Pacific231G

Even though Huskisson was a keen advocate of railways whereas Wellington (who he was trying to talk to) thought them a bad idea as cheap travel encouraging the masses to move about might result in revolution. His attitude to railways was though influenced by his being booed and jeered at by the crowds who came to the Liverpool and Manchester opening (thanks to Peterloo and his opposition to the Reform Bill so did he really expect to be cheered? ) There was a general impression at the time of privatisation that one aim of it was to let private companies profitably manage the orderly decline of the "obsolete" railway, which many in government thought inexorable and keep the political fallout from line closures away from the government. The fact that the curve of passenger numbers was starting to turn upwards as the roads reached capacity was not noticed. Remember also that at that time global warming , though by then accepted by most of the scientific community (as well it would seem by the oil companies) , was generally poo poohed by our then rulers.

It's worth looking up the "Leica Freedom Train" to see a different and very positive aspect of the Leitz family who owned Leica. The name came up at a meeting of my French railway group yesterday as one of us has just added to his collection an original Leica camera- something he could never afford when they were current. The Leica was of course Cartier-Bresson's camera of choice and I rather wish certain visitors to model raiway exhibtions would heed his comment about flash photography being "impolite...like coming to a concert with a pistol in your hand." I never had anything so grand but my first proper camera was a Kodak Retinette with a surprisingly good lens for such an inexpensive camera. I think the railway photos I took with it (long lost) were about the best I ever took helped I think by its inherent simplicity.

You can land but you can never take-off again.

Almost correct. The Master Car Builders Association was a trade association that established common standards for railroad cars enabling them to be interchanged between RRs. That function is now carried out by the Association of American Railroads (AAR). Ohio is indeed the Buckeye State but the common name for the coupler in Britain comes from the Buckeye Steel Castings Company in Columbus Ohio which specialised in the castings required for the Janney/MCB/AAR coupler and these had the name stamped into them. They weren't the only foundry making these castings but seem at one time to have been the largest. In N. America the coupler- invented by Eli Janney- came into universal use following Federal safety legislation requiring employees to not have to go between the cars to couple or uncouple them as the previous link and pin couplers had. For reasons to do with the design of cars with bogies rather than fixed axles, American RR couplers had long been based on a central coupler that incorporated both drawing and buffing functions but link and pins were hazardous and it was said that a switchman with all his fingers couldn't have been doing the job for long.

For a quick and temporary repair (using a paper clip as a coupling for example) I like the traditional and more elegant maritime term of "jury rigged". (possibly from the French jour, so a "jury rigged" mast was a mast "for a day" (in reality probably longer) until a new one could be stepped.) I don't know why bodging or bodger came to mean a botched job as it means not a job done badly but one done with the tools and materials immediately to hand. It comes from the bodgers assocated with the High Wycombe furniture trade who turned up chair legs etc. out in the woods where the timber they used was felled. They used simple tools, including a type of lathe, that they could carry with them but their work was highly skilled and anything but botched.

That doesn't make sense. The coach has standard screw link couplings and a complete set of buffers. The buffers are wider than most British ones because coaches had grown longer- I think that one is a USI 25m (82ft) long so buffer locking (probably in sidings rather on than the main) line was more of an issue. It's a couchette being used by the heritage railway as an accomodation coach for volunteers and parked at the end of a siding at St. Valery-Canal where they have their main workshop. Looking through the French Railways Society photo archive there were a variety of buffer shapes used for coaches including the one illustrated in my photo, a more symmetrical lozenge shape and, what is effectively a large circular buffer with the the top and bottom cut off- also left/right symmetrical . Why no buckeyes? The whole queston of automatic or semi-automatic couplings is a complex one. There have been attempts by the UIC to agree a standard automatic coupler even since it was set up after the first World War and, after a load of tests, they generally rejected the American Janney/AAR coupler (which is only semi-automatic) and focussed instead on a version of the Willison coupler (invented by John Willison in Derby in 1916 but never AFAIK used in Britain). Either would have speeded up wagon shunting but, for passenger operations, the Willison has the advantage that it doesn't need the couplers to be pushed together with as much force as the AAR type coupler that the drophead buckeye is based on. Coupling with screw links doesn't of course require any force but only that the buffers are brought together. That was probably a consideration where trains were shuffled a lot enroute (I once travelled on train from Calais where almost every coach - mostly couchettes-was going to a different destination). In Britain, there was far less making and breaking of trains enroute (Cornish Riviera and the ACE excepted) and buckeyes were well suited to coaches that mostly ran in sets and had certain advantages in accidents tending to keep coaches together and upright. Even in Britain, though buckeyes were used between coaches, it was relatively unusual for locos to be fitted with them. In the event, international agreement has never been reached so the UIC standard for interchangeability is still side buffers and screw link couplers. Many passenger units of course now use Scharfenberg couplers - these though proved unsuitable for heavy goods trains.

Fairly common Tony. particularly on main line coaches, diesel and electric locos and on the tenders of larger steam locos but not usually at the smokebox end. They were to avoid buffer locking with longer stock and designs varied but I've not noticed the oval types favoured by some British companies. These are just three random examples I happened to shoot at the 2016 Baie de la Somme Fète a Vapeur and, as you can see, those on 231K8's tender are definitely handed and the same shape as the coach. I've seen other patterns but have no idea why different shapes were used . Some could have used the same casting inverted for both sides but others were definitely handed. On steam locos I tend to associate them with express passenger locos. Unfortunately people tended not to photograph steam locos from the back so I had to search to find this one. The front buffers of steam locos were generally either round (and often fairly large) or symmetrically oblong. I've not noticed any steam loco front buffers that were handed but I've not really looked that hard- I will now! I couldn't say why different shapes were used. It looks like the whim of the makers but, being French, there was probably some logical reason (accompanied by pages of equations) to justify each shape.

I'm not so sure. It probably would be with a shallower divergence but the Hornby point has a divergence angle of 15 degrees compared to Peco's 11.25 degrees and that's going to make a difference to the amount of throwover between a pair of coaches traversing an immediate reverse curve. In my H0 experiments I found that, with a pair of Peco large radius points foming a straight crossover or the back to back points in the Minories throat, things were better than wth medium radius points but, because the divergence angle was the same 12 degrees, not as much better as two points of that length and radius would have been with a shallower crossing angle. Given that the Peco points are only 14mm longer than the Hornby ones I'd go for those.

Minories does avoid S curves on all but one of the six possiible routes whereas an eqivalent plan using straight crossovers involves an S curve on four of the six routes and a double S curve between platform 3 (the lower platform road) and the outbound track. I wouldn't though consider the Minories arrangement of crossovers made with opposite handed points with set track or even small radius points as even a single curve is sharp enough for buffer locking so trains pf main lie stock will just lurch through the approach points. With less sharp points (Peco's TT mediums are claimed to be equivalent to a prototype B6) a train of coaches snakes in and out of the station (except perhaps on that one route) in a way that gives far more of a main line terminus feel than a straight throat.

Interesting. So are those buildings still there? Dover is a place I've been through umpteen times but never really explored properly.

The genteel seaside landladies would have really loved that. I assume that most of their guesthouses got blown to pieces during WW2.

I often find myself doing the same- respondng to a post from way back. This topic is interesting and I've explored the area around Bristol's docks on several occasions. There are some interesting railway remains there and somewhere I have a contemporary plan of the whole system.

In the eighties and early nineties - under BR- I used to have to make this calculation for my (standard class) business travel. If I was travellig alone it was always more cost effective to use the train. if there were two or possibly three of us travelling it tended to even out but we could generally get some work done on the train and were better rested. For four people it was generally cheaper to use the car but not for longer journeys when time costs kicked in. Under BR there were occasional glitches but far fewer than jams and crashes caused on the road network and it was of course safer. If I had to take (lightweight) filming equipment the equation shifted towards road but, when BR's RedStar parcels service was operating and I was working in a newsroom, it was often the fastest and most reliable way for our news crews to get their film back to us when they were going on to another story. BR was actually a very lean (too lean) and efficient operation though nobody will believe that of a nationalised industry (any more than they would with the BBC that got about twice as much programme minutes out of each studio day than did any of the commercial ITV companies) It always seemed pretty obvious that passenger numbers were rising several years before nationalisation and the causes, apart from increased commuting, were the increasingly snarled up road network, the cost of fuel, and the fact that BR had actually become very reliable. What I lost after privatisation was the ability to pay a consistent standard fare and to be able to take a later train if meetings or productions ran over (or vice versa if meetings ended early) with yield management making it prohibitively expensive to use the train flexibly.

Thanks for all the recent replies. Curious that they've come three and a half years after my query but welcome nonetheless. From all accounts the tramway along the seafront between Dover's western and eastern docks was found extremely offensive by the genteel landladies of the the respectable seafront guest houses. Somehow, the idea of a seaside holiday in Dover nowadays seems decidedly unappealing but not because of any railways. Another example that comes to mind is Looe, though I'm not sure if the harbour extension from the station actually ran along public streets so much as along open quaysides. There was one like that in Plymouth serving Sutton Harbour but I think the "tramway" tracks were all on land belonging to the harbour authority so presumably not subject to the same BofT restrictions including men walking in front of trains with red flags as a tramway on a public road. I think that Weymouth was unique in Britain for having boat trains on public streets as Dieppe was in France* which is a shame as that arrangement is such a wonderful prototype- especially Dieppe where main line express locos worked the boat trains to and from the harbour station and even shunted them on the quayside. Glasgow is curious as its tramway network was built to a slightly narrower than standard gauge of 4ft 7 3/4 inches so that wagons taking stuff to the shipyards could run on their flanges in the grooved tramway rail which has a shallower groove than inset "railway" track . ( * Dieppe was a bit less of a tramway than Weymouth as, though trains using it were flagged, it was technically on the quayside alongside rather than on public roads for almost its entire length. Where a busy public road did cross it close to the gare maritime, there were crossing gates)

There's always this idea Geoff Ashdown's EM Tower Pier layout. The District Line train doesn't actually move (but I used to commute on the District and that wasn't unusual) but neither do the passengers on the platforms nor the vehicles on the bridge. Even though it's purely cosmetic it is suprisingly effective.

We probably need to try turning Britain off and back on again. It's what Virgin Media recommend when the Wifi plays up. However, does testing the Christmas tree lights before putting them away provide a statistically significant increase in the probability of finding them still working the following December? 🤣 (One reason why we defeated A. Hitler was because a senior GPO telephone engineer knew that if you didn't keep turning thermionic valves off and on they would keep working indefinitely)

The small number of cargo ships I sailed on in the late 1960s (so very much NOT modern) each had a sort of machine shop in the engine room but, AFAIR, they only had an ancient belt driven lathe (you changed the speed by moving the very unenclosed belt between pulleys) a Pillar Drill and I think a mechanical hacksaw. They were nothing like the machine tools I'd learnt to use at college and I don't think they got much use. As didn't any of the slide rules aboard. Any interesting work on the ship's machinery seemed to be done by shore engineers and ours, apart from watch keeping, seemed to mostly be about working on valves and pumps. I did learn that, for cold water pumps and valves, old admiralty charts make excellent and free gaskets (they have to be kept up to date so the bridge had a plentifull supply). Though I know that several of us here have had interesting careers as ship's engineers I quickly realised it wasn't for me so used my OND to get onto an engineering degree course which opened up whole new horizons. On trying to fix things. I've just wasted the best part of a day trying to get Microsoft Photos to work again on my PC since it stopped working yestersay. I've tried everything I can find but it stubbornly remains at File System Error 2147219196. In the end I just downloaded Irfanview - which I used to have on my XP machine- and probably prefer anyway. That was just the topping on a difficult few days. Oldest friend was due for a hip replacement next week, having had the surgery cancelled in December, but I discovered yesterday that she's been cancelled again with a new date in March. She's been waiting for over three years and has gone from using a stick to total immobility and is now totally dendent on "carers". I've never seen anyone in quite so much unrelenting pain. That with the constant cycle of hopes raised then dashed is destroying her but getting anything done for her is like fighting a soggy blancmange.. The NHS is safe with us? B*LLS**T and it's very much not all down to Covid19.

Hi Tim I'm sure I've seen 67400s heading Nord Pas de Calais RIO sets at Noyelles (though Corails were more common) and there's a photo to prove that they did haul them in the region here http://fetedurail.free.fr/bb-67400-page-2.105.html

Tom. You're a lot closer to reality than you are possibly aware. That really WAS the first railway station in Oxford. From 1844 it was the terminus, at Grandpont just to the west of Folly Bridge, of a ten mile branch from Didcot. It was slightly closer to Carfax (the central crossroads in Oxford) than the current Oxford Station and quite a lot closer than the planned Met. terminus in St. Clements just the the other side of Magdalen Bridge. There's far more about it here https://southoxfordhistory.org.uk/interesting-aspects-of-grandpont-and-south-oxford-s-history/the-coming-of-the-railway-to-oxford It closed to passengers in 1852 (so was always broad gauge) when the GWR opened its new station by the Botlley road next to the LNWR terminus. It continued as a goods station until 1872 and was then demolished and the area developed for housing. Some of the earthworks near Millstream Junction can still though be seen. However, had the university or the local topography forced the GWR to build its line to Birmingham further west closer to or at Botley (where the A34 now runs as a bypass) , Grandpont might well have remained as Oxford's main station and, one assumes with a triangular junction, would have been an interesting terminus branched off the through main line rather like Tours or Orleans still are and Biarritz and Boulogne used to be. I can see the London-Oxford trains terminating there and the through expresses either reversing there with a loco change or with a shuttle train running from Oxford (Grandpont) to Oxford (Botley Road) or possibly just Botley junction as happens at Tours with St. Pierre-les-Corps on the Paris-Bordeaux main line. With Grandpont, Rewley Road and St. Clements, the city of dreaming spires (and car factory chimneys) might well have had a far more interesting set of stations than the rather run down Oxford Station where I used to watch the steam locos (but NEVER to write down their numbers) I mustn't be too rude about it though as I made my first ever "scripted" film there (with the stationmaster's permission) a very sub Tati silent sketch about a man waiting for ages for a train and finally missing it.

OFF TOPIC Cassoulet surely and I'd be pretty disappointed if I only got sausage and beans in one. A good cassoulet contains so much more (and is one of my favourite dishes) A cassoulet looks like dinner whereas a cassowary looks like a dinosaur, mostly because it is one so mixing them up could be fatal. A cassoulet may include dinosaur meat (chicken, goose or duck) and generally dinosaur fat (goose) but never in my experience any cassowary meat- which it should not as they're threatened species. It was also said, in the days when nobody worried about eating endangered species, that a cassowary should be cooked with a stone. When the stone was ready to eat so was the cassowary

Hi Andy I knew that. It was the way it was handled- or rather not handled- on air that offended my professional instincts. Sorry if that wasn't clear so I've added a clarification clause to my post.

Granted that they had nothing new to say about TT:120 not already announced, it did seem odd that they then chose to stand in front of TT:120 banners. Unless I missed something, not mentioning it at all, not even in passing, made it look like the product range whose name must never be uttered. I still want to know what happened to Hornby: a Model World on Yesterday TV last night but it seems we're not allowed to discuss it. My first job in TV was network directing in BBC Presentation and I can honestly say that it was oddest unexplained programme change I've ever seen. Though we now know from their tweet etc. that it was due to unexplained "editorial difficulties" it really looked, wth no explanation at either end as if the wrong file had been broadcast by an automated playout system with nobody monitoring the Channel or the sort of thing you'd see on "Chanel Nine*" if El Presidente had just been shot. In British TV I've known a few red-face moments when the wrong item has appeared, but never one that remained totally unexplained on air. *qv The Fast Show "Bueno Estente" & "Scorchio"

That was very much the case in 1957 when Tri-ang were, at the start, the only supplier of rolling stock or even mechanisms for TT-3 yet, at its launch, Peco, Gem (and, a few months later Wrenn) were already offering track for it (GEM RTL and Peco as spiked track components) Bilteezi had also reduced their building cards from 4mm to 3mm scale and the model shops that sold components were soon offering them in 3mm scale. I'm not sure how long it was before other mechs. did become available but I'm not sure if anyone else ever produced RTR TT-3 locos (though there were plenty of white metal body kits for Tri-ang Mechs). For TT:120 it's likely to be a different story as the scale is internationally established. (We can only speculate on how much more model railway equipment British manufacturers would have been able to export if they hadn't been lumbered with a British only scale in their home market. The scale of Peco's international track sales is probably an indication)

Afternoon Barry A closer image but not quite close enough to read the wagon type designation and signage in the panel. If you have that (and if the manufacturer - I don't think it's Jouef- have got it right) I should be able to provide you with more information on it.

Hi Jamie Alan Marlow used an Athearn AMD103 P40 (bought at a swapmeet) to motorise his. All eight wheels are powered and there are stub axles inserted into the gears so he was able to turn up longer stubs for 23mm gauge (correct for metre gauge in 1:43.5 scale. I think most 0m modellers use S scale 22.5mm gauge but given that in S scale almost everything is scratchbuilt one might as well get the gauge right) I think Alan used the Athearn wheels and he fabricated side frames from Plasticard)