Andy Kirkham

perhaps they also precluded Bentleys

Flanders & Swan really ought to have put it into The Slow Train

This may be just a subjective impression, but there seem to be remarkably few photographs of Shoscombe and Single Hill Halt, despite it being on the highly popular Bath-Radstock section. A search on Flikr would seem to confirm this impression as it yields only a single image of the station when it was open 76019 at Shoscombe and single hill halt. by 00000000 000000000, on Flickr I recall back in 1972 when I walked the trackbed from Bath to Radstock, being most surprised when I encountered its remains (still complete with concrete signboards) as seen here: Shoscombe & Single Hill Halt by 70023venus2009, on Flickr I had been quite unaware that the station existed. So two questions: 1. Do others share my perception that Shoscombe is neglected? 2. Can anyone suggest why?

I've only just come across this inspiring thread, so I hope I will be forgiven for responding to this challenge over a year late. I don't have a photo, but it is a fact that in 1914 the Brecon & Merthyr purchased former L&SWR Adams 4-4-2T No.0376 I've only just come across this inspiring thread, so I hope I will be forgiven for responding to this challenge over a year late. I don't have a photo, but it is a fact that in 1914 the Brecon & Merthyr purchased former L&SWR Adams 4-4-2T No.0376

I think you will be pleased with that book, it visits plenty of off-the-beaten-track locations, and the pictures are well-chosen. I've just discovered that DMU's got slightly closer to Talyllyn than Dowlais Top. Here's one at Dowlais Central http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/Images_D-H/DowlaisCentralStation_1960.jpg (on this page http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/dowlaiscentralstation.htm)

Lost Lines - Wales by Nigel Welbourn contains a picture of a DMU at Dowlais Top on the final day of service - Dec 29, 1962. The book suggests it was a Cardiff-Dowlais Top working. I imagine this was the closest a DMU would ever have got to Talyllyn.

From memory, Hughes was either the predecessor or successor of the Falcon Engine Co, which ultimately morphed into Brush, which still operates at Loughborough. One of its surviving products (much rebuilt) is the Talyllyn's No.3 Sir Haydn which in its original form had a similar look to the loco in your post.

Thanks very much Metr0Land! Like this? Bargoed Pits Signal Box, January 1975 by Andy Kirkham, on Flickr And here's the URL https://www.flickr.com/photos/52554553@N06/10421003676/in/album-72157636831169995/

I wonder if someone would describe how they insert references to Flikr pictures that actually show the pictures rather than just the URL.

It has an 82A shed code.

It is most frustrating, only being able to register "Like" once.

It reminds me of some of T.B.Owen's work. He is a contributor to Colour-Rail

Kitsons' finest achievement must be this monster http://www.panoramio.com/photo/75324073a rack-and-adhesion loco built in 1907 for the Chilean and Argentine Trans-Andean railway. IT is a source of particular patriotic pride that Dr Roman Abt, the international expert on rack railways had declared it impossible to design a locomotive to the required specifications.

According to that ever-fascinating book Mainline to Industry by Frank Jones, there were three locos of the Lively Polly type. They were all supplied to the West Lancashire Railway but found unsuitable and returned to their maker. The fate of the third one is obscure; it is recorded as having been sold to "R White". Works numbers were 109/110/111 but it is not known which locos carried which numbers.

Talyllyn (which of course was built as an 0-4-0ST) was an example of a Fletcher Jennings standard type several of which had been supplied to Ironworks in South Wales. J.I.C. Boyd in his book on the Talyllyn, says that the Fletcher Jenning order book was loaned to him in the 1940s and that the surviving pages began at works No.21 of 1858 Locomotives of the Talyllyn design (although of various gauges) were supplied to: Aberdare Iron Company : 28 and 35; two more were ordered but the Iron Company failed and they were sold elsewhere John Brogden, Bridgend: 33 and 69 Plymouth Iron Co., Aberdare: 38 and 39

I find that Dust Removal also cleverly removes the headboard brackets from the fronts of diesel locos. https://www.flickr.com/photos/52554553@N06/10065992774/in/set-72157637546452386- note the smudge where the left-hand one should be.

I'm afraid I was at Melksham on Saturday, so I was unable to get to Cheltenham to see Peafore. I hope I'll be able to catch it some other time.

I think I remember reading once that, at the request of Yeoman's, the styling of these machines was deliberately influenced by the look of the Westerns. I can't say the similarity is very striking to me, but the "peak" above the front windows is perhaps reminiscent of the D1000's.

And I have this shot of a Hymek north of Oxford that I noted was heading for Bicester https://www.flickr.com/photos/52554553@N06/10421524094/in/set-72157636831654216

http://www.n-somerset.gov.uk/News/Pages/Portishead-railway-station-location-decided.aspx

Aberbargoed Junction on the the Brecon & Merthyr (where the New Tredegar branch diverged) had a similar lifespan. Opened 1958; closed 1964.

From 2016, there will be a new flow of domestic refuse from West London for incineration in the "Severnside Energy Recovery Centre" http://www.bristolandbath.co.uk/de/node/169

I think you should include a figure of Ben Ashworth recording the scene. This wonderful layout is so evocative of his photographic style and the era in which he worked.

Near Fishguard (or more properly, Goodwick) is this underbridge, which in the above view looks quite normal. But if we pass through and look back... ...we see that it is incomplete - just a brick arch with no parapet or facing masonry. Closer inspection reveals how abruptly the work was broken off. This was to have been the new, more easily graded route from Letterston Junction to Fishguard to accommodate the heavy transatlantic liner traffic that the GWR hoped to capture. It was authorised in 1903 but work proceeded slowly because the corresponding upgrades to the harbour were incomplete. There was a decade of stop-go construction and changes of plan until work ceased in the First World War. After the war the Cunarders failed to return, and so construction never resumed. The route would have been expensive, requiring two tunnels, one over a mile in length, but in the end only about a mile of earthworks were constructed with that one incomplete underbridge and an overbridge. Also in Pembrokeshire was the extension of the Pembroke Dock branch into the dockyard. I am always fascinated by lines like this that thread through urban areas and squeeze between houses. The view from the road towards the buffer stops at Pembroke Dock The gap in the houses through which the railway passed The surviving section of the formation with a level crossing next to the Jobcentre. When I first visited Pembroke Dock in 1973, the route was intact and the track nearly all in place. Now the formation has almost entirely been obliterated by building developments and a new road. I would be most interested to see any pictures of this line in operation, or even in its derelict state, but have never come across a single one.

I appreciate the reasoning about tautology, but I still feel there could be a justification for "County of Lincolnshire" and the like, which I would base on examining the meaning of "of". When we speak of the City of Birmingham, we are surely not referring to two separate entities: (a) an entity named Birmingham and ( B) a separate entity: a city, which is owned by Birmingham; don't we mean that the city is Birmingham? If that is true, then "of" does not have its standard meaning that denotes possession; rather it has an idiomatic meaning that seems to apply only to places and can be understood as meaning something like "that is named". Thus "The City of Birmingham" is equivalent to "The city that is named Birmingham" or even just "The city:Birmingham".. ON that basis we could justify "County of Lincolnshire" if we understand it to mean "County that is named Lincolnshire", which seems to me perfectly OK and not at all tautological. I should stress that this argument is based not on scholarship or expertise, just my own notions; so if anyone can prove that I am talking nonsense, I would be happy to be corrected. [edit - I had no intention of inserting a smiley above: it is meant to be a letter b in brackets]