Jeremy Cumberland

I agree with B stock, from what I have been able to discover. Given the pretty much spot-on window pattern on the trailer car, I did wonder that, since the motor car doesn't quite match B stock, whether they might be C or D stock, but I haven't found a side-on photo of a C or D stock motor car. They are all "underground" (or "Underground"). The distinction is between tube and surface (the "sub-" prefix only really has a historical use).

The timetable planner is a railway modeller with a small boxfile layout of a terminus station with two platforms and a rather limited fiddle yard. One of their regular moves is to take a train out of platform 1 and then bring the same train back into platform 2. Sometimes they forget to change the points so the train ends up back in platform 1 and they have to take it out again, remember to change the points this time, and then bring the train back into platform 2. At one exhibition, a punter watching this series of moves was heard to remark, "Not very prototypical, is it?" The owner-operator thought "Right. That's it! I'll show them," and so 5Y58 1955 Fort William to Fort William via Fort William was born. How long it will last is another matter. The driver doesn't much mind the second leg, where they might actually be doing something useful, but the first out and back from Platform 1 means they miss the end of Emmerdale on the telly in the mess. I've heard that they've had words with S&T for how to frig things so the train is reported as leaving from and returning to platform 1 while the driver is still sat drinking tea. The S&T guy is also a railway modeller and, like many S&T people, is something of an electronics enthusiast. His mind quickly progressed from thinking about interferring with track circuits to wondering what he might do with a shuttle module for automatically reversing the train at Fort William Junction. Watch this space.

I think so. The carriages all had door fault lights.

They were both in the Easter 2019 Windermere formation (6103 was the other coach). I didn't think 6115 was used in the 2018 trains; the only numbers I have are 6103-6000-9493.

What you describe isn't particularly difficult, but it does involve quite a lot of steps. Just to take the first thing: means creating a list of locos, counting them (to know the range for the random number generator), generating a random number and finally selecting a locomotive on the basis of the random number. You could do it in Excel, as @Steadfast suggested, if you have some way of running Excel during your operating sessions. In many ways, Excel isn't ideal. It has a habit of trying to convert text into numbers, which often gives problems with leading zeros (is your layout TOPS era, with class 08s, perhaps?). It's not very good at waiting for a set period of time. It is difficult to stop or pause a program when it is running, and if you are using the computer for other things at the same time, the running Excel program will tie up resources. None of these are show-stoppers, and Excel does have some great advantages: you are likely to have it already, you are probably already reasonably familiar with it, and it is pretty quick to get things up and running. The key thing is what you want the display to look like. Presumably you will have a list of off-shed locos (in column A, perhaps). How do you want the on-shed locos to be displayed? Perhaps they aren't displayed at all. Perhaps you will have a list of locos. You might then have the location/activity alongside. Perhaps if the activity is time-related, the remaining time might auto-update (this is fairly easy to do). Or perhaps you will have a list of locations, and place each loco against the location. How do you want "decisions" to be displayed? If you have a list of on-shed locomotives with locations/activities, then the loco number could simply move from the off-shed list to the on-shed list with the appropriate location/activity. This could be reinforced with a popup. Or perhaps you want a list of actions (new actions added at the top, perhaps), as a record of what has happened so far. Or some combination of these things. If you think that Excel might be suitable, then I suggest you create a template for the interface and post it on here (a screenshot will be fine). I would be happy to help you with the coding. In your template, leave room for a Start button (this can be the size of a default cell, but it would probably look better being two rows high).

Or perhaps LSL staff had been dispatched with some oil cans and tubs of grease. Someone said earlier in this thread that the current saga resembles an Ealing comedy. I would be loth to cast WCRC in the role of the preservationists in The Titfield Thunderbolt, but I can easily imagine a Harry Hawkins.

St Bees, like most passing loops, is only signalled for left-hand running. I can't say that I have watched the St Bees signaller particularly closely, but surely they have to put each token through the instrument, which would change the sequence of operations (notably the signaller not taking the token from the driver of the Barrow train and giving it directly to the driver of the Carlisle train). Also, if the up train is expected more than a couple of minutes after the down train (down trains are usually scheduled to arrive first), then the signaller often raises the level crossing barriers after the down train has stopped in the platform, and there is a signal at the Carlisle platform end specifically for this purpose. I don't know what information the St Bees signaller has to know when to expect trains. Departure times from Sellafield and Whitehaven, certainly, but they are both some distance away (Sellafield particularly), which might well mean the signaller lowers the barriers prematurely, expecting a train to arrive when it has been delayed en route.

[Windermere] 57316-6103-6000-9493-47245 [Oxenholme]. There's a video here. The Oxenholme end loco changed over the 2 weeks or so the service ran. It started with 37669. Then 33029 was used when the class 37 was needed elsewhere (apparently there were also complaints about the smoke and noise). Then 57314 was used from 25 June, and 47245 took over on 29 June. I think the coaches were the same throughout. WCRC also ran a service at Easter 2019 with 47851-6103-6115-9493-47826

I can understand why they have 1860 (catering) and 21266 (guard, and quite likely support crew) in the formation, but I wonder what reason they have for 4951. Perhaps they have invited the press along. They could then show the journalists the rather less pleasant conditions that fare-paying passengers have to put up with. Mind you, I suppose Mk2fs don't have steam pipes, so the coaches will all be cold.

Thanks, I didn't know exactly what it was, but I couldn't help thinking of the escape route at the back of a bus in the event of an accident.

Do you have a rule book you can quote from? There is nothing in RSR99 that precludes taking doors out of passenger use. It is only doors for use by passengers that require CDL. Of course, there may well be some other rule that prevents operators from locking doors out of use. @phil-b259 pointed out earlier in this thread that Mk1 RUs didn't have any passenger doors - something I had forgotten (and now that I do some checking, I don't think RBs had passenger doors either). Would these be permitted today? Doubtless the loose seats that RUs used to have wouldn't be permitted, but these could be replaced with fixed seats. I see WCRC does have an RU in its fleet (1961), but it has had the seating removed. Edit: I spent so long writing this that Phil got in before me.

The mark 2s are exempt from both regs (they aren't Mk1s and they have CDL). If the BSK isn't used by fare paying passengers, it is exempt from both regs (I see that it is not included in the WCRC's regulation 4 exemption certificate). 1860 has a regulation 4 exemption certificate. I have no idea what its regulation 5 status is. Perhaps it now has CDL fitted. I wonder what the rules are for locking all the doors on a carriage carrying passengers out of use. I think either it or one of the other vehicles at Fort William will have to, because the Mk2 set does not appear to have accommodation for the guard.

Usually a gauging wagon has one or more transverse plates or frames that more or less match the structure gauge profile (but are smaller all round), with projecting rods that can either measure the distance to a structure or else be set at the minimum clearance to see if anything hits them. Here is an example from Japan. The wagon in the Paul Bartlett photographs is clearly meant to be ridden in, but has no gauging frame. I wonder if it is already out of use in the 1979 photograph (it has COND painted on it in the 1983 one), and the gauging frame has been removed. Alternatively, perhaps it is for some other purpose. These days it's all done by lasers - see this page: http://www.traintesting.com/SGT.htm

It doesn't sound likely. They had a whole spare class 13 (only two were needed at the same time), and they could always have worked a pair of 08s in tandem.

The Telegraph is hardly on its own in the leagues of poor reporting of anything that involves an element of technical, scientific or specialist knowledge. I'm a leftie-leaning Guardian reader, and their reporting will be just as bad when it comes to facts and analysis. They won't, of course, report the Jacobite saga because there isn't really any angle for them - they will be generally pro-health and safety and generally pro-regulator, and of course the regulator hasn't said or done anything. Aren't you getting a little carried away in criticising their standard of written English, though? I might bemoan newspapers and journalists, but the standard of Engish is usually excellent. Of course, if you insist on "different from", "it was he" and "the person to whom I spoke" then you might be out of luck, but they were silly rules anyway. Anyway, I posted a couple of questions a little while ago which no one has yet answered. WCRC are currently moving a Black Five, a Mk1 BSK as a support coach, four Mk2fs and a Mk1 RMB to Fort William. The support coach is fine - if it doesn't carry fare paying pasengers it needs neither Regulation 4 nor Regulation 5 exemption. But...

Air condiitoned Mk2fs then. Two questions for those in the know: 1. What will power the air conditioning 2. What's the CDL status of 1860? I've not previously thought about catering vehicles, and 1860 was an RMB, so unless it has been extensively modified, it'll still have plenty of seating.

I feel the story ought to continue: ...unless, of course, the signalman hadn't been given his tradtional free fish supper, in which case he'd run the train into the opposite platform so the passengers would go into the Railway Hotel instead.

I didn't think any of the NCB Yorkshire areas had any working steam locomotives that late. In my Industrial Locomotives 1976, HE 3168/1944 is shown OOU at Allerton Bywater Colliery. "Zone of high vehicular activity" indeed.

Ah, you sussed it. Of course it wasn't a dam. The old Wrysgan Mountain Railway was particularly dramatic, even by the standards of Welsh narrow gauge railways. It left the Ffestiniog main line a little below Tanygrisiau before running through a short tunnel and emerging into this dramatic landscape: Here's the lower part of the line with Wrysgan Tunnel: And then, on the other side of the tunnel, there's Stwlan Viaduct, with Moelwyn Mawr with its seemingly-impossible precipices towering over the line. This is a historic photograph, and you might just be able to see the final train running over the viaduct. When the Ffestiniog Railway was building the Deviation, some enthusiasts had a go at reviving the old Wrysgan Mountain Railway. It had never reopened after the War, and by the 1970s the track was in very poor condition. Nevertheless they patched it up and got a train running in 1977. Alas, it was to be the last. Near the top, a dipped joint tipped the whole train over the edge. The train was going slowly, and everyone on board was able to jump clear and so escape with only a couple of cuts and bruises, but as the train hurtled down the hillside, it struck and killed a sheep. Local opinion was firmly on the side of the sheep, and the preservationists found themselves isolated, and eventually abandoned their attempts.

Bartley Reservoir clearly has a dam. The water in the reservoir might not have naturally flowed into the valley that the dam blocks, but this is no different from many other reservoirs with dams where streams have been diverted and aqueducts built to capture water from elsewhere, and perhaps at its most extreme can be seen in the upper lakes of pumped storage systems, such as here at Llyn Stwlan, the upper reservoir of the Ffestiniog pumped storage scheme. Surely no one would argue that this wasn't a dam. The D-shaped Frankley (my dear I don't give a damn) Reservoir next door looks to be different, with an embankment all the way round. I don't know the correct name for the reservoir wall, but I wouldn't have called it a bund, which to me is something used to preventing liquid spills from escaping, although according to OED the word is used for dams and embankments in Indian English.

I wonder what ORR would make of the compartment droplights. As I recall, the window slid down to level with the washbasin cover and you could basically sit with your whole body out of the window.

Oh yes. I don't think I'd ever have noticed. It's very convincingly done. Here's No. 1 end: The accident-damaged No. 2 end shows that it is plated, though: The 1983 picture in Rail Blue at Eastfield I linked to earlier looks like dominoes though.

Named locomotives are quite easy to find photographs of. Here are some others of 47559. It looks like headlights were fitted in late 1983/early 1984, but dominoes appear to have been retained at both ends till the works visit in 1985: May 1983: No. 1 end. Dominoes and no headlight. https://davidheyscollection.myshopblocks.com/pages/david-heys-steam-diesel-photo-collection-40-br-diesels-1980s-1 14 June 1983. No. 2 end. Dominoes and no headlight. http://www.hondawanderer.com/47559_Hinksey_1983.htm 23 Oct 1983. No. 2 end. Dominoes and no headlight. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:47559_passes_Smithy_Bridge_signal_box.jpg 10 March 1984. No 2 end. Dominoes and headlight. https://twitter.com/SalopianLyne/status/1279889953401589764 18 May 1984. No. 1 end. Dominoes and headlight. See previous post 20 August 1984. No. 2 end. Dominoes and headlight. https://www.flickr.com/photos/56249446@N06/53377772154/in/pool-4463329@N21/ 14 Janaury 1985. No. 1 end. Dominoes and headlight. http://www.class47.co.uk/c47_zoom_v3.php?img=0999000576000 5 May 1985 (freshly painted at Crewe Works) No. 2 end. Plated and headlight. https://twitter.com/SalopianLyne/status/1276635995333701634

47559 Sir Joshua Reynolds had domino headcodes in 1984: http://www.class47.co.uk/c47_zoom_v3.php?img=0999000575000 There's a picture it newly painted at Crewe Works with the headcode panel plated over in May 1985. Wikipedia has a picture of 47523 with dominoes as late as 1988. [Edit: Following @37114's post below, I've just checked and it's a plate painted black] 47464 had dominoes in 1986 [Edit: no it didn't - see below], but by then it was in large logo livery. There's a picture of it in rail blue with [genuine] dominoes in 1983 here: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/traction/20210401/281573768482810 They're the only 47/4s I've found from a quick search, but several 47/0s still had dominoes at this time.

Thanks. I've just looked it up. It's painted green. Doesn't anyone have a red engine? Pub quiz question for the non-railfan. Which of these is the Harry Potter engine? a. b. c. d.