Artless Bodger

Depends if the car moders use it for meets like some of our local supermarket carparks, can hear the squeal of tyres and reving engines even where we live at least 2 miles away.

Interesting, I remember the locos on the Enterprise in Belfast Central station making a similar racket - I think they were a version of EMD loco (similar to a 59?) - you couldn't hear the station announcements and even the Thumpers couldn't compete.

The choice of colours and stripes reminds me of Old English Spangles. Give it a few years and we'll wonder what all the kerfufle was about. Does anyone still bemoan the loss of Gillespie Road? I didn't realise the bridge was taken out so late, I saw the ramps when travelling on the train to Reading in the 70s but never noticed the bridge.

According to Charles Hadfield in his book Atmospheric Railways the pipe gaps had self acting valves at the ends which would admit a piston to enter or leave without destroying the vacuum, the pistons remained attached to the piston carriages. On the South Devon there was an auxiliary 8" tube alongside the track to pull the train forward so its piston entered the main pipe on starting from stations. Gaps had bypass pipes so engines could exhaust either length of pipe.

Thank you to Nick Holliday and Compound2632 for your information, correcting my misconceptions.

Were not some E1s originally fitted with Westinghouse pumps and painted IEG rather than goods green and used for passenger work on som eof the more steeply graded lines? Cuckoo Line?

I do like the EMU view - shades of the Ardingly line. That and the O gauge progress induce pangs of longing in me. BUT, must get on with the project in hand, no side tracking!

I used to refer to the Gospel Oak - Barking as the GoBar line, until someone told me it was the Hindi word for cowdung.

Less likely to entrain loose livestock roaming at large?

A member of the old Reed's club showed us some film he'd taken in Germany (early 1980s) in a marshalling yard where loose shunting was taking place, men were employed (he said Gastarbeiter) to drop metal sledges onto the railhead just before a wagon passed, to slow and stop them. He said life expectancy was short.

C576, a nice short freight. Looking closely at the brake van - not something I've done much before - I did not see the side lamps at first as they blend in, were side lamps always black bodied? Showing white light to front and rear? Sorry, showing my ignorance of basic railway operation here.

J596 - prototype for my ballasting, sleepers well covered! Presumably it has still to be tamped?

A colour plate illustration was used in the 1960 edition of the Observer's Book of Railway Locomotives* to indicate all the "Points to look for when identifying locomotives' For many years I thought it was a made up loco, the penny dropped eventually when I discovered that it was the Thompson rebuild of a GC 0-8-0. *It was a favourite bedtime read - I was about 4 and steam was just about to disappear from Kent.

The inner track on your last photo looks a bit precarious - not modelling the Dawlish washout are you? Nice to see SR EMUs.

The last car we had that was easy to change a headlight bulb was the Y reg metro. Peugeot 205 diesel, had an electrical box over one lamp, which needed a spanner to remove it, then the wires were not long enough to lay it sensibly aside so you needed an extra hand to hold it out of the way. The 306 and 309 were no better in their own sweet ways. Our current Jazz is a bit of a nuisance as you can't actually see what you are doing and have to do it all by feel. To cap it all, the headlight ususally fails in the dark in winter, so, unpleasantly cold to do anything and have hold a torch in your mouth to see. I changed one in the 306 by driving to the local supermarket car park so I could get some light on the job.

Something I noticed one very wet night at Bearsted station (I'd gone to meet my wife off her train) soon after some reballasting, there was a hissing sound and a small spark arcing from the bottom of the 3rd rail to a prominent piece of ballast. Rather more exciting was one morning waiting at Maidstone Barracks - someone emerged from the bothy at the end of the emu sidings there and, as far as I could make out, tossed the contents of the teapot across the tracks causing a momentary and very bright arc. Took a while for my eyes to recover.

I think I read that Volk's at Brighton originally was 2 rail electrified, but changed to 3 partly due to current leakage. I can't imagine Sussex commuters accepting a Volk's style train though.

J354, is that one of those tampers which could be rotated around its vertical axis? I've just read one of Machorne's blogs about Watford (Met) station where they had to turn one, the couplings are only on one end. This looks as though it fits the description.

Thank you, I'd often wondered what those numbers meant in the middle of fields etc.

J4955, could be a model, with a modelu figure on the verandah. Beautifully crisp photo. In the light of the WCRC thread - J4954, notable for bars on the droplight (shades of North London Line 2EPBs). Is that very faded maroon, or unfaded rust colour (or maybe red oxide primer)?

After a search I have found the puzzle, there's one in the Scinece Museum collection, link: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8003850/the-kings-regiment-jigsaw-puzzle I remembered wrongly, it is emerging, not entering the tunnel. Thanks for reviving a good memory!

Nice, reminds me about 60 years ago I'd had a jigsaw of a train just about to enter a tunnel as a Christmas present from a relative, once it was made Dad glued it to a piece of hardboard to hang on my bedroom wall. The loco was in BR blue, I think a Royal Scot (were they in blue?). We have one in progress now - 2 views of Waterloo, in wartime and just post war, celebrating the centenary of the station.

Proof of the advantage to be gained by removing fast trains onto HS2, as if one were needed. With so much in tunnel presumably HS2 should suffer less damage to OHLE from storm winds?

We used to send our paper machine rolls to a company called Bottcher to have their covers replaced. APM QC manager was Ken Tester.

A 100T oil tank wagon was rewheeled in APM West Mill siding (known as Brookgate Siding I think) using a hired in Iron Fairy type road crane. The oil train arrived with one bogie on skates, the defective wagon was shunted out of the train once the tanks had been emptied and was left on a spare road. Two wheelsets were delivered by a later 'pick up' goods on the line (headcode 4G?) on a lowmac. After the wheelsets had been exchanged the tank wagon and the duff wheels on the lowmac were removed a the head of our next oil train. I posted a view somewhere on here once of the departing train.