mid-60s refurbishments were 25 watters running off a 24v dc supply, and basically useless though you could find your way along the corridors with them. In normal layout ambient lighting they should not be visible, neither should building interior or semaphore signal lights. Sodium discharge street lamps, maybe. A passenger train at night, viewed from the side and some distance away from streetlit areas (which were far more extensive then), looked a bit like a glow worm. especiallly as many of the compartments would have the main lights dimmed and the reading lights off. Modern lights are much brighter, but even so are usually ridiculously overbright on layouts even before the usual exhibition trope of flashing roadworks, emergency services blues, and factory warning retina-burners are encounted. Look at my lights, aren't I clever, my layout's got lights, lots of lights, bright lights, flashing lights, red lights on the back of locos pulling trains, and the back of green-liveried dmus, look, look, look, LOOK AT MY LIGHTS!!! Actually, I think I'll go and look at another layout, thanks.

Or obtain colour film even if they could; it was the late 50s before 35mm colour slide film was easily available and a few years later before reliable colour negative film for printing from became common. My old man, The Captain was a bit of a colour enthusiast at the time, into Agfa slides. He was the sort of bloke who loved all the complexity faff of setting up a camera and the equal faff and ritual of slide shows (my job was 'lights off'). A family legend revolves around his attempt at a night shot of the floodlit Jet d'Eau (rememberThe Champions?) in Geneva in 1966; tripod, light meter readings, camera settings, about twenty minutes of faffing with The Captain in his element. The lights went off and the water was shut off on a timer at precisely 23.00 (this was Switzerland after all, they were pretty good at this stuff even before the Cern Collider clock*), and he released the shutter for the time exposure by cable at approximately 23.00.000001. His years learning how to curse in the Merchant Navy came in very handy; I was reminded of Yosemite Sam, the meanest, orneriest. rootin' tootin' shootinest hombre north, east, south and west of the Pecos as he jumped up an down in an apoplectic rage, steam coming out of his ears... Mum and me had to hold each other up laughing, and face away from him; mockery at this point would have not been diplomatic, and perhaps not survivable. It was perfectly timed comedy, and while Geneva is a lovely city and may be different nowadays, it wasn't in the mid 60s perhaps the most exciting for night-life, a bit Calvinistic to my mind, and the darkness and deafening silence that descended with the last drops of water into the lake was the comedy icing on this particular cake. One expected tumbleweed. It did not help in the long run that I'd managed a tolerably successful attempt 20 minutes earlier with my Instamatic 50... *we were staying with friends from an Italian holiday two years earlier in Meyrin, about 2 miles out of town and adjacent to the airport, and the Collider tunnel runs directly beneath the block of flats we were at...

I did not know that, and now I do, though in this case me and the van never really hit it off and the 'design clever' running means it is rarely used anyway, so no matter; I will be more than happy to give it an exciting opportunity of a new career in landfill and replace it with the new Rapido, despite preferring the plain side/end look of the Hornby model. There have been several such models over the years which I have given up on due to basic inaccuracies, which are particularly annoying. A poorly detailed model that is dimensionally correct can always be worked up but this sort of thing renders it effectively useless on my layout. The trouble is when a model is fairly near accurate but a bit off, so that the likes of me looks at it in the shop and comes over all 'me wantee', to find out later that the model is a bit of a dog; eventually I learned to do a bit of research first and keep my money in my pocket until I know what I'm buying. Dogs that have caught me out in the past include:- .Bachmann-chassis Hornby 2721, bunker too large. .Dapol Fruit D, ex-Wrenn/HD, too wide. .Dapol steel open with chain pocket, ditto provenance, sides too high, sold as mineral wagon. .Dapol cattle/ale van, again ditto provenance, incorrect wheelbase. I am not sure that there is any example of a correctly dimensioned RTR cattle van. .Neighbour's snappy yappy Jack Russell, all teeth and attitude. Doesn't like me coz I bark back at him...

That wire fencing is pretty convincing; great stuff!