2251

On 04/05/2024 at 15:17, JimC said:

A few posts above I suggested a cut down Std 5 boiler could be an alternate to a P Class. It would of course be a rather expensive and pointless alternate since the P class was an excellent steamer as it was, but here it is on the lightweight 0-6-0 and also on an 8750. I've numbered the 8750 for post war lots.

 

 

 

Not, perhaps, wholly improbable given that when 20 Dean Goods were re-built into the 3901 class they gained Standard No 5 boilers.

On 27/04/2024 at 21:39, Northmoor said:

That really would be an alternative universe!  At the time of the pit closures which precipitated the 1984-85 strike, the annual subsidy to NCB from central government was eye-watering.

Indeed. In 1982, the annual subsidy was said to be in the order of £1,000 million at a time when West Germany was subsiding its mining industry to the tune of something under £700 million, France about £350 million, and Belgium about $140 million.

While there was certainly considerable scope for arguing about whether that was comparing like-with-like, the comparative efficiency of British and German pits, etc, etc, the basic point that a very large amount of public money went on subsidising the National Coal Board is impossible to argue with.   

1 hour ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

Although support crews are mentioned in the ORR's guidelines, that's not what the statute says, which only mentions fare paying passengers. I see no reason why a non-CDL-fitted coach could not be used by invited guests having no railway experiences at all. The RMB could be used by hired-in caterers. The doors would need to be unlocked, of course, and labelled not for public use.

 

The statute appears to prohibit entry of fare-paying passengers to such a coach (so it would have to be at-seat service), but I would not like to say for certain.

While it is certainly the case that the 1999 Regulations would not prohibit that, WCRC is subject to the general duties in Part I of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 -- including the duties to non-employees under sections 3 and 4 (note that a railway carriage would appear to be "premises" as defined by section 53).

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/part/I/crossheading/general-duties

For my own part, I would not want to sign off the use of non-CDL coaching stock by sub-contracted non-railway staff without a pretty robust risk assessment. 

2 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

CDL is a stand alone secondary lock fitted to the door - it does not prevent people from Turing the door handles and disengaging the primary lock. It can also be engaged with the door standing wide open….
 

That secondary locking function is not ‘controlling the doors’ as would be understood by those in the industry or the wider public because once the CDL is released the doors are not fully unlocked (passengers still need to operate the primary door lock themselves) nor does CDL cause the door to open by itself or shut and lock itself after use.

 

 

Indeed, it would be more accurately called "central secondary door locking". But we all know what "CDL" means: an air-operated bolt locking the door in the closed position which does not interface with the primary locking mechanism or open or close the door.

I cannot imagine one would ever come up with BR CDL if designing a door from scratch. It doubtless provided, at acceptable cost, a way of retro-fitting central secondary locking to Mark 2 and 3 stock but that certainly does not mean it is what one would come up with if starting with a blank piece of paper .

13 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Nearly every train was slam door, bar some commuter EmUs

none had any form of door lock.

none had any stewards.

How many have fallen to their deaths in the last 5 years to 2019 which is much more relevent ?

 

Old numbers mean nothing unless your proposing to go back to those standards.

why not dig up numbers from. 1829 when trains had no roof and no door latch either?

 

remember a judge has to be neutral.

 

 

If you had read the report linked above, Passenger Falls from Train Doors, you would appreciate what the data unquestionably shows: that slam door stock is inherently dangerous.

Part of the work done included an assessment of “information available on incidents involving slam doors occurring between 1984 and 1991 in which passengers were killed or injured” (para 150). A total of 270 incidents were identified “where death or injury has resulted from a fall from a slam door in the eight years from 1984 to 1991, an average of just under 34 incidents per year” (para 213). As Jeremy pointed out above, of those, “In 155 (57.4%) of the incidents, the person was fatally injured” (para 177).

In other words, in the second half of the 1980s, on average, slightly under 20 people per year were killed as a result of a fall from a slam door.

It is wrong to say that at the time of the HSE report, “Nearly every train was slam door”: as the report notes “Forty per cent of British Rail passenger carriage doors are now power-operated and controlled by the train crew (para 13). My recollection is that CDL started to be fitted at about the same time the HSE report was published.

As I have also pointed out above, while a judge obviously has to be impartial, that is largely irrelevant. The court is not in this context deciding what ought to be done, or where fault lies: it is deciding whether the decision of a regulator (to whose judgement it affords considerable deference) was reached as a result of a procedurally fair process and is reasonable, in the sense of being within the band of decisions a reasonable regulator, acting reasonably, might arrive at.

I am not going to try to deal with every point which has been made about the way the courts approach matters (or how the principle of precedent -- note the correct spelling -- applies). It should, however, be stressed that in the technical regulatory context, the courts defer to a considerable extent to the professional judgement of regulators, who operate within a framework set out by Parliament (and it is Parliament and not the courts that are responsible for the regulatory scheme).

The judgment in the WCRC case (which I think from much of the discussion above few people can have read) is here:

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2023/3338.html

This passage at para 94 bears highlighting:

"There is a legislative prohibition on hinged doors operating without central door locking. The specialist safety regulator was not satisfied that the Claimant had demonstrated its method of operations provided an equivalent level of safety. There is an evidential basis for the ORR's concerns, not least because there have been several safety incidents on the Claimant's trains. The Courts have recognised the need for judicial restraint where the issue under scrutiny falls within the particular specialism or expertise of the defendant public authority (R (Mott) v Environment Agency). Where a decision is highly dependent upon the assessment of complex technical matters by those who are expert in such matters and/or who are assigned to the task of assessment (ultimately by Parliament) the margin of appreciation will be substantial (R (Mott) v Environment Agency. The ORR's decision fell comfortably within its discretion."

Here is one I cannot explain.

At Gloucester half-way along the up (north) platform are what appear to be remains of the lead-out from a signal box. My immediate thought was that they must be the remains of the lead out from Gloucester Middle Signal Box (abolished c 1938) and which I had thought was above the up platform. 

The only photographs I have been able to find, however, shows it above the down (south) platform:

"Very big" is an understatement. 

The days of (comparatively) small cranes intended for the (comparatively) small loads of break-bulk handling are long gone. Modern cranes are intended to move containers and sized accordingly.

1 hour ago, Mike Buckner said:

Too much political tone to so many things nowadays.

 

People used to understand the benefit of neutral names.

 

For me, I'd be happier with  S1, S2, S3...

For my part, geographical naming is more helpful for a city like London, where you can't number or letter on an easily remembered system because of the nature of the network.

In the case of the the Overground, separate identification was a definite necessity because of what had become its extent.

I would therefore have preferred to see geographical names -- although it might have been unwise to call the Barking to Hampstead Heath section the Barstead Line.     

Many thanks for taking the time to pull together and post this -- it really is fascinating (at least to me). 

1 hour ago, DenysW said:

I've been struggling to work out how to define the data that would show whether a big investment was worthwhile. The London/Manchester extensions of the Midland clearly were (Capitalisation increase by 50%, receipts by 100%, profitability maintained, general England/wales receipts increase only about 60%, all numbers wildly rounded). The S&C was too small to tell (the cost is reported as £3-5M, whereas the Midland's capitalisation was £65M in 1879). The Great Northern's Derbyshire Extension was mildly negative, and the Great Central's London Extension would probably have been a success if they hadn't done Part 2, Joint with GWR.

 

The Midland's takeover of the Leeds & Bradford was clearly a fiasco financially (10% interest paid), whereas the Bristol and Gloucester (6% interest paid) was probably just over-optimistic, and the Leicester & Swannington (8% interest paid) was too small to reveal how bad  a deal it was. I'm also convinced that, whatever the Manchester & Leeds Railway's thinking, the immediately-following Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway would have known it couldn't afford the £45k/year for the Leeds & Bradford. It didn't have the turnover, and it now had much higher capitalisation than when it was single. So there was no effective competition to buy the L&B, irrespective of any claims Hudson made.

 

As for dividends it's pretty much in line with @Compound2632's summary. A downward trend overall 1873-1893, the coal strike blip in 1893, then stability or a slight improvement to WW1. It is however, necessary to dig deeper to understand that the Great Central wasn't as bad as this graph implies. Only about 20% of its share capitalisation was Ordinary stock, and it didn't do anywhere near as bad a job of paying dividends on its Preferred stock - mostly at 4%. There were only about 5 years where it failed to pay out on most of the Preferred.

 

 

 

This is all very interesting stuff but I assume that the capitalisation figure is based on the par value of the securities and is not a market capitalisation figure.

For an investor who has bought on the secondary market, surely the p/e ratio is far more important than the nominal percentage yield calculated by reference to par value? 

On 27/01/2024 at 15:30, The Stationmaster said:

I think that might depend on the type of share. In many cases 'yes' but not always I think we'll find.  Of course with many of these shares where the certificatesy simply chucked away as being consicdered of m no value. (which reminds me I have a form issued by the company asking me to subscribe for shares in the proposed Swindon & Marlborough Railway. I presume that the original recipieny eiter couldn't be bothered, or couldn't afford, to subscribe.

There are no circumstances whatever in which a shareholding in a company ceases to exist merely because the shareholder dies. 

Disposing of the certificate does not mean that the shareholding ceases to exist either -- what really matters is the register maintained by the company in question.

On 29/01/2024 at 17:24, 4069 said:

The misprint is yours, not the advert's: it's wheel glutting:

 

glutter, wheel glutter ; boxer, centre glutter, veer

a smith who fills up small gaps between V-sections of metal wheels, after wheel boss has been cast on in foundry, by hammering red hot steel bar into interstices between sections, whilst wheel is firmly fixed in vice; is assisted by striker q.v. who heats steel bar and does some of the hammering; after glutting, wheel is ready for shrink-in on of tyre.

 

(From A Dictionary of Occupational Terms,1921)

The firm seems to have been specialists in making these machines. This is from the Railway Engineer of April 1897:

Those Ratio kits are quite dated (I think I must last have put one together about 25 years ago) and "quick" is perhaps a misnomer. But might it be worth persevering? They are cheap enough that if you muck up one or two you haven't lost a huge amount and do produce a reasonable model for what they are.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with an LED. The oil lamps in the prototype are so dim you can't see them in daylight and so there is really only any point in lit lamps on a layout if you plan on "night time" operation. 

On 26/01/2024 at 09:52, Tom Burnham said:

I've suggested elsewhere that if Gilbert Szlumper - who was an engineer - had continued as general manager of the Southern instead of Eustace Missenden (who was an excellent operating man but had only an elementary education), Bullied might have had more constructive criticism.

I have occasionally wondered to what extent the chairman, Robert Holland-Martin, until his death in 1944 was part of the picture. He was famously fascinated by "gadgets" and I suspect that some of Bulleid's ideas, such as the valve gear on the Merchant Navies, would have appealed to him and been encouraged by him. 

39 minutes ago, Artless Bodger said:

Thank you, I'd often wondered what those numbers meant in the middle of fields etc.

There are usually two numbers. The first is a reference number (so you can refer to "field 27", for example) and the second is the area in acres to three decimal places. Here is an example (with some railway included to try to keep this on-topic):

The chain (more accurately Gunter's chain, named after the man who invented it) is metric, after a fashion. 

The point of it is that it is divided into links each of 1/00 of a chain and one square chain equals 1/10 acre. That makes surveying reasonably straightforward -- the sums to obtain an area figure in square chains are base 10, and (likewise) all that needs to be done to turn a result in square chains into a (decimal) acres figure is to divide by 10 (and old OS maps and so on show area figures in decimal acres).      

For example, suppose a square area measures 1.27 by 3.56 chains. That equals 4.5212 square chains (1.27 x 3.56) or 0.45212 acre (4.5212 divided by 10).

Apologies for the massive thread drift.

6 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

I believe LU may have some ex-BR stock in the form of a 4-TC?

The position of LU is, in think, in part due to the definition of "Mark I rolling stock" in the 1999 Regulations. It is defined as  "rolling stock which has a structural underframe which provides its own longitudinal strength and has a passenger compartment created on the underframe which relies mainly on the underframe for its longitudinal strength". in other words, it does not mean BR Mark I stock at all, but something very different.

Various operators were given a blanket exemption by Regulation 4 from the ban on Mark I stock: 

"(1) No person shall operate, and no infrastructure controller shall permit the operation of, any Mark I rolling stock on a railway.

(2) Paragraph (1) shall not apply to rolling stock which at the relevant time is being exclusively operated other than for the carriage of fare paying passengers or by London Underground Limited, Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive, Strathclyde Passenger Transport Executive or Serco Metrolink Limited."

In the case of LU that presumably reflected the amount of its stock which while not BR Mark I in origin is  "Mark I rolling stock" for the purposes of the Regulations.

17 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The LT&S went through its entire existence trying to fool people into thinking it ran to Gravesend. I think it even had train headboardsxshowing that destination.

In the same way, I suppose, that the GW ran to Dartmouth.

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

The Midland had been running a passenger service between St Pancras and Southend for many years - the celebrated 1738 Class 4-4-0 No. 1757 Beatrice was outstationed at the LT&SR's Southend shed from building in 1885 until the late 90s. Both the LT&SR and the GER used St Pancras as their West End terminus - fashionable first-class passengers didn't want to be dumped in the City! I'm not sure when the P&O Tilbury boat trains started running from St Pancras; that may have been after the Midland take-over. 

What route did they take before the opening of the Tottenham and Forest Gate Railway inn 1894?

16 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

The LTSR isn't mentioned in the Railways Act. It had ceased to exist when it was bought by the Midland Railway in 1912, and of course the Midland became part of the LMS.

 

 

The position is a little more complicated than this, although basically correct.

The LT&S company was incorporated by the London Tilbury and Southend Railway Act 1862.

The Midland Railway (London Tilbury and Southend Railway Purchase) Act 1912 effected a statutory vesting of the undertaking of the LT&S in the Midland, including the transfer of employment of the LT&S's "officers clerks and servants" to the Midland.

The directors of the LT&S company, however, were to remain in office "for the purposes only" of "winding up the affairs of" the LT&S company and on "completion of such winding up" the LT&S company "shall be by virtue of this Act finally dissolved and cease to exist."

In addition, under the Act, the Midland issued new securities, which holders of existing LT&S securities received in exchange for their LT&S securities. 

In short, the company incorporated by the 1862 Act ceased to exist following the transfer of its entire undertaking to the Midland by the terms of the 1912 Act (the obtaining of holders of LT&S securities of new Midland securities) and the conclusion of the winding-up for which the 1912 Act provided. 

The 1912 Act, for anyone who wants to read it, is here:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/Geo5/2-3/100/pdfs/ukla_19120100_en.pdf

On 20/12/2023 at 18:28, The Stationmaster said:

Were any of them still Toplights by then I wonder?  and not just the top lights but also body panrels had been repladed so they were quite substantially altered in appearance.  When I took a detailed look at them for a manufacturer a good long time back I couldn't find a single mid 1950s photo of one in original appearance, every one I found had something done to it.  

 

I think the last one to retain any top lights was W 139, the whitewash coach, which still had some when first in BR lined maroon.  and of course many of those taht were still around only ever saw any work in the Summer peak of about 5-6 weekends a year

And to say that the "whitewash" coach was atypical would be an understatement:

20 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

And ona slightly different, but related, matter -

 

What the 1889 Act actually did was to move things from a position of 'recommending the railways to introduce ... etc'  and monitoring their progress by means of legally required Returns (i.e an 1873 Act in respect of signal interlocking etc and  the 1878 Continuous Brakes Act) to a situation where the Board of Trade was empowered to order compliance with section 1 of the 1889 Act. (The returns required by the earlier Acts were continued).

 

In simple terms the 1889 Act changed things  from a situation of 'recommending and monitoring' the rate of introduction on existing railways to one where the railways could be compelled to comply with Section 1 of that Act.  What is often misquoted is that the 1889 Act made Section 1 ('block, lock, and continuous automatic brake') a legal requirement;  it did not do that, it simply gave the Board of Trade additional powers to order that it be complied with.

This is entirely accurate -- unlike so much written by railway "historians" who appear never to have bothered to consult the primary sources.

The 1889 Act did two important thigs. Section 1 empowered the BoT to "order" the railway company to adopt any or all of (a) the block system, (b) interlocking of points and signals, and (c) the automatic brake. Section 3 empowered the railway company in question to borrow to fund the capital cost and for such borrowing to be secured and have priority over existing secured debt of the company in question. That second aspect is almost never mentioned but was very important indeed: the cost of these measures had to be borne somehow, and the Act provided for it. 

Section 1 reads:

Section 3 reads:

The Bristol & Exeter had some 2-2-2 well tanks.

[Edit] Obviously broad gauge.