Pacific231G

We can only hope they make it. Serious fires tend to be business killers but the fact that they had new premises lined may help.

Could well be. Thouars itself was in Region 3 (Ouest) on the old Etat main line to Bordeaux and the line to les Sables d'Olonne, but it was very close to the regional boundary with Region 4 (Sud-Ouest) with a line going east to Arcay and Loudon which were both in 4.

Talking Pictures TV recently showed - so probably will again soon- "The Battle of the Rails" i.e. la Bataille des Rails with English subtitles. (though these were not applied to German dialogue but these weren't subtitled in the French cinematic release either and their meaning is fairly obvious) . This film was made in 1945 while France's railways were still being put back together and is a somewhat idealised account of the activities of Resistance Fer - the railway arm of the French Resistance. It also gives an enormous insight into the way that French railways were worked in the steam era. The actions began with smuggling of people and letters etc. across the demarcation line between occupied and "free" (ie Vichy) France, then acts of fairly random sabotage, from switching the destination labels of wagons or opening the valves of tank wagons to blowing up the cylinder blocks of locomotives, all of which led to German reprisals and the shooting of hostages. This was followed by the period when the main resistance activity was reporting movements of goods and trains to London but the main part of the film follows the attempt to stop a convoy of five trains of reinforcements and tanks etc. from ever reaching the front in Normandy following D Day. Several of the actions depicted turned up later in The Train including the deliberare derailment of an old loco and wagons to block a line but culminatein the spectacularl derailment of a troop train. The film is well worth watching and the railways are of course the central character.

East West Divide's answer is correct. There was also an EX service marking for Service d'Exploitation (traffic department but signalling came under that as well ) though I'm not sure what that would have included apart from signalling. I've never seen that marking on a wagon though.

Maybe not online but I have fairly comprehensive details of Ep III wagon lettering. It all changed in about 1963 with the introduction of UIC lettering - more or less as used now. The general format was to use upper case letters to indicate the type of wagon with smaller lower case letters to indicate various details such as f screw handbrake with a guerite- brakeman's shelter (largely gone by the end of Ep III) g British loading gauge , y bogies, r refrigeration etc. These appeared on the square beneath the letters SNCF on the left hand of each wagon side with the wagon number below the type desgination- early in ep III FRANCE appeared above the SNCF The main categories for "Petite Vitesse" i.e. wagons used in common goods trains were (in 1945 - some may have changed later in ep III) M Fourgon Marchandises (goods guards van) K couvert (van) T Tombereau (open wagon) U Tombereau for coke N plat (flatwagon with low hinged sides) NT (flat wagon with higher hinged sides) Nz flat wagon with low fixed sides NTz flat wagon with higher fixed sides. L flat wagon with pivoting cross pieces (typically used for timber traffic) R flat wagon without sides T trémie (hopper wagon) S flat wagons with special characteristics generally indicated by a second capital letter such as SR reservoir (tank wagon) Except for type S wagons the type letter was doubled (eg TT) for a four wheel wagons able to carry 20 tonnes or more or, for a bogie wagon. 40 tonnes or more. A similar system was used for marking passenger coaches so an A3B5myfi (with the 3 5 m y f and i in a smaller size. would be a First (A)/Second (B) composite coach with 3 first and 5 second class comparments, steel body (which was relevant for train compositions), bogies, screw brake in the coach and corridor connections.

Hi Bill The Montpelier-Palavas line of the CF d'Herault was a bit of an exception as it was handling commuter traffic as well as city folk from Montpelier going to the seaside at weekends. It was interesting because many of its trains either didn't include a fourgon or, when they did, didn't bother to shunt it to the other end of the train for each return run Typical "Départemental" trains were far shorter with maybe no more than a fourgon and a couple of coaches and a lot of them ran as mixed trains. Apart from messageries (parcels and smalls) most "Départemental" railways also carried accompanied post, so at least one and possibly two train each day would need accomodation for that. In practice, given the typical three trains a day service, the fourgon would probably be kept with the passenger carriages even when it wasn't needed for parcels traffic but additional trains seem to have often not had them. The Jouef "imperials" are a bit heavy in structure but are dimensionally accurate, the fourgon is actually a "fourgon generateur" with a dynamo to provide power for the train's electric lighting but its design would be the same as an ordinary fourgon. It's a shame that Jouef didn't also produce a model of the enclosed "Bidel" double deck coaches as they ran until the 1950s but I think the imperials etc. were built to accompany the l'Ouest 0-6-0T "Boer". Jouef's single deck four-wheel coaches are really just the "imperial" with the upper deck removed so, because the double deck coaches had a lowered roof for the lower deck, are not really authentic.

Looking at all the contemporary photos I can find of "Impériales" all the wheels are disks. The original drawings for the l'Ouest's 1865 series of impériales (they were first introduced in 1853) do show spoked wheels but a diagram for the 1869 series show solid wheels. This suggests that they went over to disks by the time photography was well established. These deathtraps were surprisingly long lived and were still in service into the 1930s and , in the case of the short Enghien-Montmorency line near Paris, into the 1940s . This was despite the fact that the far safer "Vidard" double deckers, with an enclosed upper deck (and "swan neck" iron longerons (solebar) to lower the lower deck to allow for that first appeared in about 1865. These were known by the Parisians as "Bidels" as the rather claustrophobic upper deck was thought to resemble the cages used by the famous Bidel Menageries. Again, the early diagrams of these show spoked wheels but photographs invariably show disks. Many photos show trains with both types of "impériale" Many of these coaches had second class on the lower deck and third in the upper open seating but some third class accomodation was offered on lower decks or single deck coaches. I think for the l'Ouest green was the colour for second class and brown for third but I don't know about first. On the PLM its was maroon for first and yellow for second.

However, none of these have approach paths over major cities. In any case that doesn't alter the well evidenced reality of how Heathrow's location was based on misinformation and I doubt if anyone would place a major airport in such a location now (City Airports like London and Belfast are a different matter and not without controversy) Of course nobody expected aviation to turn into mass transport. When Heathrow was developed, the expectation was that civil aviation would be largely the preserve of the wealthy, government officials and mail.

Not quite true. Heathrow was never intended to be an RAF base but always London's main civil airport. Harold Balfour, who was a wartime air minister, admitted in his 1973 memoir that he deceived the War Cabinet with the claim that an RAF base was needed on Hounslow Heath, knowing that his ambitious plans for a large new post-war civil airport would probably not be accepted, not least because, as you say, there was a lack of money for major projects. The deception also meant that it could be pushed through during wartine without any normal planning process. The mistake was to not appreciate that aircraft would get heavier and faster and so need far longer runways nor the growth in air travel that would make its position so close to London, with a prevailng approach path over a heavily populated area with coresponding noise pollution and greater danger in the event of a crash highly undesirable. Though you would want a modest RAF comunication transport facility near London (i.e. Northolt) there are very obvious reasons why nobody would plan a heavy bomber base with a flightpath over the capital city. If you look at where the RAF actually built its aerodromes for large aircraft (its own and allies) you're looking at places like Fairford, Brize Norton, Greenham Common, or Upper Heyford.

There is indeed plenty of scope for an "independent" standard gauge line. Though France had about 20 000kms of metre gauge railways (plus 442 kms of public sub-metric narrow gauge lines) it also had about 2 500 kms of local standard gauge railways that were not part of the national network and in 1950 about half of these were still open for passengers. These included the extensive Mamers-St. Calais railway in Sarthe (open to passengers till 1965) part of which is preserved, and extensive systems in Gironde, Landes and Herault where the country is fairly flat and the Chinon-Richelieu line that was preserved until 2004 though is sadly now a cycle track. There had been a requirement for a buffer between locomotive and passsengers but by Ep III (on SNCF at least) this only applied to wooden bodied stock running as rapides or expresses. This could be provided by a separate Fourgon or by a baggage compartment at the locomotive end of the first coach (or, in extremis, by simply locking the first three passenger compartments out of use) The habit tended to persist for some time but was by no means universal. I've seen many photos of passenger trains on local railways consisting of just a couple of four wheel coaches and, where there was a a fourgon, remarshalling the train to place it next to the loco tended to fall out of use. The major railway companies and SNCF built passenger fourgons (Fourgons "D") able to run at express speeds and older examples might well have been sold to local railways. Otherwise, if they weren't using hand me downs from their main line brethren, they would either convert part of a coach or adapt any old brake fitted goods van. A lot of ex German reparations stock found its way onto France's railways after both world wars but I couldn't say how much of it eventually migrated onto independent local railways. I use both Piko and Fleischmann four wheel coaches on my own layout (which is also supposed to be a standard gauge "départemental" ) but I'm not sure how authentic that is. The standard gauge locals I know most about are those in the Gironde and Landes and, looking at photos of passenger trains on the former, I see just coaches with no sign of a fourgon, on the latter almost all trains were mixed and they used ex Midi main line four-wheel coaches with a couple of compartments knocke into a baggage/fourgon compartment ( when passenger services were withdrawn these were used as goods fourgons) though I have seen one photo of a fourgon obviously converted from a goods van by adding small side windows for the conductor. One major difference between the metre and standard gauge locals is that the former would, when built, have been equipped with a full range of rolling stock including coaches, wagons and fourgons. The latter, because they could, were more likely to acquire new locomotives but, because by the 1890s, when the real boom in local railway began, the main line companies were on their second or third generation of carriages, so equipping or re-equipping themselves with second hand stock was far more common though many did have coaches specially built for them (The SE Gironde even acquired a number of ex Metropolitan Railway eight wheel coaches which were too large in profile to be sold to other British railways) Some did though have rolling stock specially built for them and this might well include fourgons This is an impression (from Wikiedia) of the CF d'Herault's usually nine coach train train from Montpelier to the resort of Palavas. but in actual photos the fourgon can be at either end or not present. Some of the coaches still run on the short 3km railway from Sabres to the Marquèze Ecomusée but AFAIK none of the fourgons survived. In France, railways didn't own their own rights of way but were given concessions to build and operate railways on land belonging to the state or an individual département . The major legal distinction was not between standard and narrow (usually metre gauge) gauge railways but between those of d'Intérêt General which formed the national network of mainly standard but some heavier metre gauge lines (some of which still survive) which were the responsibility of the state (though until 1938 run by private companies) and those of d'Intérêt Local which were the responsibility of each Département*. These could be roughly seen as light railways though some were almost indistinguishable from main line branches. One effect of this was that operating rules for I.L. lines were set by the relevant Département's Prefecture and though they mainly simply adopted standard regulations there were variations. An I.L. line would probably not for example require staffed level crossings on all but the busiest roads and signalling would be minimal or non existent except where they encountered main line railways. *There was a subcategory of d'Intérêt Local railways- Tramways - which ran alongside or on roads for more than 2/3 of their length. These had the advantage that very little land had to be bought to build them (except for stations and places where they had to leave the road to avoid corners or steep gradients) but the disadvantage that their speed was limited and they very quickly disappeared when buses and lorries became more available, the effect of different local rules can be seen by those tramways that had fully or partially enclosed locomotives, at least at first, and those that (like the last to survive, the Tramways de Correze) simply used normal tank engines even in towns. Apart from urban trams, I don't think many tramways were standard gauge)

That's interesting and I was probably using the term running powers too loosely but I don't know of another for the situation where one company operates a service on the metals of another. The point was that the line to Shepherd's Bush wasn't built and operated, as originally intended, as a purely GWR line with its own terminus at Shepherd's Bush (which obviously has interesting modelling possibilities for a GWR Minories type terminus) I used to see the sub-station at OOC whenever I used the Greenford branch to get to and from Paddington and ISTR that it was served by a short siding to move heavy transformers etc. in and out but didn't know that was what it was. According to my Cooke's 1947 Atlas of the GWR. the line was transferred to LPTB in 1948 but the connection with the GWML at Ealing Broadway (used for goods and one daily workers' train) had been removed on 27th May 1945 (though it probably fell out of use in 1938). One curiosity is that my local grade II listed Central Line station at Perivale (which is on the opposite side of Horsenden Lane from the original GWR halt) was originally designed not by LT but by Brian Lewis, the Asst. Chief Architect (later Chief Architect) of the GWR as were other Central Line stations (though Hanger Lane does resemble some of Charles Holden's stations). For some reason (legal powers?) the line from N. Acton Junction to Greenford, parallel to the existing New North Main Line (Paddington-Princes Risborough-Banbury) was built by the GWR in 1947 but transferred to LPTB the following year and it was LPTB who extended the line to W. Ruislip in November 1948.

Yes, I rather agree, though I think the height of the retaining wall may have been a reflection of those on the widened lines. Perhaps something more like Bradfield Gloucester Square where the retaining wall is high but not so overpowering might have been better.

In that sense, I found that Brian Thomas' "Newford" did feel very railway like with plenty of weight and momentum and, when operating, you felt the trains passing in front of you . apart from the addition of a stock siding between the platform faces and turning the loco spur into a parcels road. Brian followed the original CJF plan very closely with all six main points (so not the additonal points to access the siding), which were 66 inch radius using Peco components, on a single six foot by 20 inch baseboard with the platfoms, including the concourse and station building, on two four foot long baseboards. What photographs don't show is that in 0 gauge the fact that there was almost nothing beyond the railway fence seemed to matter less than in a smaller scale. Even without the overbridge scenic break of Cyril Freezer's original plan, the four coach trains it was capable of handling simply didn't seem as short as in 00. Newford could handle a four coach loco-hauled train, though AFAIR there were no five car electric sets, but I totally believed when running a single 4BEL set into the platform that it was the full Brighton Belle. I do think this is all to do with how much the eye takes in at a single glance and sort of wonder if this explains why scenery became far more of a thing with the smaller scales. A twenty inch wide baseboard fills the visual field in a way that the same scene ten inch wide in 00 or H0 doesn't and, though I like Tom Cunnington's EM Minories (GN), which followed CJF's plan as closely as possible, it doesn't work for me quite as well as Newford did. The difference of "presences" is not though apparent in photos. Having said earlier that it didn't engage me, it only seems fair to offer another clip of "Hallam Town" to emphasise that this is no reflection on Alan Whitehouse's very fine modelling but only on my response to its scale. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZDbrX8mfB4 this was it at Ally Pally in 2017 though my photo doesn't do it justice

It's good to see Bishop's Park again as the photos of it from the earlier years of this thread were lost An interesting reflection but I do perceive 00/H0 (and TT) very differently from N. I think though that how you describe them may be how it looked to 0 gauge modellers in the 1920s - A R Walkley came up with a 2mm scale layout not that long after his 3.5mm scale proof of concept "00 Portable Goods Yard" in 1926. However, this does seem to be a matter of personal perception. Personally, I model in H0 but find TT just about large enough and would use it if my choice of prototype (late steam era France) was adequately supported. N scale, even though it does support that choice, is just too small for me to feel any relationship with the railway I'm modelling. This clearly is going to be different for each individual but I've seen several 2mm scale layouts that I've really admired in photographs but which have left me cold when seen in a single glance in the flesh but I've almost never experienced that with larger scales . I also have friends with N scale layouts that I've operated at exhibtions but again, though they were very well modelled, and one is based on a line I particularly like, I just felt even when operating that I was seeing them from afar and didn't feel engaged with them. I don't feel that way with H0 or 00 and, when I had TT-3 as a youngster, didn't feel that way either but I always have with N or Z. This has caused me something of a dilemma - which I've mentioned here before- I want to build a French MLT based more or less on Minories and could easily do so in the space available in N but, in H0, the space is just not quite enough for the five coach trains which are the minimum I find credible as main line expresses. A few years ago at Ally Pally there was a Minories anniversary with I think one 0 scale example (Littleton - the former Newford which I had previously operated), two in 4mm scale and one each in 3mm scale and 2mm scale or N so it was possible to compare them. I found all of them engaging except the 2mm scale example even though it was a very well modelled layout. For some reason I've also always found the "intermediate" scales to have advantages with TT enjoying the virtues of both N and H0/00 (not so cramped in a smallish space as H0/00 but large enough to have presence as individual models) and S scale the benefits of both 0 and 00/H0.

I agree that OOC will never have enough connectivity - HS2's connection there will only be with the GWML and hence the Elizabeth Line ( I suppose you might build an additonal Central Line station with a travolator but I can't really see that happening). I'm not sure about Addison Road - the District Line there is a single platform at the end of a single line so anyone using it is going to either cram onto some kind of District Line shuttle to Earls Court (or possibly High St. Ken), use the Overground, or crowd onto a bus. I live near the Central Line so, whenever I go to Olympia, I use it to Shepherd's Bush then walk. I do remember that after the Ladbroke Grove disaster in 1999, when Paddington was closed for weeks, Ealing Broadway became the western terminus of the GWML. It does have good Underground connections* but at that time there was no Elizabeth Line and services were curtailed with many long distance trains terminating at Reading. In terms of passengers it was mayhem there. *(Mainly because the GWR opted to give running powers to the Central London Railway with its own island platform at Ealing Broadway rather than its original plan in which the Ealing and Shepherd Bush railway would have been a GWR line with its terminus close to the CLR station - originally its terminus- at Shepherd's Bush. The Central Line extension was then delayed by WW1)

I've used HS1's Javelin to get from Margate to London following a friend's birthday there and I definitely just turned up and went. Because of the slow crawl around Thanet it wasn't actually much quicker than the outbound journey the day before on the North Kent line.

Much of the excessively high cost of HS2 seems to have come from not merely trying to build a high speed line, most developed countries have proved they can do that, but to build an underground, or at least invisible, high speed line which nobody else has been daft enough to try.

I don't think I could ever feel comfortable about modelling Merthyr Vale Colliery or even its sidings. It was that mine's active spoil heap above the opposite side of the valley that collapsed onto the Pantglas school in Aberfan in 1966 (Three years after concerns about the tips raised by the local authority were basically ignored by the NCB) . https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/letters.htm

Yes, I can see the two levels there with the Barry Railway at high level but the actual pit connected to the Taff Vale. I woder if Ian Rice was aware that there was another colliery called Deep Navigation- it seems unlikely that he wasn't. This is a bit tighter It's interesting, given the miners' remarks about Penallta and Deep Nav. that Maritime Colliery closed in 1961 but it contined to be pumped out for many years after. For a more compact arrangement the Pen-y-Rhiw colliery a bit further down the colliery line from Maritime also looks promising. It closed in 1922 but again was kept open for pumping (to protect the nearby Cwm Colliery) until the late 1960s.

That's interesting as Deep Navigation was a real colliery in the Treharris district. I wonder if Ian Rice's plan was based on it or if he just liked the name but the real pit was quite a large one . This map is from 1915 I assume that it was this section on two levels that Ian Rice was inspired by I'm conscious of Deep Navigation because in 1991 I made a film for the BBC's "Careering Ahead" programme about the employment prospects of the miners at the nearby Penallta Colliery which was due to close that November (several months later). Potential employers were being taken down on visits to see the range of high level and transferable skills of the miners and I remember walking about a mile from the shaft to the coalface clutching three headlamps (plus my own) to give us light to film by (with a clockwork camera) and they were heavy! I was told (rightly or wrongly) by the miners themselves that Penallta, which was a very profitable pit, was only closing because of the closure of Deep Navigation Colliery that Easter. Deep Nav. only had about three more years of production but, its closure made the still very profitable Penallta Colliery uneconomic because of the resultant extra costs of pumping but, taken together, the two pits would have been profitable for years and they thought the closure decision was political. When Michael Hesseltine announced further pit closures in October 1992, I went back to make a second film to see how the Penallta miners were getting on. It wasn't a happy story as their skills were largely ignored by employers. The quote from one of them, who I took with my film crew to look over the now closed pit was telling "I'd go back down there tomorrow...and what have I lost: I've lost a secure job, a secure future and the comradeship of the finest group of men you could ever hope to work with". Graham was by then working in a small factory making Christmas decorations! To say that the Penallta miners were bitter is putting it mildly and I couldnt blame them. The curious thing was that, though Penallta had been closed and capped for a year, there were still trains (daily I think) taking coal out from there. I assume the stockpiles had been deliberately built up against a possible future NUM strike.

Hi Natterjack What track are you using? I've just been measuring the wheelsets from a Tillig H0m wagon with a more accurate (in my hands) digital calliper than the mechancial one I used last night and I'm getting a back to back of about 10.2mm (NEM for 12 mm gauge is 10.2-10.4) flange depth of 0.75mm (NEM is 0.5- 1.0) and tyre/wheel width of 2.35mm (NEM is 2.3-2.5)* From this it looks like Tillig have gone towards the finer end of the NEM range but from what I've seen of Hornby's products (admittedly mostly in photos) I'd guess that they're within the NEM norms but leaning more towards their coarser end. That would fit with wanting to use sharper curves (though Hornby's set points are not as sharp, relative to gauge, as 00 setrack) and deeper flanges to allow for temporarily laid track. It's difficult to be sure though as it's on leading pony wheels which are small anyway where the extra flange depth seems most apparent: I think the width of the wheel treads are noticeably greater. *(The tyre width can go down to 2.0mm if the minimum flangeway of 0.9mm in NEM 110 is used and, unlike NMRA specs, the NEMs provide an allowable range rather than a set of tolerances)

Not necessarily going that far. So far as I can tell the wheel profiles used by Hornby seem to be similar to those used by Tillig for TT and H0m (but see below) . The NEMs give a tyre width of 2.3-2.5mm (including the flange) though that can be reduced to 2.0mm if the flangeway is kept to 0.9mm (the range is 0.9-1.0mm) I've just put a vernier on a couple of Tillig H0m wheelsets and they look to be about 2.5mm. Tillig offer their tramway track as being for both H0m and TT suggesting that they are using the same flangeways for both 12mm gauge usages.

That's very interesting. Despite the "Table Top" apellation suggesting the trainset market, it implies that Hal Joyce was aiming more at the serious model railroad market. I'd wondered though why Joyce had combined an "Imperial" scale ratio (1/10 inch to the foot- a common ratio for engineering drawings in the US) with a metric gauge of 12mm. However, I've dug out the 1950 revision of NMRA track and wheel standards (the first to include TT) and they give the minimum gauge for TT as 0.471 inch- which is is 56.5 inches/120 (0.4708) to three decimal places. The same NMRA revision gives for TT a minimum tread width of 0.050" and a minimum tire width of 0.077"

So far as wheel profiles etc. are concerned, Hornby's products aren't finescale, any more than they (or any other mass market product) are in 00. However, there's nothing to stop anyone using finer scale wheelsets etc in the gauge just as modellers do in 00 or H0 (for example with H0 RP25-88 wheelsets replacing RP25-110). The difference from 00 is that, if you want to do that in TT (as in H0) you don't have to use a different gauge. Plain track is the same and using smaller crossing and flangeway clearances is surely a lot simpler than a complete change of gauge.

Fortunately, gauge wars should not apply to TT120 any more than they ever have in H0. It's certainly true that there are compromises (and that's true for proprietary models in any scale) but, unless you got to proto standards, even EM has compromised crossing clearances and wheel profiles. So far as I can tell, the track and wheel standards used for TT120 are the established NEM 12mm gauge standards. These are slightly coarser (by about 12-14% relative to the gauge diffrence than those for 16.5mm gauge (MOROP's NEM standards for wheel profiles and track are gauge not scale specific (so for H0m are the same as TT) Peco's TT120 track does look finer than Hornby's and, according to my calculations, Peco's TT track profile using code 55 rail is equivalent to code 75 in H0. Horby's code 80 rail in 1:120 scale is slightly heavier than code 100 in 1:87 scale.