eastglosmog

A couple of pictures of a Bedford OB/Duple of 1949 taken at Gloucestershire Steam fair in 2015.

Seen in the loo of a quarry I was visiting today....

Owing to our sitting MP (one David Cameron) resigning over the outcome of the Brexit affair, we also had a by-election last year. The amount of bumpf we got through the door was immense. Had I realized we were going to need it again so soon, I would not have bothered throwing it all in the recycling bin! The bod who got elected (Tory, naturally, in these parts) was so memorable I can't remember his name or face. All I can remember is that although this was and is a strong remain area, the bloke was firmly exit which just goes to show something or other.

If you are interested in how it was done in olden days (1952), there is a BFI DVD compilation, Vol 8 in the British transport Films collection, "Points and Aspects", which contains 2 interesting British Railways instructional films on track maintenance, the second one dealing with switches and crossings. The rest of the DVD is pretty interesting, too.

Well if its going to be Rusty from Thomas the Tank Engine, then it will be a diseasel, spread by coughs and sneezes! (Can still remember that line 55 years after first reading it!) Seriously though, I have laid out my Buscot Estate railway to a ruling gradient of 1 in 30 and a minimum of 300mm radius curves. This was based on my previous experience of 009 running. I am intending to use Nigel Lawton's Simplexes on it and anything steeper would seriously impede their pulling power. As it is, some old Grafar 08's without any extra ballast can pull 12 wagons up the hill at a reasonable pace. If ballasting, beware of making the loco too top heavy as it will rock from side to side giving erratic running.

Ever since I turned 65 last year, I have been of the opinion that nobody younger than 64 should be allowed to vote! As for this idea that old folks can't use computers, its just an urban myth - there are plenty of silver surfers out there.

Just as a matter of interest, you don't have to use the Code100 to Code 75 adapter to change from one to the other, Peco do special rail joiners, (SL112), which will do the job without any intervening track. I got some from Antics in Gloucester. They are insulating or conducting depending on whether you put the metal insert in.

Well, we had a near 50% turnout and dumped the Tory Deputy chairman of Oxfordshire CC in favor of the local (very popular) Lib Dem candidate. I think it is the first time my vote has helped to change who gets in in the 45 years I have been going out and voting!

I don't know how much Simon's cat weighs, but Tilly would be a scale 2,600t. Doubt if a 50 would make much impression.......

Actually, although most parishes had a war memorial, a large number of them were inside the Parish Church, so not visible on a model. I expect it varies around the country according to local preference, but most of the memorials in these parts seem to be in the church, not outside. The location of the church is by no means always in the center, or even in, the village. Whilst most churches will have been built near the center of the village, the village itself may have moved, either for economic reasons (to be closer to a main highway, for instance) or because the local lord of the manor decided to rehouse his tenants in new stone cottages, built in a more convenient (for him) location. A church in the middle of the fields half a mile from the village is not unknown.

Very true. That bit of the East Gloucestershire Railway that actually got built (Witney to Fairford) was notorious for avoiding the local communities! Reason wasn't topography though, just impoverishment. The Upper Thames valley is as flat as a pancake, so route could easily have gone right though the settlements, but the railway company could not afford to buy the more expensive land near the towns and villages so stations ended up 1-2 miles away from the places they were supposed to serve.

Oops! Sorted that now.

Simon Tilly definitely approves! At least your layout is kept rodent free. Alan

I am no expert on these things, but I have always understood that the WCJS coaches were dual braked and the engines of each company only had one type of automatic brake (vacuum for LNWR and Westinghouse for Caledonian). The engine brake hoses were plugged into whichever was the right one of the two brake hoses on the train. However, can't find any reliable reference to how it was done at the moment.

Nearholmer wrote "Something military. Maybe one of those cold-war ROC posts, a WW2 pillbox, a hut belonging to the sea scouts ....... even tiny places seemed to have military connections." Which reminded me that there were two brick built air raid shelters down our road (one of them outside our front garden). They remained until the road was tarmacked in the early 1960s (can't remember exactly when, it had been a potholed gravel track before) - rectangular brick walled structures with a concrete slab roof, with a blast wall behind the entrance. I recall similar structures in nearby villages as well. (Note, must remember to include one on my 1946/7 based layout!) Regarding coal, whilst much of Holbury village was coal heated in the early 1950s, most houses went over to oil and gas in the later 1950s/early 1960s (well, we had this great oil refinery to supply us and most of our fathers worked there), so by 1960 at least, a bi-annular visit from a small oil tanker rather than a coal merchant to fill a rectangular oil tank in the back garden. To add to Edwardian's point, don't forget the village animals either! The local farmers herded their cows through our village streets at least twice a day, from pasture to milking parlor, leaving cowpats in plenty which ensured us children learning to look where we put our feet very early on! Being on the edge of the New Forest, we also had New Forest ponies wandering about the roads - they just rolled over the cattle grids that were meant to keep them out. To add to the list of shops I gave above, there was also a Chemist for dishing out potions, selling and developing film. And in answer to one of nzflyers original questions, there was no fire station. I think the nearest was in Hythe, some 3 miles to the north.

Holbury, the Hampshire village on the edge of the New Forest I grew up in during the 1950s and early 1960s had, so far as I can remember (and with a bit of help from the oldmaps website): About 200 houses, only a few of which were older than 1930, Population in the 800 to 1000 range and growing One post office One pub (imaginatively named "The Holbury") One newsagent and general store One bank (National Provincial) One cinema, with sports and social club attached (included a sports field, two tennis courts and two bowling greens) There was a dentist, but no doctor so far as I recall There was one Catholic church, but no C of E church (or any other denominations) (I have no idea why we had a Catholic church, don't recall the inhabitants being particularly RC in outlook) There was a bus stop and a regular hourly bus service to Southampton (northwards) and Fawley (southwards) (some continuing to Calshot) Closest railway station was Fawley, some 3 miles away There were no schools in the village, the infants, primary and secondary schools were all in adjacent (different) villages. No blacksmith, cobbler or garage Water, gas and electricity were all available (the later requiring a substation). Mains sewage was lacking - septic tanks had to be pumped out regularly There were a few farms (the only buildings older than 1930) There were a few small gravel pits but the main industrial item (and chief employer) was one very large oil refinery which dominated the eastern side of the village. Not perhaps your typical chocolate box village, I'm afraid

I know some GWR footbridges could be quite elaborate, but not all of them were! Wantage Road, for instance was a plain plate girder structure, similar to this one at Southam Road http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrsrh290.htm. If doing it in 4mm/ft, you might even manage to use a Wills varigirder kit! Just make sure you don't have a powerful landowner nearby who has to be placated by an elaborate bit of ironwork. In addition to the points made above, one other point to remember about whether an overbridge or subway would be used is that the footbridge would not be subject to any great loading, so could be a cheap structure. Any subway would have to be built strong enough to withstand the weight of passing locomotives and would consequently be a much more robust and costly structure.

Hi Guy - think that must have been the 1940 derailment of the Paddington - Penzance sleeper at Norton Fitzwarren you are thinking about. So far as I know, the Cheltenham express never ran into trouble - at least not until I diverted it down the Colne valley and Miss Tilly put her paws on it!

Hi everyone. Just to introduce myself, having recently joined the forum. I have only recently restarted railway modelling, after a hiatus of some 25 years( seduced by a Bachmann Dukedog), After a fair amount of doodling I have set out to build a model based on the first (1861) East Gloucestershire railway as it might have been c 1946 if the GWR had not got cold feet and pulled the plug in 1862. Having also discovered the old Buscot Estate railway, I have taken some more liberties with history and imagined that Robert Tertius Campbell's sugar beet distillery and industrialization of the Buscot estate in 1869 had been a commercial success (well, it might have been if there had been a railway to transport the goods and not just old father Thames). So my model is based on a halt on the East Gloucestershire Railway at Buscot (in the upper Thames valley, south of the river a few miles south east of Lechlade and a few miles north west of Faringdon, for those unfamiliar with these parts), where there are interchange facilities with the Estate railway. So far, I have built the baseboards, laid all the track (standard and narrow gauge) and wired everything up. This took quite a time as I having to relearn a lot of things. Having got everything running, work stopped whilst I sat and watched the trains go round, at least until my assistant (?) a large grey cat called Tilly, decided to stop everything by lying down on the trains!

Allow me to introduce Tilly, a yard long MaineCoon cat and the cause of a serious accident on the East Gloucestershire railway last week! She derailed the Cheltenham express, the all stations local and the pick up goods in one go by lying down on them all. Fortunately, no physical damage but it took a while to disentangle the mess when she finally condescended to get up. Alan

Just looking through some of my picture books of railways, and in GWR days at least, Swindon, Wootton Basset and Wantage (all on the main line east of the Badminton cut off and all junction staions), Brinkworth (on the Badminton cut-off) Corsham and Box (on the main line to Bristol) all had footbridges.