Gilwell Park

It is a common misconception that East Anglia is flat. The fens of Cambridgeshire might be but Essex even close to London is quite hilly, especially if you cycle around it. In fact the main line out of Liverpool St to Norwich is hillier than the main line out of Paddington. Brentwood bank in particular.

Some time ago I was watching my granddaughter driving James, very fast, round my layout. I realised that James is a very unusual locomotive, apart from his ability to speak that is. He is an inside cylinder 2-6-0. I have only found 2 such classes in the UK, One on the Caledonian & one on the Glasgow & South Western plus one in Ireland. I thought that it could be regarded as the goods equivalent of the 4-4-0. I read somewhere that James Holder of the GER considered a small wheeled Claud Hamilton for mixed traffic work, supplementing the E4 2-4-0 but never went ahead. I therefor present the LNER K10 class. An A. J. Hill development of the B12. A better loco for MT work than his heavy freight J20. It is built on a Hornby 0-6-0 chassis with a 3F footplate & original B12 cab, boiler & smokebox with front footplate attached . I have assumed that LNER rebuilt them with a round topped boiler as they did the B12/1 & the J20. 21mm Romford driving wheels are fitted. It is numbered in the unused 640xx series between the 2-8-0 & the 0-6-0. With a very old X04 motor it is a very useful engine. Roger.

Definitely has to be the B16.

I read somewhere that Bullied intended to use rotary shaft drive as with a Caprotti drive but the necessary gears were not available during wartime. Might have been better than chain drive in the long run. Roger

The HD 2-6-4t chassis will fit the Triang 2-6-2t body but it is a squeeze & the magnet will be in the bunker. I fitted mine with correct size Romfords which lowered the body but caused problems with pick ups. I went back to the Triang chassis & moved the wheels & cylinder block from the 2-6-4.

Reverting to the Triang 2-6-2T. Two pictures, one shows a BR class 3 fitted with Romford Wheels & Hornby Dublo valve gear. This raises the body & allows the front buffer beam & platform to be shortened & refitted under the smoke box giving a much improved appearance. The other is the Continental body fitted on a HD 2-8-0 chassis. The chimney & domes have been shortened & smoke deflectors fitted. I called it a 141TB but it does not match exactly any French 141T.

In the case of a 4F assume some enthusiast has pinched the front number plate.

This raises a problem which occurred to me some time ago. Seat reservation. How did the people who allocated seats know if the brake was Maunsell, or Bullied with one compartment less? Then how did the seat labels get to the carriage sidings for somebody to go down the train fitting them under those little fixings above each seat?

I notice that these coaches do not appear in the 2021 catalogue. Does this mean that they are a strictly limited edition and will not be repeated? That seems to be a lot of tooling for not much use? Roger

Without going through 50 pages of this topic to check if it has been covered. AFAIK the only GE section line which still used 6 wheel coaches in BR days was the Mid Suffolk Light. The best picture I have found, Ian Allan GE album, strongly suggests that the coaches were painted in Stratford carriage brown. As they were replaced by bogie stock in 1951/2 I very much doubt if they were ever repainted into BR crimson. Can anybody confirm the colour or suggest anywhere else on the Eastern Region that red 6 wheelers were used. Many thanks, Roger.

Hi. I too visited Ally Pally taking the 623 trolley bus from Wood St library. My secondary school, William Morris Technical, gave us an afternoon off for attending speech day at the Walthamstow Assembly Hall one evening & I took the opportunity to go to Ally Pally & saw my first A4s etc. Dare I ask what school you attended?, I am only 2 years behind you> Roger

61035 Pronghorn.

I lived in Walthamstow & our favourite Sunday trip was by bike straight through London to Feltham. Back via Southall, Old oak, Willesden, Neasden, Cricklewood & back round the North Circular. The closer sheds, Hornsey, Kentish Town & Camden were a shorter afternoon ride. We always managed to find something to padlock our bike to while we went round the shed. I do know that my legs could never repeat those trips now. Roger

I have also discovered this post by accident. It was the "London Ralifans Club" and I was a member from 1960-1963. At that time Mr Potter lived in Haverstock Hill. The last advert for the club that I can find was in the August 1964 Modern Railways. What happened after that I am not sure. The most exciting trip was a double overnight to Glasgow. We finished the regular coach tour by early afternoon so were left at Central station to our own devices till the overnight train home. My little group of friends found a tram to take us to Dawsholm where we found the 4 Scottish preserved locos plus Ben Alder. We then found another tram/bus to get us to Yoker where we found a selection of Caledonian steam shunting locos. We then wandered around the main Glasgow stations till it was time for our train. Another overnight was to Manchester where again the regular coach trip finished ages before our late afternoon train home was due. Mr Potter took a few of the younger boys home with him over Woodhead to Sheffield on the electrics & presumably got them back to London. A few of us took a train to Stockport where we bunked Edgeley shed then found a bus to Trafford park. We got back to Piccadilly in time for our train but just before we were due to depart spotted some of our party on the opposite platform. How we all got back to Euston I have no idea as we were spread throughout the train & I had no idea where the party ticket was. Luckily my parents never found out what we got up to. There were no risk assessments in those days & certainly no DBS/CRB checks on the leaders. Roger

The RCTS in Locos of the SR & Sean Day-Lewis in "Bulleid, last giant of steam" both state that Bulleid wanted to drive the valve crankshaft by a propeller shaft & gears as in rotary cam motion, instead of chains, but the necessary gears could not be obtained in wartime. He also had Caprotti Valve Gears Ltd draw up an arrangement to use Caprotti valves instead of piston valves but this was not followed up. Roger

I love the ticket machines, remember them well. 1/6 wouldn't get me very far these days!

The standard 4 actually used a modified standard 4 tank boiler, all of 9" longer, not a modified manor boiler.

When I worked for TFL I was paid every 4 weeks. As a result if the first payment of a year was in early January there was a 14th payment in late December.

The Triang 748 body is, most unusually for Triang, made in two parts, clipped together. It is quite easy to remove the cab/saddle tank section from the footplate and slice several mm off the bottom edge & reassemble. It will also be necessary to remove the same amount from the boxes in front of the cab.

HI. My grand children love driving Thomas & James round my layout at breakneck speed. I will absolutely not let them drive my Model Rail J70. However they want a Toby. Looking at pictures on Ebay both the Hornby Toby & the Bachmann version look very high and I am concerned about my bridges. Could somebody who knows please let me know how high the 2 Tobys are from rail level to top of the roof? Many thanks Roger