Morello Cherry

It seems to me that some senior managers at the NYMR began to believe their own hype about the NYMR and took their eyes off the ball and stopped looking and listening. Given the issues at the WSR, SVR, PR, ELR (MHR, FR in the past as other example) and the NYMR it seems there is something very rotten in upper management in the preservation scene. There is a general disconnect between volunteers and senior managers. In some cases we have unprofessional amateur senior managers who don't have the management or human skills to run large organisations and treat the railway as their own personal fiefdom, or managers coming in from outside who don't get the organisation and end up pissing off not just the volunteers but also other supporters. *I will caveat this by saying that I know the GM of a mid length preserved line which is getting by and thus far has had no major dramas recently. The only thing that annoys them is unprofessional volunteers, but this is a small group within a larger group so I get that volunteers are not exactly an easy bunch of people. One of the weirder things I've found within the railway scene is on the one hand over-deference and obsequiousness to authority 'Thank you Mr so and so' and on the other refuseniks for whom 'everyone else is an idiot apart from me', which I actually think is part of the reason why so many railways are running into problems. Cliques are always an issue. John Bailey when posting on National Preservation always came across as having a condescending attitude of 'I'm the master and you are just ignorant proles'. I get the sense that the tendency of people to fawn on authority means a lack of critical voices - a lack of anyone to say 'Is this wise?' and the fact that people will storm off in a huff over the painting of an awning makes it easy for managers to dismiss and ignore criticism as 'just the usual discontent of the awkward squad - ignore it, they will still turn up on wednesday for their turn, they will still visit for the galas, they always do'. There is a lot of management group-think. I think that every single case of a preserved line getting into trouble has been entirely avoidable, not once has it been unforseen, in fact in every single case there have been Cassandra voices warning which have been ignored by people who should have known better.

I did wonder if people in Brighton were very short :) To the left (as you look at the photo) of the smokebox dart on the LBSCR photo there is a round black shape. Is that a bowler hat? The line about a stout mackintosh and a shot of whisky being better for the crew than a cab springs to mind. (Was that Drummond?) Something else I am not clear about, how would they have been fixed to the loco? I'm am guessing that their main purpose was largely to stop the people on the front from falling off. (Although thinking about locomotive engineers of the day it was probably to protect the recording equipment firstly and as an added bonus it stopped the crew falling off).

I am not sure I buy the 'all Jacobite users are Harry Potter fans' argument either. Afterall, the steam trips have been running since well before the popularity of the books and films. I suspect that if you are a Harry Potter fan and you happen to be in the West Highlands then you might make a thing of it, in much the same way that if you happen to be visiting the centre of London you might go and check out platform 9 3/4. Obviously, just as there are a hardcore of people who will go on holiday as an act of pilgramage to a railway or railways, so I guess it is with Harry Potter. I can remember a few years back I was sat on a train heading to Oxford and I got chatting to the guy opposite me who had flown over from the US and was super excited about going to a pub in Oxford where Tolkien and C.S.Lewis had hung out. So there are all sorts of things hardcore fans will make a pilgramage to. TBH given the way JK Rowling is rapidly heading into Morrissey territory, she might blow up the Harry Potter market by herself before the summer is out anyway.

We've all seen the photos of engines with Indicating Shelters on the front: However, I've never seen any photos of the inside of one. Has anyone ever seen the inside of one? I'm guessing that in the bigger ones you could stand up. The Lord Nelson version looks pretty solid, the King looks like a garden shed from B&Q and the LB&SCR version looks like they knocked up this morning from some left over packing cases. I guess that on the LB&SCR you just crouched down and held onto your hat. This gives a good description but no image of the inside of shelter and I am struggling to visualise it from the description. https://www.railwaywondersoftheworld.com/testing-loco.html Are there any accounts of working in an indicating shelter in any memoirs? I'm assuming that the shelters were built as and when they were needed and then taken apart afterwards rather than permanent pieces of equipment that would be used on different engines over several years - in contrast to the dynamometer cars. I would think working in an indicating shelter as being up there with any job in the pit at the end of the day as not a great deal of fun.

It does have an air of cpl Jones' van 'Open-two-three, out-two-three, bang-two-three, in-two-three, close-two-three' Thankfully terrorists only ever attack the compartment side. None of that sneaking up on the corridor side. BTW the windows had to open, how else do you think the escorts would get rid of dog ends, cans etc on long journeys from Scotland to Cumbria or Devonport? ;-)

In the case of the S&D that is certainly true. (I'm guessing Highbridge and Wells didn't have any banking duties)

Looking at the mk1. What are the square things under the windows. Interesting view if the inside end of the mk1 https://www.flickr.com/photos/graham_williams/6674577895/

While not directly under the station, just to the south of Woking station there is a bridge that goes under the four main lines, about four sidings on the down side and some of the up sidings (maybe the old loco stabling point?). I'm guessing about 10 tracks. From a modelling point of view the bridges both sides of Woking, the roads are fairly narrow and pitch points for road traffic in the middle of the unlovely town centre.

Further along the line - Minffordd with standard gauge under the narrow gauge station. Which is a fairly unique combination.

I know you said uk, but I give you Utrecht Vaartsche Rijn. Built over three roads and a canal. (The busiest road is further to the left). New station built in 2016. Quite a lot of Dutch stations seem to have roads under them - Utrecht Centraal and Rotterdam Centraal are two others that come to mind.

Some interesting shots from the 70s. Here https://limestonepostmagazine.com/tracks-through-time-the-trains-of-1970s-bloomington/ more here http://people.kzoo.edu/~rkoenig/memoir/1.html The shots of Bedford are amusing to me as my lovely neighbours when I lived in the midwest came from Bedford. Their description of it as 'a place where setting fire to tires in your yard is what passes for culture'.

Context matters but the biggest thing to think about is how traumatic within the collective memory is the event you are modelling and whether the model trivialises the events. Could you model a scene from the Irish War of Independence or the Civil War? Yes probably. Could you model a scene from the Troubles? Probably not. I knew the daughter of a stationmaster in Bessarabia in Romania (now Moldova) and she told me about the experience of the evacuation of the town and station when the territory was annexed by the USSR. She and her family left on the last train before the Soviets arrived. 70 odd years later it was still massively traumatic event in her life as she never returned 'home'. Could I model those events? Yes. Would I want to model those events? No. It is worth remembering that collective memory and how we memorialise things is as much about forgetting as remembering. Modelling and exhibiting is a small part of the creation of collective memory. I don't recall a UK war time era layout that captures bomb damage, staff shortages, over-crowding, delays, crime. We remember 'the blitz spirit' and 'all down the shelters singing Knees up mother Brown' and forget for example the massive increase in the rape, murders and muggings during the blackouts as transitient troops, blackouts, bomb sites and short staffed police. Easier to remember it as a positive period to enable us to forget that it was also a dark or traumatic period. (See also Communist Nostalgia or Dictator ... made the trains run on time narratives). Anywhich way, a model that trivialises the events under discussion is a no no.

In the words of The Breeders: 'I like all the different people'. And mad props to anyone who does decide to exhibit, it isn't something I would do. I might be a good home cook but I have zero desire to go on any cooking show. Good modelling is good modelling irrespective of where, when or scale. A brilliant recreation of a specific place or time can hold my attention for hours but on the other hand so can a layout that is flat out fun. I could spend as long watching 'Copenhagen Fields' as watching the old Gauge One live steam layout. Was there anything 'special' modelling wise about the Gauge One layout - not especially although the electric ECS workings on the lower level were always fun to watch. But meths, steam and long trains. I can happily lose myself watching that. Twee stuff is twee stuff. Whether that is the garden gnome like figures for 16mm or a war nostalgia layout, or just where everything is a bit too clean. But I can usually look past that. Urban decay rarely portrayed, although there are a few layouts that do, so something that is a novelty will get my attention than another iteration of an imagined rural idyll. The other thing at matters to me is ethos and attitude. For example I could completely get behind a layout organised by this group because to me that is what railway modelling is all about. A big turnoff for me is operator attitude - there is enough tiresome macho hardman nonsense in the world without it coming into the hobby. So you can have the most wonderful layout but if you are an arse who thinks they are jesus, well I'll be moving onto the next layout. With regard to North American and some European modelling. Having lived in both North America and various places around Europe. I think that physical modelling doesn't capture is the sheer scale. It is impossible to model a 100+ wagon North American freight train well. Likewise, it is impossible to model a short line with maybe 1 train a week picking up and dropping off maybe 1 box car. I also think it is impossible to capture the scale of North American scenary or indeed European mountains. In many ways this is where electronic modelling ie Train Simulator comes into its own. Even something like Maple Leaf Tracks Kicking Horse Pass which came out maybe 20 odd years ago, captured Canadian mountain railroading and the Kicking Horse Pass in a way in which no scale physical model could. But there have been plenty of North American and European layouts that have caught my eye over the years. In the end as with most things it depends on my mood as to whether I linger or move on but the biggest turnoff is douche behaviour. Oh and no nude figures or 'humorous' scenes. Just cheesy beyond cheesy and embarassing. It's like dad dancing. Just no.

I would suggest asking theMerl on twitter aka the museum of rural life in Reading. They would love to be asked about muck spreaders. If anyone is going to know it is them. If you don't do twitter the website is https://merl.reading.ac.uk/ Fwiw there is a photo of a train of these going through I think Newbury behind a Western in K.G.Jones's 'Diesels West of Paddington' Edit - I am not sure what has happened when I posted the link to theMerl on twitter. Edit a second time - if I link to a specific tweet then we avoid getting the whole feed, which is what happens if I link to the twitter account. So hence a link to a twitter post about a chicken in trousers from the eighteenth century. You'd almost think the owner of twitter was almost trying to make it completely unusable. (Not that I use it anyway). But I digress - MERL I think are your best bet for the answer.

The Sibiu-Agnita railway in Romania has managed to restore it's first carriage and it has been quite a journey. https://www.facebook.com/AsociatiaPrieteniiMocanitei https://www.facebook.com/AsociatiaPrieteniiMocanitei/posts/pfbid034G2kP1XYNFgPMLRiNSnnH1iVPabDS6h4CqFR3mU1K8o5oDHDQjBqt8wLfK2byukgl A brief translation of the story. The coach was built in 1985. When the line closed in 2001 it was left at Sibiu station. [I think I have photographs of it from that period]. It was used by the local homeless as somewhere to sleep. In 2007 it was moved to outside the loco depot where it was heavily vandalised. The preservation society wanted to buy the carriages but the auctions kept on being cancelled. When an auction was held it was sold to a scrap metal company who had never been to any of the previous auctions. It was saved from being scrapped when someone passing on a train saw the carriages (there was a batch of them) being cut. This was the only one to be saved. A very rapid mobilisation took place to save the coach. Local mayors from the valley in combination with the Mihai Eminescu trust organised and collected enough scrap metal to replace the scrap metal that the coach represented. In 2009 the restoration started - they had no experience of carriage restoration, and only basic tools and so did it in the open air. By 2010 they had got it restored enough for it to run behind a borrowed steam engine at Agnita to celebrate the centenary of the line. They were able to build a shed around the carriage at Agnita to help to protect it as they restored it. By 2015 it was ready to go, but with the success of the line and demands of maintaining the track meant they did not have the ability to finish the coach. They also found that due to poor materials the interior was suffering due to the moisture in the air. It went on the backburner, finally in 2020 funds were found to enable the carriage to be restored in Hunedora. This restoration included a new interior, lights, chassis work, and working brakes(!), making it the most modern coach in Romania. It is the first part of their plan to develop a full train for the line. 2008 2010 - first restoration 2023

I thought I'd pass this on. An interesting article about something that maybe be a useful resource for modellers. For example included is a photo of Newbury Racecourse and marshalling yard. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/16/us-air-force-photos-england-second-world-war The collection can be found here: https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/archive/collections/photographs/usaaf-collection/

You have nothing fear from border force not because you have nothing to hide but because of your race, age, class and gender. You think UK border arrangements are lax because the hostile environment is not applied to you. Border force are not going be rude, unpleasant to you and physically kick your bags as I saw happening to a traveller with poor verbal English a couple of weeks back because you have the 'right' profile. You are the target viewing audience for security theatre and it is successful. 'look how tough we are on outsiders.' I hate to break it to you, but those terrorists and criminals you fear are domestic not international, and performative security at St Pancras/UK airports isn't going to do anything to stop them. And guess what, domestic security in the Schengen zone hasn't collapsed since its creation either.

You can always find exceptions to the norm. I might be remembering incorrectly I've yet to experience border checks travelling by train between France-Belgium-Netherlands. Nor checks on the German-Dutch or German-Austrian borders, Austrian-Italian, Austrian-Hungarian or Austrian-Slovene borders. I've experienced hard checks on the Hungarian-Romanian, Slovene-Croatian borders, (the Schengen border) and very hard checks (given that like the UK it is outside the EU) on the Moldovan-Romanian border. I can't comment on Gare du Nord because I don't travel to there from the UK, and the last time few times I was in France my journey started within the EU and I had no border checks. It is security theatre to make people think something is being done but is actually doing nothing other than making things harder for ordinary travellers, and actually providing little to no real security benefits. Anything they do stop is insignificant low level low hanging fruit. The border arrangements are optional and a government choice. You don't have to run your border like it is checkpoint Charlie, only if you are into macho posturing for segments of the electorate.

Just out of interest, are WCR coaches fitted with CET?

I disagree. It is an old canard that only the guilty would object. Racial profiling is racist profiling, however it is dressed up. It is all performative BS. Security theatre to pander to the holders of the Daily Mail worldview, and its only achievement is to make the border experience more unpleasant for non-white or non-British people. Funny how none of this security theatre is necessary for passengers from the UK crossing over the hard Schengen border and getting out inside the EU. At Rotterdam for example, I can just cross the platform and get on a train travel to wherever I like within the Schengen zone and not have my passport or bag checked again. The nearest you come to it is maybe Brussels and that is hardly in the same league. The security theatre element, is what will kill any potential start up. Even if they did create a Stratford to Lille (or where-ever) service the cost of the performative security which the company will have to bear will be crippling because Stratford/Ebbsfleet, will have to have the same set up as St Pancras etc rather than be set up in the more enlightened way the Dutch, Belgian and French authorities welcome arrivals from the Eurostar. And even if the UK were to stop thinking it is 1940 and adopt a more enlightened approach to people entering the country from Europe, the new company would still hit the problem that the EU via the French have taken back control of their borders. Unfortunately, that border is about 10 metres after the security scanners at UK terminals. Oh well, the British electorate made their bed and now they have to lie in it.

My general experience is that when heading off the train at St Pancras is there are usually around half a dozen border people standing around, doing nothing other eyeing people up in a way to make people feel unwelcome. Every now and again you will see them taking apart the luggage of a non-white traveller. I believe the phrase is 'security theatre'.

I make no claims to understanding timetabling and I am not disputing the necessity of flights etc but just to say that there are periods where Eurostar runs more than 2 trains an hour through the tunnel and this is when things break down in London. You have a timetable that doesn't work with the facilities available and so something has to give. In the case of Eurostar, the thing that has 'given' has been the trains to places like EuroDisney. Or the give is passengers having a nightmare boarding experience. There are I would suggest certain 'pinch points' during the day at St Pancras. Looking at the services for tomorrow, I've highlighted the times when in my experience the facilities breakdown and the timetabling doesn't help. It is when you have 6 departures in 90 or 120 minutes, but most crucially when they are trying to send out 4 in 60 minutes. 13.01 Brussels 13.31 Paris 14.01 Paris 14.04 Brussels 14.31 Paris 15.04 Brussels 17.31 Paris 18.01 Paris 18.13 Amsterdam 18.34 Paris 19.01 Paris 19.04 Brussels My entirely unscientific observations I'd also suggest that the mid afternoon traffic tends to be slightly more touristy so either families - hence slow to process (explains EuroDisney) or 'less frequent' travellers who are not necessarily the quickest making the backlogs worse. It is only the very early or the very late trains that tend to be business travellers only. Now, I really don't know what Eurostar can do other than potentially try to spread out some of the journeys (there is no 10.01, 12.01, 17.01, 19.3x). I have absolutely no doubt that there are sound reasons as to why the timetable is the way in which it is and why there are these bunches and gaps in the timetable. But the reality is that when the timetable has these bunches of departures this is when the terminal in my experience is at its worst.

As someone who commutes regularly using Eurostar: Eurostar is still better than Schipol or Heathrow. None of the Eurostar terminals are large enough - whether that is London, Brussels, Rotterdam, Amsterdam. Brussels has lost space to a massive rip off duty free shop. The rest of the waiting area is a dingy cave in keeping with the generally crappy character of Midi. To me it seems like there is an issue with the timetable. The way it is set up is causing massive bunching of passengers in London - when you have a Paris - Brussels/Amsterdam - Paris set of departures in an hour. Essentially you have late comers for the first Paris train, combined with everyone for Brussels/Amsterdam, and then the people who think it is like Heathrow and turn up really early for the second Paris train. Quite often you have three full train loads, waiting in an area that is just not big enough. I find it quite interesting that it can be completely packed when I go through security/customs, but when it comes to boarding it is completely deserted. There isn't enough space between the UK border controls and the French border controls, and the electronic gates seem to almost always be out of use. So this leads to massive queues/bunching, which goes back to the UK passport desks, which then goes to the security checks. But yeah, a couple more desks open would definitely speed things up. What I don't quite understand is the following: loads of work was done in arrivals to separate space for passport control. Eurostar have (or are getting rid of) all the trains that come from destinations where there is no UK border control at boarding (ie Eurodisney, Ski trains, South of France trains). I know that it is easy to blame 'the French' but certainly at Schipol post covid, things have been a nightmare with queues because of loss of security staff. When I came through there a couple of weeks back, I was told 'oh today is a good day, the queue yesterday was an hour and a half to get through passport control [to exit the Netherlands]'. God knows where a competitor would go to or from? Ebbsfleet? Stratford? Maybe - perhaps to Lille where there are decent connections for the SNCF network (more so than Calais). But the issue of the border remains and that there just don't seem to be the staff in either the UK or France. TBH - I suspect that the terminal at St Pancras could expand - but it would almost certainly be into space which is currently retail space and we all know that this is the last kind of space that would be given up to passengers. IMO St Pancras terminal needs a complete rethink and redesign and I think that there needs to be an approach similar to that taken at Heathrow when it came to renovating one of the terminals (2?). Close it, send all the passengers somewhere else for 18 months temporarily (HS2 at Euston/Stratford 'International'/Ebbsfleet (with a St Pancras - Ebbsfleet shuttle) and rebuild it to make it suitable for post-Brexit travel. However, I suspect that the easier choice of retrenchment to London-Paris, London-Brussels, will be the option of the day.

I think when looking at the deals it is important to step back and remember how big a deal the Romanians refusing to partake in the crushing of the Prague Spring was. A lot of Western policy makers thought that Ceausescu was another Tito. Ceausescu was feted by everyone - the Chinese, North Koreans, Middle Eastern Arab states, Israel, the US (Nixon visited in 69, there was a return visit in 70), France etc. I don't think the goal was economic gains but rather political influence - a case of what could you offer and what could you get in return? As the Percival article shows there was a lot of vocal opposition in parliament and elsewhere to dealing with Ceausescu. So a hands off deal ie Taylor Woodrow, or via Brush gets a lot less heat than the more obvious BAC deal. I tend to think that the economic historians have tended to focus on the BAC deal and ignored the 56s, (I remember reading the Percival article a long while back and thinking - what about the 56s but I suspect that material plus other stuff is the stuff that is still under lock and key which is why Percival didn't cover it - if you look his archive materials are mostly newspaper although there is some material from Kew). The transport historians have tended to miss the political context and the whole flurry of deals that took place in the run up to the state visit. PS - I suspect the Romanian debt was connected to British oil interests in Romania that had been seized/nationalised either during WW2 or by the Communists afterwards. PPS - I found reference to some ALCO engined 4000hp locos that Electroputere produced after 1978. I have never seen one, but interestingly to me the bogie design looks to be close to the 56. http://www.locopage.net/cfr700010a.jpg http://www.locopage.net/cfr-alcos.htm

This is my point - I think the deal for the 30 56s to be built by Electroputere is wrapped up in all of this. I did LOL at the comment on p.75 about the Romanians offering to pay Rolls Royce in Strawberries, Ice Cream and Yoghurt. Frankly, if the alternative was payment in 30 slightly dodgy freight locos then BR did well.