Jeremy Cumberland

A Google image search for lms "swansea bay" found two similar photos on flikr. This one is a slightly better angle. The photo in my post is only an embedded link. Click on it and it will take you to the flikr page. Deganwy was very plausible, and an area I used to know quite well, but I couldn't find anything that might match both background and foreground looking at maps. I wondered whether it could be the other side of the causeway on the Blaenau branch, but Glan Conwy didn't have any signalling and by Talycafn the river no longer looks like that. I had a look at Grange over Sands as well, but found it difficult to fit in either foreground or background with maps and photographs. I didn't need to look up Port Carlisle since I know that area well, and it definitely isn't there.

There's a limit to how much you can tell from telegraph poles and fences, but I can't help noticing that this looks a very similar setting (Swansea Bay): There are two buildings on the left that look to be an exact match with the original photo, and the slope beyond looks right too. It would be nice to find an image matching the hill on the right as well, but I don't know this area at all so wouldn't even know where to being looking.

Something I'd completely forgotten, because it predated my trainspotting days. Between 1968 and 1976, we went on several family holidays to the West Country. I doubt it is the first one in 1968 (to Hayle) that I'm thinking of, because that would have been in July or August, but in later years we sometimes went away at Easter. On one occasion I distinctly remember the steam from the train heating swirling round the coaches at Paddington. I grew up on the line out of Euston, where everything, including heating, was electric. Visits to family in Kent were all electric too, of course. A vaguer memory from these early holidays is seeing red (maroon) engines - very exotic. Green engines were unusual enough at home, but red was unheard of. Another little snippet of information comes from my grandfather, who accompanied us on some of these holidays. He later recalled that one of the engines that hauled us had a front like a car bonnet - clearly a Warship.

It would have to be a particularly small black hole to stop at the English Channel. Really, the sequence in which the different nations of the earth get sucked in seems to be of little consequence, particularly since those still left on the outside wouldn't even know about it.

7 does not seem unreasonable to me, particularly not for the Fort William end, where you might well want 6 or 7 different trains to choose from. I have never built a layout with a turntable plate and it is a very long time since I operated a layout with one, but if your individual items of rolling stock are heavy - particularly a locomotive at one end of a train - then you probably want a reasonably heavy turning baseboard to make sure the centre of gravity remains within the turntable bearing ring. If locomotives are particularly heavy, don't have all your trains facing the same way. Of course, in use, trains will naturally end up facing different ways, but it might be tempting at the start to have all the trains facing towards the scenic section. I am sure Grainge and Hodder can give you better advice than I can, though.

I wouldn't like to say for certain, but there looks to be 4 coaches. It combined with a portion from Leeds at Sheffield. The photographer did very well to get the number!

I wonder what they were prosecuted under, then. The 30 mph limit in the Road Traffic Act 1934 is very clear in applying only to motor vehicles.

Were they riding in a royal park? All royal parks have speed limits: 10 mph as a general rule, but some parks have 15 mph or 20 mph speed limits, and some did use to have a 30 mph limit, but I think the only 30 mph limits have now been reduced to 20 mph. Also local councils might be able to set speed limits for cyclists in their byelaws (but perhaps not on ordinary public roads open to all traffic - the example usually cited is 10 mph on Bournemouth promenade).

The numbers are the tare weight in hundredweight-quarters-pounds. Pounds is always 0 so far as I have seen. A quarter is 28 pounds (a quarter of a hundredweight). Accuracy is needed to know the weight of the slates inside. The wagon tare is deducted from the gross weight at the weighbridge. Since Dinorwic owned their own rail system, I am not sure at what point wagons of slates needed to be weighed, unless they had to pay tolls per ton to owners of the land used for the Padarn railway. Quarrymen were paid by the gross of slates made, not by their weight.

The "rules of the road" do - the Highway Code applies to all road users, including pedestrians - but speed limits apply only to motor vehicles, not to cyclists or horse-drwn vehicles.

Heartbreaking? I wonder what happens to it now.

Yes, I suppose that would be better, using the inside loop controller to move trains between the outside loop and the siding. I was trying to work out how you would do it using the outside loop controller.

As I understand it, you have an outside loop, an inside loop, and a yard that is on the inside of these loops, something like this: You want power to the yard to be from the inside loop when the crossover is set normal, and you want power to the yard to be from the outside loop when the crossover is set reversed. With insufrog points you can just about get away with only having two track feeds, one to the outside loop and one to the inside loop (the inside loop feed must not be placed between the crossover and the yard points), but (or perhaps I should say BUT) you must then remember always to switch the points in the sequence yard points - inside crossover points - outside crossover points when sending a train to or from the yard from the outside loop (and the reverse sequence when resetting them) or else make sure that the inside loop track power is always turned off when setting the points from the outside loop to the yerd and accept that trains on the inside loop may get power from the outside loop controller while you are changing the points. This is the sort of thing I probably did on my very first layout, but it is so restrictive I can't possibly recommend it. Instead, what you want is a third track feed, on the inside loop between the crossover and the yard points. You need to insulate this from the other two feeds by using insulated rail joiners. There's no need to skimp on insulated rail joiners and so I recommend you use six (although you could get away with three if you are using a common return): One on each rail between the two crossover points, one on each rail at the frog end of the yard points and one on each rail at the frog end of the inside loop crossover points. You now need a way of powering this third track feed from either the inside loop controller or the outside loop controller. In one way, this is straightforward enough: you need a DPDT switch (or an SPDT switch if you are using common return). If you are using point motors, then you can probably arrange for the switching to be done automatically (exactly how to do this depends on what point motors and point motor switches you are using). If you aren't using point motors, then use a separate switch, and remember to throw the switch at the same time that you change the points (the sequence of changing the points and throwing the switch does not matter). Here is typical DPDT switch. Connect the middle pair of terminals to the track feed between the points, one of the outer pairs to the inside loop controller and the other outer pair to the outside loop controller, using one side of the switch for the inner rail and ther other side for the outer rail.

If you have an independently powered section of track, you need insulated joiners between it and any other independently powered section of track that might join on to it, otherwise the two sections of track won't be independently powered. This is a different issue from needing insulated rail joiners behind a live frog to guard against reverse polarity.

I loved the old booking hall at St Pancras. Seemingly tucked away in a corner, generally deserted and all wood panelling with just tiny windows in front of each booking clerk. Very different from the glass fronted counters at Euston and Kings Cross. I suppose its been turned into something else now. The most remarkable station feature of all on my travels was the departure boards at Glasgow Central. Complete panels of destinations and stops put by hand into windows above the booking hall. This picture shows only a small part - there were 13 platforms.

How about this one? Edit: Does it only have the mod at one end, though? I can't quite see.

Wow! It's in the regulated list. I knew about the change in general, because I work in an area that involves chemicals, and so we get regular updates on changes to chemicals legislation. Also, we use acetone, which has been added to the less restrictive reportable list. Here are the details: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supplying-explosives-precursors/supplying-explosives-precursors-and-poison No, businesses generally don't need a licence, but they do have other obligations. It appears that most retailers are not yet aware of the change. This isn't surprising, because it an extension to the Poisons Act 1972 and the Control of Poisons and Explosives Precursors Regulations 2015, neither of which previously applied to most general goods sellers, and it is hard to see how they would get to find out about them. [Add note to self: remember on Monday to check the legal register at work to see that these two pieces of legisltation have been added]

We didn't bite 😀 In the mid to late 70s and living in the London Country/London Transport area, I generally found buses more interesting. It was clear that an era was coming to an end, of AEC Regals and Regents, and even Routemasters were losing their position. Most of the new buses lacked character and some were downright awful (AEC Merlins deserving particular odium), but there was still plenty of variety and interest. On the railways, everything seemed pretty static. HSTs were expanding their empire and would eventually displace the Deltics, but there was no sense of loco-hauled trains being displaced more widely, and first generation DMUs (generally unloved) were still the mainstay of most local and less well used services. Even the closure of Woodhead looked to be some time in the future.

Same era as @Will Crompton, but grew up on the electrified WCML a little north of Watford. All of London and Kent was "home". The Southern and Western regions didn't really have anything notably exotic (though of course the triple-headed class 37 iron ore trains weren't anything we saw near London). Class 24s, while rare, did sometimes venture as far as Willesden. The nearest "not in Kansas" locomotives were probably class 44s, which rarely ventured south of Leicester. Being the first class in my oldest ABCs, they naturally had some kind of mystique about them, and spotting one was far more highly valued than spotting a 20. On the WCML, prior to their move to the Western, class 50s had a similar exotic feel to them. Liverpool and Manchester had all sorts of electric oddities, with classes 502, 503, 504 and 506 on different lines, and of course the class 76s. The class 124 Trans-Pennines were notable just for their front ends; to ride in they weren't really any different from the 123 Inter Cities on the Western. Venturing further afield, though, and the class 126 Inter Cities seemed very different indeed (mystique added by the four surviving 79xxx cars). Scotland, of course, with its 26s, 27s, push pulls (first 27s, then 47/7s) and Glasgow blue trains was a completely different world

I know nothing about GWR coaches, but surely the coach to the right of the building is a different one from the one to the left. The coach on the left has a clerestory and no roof vents that I can see. The coach on the right has a clear row of roof vents and does not look to be a clerestory. I took the coach on the left to be a 4- or 6-wheeler.

My Bible knowledge is pretty good, but I wouldn't have recognised the reference if I didn't know it already. The traditional logo is absurd and well past its sell-by date, and really its only remaining value is as a pub quiz question (Which iconic British food has a picture of an insect-infested carcase on the packaging?). However, it seems I'll still be getting the dead animal version since I have no wish to buy more plastic than I have to, and I do like syrup on my porridge, and home-made millionaire's shortbread is perhaps the next-best thing (and the closest I am likely to get) to actually being a millionaire. Now then. Animals, living and dead. How about this one? Or, since this is a model railway forum, what about this less well known version: Presumably it's meant to be a Stirling single (there's a better picture of one in another Bovril/GNR collaboration). Not sure about the dome, though. I'm not sure about the bull, either. Highland, perhaps - I can't think of anything else with those horns or that colouring, although it doesn't look like a Highland in other respects. It could be a Sussex, I suppose. Most English reds were polled. [Edit: since posting this I've found some pictures of horned Devons, which seems a little more likely than it being a Sussex.] More bizarre (to my mind) are these. Anyone care to guess at the thought process that led to them?

I wondered if anyone could identfiy the motorcycle combination. I'm no good with the various conventional cars, but the one right at the front by the crossing appears to be a Morgan 3-wheeler. The spare wheel on the back places it no earlier than 1933. My guess is that it is an F-type. However, this hardly seemed worth mentioning because other features appeared to point to a later date anyway.

Easter was very late in 1935, so Whitsun wasn't until 9th June. I am pretty sure that the bank holiday wasn't moved to the last Monday in May till long after the Second World War (1971 I read in one place). Of course, the early May bank holiday didn't come till a lot later.

A very similar photograph on the Francis Frith website is dated c. 1939: https://www.francisfrith.com/blue-anchor/blue-anchor-the-promenade-c1939_b124005 There are several other photographs on the site almost certainly taken at the same time: https://www.francisfrith.com/blue-anchor/photos

Are you asking about the 1981-built hoppers (201-222) or the later Turbots (231-290)? I can't find much at all about the bogie hoppers, apart from their inclusion in stock lists. I can't find any photographs in my not very extensive collection, nor have I found any online. They seem to be very elusive beasts. However, I have found a couple of mentions in the October 1981 Underground News. This paragraph is of relevance: The "standard trucks supplied by Gloucester" are presumably those used for flat wagons F341-F391 Other mentions in the same edition of Underground News report that HW201 was delivered to Ruislip on 21st July and was taken out on test in July and August between Ruislip and Northfields, and that HW205, HW206 and HW207 were delivered to Ruislip on 3rd August. Several 4-wheel hoppers are noted as being scrapped or ready to be scrapped, and it seems the 22 bogie hoppers were intended to replace the 38 4-wheelers. All I can imagine is that they were found inadequate, hence the order for 60 Turbots just a couple of years later.