daveyb

All this talk of red is very useful as I'm just painting 1/29th scale RS3 into multimark and action red. As was said earlier and has been said previously, Action Red faded very badly and in many cases looks orange or pink. There are now three CP reds (plus tuscan if you count the maroon shade as red): Action Red, 16 July 68 - around 1998 (including all marking variants from Multimark 'Packman' until 1987, the plain old CPRail throughout the action red period, 1991 CP Rail System (with all the arguments about defacing the flags - probably the US flag as the maple leaf was still only 27 years old, which is funny because Americans will put their flag on anything, including their bodies so it must just be that a Canadian did it!) and few other specials. Candy Apple Red was the Soo and the St Lawrence and Hudson colour (later Soo, the all over colour not the 60's one end colour with white) but again varied with supply dates and areas. I can't find a definite date that this started to be applied, but almost all the GE AC4400 and variants (except the GEXC blue ones) seem to have arrived in it. This was used in the 'golden beaver' livery, which was soon dropped as it was a very expensive decal (almost as much as gold!). The type-face for Canadian Pacific changed at the same time as Candy Apple Red came in and can be seen in gold, shaded gold, yellow and white. Most recently (2015 onwards) the newly outshopped refurbs (excluding the specials on SD70M refurbs of the SD90MACs) have been in the newest red, which I suspect is very similar to what Action Red looked like at first. It is 'redder' than Action Red looks in publicity photos, but we all know the variations in colour rendering of slide film. The type-face is the same as CAR and the lettering is now white. I have a few friends that work for CPRail, I'll see if I can get the colour codes for the new colour. It should be noted there are still SD40-2 ad SD60s running in Action Red that have clearly never been painted. That makes the job of matching very difficult after near 40 years. CPR does not seem to like washing their fleet and even those in areas with carriage washers don't get clean if they are hood units, consequently after the sun fades them, the dirt darkens them... and in the GEs, the flames blacken and strip any paint. If we add size colour scaling to the equation, a bit of primer variation (over red oxide or grey), and personal colour vision variation, it could be any red we like! Good luck, lol

Those links are really interesting, thanks.

A Mk1 FK that reminds me of trips Euston to Liverpool as a child in the early 70s... big, bouncy, horse hair stuffed moquette seats, but only a very small area for tea cups. Or a loco hauled Mk3 FO next to the restaurant car. I'm not sure we've improved upon the early Mk3 FO with orange seats.

Surely Hengist, Horsa and Vortigern were on the cross channel run, not Irish Sea services.

We're getting off topic again... The Rolls Royce (later Perkins) Eagle was definitely a diesel and didn't enter the market until the late 60s. It was used in the the various Foden trucks of the 70s (8x4 low mob, FH 70 6x6 tractor and limber and lastly the wrecker) and the upgraded 350 was the in The DROPS trucks. The B60 was a mis-type, I meant B80, but I'm not sure on that now. B80 was is in the Antar and later pushed into the B81 in the Stalwart and Mighty Antar. All before my time unfortunately.

I didn't see any residential in the plans I quickly looked at. Is this simply a case of moving Cricklewood station north by about 2km? The area could do with a bit of a revamp and the old station is no longer in the area that needs most passenger access The Hendon/Hounslow bit is a little more involved, admittedly. I'll make sure to avoid the area... So no change from the last 50 years (with the exception of some work experience at CW in '84!).

They were definitely in use in Aug 14 for the weekend of the Great British Beer Festival. They were the platforms used for the shuttle service when the complete WCML was closed from Watford Junction south and Virgin Trains were terminating at Milton Keynes. There was work done on the slow lines at Apsley to Kings Langley. Perfect example of what you describe.

I happened across a couple of shots on Flikr today (property of Robert Gadsdon and H J Wayt) of the Flying Scotsman on its US tour in the early 70s: The caption/description states that there were a number of converted Mk1 carriages sent along with FS, and my questions relate to them rather than the loco. What happened to the carriages? As is well known, the FS was repatriated after the bankruptcy incident but I can't imagine anyone paying good money to recover a non-standard Mk1. What conversion work was undertaken? Was it a simple case of 'as require to be a support coach' or were there mods to allow use on the US system? My reason for asking their end is related to a thread on here some years ago about Mk1s getting everywhere on preserved lines (it wasn't a particularly productive thread - don't bother searching). Around that thread's time, I was visiting Fort Steele (http://fortsteele.ca/) in the Rocky Mountains of southern British Columbia and saw the railway attraction. The town was formerly an important river crossing point and junction on the Canadian Pacific line into BC coal country and has a loop built as part of the attraction. One of the carriages been towed around the loop was a Mk1! As the thread noted, they get out on most preserved railways but I wasn't expecting one there. I wonder if it was one of the train that arrived across the Atlantic with FS back in the 70s. I didn't get any details from BC and it was fairly incomplete as compared with a service carriage - and wearing a lot of paint. Thanks

Those are early Mk1 FV430s with the petrol engine (a Rolls Royce B60, I think) in the picture. They went quickly (but I don't know how quickly) into fairly widespread use until they were turned into Mk3s with the diesel conversion. Some Mk 1s were never converted and retired from service with the petrol engines (many on the ranges in Alberta where I served last - a long time after the Mk 1s retired) Amazingly, some of them are still in service having been re-engineered in the mid 00s to a spec known as BULLDOG. New diesel, new gearbox, new brakes, new comms, add-on air-con, same steel box, same suspension, same armour and same armament mostly same interior and equipment. They were also fitted with new appliqué armour for use in Iraq but with the heat and all the extra weight, they really struggled with lack of power. Comfy... by armoured standards!

I'm not sure anything would stop an out of gauge move as long as it didn't physically strike anything lineside; As long as it could be fitted into a timetable, which couldn't happen now without significant disruption; and someone was willing to pay!

That's never a fun job, Clive, I've done similar. Barry, I was including Lulworth in the Bovvy Garrison, sorry. I never got to play at Lulworth, but the target railway would have been interesting. I presume you mean similar to this (From Pauls excellent reference site).? Ramp wagon

Fairly light and wheeled so definitely contenders. Where was the ramp? I was looking for it on Google Earth but I'm none the wiser. I'm surprised the Fox CVR(W) was mentioned, they were a fairly rare and their use limited mostly, but not exclusively, to Berlin Brigade ops but training would be done at Bovvy. They were very top heavy. The turrets were taken to put on Scorpion chassis to turn them into the Sabre in the late 80s.

And unique as a QF fixed ammunition, in that its carries its cart case down range; the flying dustbin! Not strictly a QF gun as it had a cart case and relied on the breach to seal as well. I was an Ammo Tech but never saw the Cent in service. I joined as it was being retired and the Chieftain AVRE didn't get a gun (we used to call that the armoured tortoise with its 3 facine on the racks).

The key there, Jack, is with appliqué armour. The tanks in UK don't travel with armour fitted because of the weight. I have seen a pic somewhere of a VAA or similar chassis with a 'snap gauge' outline of the Challenger from the 1980s, and no doubt some loading gauges will have been made bigger. I agree the the Chieftain was fairly under-whelming, The Leyland L60 engine was a howling dog and never lived up to expectations. The gun was good in its day but the armour was no match for a late T-64 with the 115mm fin shot. Knife through butter! That prompted Op STILLBREW to improve the capability and added more weight on an underpowered chassis. The M4 was nearly as thirsty and more fire prone, though when fitted with the last 100mm gun was definitely at its zenith, the M48 was later and evolved into the M60 which was not as good as the Chieftain but could keep moving which is always a distinct advantage! To bring it more on topic, was the the loading gauge on the S&D generous like the GW or tight like much of the early Midland?

Not only with other nations, Clive. The Cent was a very successful tank and was up gunned to 105mm ans use to test the L11 120mm gun in the Chieftain. It remained in British Army service as the Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineer version until 1992, and there were two Cent BARV (Beach Area Recovery Vehicles) at the RM training centre though the operational vehicles were Chiefs by then. It's main downfall in British service was the plan to move from petrol to diesel and the ammo storage for the 120mm gun was entirely different. The Isreali Merkava tank can still trace its origins to the Centurion. Interestingly, the Chieftain and Challenger are both able to run on some UK rail lines, so it must have become a requirement again.

Train set curves and a large loco? Here's the prototype situation... (plus a few nearly 90 degree crossings and a mix of modern and steam traction) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAlK61l6yQI

Unusually bits of the 34th Ave SE near 9th At SE in Calgary (top pic) are still in use; the plywood store to the west (top) of 9th St is now Triple Tree Trading, a plastics recycling site that receives a few hoppers a month. Immediately to the South (left) of 34th Ave there is a busier section remaining.

Part of their problem is they haven't kept up with modern trends. Almost everyone I know in the modelling and train hobbies are using acrylics from the armour and game specialists like Vallejo, AK, AmmoMIG, Mission Models and Tamiya. Some of them are a bit finicky with thinner but many just use water and clean up is easy. My local model shop has a rack of enamel from the Rustoleum names and no one is buying it! They are a big paint firm and they are concentrating on other markets, using the aging demographic and lack of up take as excuses to concentrate on more profitable lines.

The supply chain has been tri-service for some time. Defence Munitions is the overarching organization that manages all ammunition and explosives storage and owns the central storage facilities at Glen Douglas, Kineton, Longtown and a few others. All materiel is procured by project teams and capability management teams in Defence Equipment & Support HQ in Abbey Wood (Bristol). They receive stores at Bicester, Donnington (Telford) and distribution is run through another office at Abbey Wood where the Defence Movement Agency plans the must effective method to move the commodity. They have made increasingly more use of containers, but still decided the MoD container management system at Bicester was surplus. Contractors are increasingly used to deliver complete services including supply, so will bypass the DE&S, DM, DMA, etc. Fewer storage facilities are rail served, fewer bases are rail served and as the Forces contract further, so will the need for bulk movement. All the ammo depots remain rail linked, but Donnington lost (but recently regained) it's link in the early 90s and Bicester has recently been reduced to a mere transfer siding. I assume there is still a link to Devonport, but I think Pompey has lost its link and so has the little bit remaining at Gosport. I'd imagine the RAF stations remaining that had rail links will have had them disconnected as they mostly stopped using rail in the 90s... All that said, if for some reason rail is cheapest, it will get used!

Further to the south on the former Southfleet (Gravesend) branch, there was the curious situation where they installed a twin track railway bridge over the new carriageway of the A2(T) when it was widened to dual carriageway nearly motorway standard from the former A2 coroners corridor 3 lane road (I'm guessing in the late 60s/ early 70s). The original bridge was a single track bridge, and the line had been singled and freight only for some years. So the headshunt on the single track deck was augmented by being extended over the new twin track bridge to end very nearby at a buffer stop. On the latest Google Earth shot you can make out the concrete elements of the coal tippler installed in the former yard. There was an article in Model Trains or Scale Trains in the early 80s taking Southfleet as an inspiration for a small layout, and I suspect it was closed soon after and definitely by the miners' strike in 84. The embankment can still be seen on the south side of the A2 London bound carriageway. The decks had long gone by the time I lived in Chatham in 2007-12 but as the widening and HS1 work went through, the pillars and abutments were removed.

This whole area has changed since the design of the CTRL, the change to HS1 and the changing economic situation, so I suspect it was future proofing for a plan that never became. Apart from the the changes in historic industry, there is little in the way of planning interaction between the levels of government. Planned rights of way may no longer exist and the idea of Ebbsfleet never took off either. There was a plan to put another Thames crossing in that area, but that has changed more times than some people's underwear! If you add the constant change of the geology with extraction of minerals and re-routing of water courses, the bridge carcass my have made a lot more sense 25 years ago. If you look at the A2660 bridge to the south, that also got built for dialling.

I meant model the scene, I'm not sure you'd want to drive your locos off the edge! I was going to post it in the Street running thread...

Just saw this and thought it might be of interest... May be a theme or inspiration for someone https://nypost.com/2020/04/01/engineer-derailed-train-near-usns-mercy-over-conspiracy-theory/amp/ Feel free to delete if inappropriate.

Derek,, The gravel boards are also known as ground contact pressure treated boards. You can get them at a proper lumber yard like Travis Perkins or Buttles. Some of the lumber yards will do preservation pressure treating.

Any of the surprisingly many 'Camelback' locos, or to offend my new countrymen, how about the CN Turbotrain? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAC_TurboTrain#/media/File:CN_train_in_1975.jpg