Captain Kernow

Assuming they're S&D, Radstock North, perhaps?

Just a quick query. Despite having looked in my (well thumbed) copy of Jenkins & Essery, I'm still not sure if the boilers fitted to the 483s are the same dimensions as the LMS 2Ps? Can someone confirm, please? Thanks.

The above are all factors in the 'case for closure'. BR were thinking along those lines (closure) before even the Beeching report was published in 1963, but that really sealed it's fate. What no one has mentioned yet was the deliberate re-routing of traffic away from the line, to support the case for closure, including the Pines Express (in 1962) and the Avonmouth fertiliser traffic. The single line sections did not form a particularly significant proportion of the whole route length, in my view. They could certainly be bottlenecks, especially the heavily graded (but relatively short - 3 miles or so) section from Bath Junction to Midford, but the timetable had evolved to deal with this and there were (are) other such bottlenecks on other parts of the BR (Network Rail) network. I have a view that BR had decided on closure from a relatively early date. The S&D was just one route being deliberately prepared for closure, of course, others include the Great Central main line, the Stainmore route etc. In the case of the S&D, however, I wonder if one of the reasons was the forthcoming re-signalling of the Western Region, where M.A.S. gradually replaced manual signalling during the 1960s and 1970s (and beyond). It may have been that including the northern part of the S&D on the new panel signal box at Bristol may have been considered 'a bridge too far' in terms of the technicalities, space for the panel work stations (I am familiar with the internal layout of that box), trying to overlay the awkward track layout geography of the S&D on to an already challenging project (same may have applied to the later Westbury Panel, which may have controlled the middle section of the S&D). But we'll never know for sure, I guess. Economies could have been effected, of course. We know that Ivo Peters suggested the use of 9Fs on heavy summer expresses (before 1962) and that this suggested was taken up, thus avoiding a lot of double-heading (of course, BR may have been considering this anyway). He later suggested the adoption of 'pay trains' and de-staffing the stations and dieselisation, which were not taken up. Dieselisation would not have been a simple or cheap route to take, however, given the capital cost of replacement diesel traction (DMUs, probably) and traction training/conversion for steam footplate crews. When you look at how a similar route - the Castle Cary to Dorchester line - was treated at around the same time - singling, closure of halts and some intermediate signal boxes, introduction of diesel traction etc., you can see how a rationalised S&D may have worked. By the mid-1960s, a significant portion of the coal output from the remaining parts of the Somerset coalfield was going to Portishead power station. An alternative route via ex-GW lines was found for this traffic, albeit a longer journey (but the traffic wasn't particularly time-sensitive). One of the key remaining collieries - Norton Hill near Radstock - closed unexpectedly (as far as BR were concerned) at the start of 1966, typifying the gradual run-down of this industry. You can't really do anything about the economics of geology, I suppose. At the end of the day, I think that the S&D had simply 'had it's day' and had run out of time, given all the adverse factors facing it.

Do you change the car when the ashtray becomes full?

Nor do I, matey!

This is not an LMS engine...

So some young men from a northern part of the country are half-way to their destination?

Is this some kind of sporting reference?

Just waiting for me to say that I don't need my modelling chair any more...

A track level view, taken today. Signal box still not permanently in place, however. What seems to be a board crossing is actually a wooden walkway for the signalman to collect the single line token from a train coming from Coalpit Heath West Jct. The line onwards towards Westerleigh Yard North is double track (permissive block).

We grind a daily pill up in a pestle and mortar and mix it with his breakfast. He wolfs it down, this being the time of day when he's most hungry... (these pills are pain killers, for his arthritis). Personally, I'd be somewhat reticent about giving our cats sedatives for what seems to be a non-medical reason... Whatever the background to him becoming part of your family, you're giving a loving home to a cat and that's no bad thing. Never complain, never explain.

Very discreet, matey. That's the way to do it.

So could I. They ran on the Somerset & Dorset, you know...

My current car doesn't have a CD player. It has one of those computer type sockets, but I've yet to work out if I can put some music on a memory stick and play it in the car. I haven't even worked out if you can pre-set the DAB radio stations.... If I don't like what's on, I have to wait until I'm stationary and change it manually. Looking at the manual, with about a trillion, gazillion pages, just makes me loose the will to live...

If I was still doing passenger services, I would probably opt for 2-D paper or card figures, printed on a computer printer, as per a (relatively) recent article in MRJ.