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Though fairly simple this formation has fascinated me since I discovered it in the early 1990s. It's at Port Bloc at Pointe de Grave at the mouth of the Gironde opposite Arcachon in S.W. France. The purpose seems clear; , to enable wagons to be shunted either very close to the side of the quay or at a more normal distance. Despite my less than brilliant photo you should be able to see in the close up that while most of the inset track on the quay has a normal rail with a much lighter contra-rail the common rail beyond where the crossing/frog would normally be has two rails of equal size that each act as the other's vontra-rall (checkrail more or less) depending on which "half siding" has been used. When I first saw it the track on the quayside appeared to have been unused for sometime but it had been part of a particularly interesting system operated until the 1970s or 80s by the Bordeaux Port Authority.(Port Autonome de Bordeaux) mainly to convey sand, gravel and blocks from Port Bloc and a nearby SNCF interchange yard to various sites down the coast as far as Soulac. This line is now use by the PGSV Tourist Railway using "draisines" (motorised PW workers' trollies) starting from a terminus adjoining the SNCF terminus and running for 7kms south west to Soulac. The port authority railway used to be far more extensive at the Port Verton end, crossing the SNCF line to reach Port Bloc in a wide curve with branches to various breakwaters whose repairs it also supplied with materials. However, a couple of sidings also seems to have run into the workshops used to maintain buoys a few hundred metres from the quay. Though I assumed the purpose of the extra quayside half siding was to facilitate the transfer of sand and gravel from barges it occurs to me that it may have been to bring special flat wagons closer to the port authority tenders in order to enable buoys, which are fairly large objects especially when out of the water, to be slid between wagon and deck. Despite a general fascination with quayside lines, I've never come across another formation like this so think it may have served a very specific purpose. Has anyone come across an arrangement like this anywhere else?

Triang used to have a CKD range but I think the term may have come from the motor industry where cars were were exported as "kits" to be asssembled locally - possibly to get round protectionist trade barriers. Anyone who has modelled in North American H0 will probably be familiar with the "shake the box" kits for freight and passenger cars from companies like Roundhouse that took all of ten minutes to assemble (if you worked very slowly) Their advantages were that packing was simpler, the completed model didn't have to be wrapped in expanded polystyrene for shipping and you didn't have to disassemble them to fit better trucks or couplings. You also got a certain degree of satisfaction from assembling them rather than just taking a complete model out of the box. Presumably the manufacturers saved the cost of final assembly and some of the packing costs but I suspect that their real purpose was to avoid sales tax if kits were counted differently from an assembled toy. I used to buy them at Victors and the plastic (or possibly the colouring or ink) they used for the bodies had a very distinctive smell that I always associated with American modelling ISTR that Peco "Wonderful Wagons" were effectively CKD kits but it's a long time since I've seen one.

I enjoyed seeing Northwick at the Woking show and thanks for the insight into your use of long cassettes in the fiddle yard. I think the forward extension of the two left hand boards by six inches does help to set the railway in the scene. (Shame none of the Scout camps we had in the last years of steam were that close to a railway!)

If you right click within the video frame you should get a drop down menu including "copy video URL" If you then open a new tab or window and paste that as the URL you should open it in directly in YouTube. Altreenatively just click on this https://youtu.be/JT2ZyFMbg_w There was some confusion in RMWEB in 2013 when an obituary for a Mike Sharman appeared. He had been an engineering academic at Cambridge etc. and was an MBE and was also a railway enthusisast with a collection of lamps and nameplates. It seemed though that he wasn't "our" mike Sharman who was reported at that time to be very much still with us. I don't know if that is still true but hope so.

But you might cross your own time stream and destroy the universe.

I've seen a layout (by Stuart Robinson) that depicted a flooded section of track. The water was just above rail height and the loco seemed to have no real problems. I guess you could do a completely submerged track in fresh water (though there would be a lot of current leakage) but the motor etc. would probably need to be insulated. You wouldn't want to use your favourite loco on it but in 1971 a Triang Jinty was probably expendable. The lubricant wasn't WD40 by any chance was it?

You're quite right. The bumper was a 1901 British invention by Frederick Simms who also gave British English the words petrol and motor car. The American words trunk, motor, and fender are also completely different (plus no doubt a few others) In Australia I suppose it could be a "Ute chute". Getting back to railways (vain hope I know) it's always fascinated me how vague the words are for passenger vehicles. We seem to use carriage and coach more or less interchangeably but also refer to restaurant and sleeping cars. In American English "coach" was AFAIK a class of seating ("coach class" also used by US Airlines to mean economy class) but car is the generic name for both passenger and freight vehicles in American English (where it wouldn't be confused with automobile). The Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-lits (et des Grands Express Européens) wasn't even consistent with its own name as sleeping cars were voitures-lits but restaurant cars were wagons-restaurant. Car, meaning railway passenger vehicle, also has a fairly long usage in British English with "railcars" (same as in American English) and old Bradshaws do refer to the CIWL as the European Sleeping Car Company. On the UndergrounD car is also used but so are Westbound and Eastbound etc, and so were "motormen" (drivers) which are all American usages. Though the UndergroundD is now as iconic of London as red buses and black cabs, the deep level tube lines were built by mainly American capital and there were fears of a creeping Americanisation with its open saloons and horror of horrors no classes. "We have scarcely yet been educated up to that condition of social equality when lords and ladies will be content to ride side by side with Billinsgate 'fish fags' and Smithfield butchers" The Railway Times: November 1890 (Despite the Égalité in their national slogan, Republican France still had first and second class on the Paris Metro until 1991)

Given the reported prevalence of absurdly deadly snakes and dunny spiders in Australia, I can see potential advantages. I can't think what the US version would be called. what word would work with fender?

Aaaargghhh!!!! for heaven's sake don't let the present backpack brigade find out about these, they could cause a wave of injuries. I suspects the point of these at the Flower Show is that potted plants need the green bits to face up and the brown stuff to stay down.

Th The thing that really annoyed me about the Channel Tunnel was that, I think because of the extreme Nimbyism it had evoked in Kent, the entrance to it looks like he entrance to a storm drain. It was possibly the greatest feat in civil engineering up to that time and they wanted to tuck it away so as not to upset the locals. Think what IKB would have made of the entrance to the Chunnel if he's been responsible for it. I did rather wickedly think of operating a typical French BLT in real time at exhibtions using an authentic 1950s timetable . The early morning autorail left at 06.00 followed by the Paris rapide at about 08.00 so I'm afraid that was before the punters were let in. If you're near the layout at about 15.00 you might see the afternoon Marchandise-Voyageurs (mixed train) and that would generate a bit of shunting. Unfortunately the exhibtion would be closed an hour before the rapide from Paris arrived at about 6 PM. Those coaches would sit in the station overnight and form the 08.00 depature the next morning and it's a shame you can't actually see them because they're reallly good models hauled by a far more magnificent loco than the rather scruffy Glaswegian 2-8-0 that brought in the afternoon mixed. If you're lucky you might, depending on what time of year it is, see a small locotracteur shoving a few cereal wagons around the siding for the local co-operative agricole's silo but apart from that.... well the local wine's not bad. It did occur to me that losing the afternoon MV would save a fortune on wiring and only the silo siding would actually need to be powered.

So the A2 Blue Peter is like New York. So good the BBC named it twice Thanks for posting those clips. The 40th anniversary one did rather confirm what I've often thought, that the train it's hauling tends not to be the best place from which to experience a steam loco, That's never stopped me yet though. In the 1970 renaming ceremony I did like the question from the Radio Leeds reporter "You've not been to the north very often have you?" I assume she meant the programme not John Noakes as he is from Halifax. Valerie Singleton- who I think had decided she was a member of the Royal Family- mentioned that the programme had always taken a great interest in the locomotive before it was withdrawn. Anyone know of any items about it from that time?

It would be interesting to know how far plans for restoration had reached when the loco was "found" and was this before or after Geoff Drury bought it in 1968. It occurs to me that there may have been several examples of the same class available but choosing Blue Peter and having a relationship with the programme would be useful to both; the programme would get plenty of material for interesting items following the career of "their" loco - magazine p[rogrammes like Blue Peter do require a lot of items- while the TV exposure would be of obvious value in its preservation.

I found this at http://www.apt-p.com/HornbyAPT.htm and although the layout looks very small in this shot I think that may be deceptive as we're looking at the end rather than the side of the layout. From what I can make out from the photo it does appear to be the same layout as in this plan though it's obviously not to scale and the curves are relatively much wider compared to the lengths of straight. I'd estimate its total size as at least 8 feet long- possibly more like ten- by about six feet but if you put an object this size in a large TV studio and shoot it from well back it will look small.OTOH a good choice of close up shots would have make it look enormous. The balance for the production would have been a layout that was large enough to look interesting and give reasonable shots of trains running without being so large as to appear out of reach of the young viewers. When I was a young viewer I did write to Christopher Trace (so in reality the BP production team but I was too young to know that ) to ask for a copy of the plan.They wrote a very polite letter back in his name but regretted they couldn't supply a plan which I'd guess meant the production didn't actually have one. It would have been built as a solid piece of scenery (probably with help from members of the BBC MRC) and simply wheeled into the studio when needed. The Studio Director would only have needed the overall size and a rough track plan to work out the moves the trains would make but no more detail than that.

That sounds like the government's energy policy!!

Thanks Northroader I can remember seeing Waiting for the Bridge though I don't think it was at Eurotrack that year. It was definitely a work of three dimensional art- should it be classified as a sculpture?

I don't blame him and I gather that Buzz Aldrin would do rather more than go nuts. I any case there are now aerial photos of the lunar landing sites that show them in considerable detail.

No chance!!

My general impression is that rules for street tramways in many countries started out being very strict with nothing showing under the skirts and gradually got more and more relaxed. You only have to compare the Wantage Tramway's original fully enclosed locos with Shannon; presumably the horses weren't quite as terrified as everyone feared. There was often also a difference between at one end of the spectrum street running in larger towns and cities and, at the other, lines that ran along the side of rural roads. In many countries the local authorities often also had a say in this. Many French rural tramways, such as the Tramways de Correze, used very conventional locos with competely unenclosed motions whereas others, the Tramways de Sarthe for example, had fully enclosed locos with driving positions at both ends until they finally closed in 1947. On many tramways even when enclosed locos remained in service there was a tendency for the side skirts covering the motion to be gradually dispensed with but the Sarthe system, or probably the local prefecture, seems to have always been quite strict about this. Definitions of tramways have always been "interesting" but in France it was a railway (normally d'Interet Local so a light railway) that ran for more than a third of its length on or directly alongside public roads and was genarally slower but subject to fewer regulations than a light railway running on a "plateforme independant"

I've just gone back to the original 1957 Minories article and Cyril Freezer did mention the idea of hidden sidings OR a reversing loop. "It would be possible to use tender locos..provided some means of handling them "off stage" were provided either in the hidden sidings or by means of a reversing loop... Having arrived at the head of the express the tender loco is trapped until the shunter takes the train away, in imagination to the carriage sidings farther down the line. The tender loco then follows light engine, in imagination to the depot for coal, water, cleaning fires and turning, rejoining its train after the shunter has brought it back. In practice this probably means that they have both followed each other round the reverse loop!" Clearly in the 1950s modellers weren't expected to have express locos to spare. It's interesting that the original terminus to fiddle yard layout, Frank Applegate and Bill Banwell's Maybank an O gauge layout first exhibited in 1932, used a motorised four road traverser hidden under a high level MPD but at its last exhibtion outing, the MRC Easter Exhibition in 1939, the write up says that the layout "has been improved, for exhibtion purposes, by the provision of a single loop at one end which speeds up the traffic operation" I assume this was beyond the traverser but can't be sure of that. Unfortunately this iconic layout, that I know inspired Cyril Freezer, was damaged beyond repair in the blitz.

Louis Napoleon established the Second Empire in 1852 having been President of the Second Republic from 1848 and it's true that buses with an upper deck or "impériale" also appeared in Paris in about 1852. However, references to impériale as an upper or outside seating position are much earlier. It appears in a description of the large diligences that started to appear in 1820."Dans le coupé ou le cabriolet, trois voyageurs peuvent prendre place. L’intérieur offre six places, la rotonde 3 places. Enfin, deux personnes peuvent s’installer sur l’impériale." I also found a slightly later reference from Balzac, Le Message (1832) "L'état de ma bourse m'obligeait à voyager sur l'impériale de la diligence." The state of my funds obliged me to travel on the impériale of the diligence. So the word seems to have always referred to an upper position on a vehicle rather than the vehicle as a whole but I'd like to trace its earlier origins.

You'll be needing some drawings then I don't think anyone currently produces a model of a Bidel. The interesting design feature is the swan neck chassis that enabled the floor of the lower deck to be lowered without compromising the strength of the vehicle. Jouef did do a model of the death trap impériale based on the Ouest example which is in the Mulhouse railway museum along with an Est Bidel. Though moulded from rather heavy plastic the Jouef model is dimensionally accurate and illustrates the features of the thing rather well. The word Impériale seems to derive from stage coaches and diligences and is still used in reference to double deck buses and coaches. I did wonder if it was a slightly ironic reference for the poorer passengers riding on top of a stage coach in the open "riding like an emperor"

Far too many especially on trains returning to Paris Bastille from the Marne Valley on Sunday evenings with passengers who'd been having rather too good a time in the pleasure palaces. The Impériales were eventually replaced by coaches with an enclosed upper deck- though still with open stairways . The last of these "Bidels" operated the short line from Enghien to Montmorency till it closed in 1954. They got their nickname from the wagons used to transport wild animals by the well known circus menagerie of Francois Bidel. Though safer they were more cramped than the Impériales that remained in service till 1931 and despite the obvious hazards many people preferred those especially in summer.

There seems to have been an addiction to double deck steam tram trailers on rural tramways. Stony Stratford claims to have had the longest but most of them seem to have used them. I wonder if there's a clue to the similarity to tramways in Paris in the legend that appears along the route of the earliest one in the French capital "chemin de fer Americaine". The double-deck loco hauled trailers do have similarities to the "imperiales" used in the Paris suburbs, presumably the S&M wasn't restricted to Stephenson's loading gauge but they do look a lot safer than deathtraps like this. I know that in France one reason why the companies liked them was that the extra seats on the roof meant more passengers for the same tare weight and with the early fairly weak locos that was an important consideration. Most British railways couldn't fit in an upper deck - it was a push for those in France- but with no overbridges or tunnels some of the steam tramways clearly could and more paying passengers per unit of tractive effort would have pleased the bean counters.

Not terribly rural perhaps, apart from its extension to Deanshanger, but the 42inch gauge Wolverton and Stony Stratford Tramway (1887-1926) was according to the Milton Keynes Museum the last steam street tramway in Gt Britain- Presumably they classified the Wisbech & Upwell as somethig else as its passenger services ran till 1927 though the Wantage tramway had closed to passengers on 1 August 1925. Stony Stratford was a traditional coaching town that the LNWR missed by a couple of miles running through Wolverton. The tramway was built to connect the two. More about it here http://www.mkheritage.co.uk/mkm/

Although I have come across technicians, usually the barely competent ones, who regarded production as their natural enemy my experience as a live studio director of camera crews in TV Centre was always very positive. Once they'd rehearsed a shot however complex they could repeat it every time. We "creatives" did actually plan our shots very carefully. I even kept a set of coins - possibly old pennies- with numbers painted on them attached to lengths of cotton that I used to plan camera moves on a studio floor plan as it was horribly easy to get their cables tangled. The BBC Studio Director's course like all BBC training was actually very thorough. I still can't hear "It's a Hard Knock Life" from Annie without twitching as it was used in a particuarly gruelling live shot calling excercise. Although they'd stopped using it regularly by the time I first worked there, I saw the Blue Peter model railway in the TV Centre scenery dock on a couple of occasions and it was a very heavily built single unit, including the operator's well, that could be trucked in and out of the studio. It was normally protected by a box that covered it .I'm not sure of the actual size but 6ft x 8 ft feels about right and ISTR the BBC MRC had a hand in its building.