Artless Bodger

The smaller diggers can already be used with remote control from a belly pack, especially for demolition work, I think I saw film of the roof of Battersea Power Station being demolished by a mini digger mounting a jack hammer. If it broke through and fell the driver would be in a safe place, though usually working on line of sight.

Just for interest regarding 'turnout', attached drawing AX207 from c. 1921 (construction of Reed's Aylesford Paper Mill) 'Diagram of Turnouts From 75 lbs FB BS Rail.' 1 in 6 and 1 in 4 types. Railway Track 01.pdf

Was it not that the shape of the bonnet resembled a Waterman ink bottle? Certainly one variant has that facetted / rounded combination.

My feeling was it came from the US, but had no evidence to support it.

A recent issue of Chemistry World included an article on artificaial fertilisers, the comment was made that without them agricultural production would support only half the current global population. And even before the use of the Haber-Bosch process to fix atmospheric nitrogen, huge quantities of nitrates were imported from Chile for agricultural use British nitrate companies built railways in the Atacama desert for the prurpose). In mediaeval times population was tiny and food security precarious, one wet summer and starvation loomed.

Gricer - where did that term come from? I was not very happy to be referred to as a gricer by a colleague once, enthusiast yes, railwayac possibly but definitely not a spotter (no point in taking numbers when the same 1 or 2 emus shuttled up and down to Strood all day).

Agreed, certainly the case with Black Damm roundabout in Basingstoke in the morning peak, red meant 'Stop - unless you think you're hard enough' for some drivers.

There's a Sarn just outside Bridgend if I remember the list of stations reeled off for the train I'd catch from Cardiff to Llanharan correctly.

Bexley, 1997, spoil train derailed and some wagons fell off the viaduct, admittedly a low one. https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1JZAP_enGB845GB846&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=bexley+derailment&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjpqpPl6ZTxAhXGX8AKHbsOC-cQjJkEegQICRAC

Very interesting photos, thank you. In the background of the third the building looks a lot like the Thomas De La Rue print works which is at the south end of the Team Valley Estate. I visited the factory a few times in the late '80s and '90s, and had seen an aerial photo of the site in company documents which included a bit of what looked like a railway viaduct, but I could never get any confirmation from my employers, they thought you a bit suspect if you admitted to being interested in railways!

Yellow hi-vis was made mandatory around our mill, unfortunately the background scenery in many views along site roads at certain times of year was fields of oil seed rape.

I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but thanks for the photo above, I'd seen it somewhere before but couldn't find it in any of my books or online. When I first saw it the extensions were described as 'crocodile irons' as they were long and tapered and iirc were hinged to fold sideways onto the rail top, though in this photo it looks more as though they have been bolted on with fish plates. Has anyone else heard the term 'crocodile irons' or am I confusing it with some other railway item likewise named? PS I wanted a short turntable to fit my layout so I built a through girder one out of plastic sheet (it is only N gauge), totally manual but it will turn a dukedog.

Having done the virtual cut and paste, I picked up courage to go into plastic, cut the side out of the donor coach, sawed it into bits and recovered enough to fill the gap from the shattered remains of the first coach I tried to modify (as up thread). There's a strip of about 60 thou in the corridor to strengthen the bottom joint, necessitating trimming off the corridor floor of the interior moulding. I then stuck that on top of the strengthener to provide a locating slot for the bottom of the glazing, which will need to be trimmed in height. It's a bit wobbly in alignment vertically and along the cant rail but having done the filling and sanding down I think it will do, depends on how bad it looks after priming. Other odd jobs included adapting the driving end roofs and gluing a representation of the shoe beams on the outer bogies. Currently on a horticultural interlude now the finer weather is here.

I dismantled a couple last year, they had mainly the 'chipboard' blocks (all sorts of junk in that including bits of glass and metal), I used an old wood chisel and a mallet to break the blocks into bits and lever them away, releasing the nails then knocked the nails back and pulled them out of the slats with a claw hammer. It was hard work though for little reward, just enough slats to use as walkways on wet soil.

Indeed, my wife worked in NI for a few years, in the months up to July there would be notices up in certain areas calling for pallets, the bonfire piles could reach 20' or 30'. Years ago at the mill, we had our bagged starch delivered on non returnable pallets, lots. The plant operators on night shift would dismantle them with a hacksaw blade in a pad handle (when the foreman wasn't around), cut through the nail shanks between the wooden pieces. Originally the pallets were square with the bags stacked in interlocking rings, 4 per layer, then changed to rectangular pallets with 3 bags per layer, the plant ops bent my ear about this as two of them were building sheds and the new slats didn't fit their plans. The pallets piled up - we had 100s - offered them to the pensioners club to sell on but they couldn't be bothered, but some lorry drivers would take as many as they could get loaded on, my colleague 'Squirrel' said there were depots the other side of the tunnel offering £1 per pallet, 50p for a broken one. That was early '80s.

Saw one of the class 12s in the siding at Minster (Thanet), while waiting for a train to Dover around 1971/2, I was on a week's runabout ticket along with my school friend MacAulay, who was much more knowledgeable about railways than me and he pointed out the BFB wheels. Weren't the bigger wheels on the SR types to raise the cranks clear of the 3rd rail?

Was this the Focke - Achgellis? Demonstrated by Hannah Reitsch in the Deutschland Halle just before the war? 'Winkle' Brown mentions it in his memoirs. There was a post war UK type with 3 rotors, the Cierva Air Horse - one engine three rotors, crashed when the drive to one rotor broke and mangled the other two rotors.

Three phase with fixed speeds seems to be common for rack lines, the Gornergrat Bahn and the Rhune line use it. The Rhune has locomotives that resemble wooden garden sheds with the bow collectors on the roof sticking out front and back like old pram handles.

BR blood and custard livery as applied to locos?

Just catching up with this thread, it's certainly a very subjective subject and would be interesting to hear from a, say, central European viewpoint. Klien - Lindner, Douglas Self has a page on this; http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/klienlindner/klienlindner.htm , which has photos of the Saxon XV class, and has the outside frames for the leading and trailing axles only. It's a 4 cylinder compound as well. There are models of it by Trix which actually look a bit nicer in original green than the b&w photos suggest; https://www.modellbahn-seyfried.de/trix_tenderlok_saechs__xv_htv_(br_79)_gruen%2Cpid%2C690772%2Crid%2C716%2Cproduktdetailks.html

Very interesting, thank you. One of my work colleagues in the late 70s drove a dormobile - I didn't know they were home grown in Kent.

I was going from memory of trips to the seaside as child in the early 60s, and it is of lettering on the factory, but it was a long time ago. Looking up the Batchelors site, it is now Premier Foods, Google satellite view for TN24 0LU, shows some track still in existence outside the north end of the factory. It looks closer to the mainline than I recall. So my memory was wrong, thanks for sorting that out. Live and learn :-)

The book is Locomotives at War, by P. M. Kalla-Bishop. On page 34 he describes how LMS jackshaft shunter no 7063 suffered a burst armature (aka 'birdsnesting') inside Guston tunnel. Apparently one driver liked to show how fast the locos could go; 22mph for the LMS, 25 mph for the SR ones. The armature bindings failed at speed (Guston tunnel is on a gradient) jamming it all up solid. The loco then had to be sledded out on greased rails to daylight, so that bits of the motion could be worked out until the coupling rods could be taken down to free the wheels. Locomotives used at various times on the Martin Mill military railway, and on the Elham Valley line included: LMS Armstrong Whitworth jackshaft shunters nos 7059, 7063 and 7064, later 7062 and 7061, several transferred away on receipt of SR nos 1-3.

The top photo looks very much like Dover Priory goods yard to me, https://www.dover.uk.com/history/1930/dover-priory-station, the 6 legged watertank and the brick base of the old one. There was, I seem to remember from trips to Margate, a Metal Box factory at Ashford just north of the Ashford bypass with a private siding off the Ashford - Canterbury West line. You could see vans and minerals with shiny tinplate scrap in them from passing trains, so possibly the palvans moved empty cans from there to the Batchelors factories. At Aylesford (ref the Snodland link above) there was the goods yard on the down side, and just beyond the level crossing by Aylesford box was a long trailing siding on the up side, which served one or more warehouses (SPD or some thing at the far end), often a few vans in there including (according to my more knowledgeable friend) one of the vans with a fibreglass roof (translucent?) on one occasion, he referred to it as a plastic van. The warehouse later became a Finefare distribution centre. The siding terminated just short of Aylesford village level crossing. There were several food factories in the area along the Medway valley - Smedley next to Barming station, Foster Clarke alongside Maidstone West yard.

Some quite big ones had them too - in the early 80s (I think), we had a holiday in Scotland, one trip we did was to Skye, across on the Mallaig - Armadale ferry (back on the Kyle one). The ferry was quite big, many cars in the lower hull - 2 possibly 4 lanes. Drive on across the port side, rotate on a turntable, one of two, on a lift that lowered the car into the hull then reverse down the ship. Last vehicle on was a full sized coach which stayed parked on the lift athwartships. Debarking at Armadale was along a narrow jetty, the ship tied up with the lift and coach aligned with the end of the jetty, the coach drove off and then cars were raised one or two at a time to drive off, over the starboard side. Quite protracted compared with say the Belfast - Stranraer ferries.