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One of the six points of The Peoples' Charter of 1839 was to have salaried members for just that reason - to open up parliament to men (it's 1839, folks!) of modest means; also to reduce the chance of MPs being influenced by 'outside interests .

But Mrs. Thatcher, and Ronald Rayguns, were both disciples of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, no? The ideas they espoused definitely weren't theirs.

That's right; I don't think the government called in the IMF so much as they were bounced into it; Denis Healey recollects, in his autobiography, going round London trying to avoid the IMF men. Eventually they agreed to a compromise package of cuts to public expenditure, but the loan was never taken up, thank goodness. Healey in any case introduced cuts in all his subsequent budgets between then and 1978, in an economy growing at a rate we could only dream of today

Sorry, that's incorrect. The IMF crisis was in the Autumn of 1976 and was due,partially to the UK running out of money after the price of crude oil increased by 400% after the Yom Kippur war. The first North Sea oil didn't come ashore until the late summer of 1978. It was the massive increase in the oil price which made its production in the North Sea viable. Also what looked like MMRCs 'Dewsbury Midland'

Or the semi-rotary exhaust valves on the Sulzer RD . Fortunately, I seemed to miss all the ships in BP so fitted. Fortunately, there weren't many. Also, somehow I missed all the Doxfords as well, but two had the exhaust-piston B&W VTBF, which were mesmerising to watch; the first time I saw one when we were under way, I had an attack of the screaming habdabs

Johnson Minor [the cleverer one] Low baseline to work from though!

The last sentence. The Liverpool to Manchester Route via Chat Moss was electrified in the middle and at least one end for forty years before the infill was carried out! Similar applied to the former CLC route, which was electrified at both ends

Having said that, I sailed on two further ships with VT2BFs, British Centaur and British Beech. On the Centaur, which had a 998VT2BF, the springs were arranged K-engine style, radially around the carrier, whereas the Beech had the original arrangement.

Looking at that arrangement of the springs is that not a VT2BF? MV British Liberty had one (6VT67BF155, IIRC) and the spring arrangement was the same. The next class, the 'Rivers' had KEFs with the springs arranged radially around the carriers, and I would imagine the KFF followed on from that.

Wasn't it the 6th Australian division who reckoned that each 'I' tank involved in Operation Compass was worth an infantry battalion.

Putting the valves below the cylinders was quite a fad on most railways around the turn of the 19th century. The Midland and the Great Eastern were the same.

If the walls are built up from gritstone, they weather to almost black. It looks as if those walls were cleaned at some time, probably in the 70s or 80s

Had someone doing 45mph on the M67 the other week; I only realised he was going so slow when the distance between me and him decreased quite rapidly, and I had to take emergency avoiding action. Absolutely in no doubt that on a motorway with normal traffic, there ought to be a minimum speed limit as well as a maximum

It is not a target to be achieved at all costs. Lesson number 2 on a speed awareness course!

Stalybridge tunnel looks tight, but whether it is, I don't know

And The Palatinate in Germany

The Abbot's Ripton crash in the 1870s was another similar one, only this time the first express was lured to its doom by all the signals being frozen 'off', this being the normal position in those days; indeed it's often quoted as the major reason that the normal position of signals became 'on', only being cleared to allow the passage of a train

It's reckoned that the late-17th century to Napoleonic British soldier carried at about 60 pound of kit, excluding the clothes he was wearing

Noticing boats on the canal; that was closed (by the LMS) in 1944, and fell into general disrepair during the next 25 years. The lock chambers were all capped in the early 70s. There is an account in Narrow Boat, by L.T.C. Rolt, of his trip through the canal tunnel in 1944; he remarks that they had just passed through one of the locks on the Colne Valley side when one of the gates collapsed with a bang behind them.

I am enjoying it, it looks the part, apart from the strange-looking locos . When we moved to Uppermill, the Friezland loop had just closed (October 1966, IIRC), I can remember an early-morning freight on the loop, a couple of times 9F hauled. Steam was in use on freights almost up to the end, mostly black 5s and 8Fs, quite often double-headed going Eastbound. there was a late-afternoon (through Uppermill) parcels going Westbound which quite often produced a Brit. All the passenger sevices were dieselised, and had been since 1960

Can't remember missing it once. However I can remember a few occasions when snow stopped play in the morning, and a couple of times having to come home via Hebden Bridge for the same reason.

Don't think it will be forgotten, ever. Pity that by the time it was scored, it was irrelevant

There is a roundabout at the pyramid junction onto the M60 at Stockport; I can remember several occasions in the early 2000s when travelling home from work in Cheadle Heath, and it taking me half an hour to get from the A56, across Brinksway Bridge and onto the motorway, because of traffic backing up. There were only two sets of lights then. Now its lights all the way round, that's been considerably reduced.

You might have, but I was already 13 when we moved there! For information, I did use the line once when coming home from school, after staying on for a cricket match. In those days, when Saddleworth was in God's own county, you went to Colne Valley High School if you were an 11-plus passee. It's just a shame that most of the people who could have helped you have passed on. A couple of others to talk to might be Coachmann of this parish, who attempted a scaled-down model of Diggle a few years ago; he was a fireman at Lees shed in the late 50s/early 60s; and Peter Fox at Saddleworth Museum

How many times did the hump controller wear his cap to work, I wonder?