MR Chuffer

This still doesn't makes sense, in a global economy, you want to handicap UK-based companies generating profits globally against foreign owned companies milking it in the UK? Not sure that'll work, and many of us on here have our pensions invested in the major energy companies on our behalf so double whammy.

On some issues, I would agree with you, on the substantive point I made, the supply companies profits are rigourously controlled, otherwise I think they would wish to make a lot more profit than 1.8%.

So how do you propose windfall taxing Exxon, Saudi Aramco and the multiplicity of LNG (liquid natural gas) companies in the Middle East, let alone globally, that supply us with gas and petroleum products but do not have head offices in the UK, are not on the UK stock exchange and do not pay taxes in this country. And if you do find a way to tax them in the UK, they will sell their wares to other countries, we have very little leverage as is now being demonstrated. Unless you are conflating your idea with energy supply companies who are based in the UK and are rigorously controlled by Ofgem making no more than 1.8% margin on their businesses (I think I read somewhere that this equates to £46 off the annual bill - but double figures only). There are no easy answers nor quick wins - better turn some more appliances off....

Has anyone referenced this? As a model, it doesn't appear to be braked either.

Really? What about biggish towns like Blackburn, Burnley, Accrington - home of Accrington brick, Clitheroe, Barnoldswick, Colne and others. They were all established with stone civic buildings and ashlar for humbler dwellings, brick came later as the outskirts spread out.

I wish they had. I created a topic (no responses!) about common alternatives to brick, specifically for me, ashlar and random ashlar which are so common across the North of England from when it was the go to stone material before bricks started to prevail in the mid to late 19th century. Examples of ashlar are some of the Metcalfe S&C and ScaleScene buildings but I can't find any backdrops to go with them.

As in Midland Railway and Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, show me, where, have I missed something? I have plenty of kits, but I have discovered my soldering skills are zilch and the handlining is something I would want to avoid so I could spend more time running trains.

I want them here and now so I can start to run some passenger services on my pre-grouping model railway. I'm in my 70s, 2 years into a model railway project from scratch, I have the layout, 100+goods wagons and half a dozen locos but no coaches and with diminishing eyesight and hand-eye coordination, I don't fancy handlining a pre-grouping coach. These will be a quick win (when they arrive), simples....

Where I live, close to the Blackburn - Clitheroe line (and on to Hellifield and the S&C), we're blessed with steam trains all summer. This week has already seen 2 return workings, Tuesday and Wednesday, with another 1 way on Saturday, equals 5 in total, so a two-way could certainly fit into a day's operating schedule without stretching credibility.

Thanks for your kind offer but I am after 9 foot representations for MR 1910 that @Compound2632 cites. Probably some diligent craft knife work on some wooden coffee stirrers will have to do.

Ah, thx, that's more like the picture.

This picture puzzles me, I'm reading that the standard British sleeper length is 8'6" (am I right for pre-WW1?), and that the interior length of this wagon is 18ft 7.25ins. If so then I would expect larger gaps at each end. Can someone clarify as I had loaded my wagons widthways - because I was using Peco 16.5mm Streamline sleepers which will be short anyway so will have to make or purchase suitable length sleepers just for loading the wagon.

Another example is Royton, L&YR, to the east of Manchester. Opened in 1864, it was double track into a single platform but quite busy nevertheless with 18 passenger trains each way in 1920. The L&YR seemed to make a habit of building double track branches into single platforms irrespective of the paucity of traffic, other examples being the Horwich, Holmfirth and Rishworth branches (already mentioned above).

Some comments to fill your detail out - I love your detail! I have got a figure somewhere for the exact coal wagon traffic numbers year on year so, yes, our figures are about right without me getting the exact wagon sizing correct. Some comments I got from a PDF somewhere on the web: "Barnoldswick, a cotton weaving town of about 12,000 people (I've upped the population to 20,000 to make the town more important), provides a good example of traffic in a small industrial town. The station received 10+ wagon loads of coal a day, a lot of coal. The 1930s “Kelly's Directory” for the period lists 5 coal merchants in the coal yard and 12 weaving sheds. (There were more pre-WW1) 3 of the coal merchants and 4 of the sheds had PO wagons registered (presumably all the weaving sheds received wagon loads of coal, though perhaps several sheds shared a load as several had offices at the same address). A photograph shows that in addition the Barnoldswick Cooperative Industrial Society had an office in the coal yard. The town gas works must have received a lot of coal. As well as the coal sidings the yard had a coal chute where wagons could unload through side doors onto a chute to a lorry on a road at a lower level." As for sources of coal - coal for gas probably from the Burnley area, well known for its gassing coal but over the L&YR; I have a yard picture from post-WW2 of a coal wagon from Low Laithes, Ossett/Yorkshire, and one of the weaving shed owners purchased the New Ingleton colliery in 1912, so coal would come down via Clapham. And of course, some of the collieries shipping into Skipton, as per your researches, could trip their wares the additional 10 miles to Barnoldswick, thus keeping the traffic on Midland rails.

Beyond my knowledge, possibly not Midland. Of course the engine wouldn't need to be locked in all day, it could be let out when it's job was done to head back to the mainline double heading. But just minerals and coal of 22,000 tons per annum in 8t wagons, it was 35,000 tons in 1911, then there was all the goods in and out to maintain self sufficiency - 30,000 "parcels". But I'm comfortable now that with block signalling, I can maintain a single line branch - can't afford to do much else!

The majority of passenger trains ran just to and from the junction at Earby, according to Bradshaw's 1910 timetable, but ones from further afield allow more "exotic" motive power. The locals christened that service the "Barlick Spud" or "Spudroaster", because the original engine was that small, it was like a portable potato roaster, or, the journey took just long enough to roast a spud in the firebox, take you're pick. (Barlick being the local pronunciation of Barnoldswick - as in "eeh, lad, don't mangle tha' words, spit it out...")

Don't know, but I believe the Midland's West Bridge, Leicester branch had a locked in shunting engine all its life. And that's probably why chain or rope shunting that allowed an engine on an adjacent siding to move wagons - again, rare I believe - was permitted at Barnoldswick. But difficult to model...!

It went push-pull in 1932, and in 1934 was running 24 departures a day with some to Skipton, Colne and Burnley with summer excursions even further afield. No electric, sparsely populated area at the lowest Pennine crossing point.

Point taken, but see my reference materials in previous post. It was OES throughouts its existence so I may re-imagine it to staff and ticket and block posts to avoid having to double the line.

There was only one bridge over the Leeds - Liverpool canal, which brought initial industry and wealth to the town, with the rest of the line relatively flat. The MR bypassed the town when it built its Skipton - Colne line in 1848, perhaps due to a huge hill in the way to the southwest, so the merchants and citizens funded and built their own branch line which opened in 1871. It was run by the MR who later acquired it outright in 1898, when it was paying a 5% dividend! The traffic, goods and coal inwards, finished products outwards from a town of approximately 11,000 people (which I've upped to 20,000 to make it more "important" traffic-wise) in 1910 and 13 mills in 1920. Much of the branch goods traffic was inward coal and minerals (see figures above) from both the Lancashire and Yorkshire coal fields, general provisions (it is relatively isolated), cotton from Liverpool, wooden bobbins for the mills from Cumbria,, etc. The traffic was more likely to start from Skipton or Colne as there were limited siding/exchange facilities at Earby, the junction station. The engine shed was demolished in 1910 to up the coal siding storage from 20 wagons as built to 100, such is the enigma that is the Barnoldswick Branch which makes it easy to hang fantasy operations on. And mixed trains are documented: The Skipton-Colne Railway and the Barnoldswick Branch (Donald Binns) Disused Stations - Barnoldswick So yes, I'm feeling more comfortable about it remaining a single line branch, perhaps with a block post at the terminus and/or more flexible workings than 1 engine in steam Thx

The period is 1910, so the majority of open wagons would be MR D299 8T carrying, usually, less than 8 tons (which on my quick calculation makes approx 12 minerals/coal per day on 22,000 tons). One operating peculiarity was that the first train of the day or a subsequent early one would be a double header where one engine would then be locked in the sidings all day until it's work was done. Chain shunting was permitted from adjacent sidings! Yes it was OIS, there are pictures of the staff being exchanged at the junction box, but if the the terminus was a signal box and block post, that might allow for increased traffic? This is only a 2 mile branch. Thanks for your ideas.

I know, but the 1910 Bradshaw Timetable shows just that, 13 passenger trains a day each way and I have other materials that document the level of goods traffic in 1910 - 3,600t of minerals, 18,800t of coal...! The junction signalman must've been really busy with that token.

I'm modelling a short pre-grouping (2ml) single line branch off a secondary double mainline based on an actual line, what level of traffic would make the railway company think about doubling it? The actual line, the Midland's Barnoldswick Branch in Lancashire was run as one engine in steam and coped with up to 13 passenger trains a day from the nearby junction station at Earby, and this was interspersed by several goods trains a day, though some of the passenger trains were "mixed". I've upped the population of the town to 20,000 to generate more distant passenger traffic and goods and there is now a lot of activity in the goods yards between services but handling this on one engine in steam on a single line is getting hard. A further complication is although the line is MR-owned, the L&Y has running rights over it - as it did on the actual line but mostly originating excursions from there. Are there instances where pre-grouping companies shared single line branches? The L&Y tended to build a double line branch whether the extra traffic was there or not. Downsides of doubling the branch, I'd have to re-model the station throat and perhaps lose a few wagons of siding capacity and as I run DC with CAB control, it would be difficult for me to run inward and outward trains simultaneously, I'd still be running sequentially as on the current single line. I guess I'm looking for some reassurance that I can maintain the single line branch and be reasonably faithful to pre-WW1 practice with my increased traffic.

This is incorrect according to Essery, "D306 having fixed sides...", and the photo and diagram clearly show no door(s). FYI The 11ft wheelbase is the same as the Slaters MR Large Cattle Wagon if you fancy making some more.

I think it possibly could be, after all, in the olden days, people in Lancashire got used to drinking beer from soft water and even though you can change the chemical composition in the water, it's what people got used to so Lancashire brews like Prospect, Bank Top, Thwaites and Moorhouses all have a "soft" edge to their beers and a well established market in Lancashire, but none makes a decent IPA (- prepared to be proved wrong...). I also taste the same traits in the much lauded Marble Beers from Manchester, their IPA is too soft! The exception being Brewsmith from Ramsbottom which tastes more like a Yorkshire beer than some Yorkshire beers, with its APA, NZPA, IPA - all great at various strengths and then there is their delightful Oatmeal Stout. And Hawkshead, is Cumbrian water hard? On the other hand, most Yorkshire beers used harder water for a different beer and that's what their consumers got used to in the olden days, and is better suited to IPAs. The Lancashire beers sell in our pub but slower than Yorkshire ones. I blame those Americans and colonialists with all their fancy hops of the last few years which is why IPAs became so popular overnight. And of course, the original IPA came from Bass and Worthington in Burton-on-Trent, sitting on a source of hard water, which nicely brings us round to the D299 thread and other railway related topics on RMWeb about beer and its distribution. My theory anyway, I will have to do some more research.... :))