Boldon Boy

Thank you MM for the photos -- happy memories!   An interesting selection of prototypes.      

The card parts I had were 4mm/ft.   

Does anyone know the extent of the range of pressed card coach sides and ends marketed under this name soon after WW2?   The only ones I remember were a NER 6-wheel passenger brake and a LSWR 6-wheel coach, but there may have been others.   I recall making up one of them badly (I hadn't discovered the used of shellac/knotting to stiffen card), but National Service called and it failed to survive.

A picture of a survivor would be interesting!        

ERG's first name seems to have been Edward rather than Ernest.   He appears in the 1939 Register as Edward R Gray with "Mail Order Business" as his Occupation, and living with his wife at 726B Christchurch Road.    Does anyone know whether the pre-war business was in model railways too, or did he start in a different line?   He was born incidentally in 1910.

Sorry - not complaining, just stating a fact.   I was hoping to tempt an aged educationalist to come forward to explain why an age-limit was deemed necessary that year.   

Because I and about a third of my class were under 16 years of age the English educational Taliban in 1950 barred us from taking our School Cert.   As a result I have nothing to show that I spent 5 years studying about half the syllabus.   The reasoning is still unclear.       

The sign on the right advertises James Coxon & Co, which had a department store in Newcastle, latterly on the corner of Grey Street and Market Street and later occupied by Binns.  Googling the name produces more.    

The firewall/party wall did not always extend above the ceiling height of the top floor.   In the 1960s I moved into a 3-storey house, in a terrace of 4 houses which the title showed had been built in 1840-41, which had nothing except the chimney flues above ceiling level.   There was no felt or wooden sarking either, just pantiles hung on laths!

Caley Jim should have made clear that in Edinburgh the invitation, "Come away in. You'll have had your tea", is followed by "You'll take a refreshment".

Sorry to come late to the party, but Census returns show that Archibald Marshall Reidpath was the father of Archibald Stewart Reidpath, who was born in 1894.   Father was a stockbroker and member of the London Stock Exchange.   The Marshall Stewart firm was probably just father and son in partnership before the son, who had been in the RNVR during the war, struck out on his own.  

No 11 is I think a West Lancashire Railway engine, one of two bought in 1883 from the LBSCR.   It is probably WLR No 8 Blackburn, formerly LBSCR No 363 (info from Vol 3 John Marshall's 'Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway'), which gained a MSLR chimney and a tender weatherboard.   It was withdrawn in 1890.   

John William Smith (of Derby and Gorton) is recorded as dying at Marple on 12 May 1943.   He may well have been the 'G C Schultz' who described the Smith compound system in a series of articles which appeared in the 'Locomotive', beginning in October 1911. 

Ah memories!   Anyone remember Centigrade Heat Units?

Concerning 'Manifold', this was the very fitting name chosen by the group of authors who combined to publish 'The North Staffordshire Railway' in 1952.  In its Foreword the members were named as J R Hollick, C A Moreton, G N Nowell-Gosling, F M Page, and W T Stubbs, most of whom contributed to the magazines of the time.  And it is worth tracking down.