Bittern

The error was that the diesels were specified based on the sustained power of the steam locos they were supposed to replace (which were carefully measured at Rugby), but had much less margin above that for short-term peaks (which weren't measured so systematically).

I may have misremembered (I was pretty young then) but I'm fairly sure I travelled on a RR 158 between Havant and Bath in 1995 or 1996. The bits I'm sure of was that it was the direct RR train to Bath, and a 158 on the way back, but there was disruption at Bristol that day so we might have ended up catching a Southampton train and changing at Fareham. EDIT: now that I think about it, it was probably 1996 (but definitely before July) - the disruption was a HST that had failed after leaving Bristol and the announcer at Bath said a Great Western shunter had been sent to rescue it. The 158 was definitely in RR Express Sprinter livery and the train to Bath had RR reservation labels (i've still got one I collected, though it wasn't for my seat), but I can't remember anything to be certain it wasn't operated by SWT.

The explanation I read somewhere (probably on the Woodhead SIG subform) was that as they were already classified as non-standard and weren't due for repainting, the official instructions were that they were to remain in either green or electric blue (whichever they were carrying) until withdrawal and just be touched up as necessary for corrosion control, but the depot staff mixed up some electric blue, white, and black, to produce a reasonable approximation of Rail Blue (at least as good as some of the official paint shops, anyway). I suppose that enthusiasm makes up for the black 76s, which had LNER livery for long time.

I'm not sure if it's fair to blame BR for not thinking of standardising cab designs before the AL loco order, but not insisting on compatible MU systems was a big mistake, especially as the Southern had already demonstrated the benefits of a large compatible fleet and the transition to the new EPB system was already underway before the Blue Star classes were ordered. There would still have been a need for Blue Square for DMMUs, but that would still have been an improvement.

A Light Railway Order gave the power to compulsorily purchase land, and simplified the rules about level crossings (a private tramway could cross roads, as on the Selsey Tram, but there were complexities). I don't know if they had to formally invoke the compulsory purchase powers, or if they managed to negotiate land sales with it just in the background.

It was built using a light railway order.

IANAL etc., but I seem to recall that 14" gauge or less does't count as a railway for some legal purposes (instead they're now regulated as amusement rides), so if that was true back then too it might be that they chose the smallest gauge they could, and then enlarged the locos to make them more practical.

Those ends look very nicely shaped - did the raw print come out like that or did they need filling and sanding to get such a smooth curve?

I was thinking of the New Wharf, before it was a wharf: as I understand it, that bit wasn’t built until the 1870s.

There’s plenty of stations like that, it was the combination of that with countryside beyond the buffer stops, as if it were built on an isthmus, or a river were running parallel to the sea. Even land beyond the buffers is not all that unusual, but it tends to be urban The best precedent I can think of is Porthmadog (FfR) before the area beyond the station was fully developed, when there were sheep on the undeveloped area, but a bell is ringing faintly in the back of my mind, possibly from Ireland. an interesting piece of advice I’ve seen for designing plausible scenery is to sketch some distance beyond the edge of the layout, extending roads, rivers, hills, etc. to make sure they connect up reasonably.

Quays on both sides seem unusual for a country BLT, especially with more land beyond the buffers, that's more the sort of thing you'd find in a large docks complex or urban port, though I'm sure there must be precedents somewhere.

For a layout like this, especially one where there's a lot of watching trains go by, there's advantages both ways. The major downside of DCC is that it is all about controlling specific locos, not controlling the train in particular locations. There are train-identification units and half-wave deceleration signals and other such enhancements, but they're all trying to work around the problem of DCC having been developed 10 years too early and so being a one-way system without a good localisation system, and will probably cost you more than something like Heathcote's TCB modules (or even implementing it yourself, which I think you'd have to do for absolute block). Things like dropping bankers in the right place is easier with analogue control too, especially if you carefully match your locos' performance. The upside of using DCC is that it makes automating things like shunting simpler, and realistically reflecting the performance difference between a lightweight EMU and a mineral train. DCC is probably the less awkward solution to things like long trains with pick-ups at the back, real MU operation with consisting (though implementing the logic for that is probably easiest to do on a computer), and so on. Pointwork is probably simpler with DCC but it all depends how you want to tie it into the automation. Interacting with manual operation is a lot more practical when using a computer to control the whole thing, rather than distributed modules, and the off-the-shelf control software packages are designed to work through DCC.

How much had actually been painted? I suspect the main reason is that most of the Gresley-era LNER main-line carriages were direct descendants of GNR and ECJS designs and so just kept using the same materials and finish.

I don't know how accurate it is, but one of (IIRC) Robert Gadsdon's flickr captions mentioned that the oils in teak make it hard for paint to stick. The red varnished wood on some of the Tanfield Railway's carriages shows the same problem, though there it is mostly the ends which get stained.

Agreed, but it is hard to see a better route between Ryde and Newport than the rather lousy R&NR route (pretty, yes, but not very convenient for passengers): it would be possible to run a new line closer around Swanmore and up to Binstead, but without demolition, a tunnel or street running that's a pretty meandering route to Ryde town centre . Serving Fishbourne and Wootton Bridge would be tricky too, and then there's access to Newport itself (especially if you want to connect on to Cowes, though serving East Cowes would be easier). It's easy to see why a tram-train/interurban seems like a good choice, provided they can achieve a decent ride quality, low noise in towns, and better speeds than the buses on the reserved track sections between villages, and I can't really see any other rail approach providing a better service than a bus along the road where all the people live (though I'm open to being convinced otherwise).

AIUI British laws about evacuating trains safely are unusually strict (IIRC you have to have someone to assist if passengers can't self-evacuate onto a safe walkway out of danger, and on routes that became unstaffed after some specific date that self-evacuation rule applies to PRMs as well), plus it's much harder to avoid the need for someone to be around in person to fulfil the legal functions of the guard. The fourth rail also makes things tricky, since it greatly increases the risk of electrocution if it isn't shorted before a train is evacuated along the trackbed.

Does the law still require schools to provide transport if you're more than however far away by the shortest safe route? It did when I was a kid, provided you went to the closest school with space that was the right religion, or a selective magnet school, but that was a few years back and while I've never heard a fuss about it being repealed I don't have any kids of my own. Still, I don't think the law required the transport to be very fast or direct, just safe and not involving excessive walking.

The best sensible argument along those lines is that if bus stops are too close together and buses are too frequent people will catch the bus a few hundred metres just because it is there, thus increasing dwell times. That's not so much of an issue if the stops are more like 10 minutes walk apart, but of course that also makes the buses less useful for people who need them. It only exacerbates a problem that already exists and it can be managed, it just has to be thought about in route planning etc.

Yeah, Roger Ford, Graham H, and Walthamstow Writer have all been rather informative on that topic as relates to transport in particular. I suspect the minister/DfT/Treasury want them to look more favourably at the assorted F-ing Magic solutions proposed by vendors and ignore all the problems inherent in the world of Actual Machines. The best way to push back would be to ask for quotes based on a fixed-price contract, but Whitehall would probably stop that.

in theory, local authorities, and thus their LEAs, are required to provide their statutory essential services uniformly across their service area. In practice that's never been enforced when it comes to schools, and there's no similar principle for GM schools or for Academies or all the other assorted arrangements. Since you generally can't get your kids into a good school by coaching them through the 11+ anymore, you have to do it by either buying your way to winning the postcode lottery, or paying school fees, or by finding a good school somewhere nearby and travelling further. There's also more flavours of religious school nowadays, plus schools with whatever educational philosophy or area of focus, and that means more reason to pick and choose.

The pre-war bits of London and the suburbs were mainly dependent on trams, busses, bicycles, LU, and main line suburban trains, and of course shank's pony (though mostly in the East End, because London's major employment centres were already too big to walk to). The problem in those areas is the post-war changes made to facilitate cars, and the growth of scattered outer-suburban employment (which combines with two-worker families and housing costs to increase rather than decrease commuting and require travel in awkward directions).

I'm sure they'll just redo their last study into it, which showed that it was a bad idea to have a cab-less conductor, and totally uneconomic until they get the new trains and resignalling, and then only if they can get the money to do the necessary enabling works, and you couldn't usefully de-skill the T/Op job without other supporting works. I think the LR consensus was that Treasury would have to provide far more money than they have shown any willingness to spend on London even for the sake of union-busting, plus you'd get a better BCR on that capital spent on other works.

Wow. That price they're advertising is amazing, especially since they seem to have massively reduced the banding that affects the finish of traditional resin printers (for hobbyists, that's probably more important than the speed), but it all depends on the resin costs. Reducing the need for particular orientations is useful too.

I think if you wanted to justify it, the story would be that with through traffic they formed a coordination committee (like the SECR), or the GdN bought the SER, and picked group standard designs to use until the combined drawing office produced hybrid designs.

It wasn't quite as silly as that makes it sound, since converting the steam loco fleet could be done for much less time and money than scrapping them and building whole new locos. Also cracking wasn't as well developed so an oil-fired steam loco could in principle use cheaper low-grade fuel, and because oil left less ash theoretically locos could keep running longer and you'd need fewer locos and cleaners. In principle it could have still saved money, especially if higher utilisation had allowed them to scrap older locos, and it might have allowed single-manning on lighter duties (so it was strange that they didn't convert small tank engines too), at a time when there was a shortage of warm bodies, let alone skilled workers. Of course, those "theoretically"s and "in principle"s are doing a lot of heavy lifting, and it didn't work out in practice, but it was worth a try, and if they hadn't I'm sure we'd be here asking why they didn't try to make better use of the already paid for steam fleet with things like oil firing. It was still a bad idea to cancel the LNER diesels though, for all the reasons people have said.