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We do use RTR locos on operating days (usually four each year) to augment John Ahern's locos (most of which still run incredibly well given their age) but hide them when the MVR is presented as a static display . The other rolling stock was all built by John Ahern so just about everything you see was his work. Thanks to considerable efforts by other members of the team I joined a couple of year ago, every inch of track on the layout is now usable and we test it all during maintenance sessions though it does require very regular TLC. Though it has inspired several 00n3 layouts, the MVR is indeed a standard gauge layout (albeit 00) though it does include a number of narrow gauge locos (60 cm to 3ft gauge) built to various scales that simply looked right. I like to imagine that thay are standard gauge versions of the narrow gauge locos they were based on built by the same manufacturers and, given John Ahern's ability to create a convincing world, they just seem to fit. If you didn't know they were based on narrow gauge rather than SG light railway locos it wouldn't be obvious.

Well that's Christmas more or less over and a far busier one than I'd expected with social engagements every day from the 23rd (and almost every day from the 16th) till yesterday encompassing, Buckinghamshire, Worcestershire and Oxforshire as well as London. No rest today as I have an appointment with the urologists at my least favourite hospital (I used to have a choice but no longer it seems). I hope you all had good and happy midwinter festivals of whatever tradition you favour.

I do see a distinction between "retro" and "impressionistic" modelling. Retro seems to mean using older proprietary models to create the sort of developed train-set layout that were in truth the majority of actual layouts when such equipment was in the shops (and in their modern guise still are). An impressionist layout might also make use of such products but esssentially focuses on creating an overall scene rather than on highly detailed individual models. It is likely to require just as much skill and artistry as a hyper realistic layout but applied in a different way and with different priorities. You'll not be surprised if I quote the difference between the Madder Valley and the Vale scene at Pendon as an excellent example of this. The Vale scene is the superb result of over half a century of incredibly fine scale modelling by a team of dedicated modellers while the Madder Valley represents no more than a dozen years of work (probably rather less) by one equally artistically gifted man who used much broader brushstrokes (brickpaper rather than individually painted bricks for example) to create an overall impression of a world that seems totally believable. Equally, Frank Dyer was content to use ordinary 00 standards to create layouts (Borchester Market in particular) that gave a wonderful and again very convincing impression of a full size railway in everyday operation. I think there is a question about how important it is for all the modelling in a layout to be of a consistent standard - does a super-detailed piece of almost show-case rolling stock for examply look right within an impressionistic scene- or is it OK for the layout to simply be the background in which to show off such models of trains? John Ahern and Peter Denny both built almost everything themselves and did so to a very consistent standard and the result just seemed to work.

And you can add as much as you like of a really good brandy (I won a bottle of Calavados in a Christmas charity lunch auction last Sunday so I might try some of that)

Thanks for this Melmerby. I'd forgotten just how good Steeleye Span were (still are?) . This is the best of their reditions of it I've found on Utoob https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDc2FD-vy8M and is clearly an authorised recording (judging by the multi-camera video) and I think being to a live audience makes it work even better than the studio recording on the album . There are several other A Capella versions of Gaudete around like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTdAugBt-_g. Being all-male voice it is probably more authentic for 16th Century church music but I think Maddy Prior's precise and haunting voice lifts the Steeleye Span version to the realms of the sublime and I've really enjoyed listening to it again.

The Madder Valley was indeed extremely well designed for operation. We run it about four times a year and though, to keep things moving for the public, we don't operate it to its full potential which would require a lor more shunting, it can still hold my interest for a full day (preferably operating Maddeport) There aren't many layouts I've operated that I could say that of. It's interesting how many later layouts were closely based on it including Derek Naylor's Aire Valley and Giles Barnabe's 00n3 layout. Curiously though, while Ahern wrote extensively about every aspect of the railway, including its control systems and two-rail electrification scheme, he never did write about its operation. Like many home layouts, I suspect it wasn't actualy operated all that often though running an occasional train up and down the valley would have been entirely possible and enjoyable on his own. I do rather wonder if that was also true of the West Midland Railway. The WMR was clearly designed for intensive operation with a set of standard routes, as described in "West Midland, a railway in miniature", but did Edward Beal actually have regular operating sessions with a group of people as Peter Denny, Frank Dyer and John Allen did? The MVR wasn't the first model railway to include a world beyond the railway corridor. Aldo Cosomati's 3.5mm scale Alheeba State Railway (MRN Dec 1933 & Jan 1934) also did this and though nothing like as well developed as the MVR ten years later, it was one of John Ahern's main inspirations. John Ahern's layout was though the first to fully develop the idea of a railway within a believable world and I would love to be able to actually visit Madderport and Gammon Magna and to have tea in the Monraker's Inn. I would say that the balance between creating a believabl world in miniature and including a very operationally sound model railway in that world has rarely been achieved as well.

Particularly interesting in these photos is the narrow gauge (18 inch gauge?) track running round the Cowlairs works, especially the crossing of the SG track in what I asseume to be the locomotive erecting shop.

Not as bad as if they'd been having to ride in some of the Parliamentary wagons (I hesitate to describe them as carriages)

Thst seems to be popular in France too, though often with just a descending curve rather than a helix to the under layout storage sidings. Unfolded figure 8s with the storage sidings crossing below the scenic section also seem to be popular. Such sidings have always struck me as being rather awkward to access though John Charman had his main storage sidings below the terminuus in in the permanent version of Charford. He wrote that this was 5 1/4 inches below the terminus and, looking at photographs there does appear to be a gap of that height between the bottom of the upper baseboard and the storage sidings. That looks like a rather narrow access slot through which to deal with derailments and track maintenance etc. but it obviously worked for him. (The ruling gradient was 1 in 35)

Wretched things. Jouef were very fond of them for their powered tenders, diesels and electrics in H0 but getting the mech apart to change them can be a real pain. Fortunately Roco didn't fit them to their 63000 (SNCF diesel BB) and they're my best runners. I've never known why they are so popular with manufacturers in continental Europe unless modellers really are needing them for very steep gradients. Long trains on club layouts perhaps?

Would they be able to get it sufficiently unpolluted for water supply? There are metal mines (mostly adit mines AFAIK) that closed generations ago, some of them from the eighteenth century, whose water outflows are still poisoning the local environment and water outflows from coal mines can also be a problem (though not always).

I received this from one of my feeds this morning https://bigthink.com/health/james-hamblin-doctor-didnt-shower-five-years/?utm_campaign=weeklynewsletter&utm_source=rejoiner&utm_medium=email&utm_content=11%2F30%2F23+Smarter+Faster+(A)&rjnrid=kyq43eA The Doctor is from New York but the interview came from Australia's Nine Network. Could it be that we've been wrong about a certain proportion of exhibition visitors all these years? I have "tests" today at the local hospital. The trainee GP I saw on Tuesday (who fortunately for me happens to have been a urologist before she changed specialties) is pretty sure it's nothing serious but "wouldn't want to be the doctor who missed it".

Thanks for this. I knew about this operation but not in any detail so this is an excellent find.

I assume that one reason for the railway was to protect the floors though in the 1895 photo they look rather less well polished. The Musée des Arts et Métiers (Métro Arts et Métiers surprise surprise!) Is definitely worth visiting and I found it a very friendly museum with none of the vast crowds of the better known Paris museums. They used to have a wonderful display item which illustrated the virtues of railways by cranking a handle that pulled a heavily loaded axle fitted with cart, pneumatic, and railway wheels over a surface of rough ground, tarmac and rails. The relative ease of moving it on rails was very striking. They have some very interesting objects including Cugnot's steam carriage, Bleriot's aircraft, and Clément Ader's Aéroplane no. 3 that made a short powered flight in 1890 (though he hadn't solved the problem of control- it was the Wright brothers who did that)

The second of those is a terrific source. It illustrates a great deal of the examples offered in the Decauville catalogue. and the gunboat being moved through Paris on Decauville rails removed behind it then laid in front of it is a real find. The reference to wine caves is slightly out as the Ackerman caves near Saumur (and possibly others) ran for several kilometres tunelled through the very soft rock (Tuffe) that make up the escarpment on the south bank of the Loire. The sparkling wine there is made by the Methode champenoise' (though they now have to call it méthode traditionnelle outside the champagne region) with a second fermentation in the bottle. This requires a lot of handling as the bottles are turned, disgorged and dosed. This is very labour intensive but made easier by bringing the bottles in their racks to stations set up for each task which was where the railway came in.

I don't think it had been used for some time before the redevelopment but had simply been there in the floor. The movement of large objects was probably a daily occurence when the buillding's primary purpose was teaching. As a museum it would have taken place far less often and mainly when objects needed to be refurbished . The development of rubber tyred trolleys to move things around would in any case have made it redundant, just as they did at the Ackerman wine caves in Saumur. They're not limited by where the rails are which had also imposed a rather rigid arrangement of display cases either side of the track and, unlike the Decauville platform wagons, could be motorised. Parts of the museum were extensively rearranged during its redevelopment and, in several places, the railway simply reaches a new wall. What remains of it runs through the larger galleries that were not moved. but several of the display cases are now over the track This is what it looked like after 1895 when CNAM opened its collection to public display after creating a number of large galleries in what had been a priory full of small rooms/cells Apart from the galleries, a line - inset in the stone floors- runs through the former chapel This ends at an outside door to a courtyard for items to be moved on and off site (mainly to the museum's workshops in an industrial suburb of Paris. I've tried in vai to find a plan of the system but, though I've found plans of the museum's galleries after 1895, the railway clearly wasn't considered worthy of note. There was a goods lift between the floors of galleries and this was presumably fitted with rails.

But there is of course Perrygrove Railway in the Forest of Dean which is very similar in concept to Heywood's own Duffield Bank demonstration railway though the reproduction Heywood "heritage" rolling stock seems to have been moved elsewhere. I find that I far prefer the 15 inch gauge when it's treated as a minimum gauge narrow gauge railway than when it is a large-gauge miniature railway.

The Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (CNAM) 50 cm gauge tramway is even stranger than the current museum had realised (I was in communication with their very helpful curator of transport and energy M. Lionel Dufaux while writing a short article about it for the French Railways Society Journal last year). The four wheel truck preserved at the museum looks to be a bogie from one of Decauville's standard type 71 hand propelled 3m long platform wagons However, if you looks closely, you'll see that only one wheel on each axle has a flange, the other is flangeless and, on the railway itself one rail is of Broca (grooved tramway) profile and the other standard Vignoles (flat bottom) profile. Both rails were inset into the floor but the Vignoles rail has no flangeway and is a millimetre or two proud of the gallery floors The points (there are two and a wagon turntable in what remains of the railway) were set by a single tongue in the Broca rail. CNAM was and is an important higher education institute (one of France's Grandes Ecoles) and the railway's purpose was to take exhibits, mostly large models of machines etc, from the galleries where they were displayed to the public, to the conservatoire's two large lecture theatres for demonstrations and lectures with minimum disruption and without damaging the wooden flooring. This seems to have been a very regular operation which the railway made far easier. The track also extends to the rear door of the institute to enable objects to be brought in and out of the building. The railway probably only ever had two or three flat wagons to carry this out and, AFAIK the bogie on display is the only part of its rolling stock to have survived. Why they adopted this peculiar (and possibly unique) hybrid arrangement of track and wheelsets isn't clear. M. Dufaux suggested that it might have been to make it less obtrusive in the floor with only one grooved rail and no conventional crossing or to reduce rolling resistance on the tight curves (though these seem to be Decauville's standard four metre "setrack" curves for its 40 and 50 cm gauge portable railway system). It might also have been a matter of cost as there were several hundred metres of track and Vignoles rail was only about 60% of the cost per metre of Broca. That might not have been a major factor in the museum's installation but Paul Decauville was well known to CNAM. He had supplied it with a 1/5 model of his portable railway system and possibly this was a proof of concept for other more extensive uses of this hybrid system. We may never know. The museum was closed for a major eight year redevelopment until 2000 and, though the tramway was now redundant, the architect decided to keep a large part of it as a feature and it runs through several of the galleries. The museum is well worth visiting if you are in Paris and makes a nice contrast with the better known museums and galleries.

Isn't the Kirklees line built on an old standard gauge roadbed? That would obviate almost all the advantages of a 15" minimum gauge railway in terms of earthworks, curves etc. so a 2ft gauge railway probably wouldn't have cost more and possibly less. The existing 15 inch railways, being passenger lines are a bit limited to that though there was a very nice layout based on the RHDR terminus which was effectively a 15 inch gauge Minories in terms of intense operation. An estate railway like Eaton Hall would though have plenty of operational interest and that could have been a niche that 15 inch gauge railways came to occupy. For reasons already discussed I think it unlkely that it would ever have become a mainstream industrial gauge for loco haulage as industrial railways just tend to be more roughly laid. However, there are kilometres of well laid Decauville 40cm railway in the floors of Ackerman's wine caves near Saumurt. They are no longer in use but, being inset in the floor, haven't been lifted and their wagons form part of public displays. They were hand operated and replaced by electric rubber wheeled trolley but, with battery- electric rail tractors a wine railway would be an interesting prototype.

Possibly a little unfair to Arthur Heywood. Although he was obviously an enthusiast, his idea that the use of railways could beneficially be extended to applications (typically estates and smaller quarries) where the annual traffic would be relatively light (5000-10 000 tons per annum) but only if they could be made as inexpensive as possible, was quite well thought through. His experiments found 15 inches to be the smallest (and therefore cheapest) gauge with the stability to safely carry out such tasks. In that he quoted Paul Decauville's origiinal gauge of 40cms (about 15 3/4 inches) Paul Decauville developed his system using that gauge for his family's farm where 9000 tonnes of sugar beet had to be moved from soggy fields in a very short time (an aspect of sugar beet farming that led to much use of narrow gauge railways. The major aspect of Decauville's system was that the track was in portable sections complete with metal sleepers that could be moved around in the fields fairly easily (one man could carry a section of track or even a complete turnout) and the 1905 catalogue states that it "requires no ballasted load and can be laid amd worked on any class of soil". At 40cm gauge that probably made it not stable enough for loco haulage and Decauville reserved that gauge for light human or horse powered railways. Heywood's minimum gauge railways by contrast were intended to be more or less permanent (typically to connect an estate to a local railhead) and, though he also eventually used pre-assembled track rivetted to metal sleepers the track was fully ballasted so stable enough for loco hauled trains to run safely on 15 inch gauge track. Decauville meanwhile adopted 50cm (19 1/2 inch) and 60cm (2 ft) gauge track for railways using locomotive haulage. The 15 inch railway, four and a half miles long, that Heywood built for the Duke of Westminster at Eaton Hall ran for fifty years until 1946 so clearly it served a useful purpose.

I'm pretty sure that Touax, originally formed in 1853 as "Compagnie de Touage de la Basse Seine et de l’Oise", was never involved in the business of towing canal barges using rail mounted tractors. As a river towing company, it would have focussed on using steam and later motor towng tugs to haul barges on France's rivers. With Rouen as a major inland port at the upper end of the tidal section of the Seine there was, and to some exent still is, a heavy river traffic between there and Paris. Canalside towing by pneumatic tyred motor tractors was used on a number of French canals - though by no means universally- and Touax may have been involved with that. There also seems to have been a short section with pneumatic tyred electric tractors north of La Vilette in Paris operated by the CGTVN. That apart, the use of electric canalside traction in France, whether on rails or pneumatic tyres, was peculiar to a single chain of canals running from Mulhouse, via Strasbourg, to near Dunkerque with three major branches towards Thionville from near Nancy, to Valenciennes from Cambrai, and to Lille from a junction off the main chain somewhere between that city and Lens. There were also a number of short local branches. There were gaps in the rails when the canals ran through long tunnels where haulage was (and in two cases still is) by electric chain tugs or overhead monorail systems and also where barges were lifted as at the "Ascenseur" at Fontinettes (near St. Omer) . This postcard shows a row of tractors at the foot of the boat lift. and you can see how the tractors were "handed" with more wight on the shore side and how the track was slightly canted though that's less apparent elsewhere. Each tractor could pull two or three unpowered barges. It was here that I first encountered what was left of the system in the 1980s where the metre gauge track was stil intact for several kilometres back towards Dunkerque and a couple of tractors (actually 60cm gauge examples from Traction de l'Est) had been placed as a memorial on a short piece of track in roughly the same place as the metre gauge tractors in the postcard. For many years after the main CGTVN system closed, sections of the railway were still in use by the ONN (Office National de Navigation now VNF) either to take motor barges through long tunnels several kilometres long (which at two knots - slower than on open sections- has to have been the most tedious driving job on any railway) or, where electric chain tugs were in use, with a couple of tractors coupled together to pull each long rame (train) of a dozen or more motor barges clear of the tunnel. In the 1990s I came upon the Riqueval tunnel at Demange , whose electric chain tug was still in use but where a reduction in barge traffic had removed the need for the railway. The rails and even some of the overhead line were still in place. I then found a shed and, in it a couple of tractors left there the day the service closed. At the other end of the three and a half mile long tunnel was another kilometre or so of track but no shed so the two tractors that had handled things at that end were less fortunate with one in the open rusting merrily away and the other only slightly better protected under the road bridge. If you ever get a chance to see the BBC''s 1960 Maigret episide "The Golden Fleece" (It's been on Talking Pictures TV recently) the action takes place around a lock to which barges are hauled by electric rail tractors (which are seen running up and down rather pointlessly - probably for the camera -but the lock system itself uses a towing "monorail" controlled remotely by the lock keeper. I've done some research and had published a couple of articles about this little known railway system but since then have discovered the best source of information which is on George de Fontenay's website at http://papidema.fr/halage-mecanique.php This constitutes a complete online book that goes into immense detail on the system operated by CGTVN and Traction de l'Est, its engineering and operation. It's in French of course but the diagrams are clear and, if you ignore the odd howler, translates well in automatic translation. (Note: all the colour photos were taken by me and are not public domain)

There were experiments with steam haulage of canal boats in several countries, including Britain but the very slow speed made them uneconomic. The mules used in the Panama Canal Locks are apparently more for keeping ships pecisely in line laterally than for actually towing them. There was an electric haulage system on the Tetlow Canal near Berlin with Siemens tractors on both banks hauling barges in each direction (It didn't survive the division of Germany) and a set of locks in Belgium that used rail haulage. However, all these fade into insignificance compared with the vast system of electric canal towing railways that ran across northern and eastern France from just behind Dunkerque to Strasbourg and Mulhouse with branches to Liile etc. a total route of over a thousand kilometres of metre gauge operated by the CGTVN (Compagnie General de Traction sur les Voies Navigable), using 1700 electric tractors, and several hundred kilometres of 60cm towing railway in Alsace, which had been part of Germany until 1918 and had narrower towpaths. This was operated by the separate Traction de l'Est company. The system was electrically powered with overhead wires (not very far overhead in some places!) with a trolley running on them connected to the tractor by a cables. Parts of the system date from before the First World War but the system ran at its full extent from the end of the First World War until it closed in 1973. All barges without engines were obliged to use it (no horses allowed) and the railway effectively occuped the towpath. The CGTVN also had about 140 kms of haulage on quieter canal using rubber tyres electric tractors with trolleybus type overhead and offered diesel tractors elsewhere.

18 inch seems to have been the standard narrow gauge used within British military depots etc.including Woolwich Arsenal where locomotives were used and the Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey (which also used 2ft and 3ft gauges). It was also quite widely used in factories- though mainly for hand propulsion and there were 18 inch gauge railways in Crewe works (with Webb experimenting with the same gauge for canal haulage) . Arthur Heywood pushed quite hard for 15 inch gauge which he considered to be the minimum-and therefore cheapest- gauge with sufficient load capacity for an estate railway of at least a mile in length using locomotives . His book Minimum Gauge Railways published a a pamphlet in 1881 and revised and published for private circulation in 1894 and 1898 (the 3rd edtion reprinted by Turntable in 1974) makes for fascinating reading and he did think the whole thing out. I think he was probably on a hiding to nothing with 18 inch gauge already well established by the military and 15 inch a bit marginal for loco haulage. He saw 18inch gauge as being suitable for railways 3 or 4 miles long carrying perhaps 60 000 tons a year but thought there was a gap for a cheaper sort of railway where the route length was between one and three miles and carrying 5-10 000 tons a year. Sir Arthur Percival Heywood (a hereditary baronet rather than a knight) was a landed aristocrat with a passion for developing such railways for the benefit of agriculture. In championing 15 inch as the minimum practical gauge he quoted the gauge of 40cms (about 16 inch) adopted by Paul Decauville. Decauville however, who had since 1876, turned his concept of a portable railway into a very successful industry and understood his customers' needs, only recommended 40cm for animal or human haulage and, in their 1890 catalogue, offered steam locos only for gauges of 50 (19.7 inches) or 60 cms. The catalogue shows an interesting range of actual uses of Decaulville's products from the obvious such as quarries and forestry to the more exotic such as in oyster beds or wine caves and even, with a few tens of metres of track and a couple of bogies, carried on explorers' steam boats for portages around rapids with the rail progressibley laid ahead of the boat and lifted behind it.

Perfectly valid techniques. Some of John Ahern's locos are still going strong on the Madder Valley, eight decades after he built them and probably seventy five years since he converted them to two rail (and remotored them as he used 6V DC for third rail and even grumbled about Hornby Dublo using 12V)

Interesting. I thought Greenford East was the only remaining mechanical box (though the number of actual semaphores gets fewer all the time) in this part of London.