Jeremy Cumberland

Waste oil. Utterly foul stuff. Eventually (in the late 1990s as I recall) they went over to gasoil before changing to coal early this century. Oil would produce less CO2, but I very much doubt it is any cleaner in terms of particulates and other pollutants. By particulates, I mean stuff measured in microns, not stuff measured in millimetres that burns holes in that nice jacket you knew you shouldn't have worn to visit a heritiage railway.

The Disused Stations site (http://disused-stations.org.uk/l/lyme_regis/index.shtml) has the 1959 1:2500 map, although it is photo-reduced. However, it ought to be easy enough to compare against the 1929 NLS map, and this is also on the Disused Stations site at what appears to be the same scale of reproduction. I very strongly recommend you get a copy of From Devon to Dorset: The Story of the Lyme Regis Branch by Martin Smith and George Reeve. The pictures are superb and your era is well-covered, although not all the photographs are dated. However, there are 1959 and 1960s studies of the engine shed, two of which show the platelayers' hut beyond (half of it in one picture and, fortuitously, the other half in the other) and there is an undated (presumably post-war) study of the advanced starter in which the concrete road bridge is clearly visible in the background.

That is remarkable! I hesitate to suggest anything since you clearly know exactly what you are doing, but would two or three cameras help, parallel and perpendicular to the wheelsets, to be the eyes of the banksmen as you drive the cranes?

Different Jeremy, I think. I did not realise when I registered that I have a name almost identical to another user. I think I'll get a mod to change mine to avoid confusion (if only I could think of something suitable).

The photograph is from Mike King's collection, and I don't think I am allowed to photograph or scan it and post it here. The book's authors are doubtless far better than I am at working out colours from black and white photographs, but it does not look conclusively stone and red lettering to me. The wheel rims and brake handle are painted white, and the white of the wheel rims certainly looks brighter than the body, but not by much, and it might just be that they look whiter because they are surrounded by so much black. There looks to be far less difference between the body and the brake handle. A 1931 picture of 50538 (same diagram) in stone with red lettering is far darker and has far less contrast between the lettering and the body colour. This picture has white letter "N"s painted on the bodyside in the bottom corners, so the body colour is unmistakable. Two diagram 1486 photographs are similar in shade to the 1931 picture; one of these has white wheel rims, but both have dark letter "N"s. Two diagram 1476 photographs (taken in 1928 and 1936) are perhaps more relevent. The 1928 picture is similar to the 1931 picture in shade, and has white letter "N"s. The other is far closer to the 1948 picture and has white wheel rims, dark letter "N"s and a high contrast between the body colour and the lettering, but from the text I would assume it is in stone with venetian red letting. For me, the most curious photograph is on page 79, which shows a very pale banana van (dia. 1479) with dark lettering in the 1936 style, next to an unidentified van (looks to be a dia. 1478 banana van) having a much darker body colour but also with dark lettering in the early, pre-1936 style. Could the first van be in white and the second one be in stone, or was there considerable variation in the shade of stone, or did the stone weather to a much darker shade? I have just noticed that the 1948 photograph looks almost identical to the Peco gauge 0 model. The photograph has a small letter S prefix, the same height as the number, and also has WB 9'-0" at the bottom right hand corner, placed a line higher than the tare weight, and further to the right: https://peco-uk.com/products/southern-railway-insulated-van

The Southern livery (pre-1941) was stone with venetian red lettering. In An Illustrated History of Southern Wagons Volume 4, mention is made of a 1941 livery of red oxide with lemon lettering, but there are no photographs. On the other hand, there is a 1948 Ashford Works photograph of dia. 1477 no. S50561 with a pale livery and dark letters, which the authors believe to be stone with venetian red lettering. However, it is very pale and I wonder if it white with black lettering, which I read somewhere was an early BR livery. Early BR wagon liveries aren't something I know much about.

I use self-locking forceps for small nuts. And magnifying lenses.

How good are your ears? I can tell a three cylinder locomotive from a two cylinder one easily enough and the number of beats per distance travelled is a function of wheel diameter, but the most obvious differences in exhaust sound are between different blastpipe arrangements and whether the valves are properly adjusted. Apart from that, I cannot distinguish between such things as slide and piston valves, type of valve gear (Stephenson's and Walschaert's, at any rate), valve travel, cylinder diameter and stoke, boiler pressure or whether a locomotive is superheated or not. I really cannot see what difference boiler size makes at all. 57xx and 74xx classes both had 4' 7½ wheels and of course both were two-cylinder, and I expect they both had similar blastpipes, so I doubt I could tell the difference. Of course, there would be differences between individual locomotives within a class, as others have said.

Fancy offering us Fowler's ghost when we don't even have a Metropolitan A Class. I'd be tempted by any early indirect-drive locomotive, but the Blenkinsop locomotive would need its own dedicated track. I wonder if the rack was only on one side, a bit like 3rd rail. I suppose it would have to be, on curves at least.

If you happen to find any photos pre-1498, please drop me a line. They don't have to be of the Southern, or even of railways - photographs of anything would be of interest. If you can go back to 1485, I'd love to know what Richard III really looked like. [Sorry, I'm away from home right now and don't have access to my Southern books]

They are lamps, N and R, and since the points were wrong, neither were lit. This, of course, means that they fail safe, but if the signalman was not looking for an indication, the absence of one would not alert him that anything was wrong. Of course he should have known of the indicators and looked at them, particularly when authorising a movement past a signal at danger. The report shows an indicator lit for another set of points, presumably taken shortly after the accident, and there is no suggestion in the report that the indicators weren't working normally.

That was the first thought that occurred to me. The signalman (new, unfamiliar with the box and tired, and a person for whom I have some sympathy) was not relying on the position of the black points levers, but on the position of the blue FPL levers. Should they still be painted blue? Painting them a different colour would be simple change to make. FPLs with locking bars were hard to pull, but Bognor Regis (and probably all the boxes the signalman had ever worked in) were track circuited, so FPLs are probably easy to operate. Remember that the point levers will also have been easy to pull, so going by comparison of one lever to the next, nothing may have seemed amiss, and perhaps the signalman merely thought as he pulled the levers that everything was immaculately maintained.

This pair of pictures also shows 97703 and 97704 but from the other side. The first picture doesn't really add anything to the pictures linked to by @keefer. Even-numbered ("B"?) units appear not to have ladders on the inside ends. However, you can just see the top of the ladder on 97703, meaning it has one on either side. Posted on flickr by afc45014

I thought this arrangement used to be reasonably common. Bullhead rail was in plentiful supply, it was easier to bend and would fit inside the FB rail section. It needs special baseplate/chairs, of course. Mixed chaired and flat bottom running rails would be exceptionally unusual, I would have thought. Usually when you replace rails you replace everything else. Although a single broken rail might be replaced, I cannot imagine it not being replaced with the same type of rail. However, after doing a web search, I have found this, at Baker Street on the Bakerloo line. Here, of course, there are no sleepers to replace: https://hydeparknow.uk/2019/01/24/rare-mixed-track-at-baker-street/

Thanks, folks. I just popped to my local Lidl and picked one up. It will come in handy for the smaller jobs.

I take it there are no passenger trains. Hand levers and no signals seems right to me, but a motorised gate would have been rather unusual in 1900, I think

Isn't it a joke? I really cannot think that anyone who claims to be environmentally aware would complain that steam engines emit nitrogen. They do emit nitrogen, of course, the same amount of nitrogen as they absorb. Perhaps the writer will complain that 79% nitrogen in the air is far too high, and we should be reducing it. The writer might have confused nitrogen with nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide (collectively often called NOx), but even these aren't something commonly associated with steam locomotives.

@Rugd1022Are you sure any of those two letter stickers date from before 1973? I don't recall seeing any mention of two-letter depot codes anywhere before 1973, and the old number-letter codes (and things like D05 for LMR, which I never saw written on locomotives) were used up to that point. Furthermore I don't recall seeing any depot stickers with just the depot name (or the depot name and old number-letter code). All the examples posted on this thread are from the Eastern Region, a place I did not get to see much of at the time, which is perhaps why the style is unfamiliar to me. Was it only the ER that did this, just like it seems it was only the ScR that did stencilling? Incidentally, it is clearly GATESHD in both pictures of 47s. Curiously, although it is very difficult to make out, it looks like IMMINGHAM is written out in full in the pictures of 31s linked to earlier. Early two letter stickers without the depot name, such as the bottom one on D1013 are exactly what I remember from 1973 onwards, with depot names being added a couple of years later. Again, it seems the Eastern Region may have been a little different, looking at that photograph of 47298, with a rather non-standard layout, but this does ring a faint bell, as by then I was seeing more of the ER.

The MARCH sticker on 5632 is definitely in all capitals. 5674 and 5523 appears to have IMMINGHAM, but 5637 and 5524 seem to be very strangely picked at (spotters, perhaps), 5637 has MARCH over something; probably 31B rather than MH. 1886 in two-tone green appears to have IMMINGHAM over 40B. How common were these? I remember cast plates and I remember two letter codes, but in the early-70s most locomotives had nothing at all, as I recall. I amended my earlier post. I thought you were referring to the two-letter stickers, since these are what the Precision Labels site illustrates.

I vaguely remember them as being lower case. I cannot in my mind imagine TOTON or WILLESDEN in all capitals, but some depots might have have used capitals. Laira always were an odd bunch. They aren't pre-TOPS, though; They didn't appear till the blue data panels did, and they might not have come till a long time afterwards; I recall (but I could be mistaken) that my 1971 shed book still had the old number and letter codes. Also, in the earliest days, I think it was just the two letters; names didn't start appearing above the letters till a couple of years later, though I think they were widespread by about 1980. Edit: Sorry, I may have misunderstood what you were asking about now that I have seen some of the pictures below. Are you referring to depot name stickers without the two-letter codes?

Between wheel centres, axle centres or contact points with the rail; these each amount to the same thing. For a 6- or 8-wheel rigid wheelbase vehicle, the dimension refers to the distance between the outermost wheels.

I take it your friend has seen this picture, from https://www.benjidog.co.uk/Geoff Topp Postcards/northdocks.html: The LOR/MDHBR bridge is in the foreground. The 1930s road bridge mentioned in the post is behind it. Then there is this drawing, from the other side, with an earlier road bridge (from https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Swing_Bridge,_Stanley_Dock,_Liverpool): The web page text reckons that "swing bridge" refers to the road bridge, and all it says about the railway bridge is that it is an "opening" bridge. Personally, I think it is likely that the railway bridge is (also) a swing bridge. The artist does not portray the road bridge as opening at all, but that is probably an error on their part.

From the excellent video, it looks to me that the real problem is the bogie not turning enough. When the offside wheel rides up onto the vee, it immediately pulls the nearside wheel up with it, as if the bogie is incredibly rigid. However, when the offside wheel drops off the vee, the bogie twists before the nearside wheel is dragged off the top of the check rail, so the bogie is not as rigid as all that. Even when the offside wheel rides up onto the vee, the nearside wheel ought still be able to remain in the flangeway, but clearly it does not want to, so my guess is that the bogie at that point is already turning as much as it can. What is restricting its movement I cannot see. It could be the other two wheelsets or it could be something else. Clearly the point check rail gap and the locomotive's original back to front measurement (back to back plus flange thickness) are incompatible, but in some respects it does not really matter which is at fault. Reducing the back to back by 0.5 mm shifts the whole bogie 0.25 mm further to the left (in the direction of travel), and then the offside wheel is shifted another 0.25 mm away from the vee, all without changing the angle between the bogie and the locomotive. If you went and reduced the check rail gap instead, although this would also keep the flange away from the vee, the bogie would have to turn a little more, and this appears to be the thing the bogie cannot do. However, reducing the back to back is probably something of a fudge. Unless the locomotive has particularly thick flanges (about 1.25 mm), you should not need a back to back of 13.9 mm, and you might encounter a problem running through finer-scale points, if you have any on your layout or if you want to run the locomotive on someone else's (does anyone know how wide Peco flangeways are these days? I was under the impression they would not accomodate 13.9 mm back to backs). What might be worth doing is slightly increasing the back to back till you find the largest size that works. If you can get to 14.2 mm without derailing, your locomotive should run on any proprietary track.

I recall that in the 1970s, the railway press reporting unusual moves would sometimes make it clear that the locomotives coupled together were in tandem (ie not in multiple; each loco had its own driver). My memory isn't so good as to remember whether these were always in tandem due to incompatable coupling codes. Incidentally Hattons have a formation guide for BOC tanker trains: https://www.hattons.co.uk/newsdetail.aspx?id=501 You will see that there are a couple of unusual locomotive combinations on the Ditton - Broughton Lane run. A different 25 + 40 pairing from the OP's, and this wonderful combination: [Photo: Barnsleyrailboy] If this is an LMR diagram, I wonder where they got the 31 from. I seem to recall seeing 25s with other classes, but it's a long time ago and I cannot remember details. I've certainly seen a picture fairly recently of a 25+Peak.

Crofton West Junction: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/safety-digest-062020-crofton-west-junction