The Stationmaster

GWR trains to Warrington via Hereford and Chester were originally planned (the plan drawn up in 1911) to be worked to Warrington by 28XX. What happened under the pressures of wartime might well have resulted in other engines working some of the trains.

Some did, many didn't. Attaching and detaching, especially up to the 1960s also took place at just about every station and in soem cases remarshalling of freights took place at location with no more than a couple of sidings (e.g. Broom Junction). Quite a few stations had track layouts which allowed the work to be carried out by trains travelling in either direction and through trains would call to attach (and sometimes detach) traffic in the goods yard itself. Traffic being attached to through trains often had to be segregated (i.e sorted into correct order) to mi mise the time taken to make the attaching moves. The war saw a huge increase in the number of places where some sort of sorting sidings or marshalling yard - often in rural locations - were created out of almost nothing, or were increased in size, to handle the massive increase in freight traffic. Many of these changes hunk on through the period of freight traffic decline which steepened after the 1955 ASLEF strike which caused the loss of much Goods Rated traffic to road transport. A lot depends on the period - you've got that, and the volume of traffic being handled but also the type of traffic created, or used, by local industry and other activities such as farming or fisheries. So you need to consider lots of basic things before you decide on your track layout and what it will be meant to do.

Quite agree. But I reckon it's daft duplicating something when you haven't spent any big money on the project and even your initial research isn't complete but the opposition are obviously (to me at any rate) way ahead. Far better to dump what little time and money you have spent and go find something else otherwise you're just turning it into a w*lly waving exercise.

And don't overlook the fact that the 'retailers' being talked about here were almost certainly not the model railway trade but the big multiples and mail order houses where the big Christmas market lies. One look at the sort of 'toy trains' they were selling and you can instantly see just how far off the market some of the Hornby stuff would have been - massively higher priced for less play value in many cases.

But was it down to them or someone at the factory producing an Ep who thought it would be a good idea or maybe thought that was how the English do such things? It did at least show that all the lamp brackets were there!

Not so much Margate's perception as SK's perception. He is a self declared ECML pacific 'fan' so you get a new range that starts based on that because it suits him and - maybe - he also knows/believes it will sell. Plus 'big engines' are more suitable early subjects for a new smaller scale.

I think the $64,000 questions about the stockpile boil down to two things - firstly what is in it and secondly will it cost more to keep on financing it instead of dumping what can be dumped (back to what's there)? I know, from a very reliable source that something that is in the pile is something which has steady sales over an extended term but was simply ordered., for whatever reason, in a huge quantity. So in theory it will continue to sell at a fairly steady rate and if it was bought in at bargain price for the bulk buy it will gradually offer an improving return due to inflation if nothing else. But in value terms I would think it is something that isn't a large contributor to the total value - and all it might need is a push to get more of it out to retailers (at the normal price). From what the previous management said - if it is to be believed? - a large element of the stockpile was goods ordered for the Christmas market but which retailers wouldn't take on price grounds. Clearly an attempt to shift some of that appears to have happened before the more recent Christmas. But what else - railway or non-railway - is in that huge pile and could it be shelled out at significant reductions without harming the brands? Judging by past comments and what has gone out to retailers at reduced prices there are also over-ordered and some Year 2 models which simply didn't sell in the first place - mosy likely either because the market was sated or what was being offered simply didn't offer much variety on earlier liveries etc. Here a more selective attack would probably be needed but some of it could be unlikely to ever sell because if the market was not there for it in the first place would it go for it now? Hornby might well benefit - as in the past couple of years - from finding 'helpful' retailers who are prepared to acceptstuff at reduced prices on sale or return terms to see if that can get shot of it. But some stuff will hang around for ever and whatever the reps, sorry Sakes Executives as they now are, try to do it simply won't shift. Will it better to sell it unboxed for component stripping by specialists at a giveaway price or put it in landfill and get the continuing financial drain off the books, albeit in one bad hit? The stockpile clearly needs to be carefully examined for what it contains rather than what it is costing and then be tackled in a variety of ways to suit whatever markets might exist

Look mate just because the side my ancestors were on in 1066 happened to win near Hastings (historical fact believe or not) there's not need to get touchy about the French. And at least their existence helped to keep those cuddly little R1s in some work until the disciples of Mr Collett sent some replacements over thereby giving you a chance in later years to produce yet another variant with too many lamp irons (the wrong way round) I wonder if you've already thought of that little latter temptation?

You appear not to have heard of Penrikyber Navigation Colliery, sunk in 1872 by a Mr Thomas of Cwmbach and a group of associates. Later owned by Cory brothers and then Powell Duffruyn before passing into state ownership; finally closed in 1985. The pit was at Penrhiwceiber but presumably he original owners hose the strange anglicisation of the name for commercial reasons (and maybe concerned that potential English customers probably wouldn't be able to pronounce the place name?)

If we go back well over a century people were regularly killed or injured where roads crossed railways on the level. So Parliament - in some of the earliest railway legislation made stipulations for such a situation. Those stipulations inconvenienced some people using the roads but they saved a lot of lives - probaby running into many hundreds or more over time. Now numerous people complain about being delayed at level crossings so if we apply your logic public opinion among those people would suggest that all those safety features where a railway crosses a road on the level should be removed and that all level crossing legislation is 'bad'. CDL has saved lives - there are people walking around today who would be underground in a wooden box if it had not been introduced. Presumably - by your argument - it too is 'bad' and we should let people kill themselves, and others, through their own stupidity and ignorance (plenty of that about when it comes to slam doors on railway rolling stock)? That is what you are in effect arguing for - the rule of the unknowing led by the unseeing. Surely if something which comes at a pretty low price over its working life saves even the serious injury of just one person then it is worth doing" And WCRC has millions more than even the most pessimistic figures suggest it would cost them to install that very basic safety feature on its rolling stock. If others are doing it what is so special about that bunch - apart from its very loud, parsimonious, rabble rousing, voice?.

The answer to your questions depends very much on the era to which you are referring and that is very much the case with your first question. However the answer to the second one was fairly consistent over the years because intermediate yards where trains called to attach/detach would assemble vehicles in the optimum way to suit the order in which they had to be shunted into the train. This was covered by what were known as 'Marshalling instructions' and they definitely existed by the 1890s, if not earlier, on some Companies. And they basically lasted until freight etc trains conveying traffic for a variety if destinations etc and attaching/detaching enroute ceased to run on BR. There are still some about albeit usually conveying specialist traffic in a trainload to a destination yard where they are broken up into smaller sections for various destinations so not taking on any traffic intermediately during their journey.

Some stations used to boast signs which said 'You may send a telegram (or 'you may telephone') from this station. Sendinga telegram wiould have required a public counter separate from the working part of a telegraph office where somebody could write down and pay for their message. But generally this system was overtaken by the GPO's facility to send telegrams via a Post Office counter. 'You may telephone normally seems t ohave meant that a public call box of some sort was available - the railway 'phone system would not have been made available for members of the pi ub lic to make calls over it. all stations of any sort of size had a Telegraph Office but over the years what it did and how it did it changed. Originally they were, literally 'telegraph offices' using either single needle or multi needle telegraph instruments to send messages (in the Western we called what others might calla telegram a w'ire' so details of all sorts of things would be wired. This meant that you wrote your message , using code words to keep the message short, on a form which you took to the telegraph office for the Telegraph Clerk to send. In later years that would mainly be done using a voice call between telegram offices or using something akin to a simple version of what became a teleprinter which wrote the message on a strip of paper at the receiving end. Ultimately that system was replaced by teleprinters between the busier and more important offices. In many places the Telegraph Office also became the local railway telephone exchange which could rpute you onto different networks or even make a call; ob ver 'theNational' (i. the GPO) 'phone network. This finction was largely replaced by automatic exchanges and. from the late 1950s/early '60s ever increasing use of ETD (the BR equivalent of STD). At Reading in the mid 1960s a new telephone exchange was provided - one of the few parts of the major station rebuilding scheme of that era to be actually completed - and the new exchange was also the 'telegraph office' although it used teleprinters (or voice by 'phone) to send wires. And, believe it or not, single needle telegraph instruments remained in use on some parts of BR until the first half of the 1970s while at the same time BR also had some of the best data links in the country and could transmit data quicker than anyone else in Britain.

It all helps to explain why bullsh*t bingo became so popular!!

The only problem with 'society as a whole' is that almost invariably society as a whole is not sufficiently informed about all the relevant facts and how they inter-relate to be able to reach a properly informed and reasoned decision. Such decisions often just go with either gut reaction or some variant of pre-formed prejudice with only a small part of the whole actually bothering to look into the facts and the various conflicting points. CDL is a good example of this. Firstly we should ask just how many members of 'society as a whole;' have even travelled on a train in, say, the past 10 years? We could then take that down to more detailed levels such as how many of those have travelled in a Mk1 coach on either a preserved railway or some sort of mainline excursion and then how many have done both of those things and are therefore able to make some sort of comparisons between them. We are immediately coming down to some very small numbers compared with 'society as a whole' and I suspect that it is more than likely that far more. will have travelled in a Mk 1, or even older, coach on a preserved railway/preservation site than have travelled in one on a mainline excursion. Thus only a relatively small number of people can come to some sort of qualitative assessment drawing on their own experience. But even that group will not necessarily have the necessary quantitative data to put into a proper assessment comparing risks. So informed opinion. and objective professional inputs are needed in order to draw up Regulations etc and implement them. CDL was introduced for one very simple reason - it would remove an unregulated, irrational, decision process from the control of train doors, i.e. it would stop human beings doing something they shouldn't do and opening a door at the wrong time. In consequence it would reduce the number of deaths which occurred every year due to the lack of something to prevent human beings stupidly hurting or killing themselves and others. And somebody probably also put the usual method of costing such a step in improving safety against the cost of lives saved. I have picked up the personal possessions of someone who jumped off a loco travelling at less than 40 mph - his body had been removed before I got to site to do that but small parts of it remained. The 25mph decision speed for provision of CDL wasn't just conjured up by magic but has a lot of logic to it if you relate severity of consequences to speed. However some people have stepped out of a stationary train on the mainline and have either died or been killed as a result of doing so and CDL has helped reduce/eliminate that potential as well (it's far more likely on mainline railways). Looking at a recent photo in the Daily Telegraph of people leaning out of slam door droplights on a certain viaduct on the West Highland Extension reminded me of another good reason for CDL on The Jacobite. If a door happened to be only on the first catch leaning on it, especially with others crowding around to get a look as well, could result in the door coming open and somebody falling out. Falling out of a train is one thing, falling out when the train is on a viaduct 90 ft high is averry different thing. That too strikes me as a pretty good reason for having CDL on tourist trains using Mk1 coaches on the WHE.

A 47 was not exactly the ideal loco for working an unfitted freight - no sanders for a start was something which made them less than ideal for a lot of freight working in difficult areas. Plus they were always in demand for working fitted freights and passenger etc trains.

Judging by various thngs, including their Covid 'start a layout' bundles, Hornby were at one time blessed with a small mountain of J15s. I suspect that was a result of one of their typically ill-managed Year 2 over-ordering fiascos. Yet another example of their poor marketing am nd lak of understanding of the market. The Black 5 at least has the advantage of being the basis for them to produce many of the variants over the years to come but, as ever, even doing that they need to get teh marketing right and that includes the price point at which they put it into the market. Here, if they bothered, they could learn a lot from Accurascale, and maybe even from Bachmann as well. accurascale could no doubt have produced an equally verstaile suite of Black 5 topling which would deliver revenue for years to come but I suspect they would have taken much greater care over the initial launch and thevariants it would include by going for a broader opening market rather than Hornby's slightly hit & miss approach in that respect. In simplistic terms the initial launch has to include some big hitters in terms of sale numbers and to do that you need to understand the market. And big hitters in sales terms mean lower prices for the end consumer.

Single needle telegraph - it says 'thank you' but I didn't leave any spaces between the letters which might not have helped translation.

But do they and does he? (And also reference a comment made above re newcomers). Accurascale have sold 18,000+ EE Type3/Class 37 models and no doubt they'll be selling even more when other variants are introduced. Higher volume spreads developing and tooling costs over more models which reduces the unit and thence the price to the consumer. When did Hornby last sell even 10,000 of any newly introduced loco with a couple of years of it being delivered to market? Selling even 5,000 puts far greater costs on each unit produced that selling three times as many. Bachmann have invested in some expensive re-toolings but are they marketing. let alone selling, the volume that helps reduce the unit cost? Just compare their Class 37 cost with the one from Accurascale. True lower overheads make a difference and Hornby has heavy, and recently greatly increased. overheads which have to deliver a return in order to achieve profitability. But Hornby don't just need to come up with a better mousetrap but also the right sort of mousetrap at the right price. Locomotion No.1 might wot rk very well for them but will they sell enough of them to keep the price down and thus sell even more? The right version of Black Five could be quite attractive for me but I would hope to see a more attractive price ticket. k Make the right thing and get teh marketing right so that you k make more and reduce the unit price. That is where SK misses the track in that RM comment piece - overheads are one thing but getting the marketing right is a very different thing and far more important.

I also read the Telegraph (or mainly do the sudoku and read the business pages) but here we are beyond that. Don't forget that EWCRC had an exemption for The Jav con bite based on the very fact that doors would have a secondary bolt and stewards provided to ensure those bolts were not interfered with. Good arrangement, made a degree of sense (pending fitting of CDL). So what did WCRC do - they didn't bother to have enough stewards to cover every pair of doors. And guess what - the Railway Inspectorate caught them out (hardly difficult and no doubt at least one passenger had reported WCRC to the Inspectorate). Putting it rather more brutally WCRC proved that they could not be trusted to manage their. own safety mitigation. I would hardly call that 'a mistake' and more a matter of inadequate or incompetent safety management (if not worse).

I think the expression 'WCRC have clearly made some mistakes' should enter a competition for the best railway related understatement of the decade (excluding those made by politicians). Even Christian Wolmar - much to my amazement if I am honest - has understood what the real issue is and has come down firmly in support of the action on the part of the regulating authority. Why conflate statute with the reality of actually ensuring safety on a railway? For example the statute requirement to have continuous brakes on passenger trains was done away with some years ago so are you saying that if statute applies there is no need for continuous brakes on passenger trains? The position regarding passengers (whether or not they have paid a fare) is simple - they must travel in a vehicle fitted with CDL and the CDL must be in full working order. As far as people travelling in support coaches are concerned the situation there was made perfectly clear back in. BR days and has not changed since. And that policy was fully backed by SLOA who put their name to it as well. When it was applied in the late 1980s some very well known people in the world of railway preservation involved with locos operating on the main line expressed considerable disgust with 'this new nonsense'. But it made no difference everyone travelling in a support coach, whoever they were, had to be qualified in the relevant track etc safety Rules - no exceptions. Based as much as anything on my experience from direct involvement in mainline steam working back then but also my wider railway experience I wouldn't allow anyone to be in a position on a train if they do not have the knowledge of how to deal with any potential consequenc es of being there As it happens I was one of the two people - involved at that time with loco owners who were members of SLOA - who were authorised to examine people in their knowledge of the relevant Rules and what they meant in practical situations. Both of us were BR staff anyway and as it happened I was already authorised to examine BR staff and issue the necessary documentation as far as on-track etc safety was concerned. At the end of the day this all comes back to safety - safety of the individual person travelling on a train as well the safety of people standing on a station platform etc. And thinking of the possible consequences it's also about not exposing anyone to the nasty business of dealing with the remains of those whom proper safety procedures would have protected.

I would hardly class things such as 'oiling, getting the injector working, and watching his Fireman' as 'little things'. The world of steam engine management changed massively in a few decades in the early to mid 20th century as technology and materials developed. 1913, especially for those who had learnt their job in even earlier times was a very different railway from just one generation later let alone the later years of steam traction. Failed lubrication could mean stopping and have to be rescued, dodgy and troublesome injectors could mean just the same, and nursing a fire back into shape to keep steaming also took skill and experience - hence the Driver's interest. Managing the engine is, and was very much so back then, as important as looking out for signals and it could distract an Engineman from other tasks if there were real problems to deal with simply in order to keep on the move. Where Caudle really fell short was in his wider actions after getting back to the cab and not paying proper attention to where his train was and any signals which might have been missed. The wider ramifications of the collision are interesting - Rule 217, which would have played a critical role in certainly reducing the impact and, probably averting the collision had been in the course of revision during 1913 and Ais Gill prompted a move to further revise and ensure that in these circumstances the (Rear) Guard should immediately go back to protect a train stopped in the way the first express had stopped.. The GWR of course - not unexpectedly - noted and sought to act on the comments about its audible distant signal system (later known as ATC). However it is interesting to note that the 1910 Hawes Jcn collision had a far greater impact on the GWR and in 1913 it decided to spend £30.000 on providing additional and more comprehensive track circuiting throughout its main line network.

Hornby's second half/year end Trading Statement has been posted on RNS this morning - https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/Hornby/news/rns/story/rgg323r Alas not much in the way of good reading and, as Hornby have put it 'Our underlying loss before tax has weakened since the half year point. ' Or putting it another way the second half underlying losses are bigger than were the first half losses. Group sales for the year are only 2% ahead of last year so if you feed in inflation that means that in real terms the value of sales has actually declined. Margin ahas also dropped for a variety of reasons notwithstanding an 18% increase in direct to consumer sales. That apart net debt has almost trebled reaching £14.3 million this year compared with £5.5 million a year ago although that is a slight improvement on the first half year position. The increase in debt is mainly due to capital expenditure and the trading loss. (although no doubt overheads will have increased (but that is not mentioned). So far this morning the share price has only suffered a relatively small drop - c.8% on the bid price - but it is still relatively early in the trading. There is some optimism to close the Statement but they also mention various perceived hurdles - some of which (oddly?) don't seem to affect some others in the business to the same extent.

Er yes - but. And the big but is where things move from the Regulations and Exemptions, or not, to the everyday railway. Once they are on the everyday railway - provided they are allowed to be there (i.e vehicles either have CDL or an Exemption if they are to carry passengers) - then what happens is subject to the Rules. This is were the real world meets what is or isn't permitted, Vehicles carrying support crews are not required to have CDL, but at the same time the occupants of those vehicles are required to be qualified in Track etc safety Rules,. So they (should) know exactly what they should or should not do before opening a door. Vehicles carrying passengers in the mainline railway are required to have CDL (or an Exemption). But if the CDL is defective and not working all the exterior doors of that vehicle must be locked out of use and passengers must be moved from it. The doors must be labelled not for public use etc. Effectively, as I posted previously. that also 'implies' (and in my view 'means') that the doors on a vehicle not fitted with CDL - and without an Exemption - must also have its exterior doors locked and cannot be used by passengers. Gangway etc doors which give access to vehicles locked out of use also need to be locked. So quite what the 'extra' beyond the support coach vehicles are for is debatable although there must obviously have to be a suitably equipped vehicle for the Guard to ride in where he will access to a handbrake. Quite where the Guard will control the CDL from seems unclear/thus far unexplained but presumably one of these 'extra' WCRC vehicles includes the control point for the CDL? But that apart they are simply makeweight and more importantly maybe to add some extra brake force. Whether or not the RMB can be used for catering supply purposes is an interesting question lurking at one side. Passengers are not allowed to travel in it which means they can't go to it and to refreshments. But presumably on-train staff could work from it selling refreshments etc - however they would as i understand it) therefore also be required to be qualified in Track etc safety and if they are not then what is their legal status?

Looking at the gradients logically it would make sense for an engine to be chimney first to Mallaig in relation to the gradients as there is a climb of nearly 6 miles heading in that direction. There is a shorter climb heading towards Fort William but both directions appear to be either 1 in 45 or 1 in 48 at their steepest. Climbing from the Fort William side approaching Glenfinnan there is the best part of a mile at mainly 1in 50 with a very short stretch of 1 in 45 and another stretch at 1 in 100. This follows two miles of almost continuous climbing but, a bit of 1 in 50 apart, that is not so steep. The length of climb from the Fort William direction makes me wonder if management of the engine on this occasion was not entirely as it should have been and it was likely over-powered at some point during the long climb. However the start of the climb is 13 fairly easy miles out from Mallaig junction so there should have been time to get the engine ready for the harder work ahead.

Not necessarily as it depends on how it was released. Many ground frames did not havea release lever but were unlocked by an Annett's Key so only - at a facing connection - needed a blue lever and a black lever. A lot depends on Company/Reh gional practice and the type opf equipment in use.