HGR

No, not independently switched on any classes that I am aware of. There was only one 'train classification lights' switch in each cab. For disks, all four lamps would be turned on together if any disk flaps were to be open. If all flaps were closed, you could leave the switch 'off'. As you would also do for an intermediate or rear-facing cab - should have all disks closed. With the train classification lights switched 'on', any closed disk flap would obscure its corresponding lamp and not be visible. You might notice light leakage around the edge of the closed disk on night-time long exposure photographs. On headcode locos in most cases there were two bulbs behind each character position. As most locos had duplicated lighting circuits, one bulb in each position would be fed from the No.1 lighting circuit, and the other bulb in each position on the No.2 circuit. That way if one of the circuits tripped out, half-lighting would still obtain. The same duplication occurs with the red tail lights. One is fed by each of the two lighting circuits, but operated by the same one switch. So one circuit trip would allow the other tail lamp to still function. When headcode boxes were fitted with circular opaque white disks to act as marker lights, there were two bulbs roughly behind each marker - bulbs 2+3 and 6+7, so usefully still one of each on No.1 lights and the other on No.2, the other four bulbs becoming handy 'spares'. The switch now being used for marker lights usually was still labelled 'train classification' on locos that previously had disks or headcodes.

Not sure how to link to it, but ... there's an interesting thread in the Prototype Discussions section on BR Exhibition coaches. It includes some extra information about the origin of the three LNER BGs and Mobile Marketing. Learn something new every day.

When headcodes went out of use in the '70s the white disks were supposed to be removed and the bulbs and fittings and / or wiring disconnected from the centre and top positions so as to leave the other two outer lamps remaining visible as marker lights as per the new requirement. Unsurprisingly there were plenty of variations on implementation of this, and the time taken to apply. As pointed out above, the centre position formed a useful starting hole for the later headlight fitment. The drawings issued for this modification sort-of took this into account in the selected position / measurements for classes / batches of locos that previously had disks in deciding where to set-to with the hole saw.

Remember seeing these three all-over yellow coaches sat in the Bishop Auckland bays (platform 6) at Darlington. They carried departmental numbers ZDB975399 - ZDB975401. At the time struggled to find out what these were converted from, but had figured that they were previously exhibition train vehicles M99626 - M99628 (not in that order though). Later these appeared in departmental coaching stock lists as : ZDB975399 was M99628 previously numbered MM3023 was originally E70491E ZDB975400 was M99626 previously numbered MM3021 was originally E70592E ZDB975401 was M99627 previously numbered MM3022 was originally E70630E Ex LNER BG. The MM numbers were I believe P.O. registration numbers for an outfit called 'Mobile Marketing' but I'm not sure if this was really a private company or a B.R. subsidiary outfit. They later appear to have had a repaint at some stage into a blue with wide yellow stripe livery (similar to the generic exhibition coach livery but yellow in place of the white middle band) and with the BR arrows in a safety sign triangle in the middle of the yellow. After use they were all preserved, the last two appeared at Carnforth. Departmentals.com presumably will give the later history of them.

... and several intermediate stations that are a not insignificant distance away from the present route of the ECML. The first main line took a rather different route to get north to Newcastle.

North of Darlington Bank Top station, on the UP / east side of the main line there (were) goods sidings that we used to refer to as the GN sidings. Previously Darlington steam shed was also alongside these sidings. This was opposite side of the line than the later DMU depot built on the west side of the line. 'GN' = Great North of England Railway. This was the original 'main line' in 1841 from York to Darlington. The original Bank Top station of 1841 was a small affair on the alignment of the present main line. It was rebuilt larger (I think in the 1860s ?). The present (and much larger) Bank Top station was built in 1887 on a loop alongside to the west of the main line. If you look at the brickwork of the wall on the platform 1 side roughly opposite the station buildings you can see the remains of the west wall of the previous station - it's a different pattern to the rest of the station outer walls. The GN sidings were thus to the north of Bank Top and ended just short of where the Stockton & Darlington ran east-west. The GN engine shed building still remains just to the north of Haughton Road on a curve. When the main line was extended north towards Newcastle, it crossed the S&D at the infamous flat crossing. The GN engine shed being now a south to east curve in the crossing layout. Springfield was the next 'box to the north.

Being born & bred not so far from there, I would agree with Springfield Box. The photographer is standing on the 'UP' side of the main line, facing south, at the foot of the embankment where Thompson Street East crosses over the ECML by an overbridge. The train is crossing over from the goods relief line that comes into / out of the north end of the GN sidings, crossing onto the UP main. A further crossover beneath / to the north of the overbridge would allow the train to continue northwards on the DOWN main. The line running up towards the photographer is just a headshunt at the end of the relief. Not visible in the photo, Robert Stephenson & Hawthorn's locomotive works is to the left behind the signal box, at right angles to the main line. Weirdly, all of the lines in / out of the RSH works turned towards the north, connecting together and running parallel to the main line ending in a headshunt also just short of Thompson Street East and just out-of-shot behind the 'box. The exit from the works was then at the southern end of this and joined on to the relief. What I'm not sure of is if the relief was bi-directional, allowing access between RSH and the GN UP sidings (Parkgate signal box) without getting in the way of the through mainline traffic. Unfortunately RSH is long since gone, as the 'box and everything other than plain two track ECML with auto colour light signalling. The area is now a 'new'ish estate full of little houses and streets with railway themed names giving some clue of the area's former heritage.

Something to be aware of with the dates quoted in Longworth - those shown alongside the individual vehicle number are the date it was first noted or reported in traffic. This ties in with contemporary sightings in the likes of Railway Observers of the time. This would of course always be some variable length of time after the vehicle officially left works and was delivered into traffic. In some cases early sightings were made of trains of newly outshopped vehicles fresh from main works or builder in transit to their allocated region. Some individual examples on the other hand seemed to find places to hide for numbers of months before being spotted in traffic, possibly remaining on works for trials or experimental purposes before being released, or otherwise simply just not being noted by observers of the day. M 34095 is the oddity. Lot 1626 gives it a build date of 1950 along with the others mentioned above, but the first mention or sighting of this number is not until well into 1952 roughly in sequence with the appearance of the last examples of lot 30003 from Derby and the first ones of lot 30025 from Wolverton. In the meantime, Eastleigh had already set away turning out some of the higher numbered examples for the Eastern and Southern Regions.

The drawing numbers of the general arrangement drawings are normally listed in the vehicle diagram books. There are copies of these on the Barrowmore MRG web-site. Book 320 Part 4 includes the VGA vans, diagrams VG 001 A to D being the variants included. VG 001 A is the prototype, G.A. drawing C1-A0-9003836 VG 001 B onwards are all variants of the production batch, G.A. drawing C1-A0-9005498 These drawings should be available from Serco Raildata at Derby - what used to be RDDS. They can be contacted through their web-site.

Thank you all for the replies so far. Some interesting info. To raise some further questions & answers, please : Far as I know only the Eastleigh prototype CK S 15000 had the inward facing underframe angle-section trusses, everything else was made with them facing outwards. However to be fair, I don't ever remember seeing M 34000 in later years to have checked. The official B.R. Derby photo of M 34000, as printed in Parkin, isn't clear enough to definitely say which way the bottom angles face - in or out. Does anyone have an actual print of this photograph that could be given the once-over with the magnifier ? The lifting date painted on the solebar of 10-8-50 ties in with other contemporary info of this coach. The left-hand number would be correct initially for 1950, but it migrated to the right fairly early in 1951, so as to be at the same corner as the dimensions plate on the coach end apparently. The first B.R. coaching stock lots issued in Dec. 1950 when the new 30001 series was introduced may well have included some vehicles or batches already allocated lot numbers in the series of the former companies. The same happened with wagon lots 2001 upwards which initially mopped up the order books of the former company's works of vehicles to their own designs prior to B.R. standard wagons. Lot 30001 was to convert the prototype CK into the all-compartment layout to diag. 127 (i.e. not for the original construction of the vehicle itself) - not sure what lot it was originally given, a Head Office Order (H.O.O.) number in 1950 ? Does anyone have details of the vehicle number ranges or quantities attributed to L.M.S. lots 1626 - 1630 ? A build programme, for example 1951 would be issued as a block of lots with intended types and quantity, to which the number ranges would be allocated. As would each region's needs. These would then be assigned to a particular works or outside contractor depending on their bids to tender and perceived capacity to fulfil the orders. Each works / builder would then set away manufacturing the vehicles in a series production-line style. The appearance of Eastleigh production CKs 15021 upwards ahead of the lower numbered Derby batch probably more reflects Derby having the jigs set up for building TKs and BTKs, which they were cracking through at an impressive rate. If you look at the build dates per lot per works rather than per type, this is sometimes more evident. Same could happen with locos / wagons if construction was shared over multiple works / builders, and some were quicker at turning them out or more or less busy with other work. Sometimes materials, particularly steel shortages, would slow down production. This could result in orders being amended or curtailed, and possibly re-issued later on a different lot number - in some cases, multiple attempts. Add to this that presumably there was scope for regions to expedite their allocations and thus upset the delivery sequence. Metro-Cammell seemed to be particularly adept at this. When building large lots of a particular vehicle type for a number of regions, there were in effect all of the regional series within the lot being released concurrently rather than in overall numerical order. Beware that what's shown on the builder's worksplate sometimes can be misleading. Take for example the Swindon lot 30019 FKs 13033 - 13035 that got transferred to Eastleigh works on lot 30052 - these had Swindon builders plates like the rest of the lot 30019 vehicles. Not sure what lot 30024 was intended to be, but I did wonder if lots 30025 and 30026 were tagged on to transfer production to other works with spare capacity. It gets messy after that as the 1952 programme was abandoned (steel shortage) and rolled on into the 1953 programme. There's a huge raft of subsequent order amendments amongst them.

L.M.S. lot 1626 was attributed to an all-steel brake third corridor BTK for experimental purposes. Listed as built Derby 1950. B.R. lot 30003 was for qty. 95 Mk.1 BTK nos. M 34000 to 34094 (mostly for LMR but a few ER ones in there as well). These have Derby build dates from late 1950 through into 1952. The prototype Mk.1 all-steel standard coaches displayed to the B.R.B. top brass in 1950 were CK no. S 15000 and BTK no. M 34000 The next batch of BTKs from Derby, also part of the 1951 building programme continued on with lot 30025 as numbers M 34095 - SC 34224 (with batches for WR, SR and ER in amongst). M34095 has a build date 1952 following on from those of the prior lot above, and the rest of this lot follow on from that. The question then : was the vehicle of L.M.S. lot 1626 actually M 34000 ? Later information in numerous sources says this vehicle is M 34095 and was subsequently included with the vehicles of lot 30025 ? As an aside ... does anyone know what was attributed to the cancelled lot 30024 please ?

Wasn't the power of 'larger loco plus half that of the smaller loco' applied for tandem worked pairs of any sort - mixed or same class ? For multi worked Blue Star pairs or triples it was simply totalled up. It may have been a NE or LMR regional thing maybe ? Seem to remember seeing an instruction about reducing the load of freight trains if the locos had a failure of the MW gear. Do remember putting a loco 'inside' to remedy defective MW - the pair worked OK coupled the other way round.

It's mainly an issue of load-sharing. Some of the early classes, particularly the pilot diesels, had control systems that limited their multiple working capability to others with the same arrangement of equipment, so sometimes only within their own class. This automatically ensured compatibility within the group. Blue Star is an example of an attempt at a 'universal' multiple working capability. It basically relies upon using the regulating air pressure to control all coupled locomotives so the engine output of each is in proportion 0% to 100%, so all locos produce the same percentage of their rated output. The output of a diesel engine is limited by the speed it is run at, so the regulating air pressure controls engine RPM through (in most cases) a mechanical governor. The load regulator of each loco then takes care of loading up the diesel to its fullest for the set RPM. So load is shared according to rated power output of each loco. The success of any combination of different classes in multiple then brings other factors into play, field diverts being the usual culprit. As these are generally taken and reverted at particular set road-speeds, there can be instability if the train is running around about the cut-in or cut-out speed of one of the locos. Accelerating quickly through the divert setpoint speeds will generally be OK, but climbing slowly through the critical speed(s) or slowing on a rising gradient can cause surging and/or transient overloading / unloading on one of the locos. Some pairings seemed to be more susceptible to this than others. Some classes are prone to this even when working between members of the same class. 37s for example can get a good fight going once one decides to go for divert, evidenced by the varying exhaust clag and outbursts of thunderous noise and mightily uncomfortable ride up the front end of the train as the engines over / underload.

Apologies for replying to something from a while ago, but ... (that's what you get for reading back through the thread I guess !) Bear in mind that 'grease' has evolved quite a lot in the timeframe under consideration. Early grease 'box lubrication would be often some concoction of animal origin, fat, tallow, etc. and very loosely specified or its consistency controlled. Oil of the time was often of plant origin. CASTROL name = castor bean oil. This is why the very characteristic smell of old classic cars. It had undesirable side-effects on the drivers of said vehicles but that's another story ! Mineral based oils brought much more quality to lubricants. The oil used in axleboxes soon became mineral oil, but with esters added to make it 'sticky' like the old stuff. Grease is effectively a blend of a lubricating oil with a base soap used to obtain the desired consistency / thickness depending on what you wanted to use it for. Early (WWII) through into British Railways the grease used for the new roller bearing axleboxes would need to be a defined mineral based grease. Originally there were two distinct grades - a very expensive (at the time) grade based on a lithium soap that was specified for such as Timken roller bearing sets. The other grade was a cheaper, more general purpose grease but was not up-to-scratch for such as Timken RB boxes. B.R. started initially painting the covers on grease boxes red to discourage attempts of filling them with oil. This soon changed to yellow so as to remain visible in black / rust coloured grime for longer. They typically get re-greased every two years so the covers might at least get an occasional clean from time to time. To identify the boxes needing the fancy lithium based grease, a horizontal red stripe was painted on the yellow cover. Depots were instructed to use the lithium grease only for these boxes so marked and not 'waste' it using it on anything else that didn't need such good stuff. More recently, as the cost differential of grease types has become less relevant, the lithium base is now very much the general purpose grease - the 'Regular Lubricant' or 'RL' grades. There are now other more expensive / exotic grades for those special applications where extremes of high speed, loading, etc. necessitates.

Upperby was the carriage shed. In the '80s there was the likes of a rake of blue & grey open firsts in there, including '358' from the SLOA set at the time it was being replaced by a doppelgänger. Currock was a wagon repair depot, but was not averse to the odd quick coaching stock job for example around about the same time as above a random trip there yielded one of the VSOE 'pullman' Mk.1 half-brakes in umber and cream livery. Was very late in the day so the photo wasn't too hot though in the fading light.

Unfortunately, no. Missed out on the APT 'shove and let go' resistance tests on the York - Darlington stretch as well ... on the wrong project at the time ! With the 50+ tonnes weight of the average ENS coach, good effective brakes were essential. My involvement in Nightstock was as sub-contractors to GEC Alstom (what used to be Metro-Cammell at Washwood Heath) in developing a TMS simulator for them / GEC Marconi Avionics to allow the TMS configuration development and subsystem testing to be done off-line. Then later as sub-contractors to the sub-contractors who provided the air-con equipment. We were electronics and software developers. Did a similar exercise for Jubilee Line Extension stock air-con for LUL. ENS coaches were very power-hungry so the TMS and electronics on board had to determine how much power was available from the electric train supply (ETS) to power the air-con and all the other kit hiding underneath each coach. It then entered one of up to five 'Load Shed' levels depending on how much kit had to be offloaded when there wasn't enough power available. A class 92 on overhead in a country with decent 25 kV AC supply could feed the many hundreds of amps needed by the train through the ETS. Countries with 3,000 V DC supply were somewhat more restrictive. Then going through Belgium on 1,500 V DC you had to just about switch everything off and hope you got out of the other side of the country before it got too cold (or hot) inside the coaches. Same 92 but on third rail introduced another complication into the equation : conductor rail gaps. Not only does the line voltage fall dramatically in mid section between substations particularly when the loco is giving it the berries, the sudden jumps up to normal voltage when the driver shuts off caused some fun for the static inverters on the coaches that convert the ETS voltage to three-phase for the air-con kit. Add to that the voltage drops out when you go over a gap, so the inverters have a really hard time. The refrigeration compressors on the air-con cooling circuit have a feature that you have to start them in sequence to avoid overloading the ETS, and you are only allowed an average of about half a dozen 'starts' per hour, as each start causes the compressor motor to heat up. Hence you tried to keep the compressor running as long as you could, but gaps and load shedding were your enemy. Every minute the compressor was running or stopped was time-in-the-bank clocking up that the motor could be cooling back down to normal. Each start attempt would take a gulp of six minutes out of the 'time-in-the-bank'. When that ran out, you had to wait till it had clocked up sufficiently to do another start. As part of this exercise, I have a report somewhere gathering dust that lists the precise location and length of each and every individual conductor rail gap on BTR1 and 2 (boat train route) on the Southern to get between London and the Tunnel so we could estimate just what sort of performance we were going to get from the air-con. For something that would on the face of it look to be fairly simple, the load shedding software was hundreds and hundreds of lines of code (software). And, after all that ... what happened ? The whole market that ENS was aimed at evaporated just about overnight (excuse the pun), so the politicians pulled the plug and it all came to nothing. The Canadians got a raft of stock on the cheap out of all of it, but wasn't good for the people at Met-Cam.

Another issue with playing around with ENS set formations was the self-setup procedure that the TMS (Train Management System) and air-con subsystems used to go through at startup in order to determine which of the three vehicle types each coach in the set was - sleeping, seated or service vehicle. Each had different sensors and equipment that had to be correctly identified and configured by the TMS as it went through its initialisation sequence. Lets just say that the decision-making process wasn't exactly flawless, so sometimes it would incorrectly identify the vehicle type or just flat refuse to believe what it found on the CAN bus that was used for the communication network within the set. We used an alternative name for this stock back in the days when involved in the development work, but instead of 'night' I'll leave you to guess a word that rhymes with it ! (relies upon a certain pronunciation) And yes, those magnetic track brakes were a mightily impressive bit of kit, and put the fear of God into the engineering staff at Railtrack. Pity though, I never did get to have a trip out to Vienna when the vehicles went over there for climatic testing.

Wasn't this one of the earlier batch of International coaches - from 1984 ? I'll have to do some trawling back through info. The first one done was a 'special' very high-spec vehicle for President Omar Bongo of the Gabonese Republic (a former French territory in Central Africa) ? Not sure how many more were made to the standard UIC '26.4 metre' spec. offering by BREL over the following couple of years if VCT says 1986 for this one. The 'International Train' done a couple of years later were the ones that were very much Mk.3 derivative, albeit with flat plug doors in place of the wrap-around sort. BREL described them as '23 m' option.

That's posh ... not seen a 'Yale' one like that. The Annetts key that I remember was a lot bigger and the key part of it was straight cut as per an old fashioned mortice lock key / mechanism, just scaled up. It was a hefty iron thing about 10" long, an inch thick shaft with a half-round solid 'D' on the end to turn it. The lock box that kept it was mounted on a tubular metal post (possibly a former signal post) a few hundred yards along a single line 'long siding', the remains of a once much longer branch line singled and cut back. The 'box released it electrically so you could withdraw it by leaning out of the cab of the 08 having drawn up directly alongside. Mounted high up the pole out of reach from the ground to discourage local mischievous types from attempting to interfere with it. Mind you, the second you withdrew it from its keyhole, you discovered just how heavy it was - at full stretch of arms reach. It then allowed you to unlock a ground frame part way along the former branch to get into an intermediate siding serving a goods terminal. The other customer was a works at the far end of the branch which was simply entered by way of a hand point, not needing the Annetts key.

Yep ... the rubber route card ! Wonderful material they were made out of. Stretched a mile before it would tear an inch. Amazing how far you could get on one of those, back in the days before Hidden hours etc.

So far only wagons have been discussed, but bear in mind that coaching stock could get in on the act as well. Vehicles could and did regularly go 'missing', or find somewhere to hide for a while until the offending vehicle appeared on search lists. This happened both before and after stock going on to TOPS / POIS in the '80s. Vehicles misappropriated for mid-week use by other districts / regions or divisions seemed to be limited to the 'B' stock used for the summer daters (Saturdays-only excursions to the seaside usually), which resulted in regular Friday evening search parties around the region and ECS to recover the delinquents and work them back to their home depots in time for the week-end bucket & spade jollies. North Eastern allocations seemed to have an uncanny habit of not getting worked back off the LMR for some reason, but never did know where they went to hide other than Edge Hill or Red Banks used to be a good starting point for CCTs with numbers starting with an 'E' regional prefix ? A later attempt at keeping these on their correct circuit working involved painting a red band on them. Once had a Mk.1 SK that we discovered had different numbers on either side (found literally after having walked down one side of the set, and back up the other side). Of course, coaches don't have the number on the cast works plate on the solebar, only the lot number / builder and year. This did allow us to rule out one of the two offered numbers. The other giveaway was by looking up the side of the coach body at a shallow angle, where you could see at least three sets of self-adhesive numbers with regional prefix letters from previous inter-regional transfers (before these were dropped when they went on POIS) hiding under the layers of equally numerous repaints with varying degrees of sanding down. What I did learn as part of this exercise is that some works used to stamp the vehicle number in half-inch high digits on the corner of the headstocks, which could be visible if the many layers of paint and years' worth of crud / brake block dust sealed in between had flaked off in the opportune place.

District control would try to satisfy the need within their own area if possible. Outstations would not routinely hang on to empties unless there was often an anticipated return loading for them. If not, empties would tend to get tripped back to the district area's sorting yard and linger there till next needed. This would typically be the location where routine maintenance such as axlebox oiling would be done. If a wagon of the right type wasn't available within the district it would be transferred over to the regional returns to be resolved at that level. Control would usually not instruct an outstation to send a wagon directly to the station needing it, unless it was urgent. Though they might ask for it to be tagged on to a service heading in the right general direction to expedite if needs be. Instead the wagon would be called up to the area yard, for onward move to the place needed. To prevent any opportunistic local interference in this, empties running in train used to be endorsed 'must not be intercepted en route'.

All done by hand on paper forms. Individual locations had to submit daily returns of wagons 'on hand' loaded, awaiting unloading, or empty and whether otherwise 'carded' for repair etc. Individual wagon numbers were not reported, just the totals / quantities for each type. There were slight differences in how 'common user' (what used to be pool, not to be confused with TOPS pool numbers) wagons were reported and those on circuit workings or specials. The returns would ripple up to district offices, and on up to regional control. Wagon needs for the following day were similarly passed up the chain, and should be satisfied divisionally or regionally. May even require inter-regionals if supply was being outstripped by unusually high local needs. Specially constructed vehicles used for exceptional loads received their own dedicated control but the principle was similar. 'Stationmaster' has just posted about these wagons' home station while I'm typing this.

From left to right ... Left / near side : Dummy receptacle for 'loco' control jumper, with jumper plug inserted. Train Pipe (would be painted red) Main Res (yellow) both cocks operated by one common handle. These would connect to trailer. 'loco' control jumper, plugged into the dummy receptacle at the left end. Heating receptacle for jumper from trailer Lighting receptacle for jumper from trailer Right / off side : Control receptacle (under the second roof access step) for jumper from trailer Duplicated main res (yellow) and Train Pipe (red) with double cock. These not needed for trailer so usually stowed. Note the thin pipe from the PCA valve on the butterfly cross-shaft takes the more usual route over and around the right of the double cock to get to the train pipe. The brake / res pipework from the double cocks runs down the body end and in through holes in the headstocks, roughly where buffers would otherwise be.

The dummy receptacle with the plug end of the extra 'loco' control jumper on this side of the motor coach is what is visible at the extreme left of the photo, on the back of the motor coach. The two jumpers from the trailer on this side are for lighting and heating respectively (the control jumper is on the other side of the end - as above a jumper on the trailer into a receptacle on the motor coach). The main res and train pipe with their high-level double cocks are on this side of the unit only. They are duplicated on the back of the motor coach for 'loco' use same as for the duplicated control jumper. See the end of the Bachman 2H for their arrangement on that coach. The only difference between this and earlier trailers is that the thin pipe that connects to the PCA communication cord valve on the end of the coach between the butterfly tell-tales takes a more direct diagonal route on this coach, whereas on the others it goes across horizontally all the way to the corner edge to clear the double cocks before dropping down to connect into a branch on the train pipe. Train pipe is the one nearest the right / edge of the coach.