TheSignalEngineer

My parents died a few weeks apart about 5 years ago. My mother was losing the plot but Dad had been fully with it until three days before he died. He had been quite organised and sorted a lot of his own stuff whilst in his 80s. Mom was a bit of a hoarder possibly as a result of losing everything during an air raid when she was 14. She would keep Christmas cards so she could update the list each year but would never throw them out when finished with. I found quite a lot of old things, including paperwork for a house purchase in 1967 and an original paper typed up by Mom when she worked for our GP. He was a leading light at the time in the field of General Practice and an expert in the treatment of diabetes to the extent of being a visiting Professor at some overseas Medical School. I still have that as a link to them both because as a young doctor who had not long started his career as a GP he was the person who attended my birth. Another thing in loads were old family photos. One of these was a studio portrait c1890 showing my paternal Great Grandmother who I remember living in the Jewellery Quarter in the 1950s along with her brothers and sisters, mother and father who was born in 1835. There were also several of her sons in WW1 uniforms which I think came from the home of her youngest son when he died in 2004.

I wonder what bad news will be sneaked out behind this? I believe the Pentagon has a saying 'Never waste a good crisis' for such events.

It's hiding behind the fog on top of Kinder over here in the west. Think I'll award myself an extra muggertea and retire to the railway room for an hour as I don't have anyone chasing me to do something for them for a while.

Our charges have five elements. The meter reading generates two elements, fresh water used and waste water. These items each have a standing charge. On top of this there is a fixed charge for rainwater removal. If you do not have mains drainage you can get a rebate on some of the elements.

Various advice about the undesirability of storing one's brain in a lower undergarment come to mind, especially if the said clothing item belongs to someone else.

Waiting Ambulance = mobile waiting room outside A&E staffed by paramedics.

Postal sorting vehicles with pick-up apparatus had to be turned as the net and doors were only provided on one side. Otherwise you had to use a pair with one each way round. Willesden by using the North London to form a triangle? Carriage lines, City Lines, Kensal Green Junction / reverse / Acton Wells / reverse / Acton Canal Wharf, Willesden No.7, LL Goods. was one of the options I used for an engineers train some years back IIRC.

Returning to the meter conversation, before I retired we bought a second home which we intended to move to full time. It was a new build so had a water meter. For the first year we only used it about one or two days a week as I was travelling up and down the WCML a lot and sleeping over at our old house in Solihull. Mrs SE's job at that time frequently took her off around the world as she was involved in organising for an international sports federation. Her office then moved close to our new home so we sold up the other place and consolidated. Water bills were paid by direct debit so we thought nothing about it. About three years on we were presented with a massive bill. It turned out that the contractor employed to read the meter had not done it since the first six months when we had only been at home for about 50 days. All he was doing after the first couple of readings was adding a similar amount to the figure every six months. I found out that at the time that under the company's service charter were obliged to pay us compensation for inaccurate billing. As they admitted to not knowing if any of the seven readings since the one when the meter was installed were accurate they ended up paying us a sum of money which amounted to about half of the cost of water we had used in three years

Forgive me if I ramble tonight but I'm unscambling my brain after an afternoon of Grandad duty. Doing another of my unscientific skims through several books to see if I can find a picture of a 78xxx in the context of my layout I accidentally trumped my previous search. Ned Williams has done several books on Black Country railways. I turned a page on the Byways subject and came upon the Bumble Hole Line. For those not familiar with the area it was a double track branch between Old Hill on the Stourbridge line and Blowers Green on the OWW near to Dudley. It was mainly for serving the local industries but also had a series of stations and halts served variously over the years by railmotors, auto trains and one of the last bastions of the Flying Bananas. Its main claim to fame was being home to the last station mentioned in the fade out of 'The Slow Train' by Flanders and Swann. At Windmill End Junction, which was not situated at Windmill End Station but at Baptist End, there was the Withymoor Basin Branch which served a goods depot which later became known as Netherton Goods, although it was not at Netherton or near to the old Netherton station which was demolished to build the Bumble Hole Line or the new Netherton station which later became known as Blowers Green but was actually further from Blowers Green than the old station that it replaced. Confused? Don't worry, this is the Black Country - home to Aynuk and Ayli. Any Road Up, back to the discovery ......... A Toad on the Withymoor Branch hauled by Pannier 9614. Date? Picture caption says 10th June 1965. There is another picture of the same pairing on the branch on Flickr quoted as April 1965. The branch closed in July 1965, so I would expect a few of the local enthusiasts would be taking an interest in its last throes. Withymoor Basin by Prof2940, on Flickr

Era 5(S/og) ?

Lined green anyone? 78006 at Swindon, March 1957. Linked from from the www.colourrail.co.uk website.

I moved into a new house about 20 years ago, the gas meter reading was 00004. The following year the company came to do a reading to check I was paying the correct amount on my direct debit, estimated on my previous consumption. The meter reading was 00009. They changed it and took it away for examination and found it had a mechanical fault where the meter was going round but the counter on the display wouldn't step onto the second wheel to get from 0009 to 0010.

Think I will concede on that challenge. Had a quick look around tonight but most of the pictures I have are the northbound train with 3rd leading. The only clear southbound one showing much detail of the train also has the 3rd leading.

The protection on this recently rebuilt bridge near Disley is obviously 'Design Clever'. It's on a slight hill so less clearance on the side nearest the camera. The protection an the far side is set below the bridge deck at the same height above the road as the closer side.

When I was involved in the southern end of the WCML I turned engineering trains in three different ways in the Willesden area and those connections all existed in 1937 AFAIK.

I also remember seeing a picture of it with the 1939 Coronation Scot Brake with a gangway connector at the inner end only.

Must have bought too many locos recently. I am now being exhorted to check my credit rating.

I had similar intermittent running from a D.C. Bachmann 08. That turned out to be dirty pickups.

Sometimes to get them the right way round after a diversion involving reversal. The other reason at outer terminii was if there was a control fault or broken window at the London end they turned it rather than cancel the train and the Euston people had to deal with it as they couldn't drive it back out. Saw it done at New Street Broken cab window on way into Euston. They send it back north. Meanwhile Birmingham decide rather than fix it, divert the return via Perry Barr and Aston to Stechford without reversal at New Street. "Somebody else has the problem now" was the quote of the day.

LMS Open coaches have long been an 'Open Goal' in my admittedly biased opinion. Nearly 3000 were turned out between 1923 and the introduction of Mk1 stock. Nearly 1000 of these were in the 1933-39 period of the Coronation Scot types. Examples of most if not all lasted until the 1960s. One D1999 TO is believed to have actually received Blue/Grey livery. The only thing we have on the market at the moment is the Bachmann Porthole FO of which 20 were built c1949.

Regarding liveries of the general service equivalents, at least a few, I think D1902 RFOs for instance, received fully lined LMS livery when they first entered service.

Prototypes of the coaches concerned were produced c1933/4, with production runs 1934-9. If I was doing the research and design for these models I would see if the roof cowl could be put as a separate part (assuming they follow the usual one-piece body/roof of the previous P3 coaches) so that it could be left off and the normal roof vents could be added on a later run. I think that the TO would be an easy win if this is possible as it would then just need a new interior with 2+2 seating to make a D1904 TO of which 116 remained after the nine were used for conversion to the RTO. From the various accounts I think it is possible that they may all have entered normal service after a post-war repaint without any other alterations. Money and materials were tight at the time so nothing would be wasted on converting them back to an older spec. In those days if the wheels turned it ran, it took until the mid-1950s to flush out all of the pre-WW1 stock still in service. Incidentally I remember a report, which I can't vouch for personally, that one of them even got nicked by the Western Region and was seen with a WxxxxM number. Anyone confirm?

Here's my take on it originally posted on the announcement thread and linked on the previous page. I'll repost the main bit here for clarity. D1905 57' BTK Modified from same coach as existing Hornby BTK R4232 etc. D1961 57' BFK Coronation Scot version of D1910. not previously produced. D1960 57' FK Coronation Scot version of D1930. Hornby R4230 etc, although some have wrong seating layout. Some original issues are numbered in D1909 series which had 2 a side seating. D1912 50' RK Coronation Scot version of standard D1912. Not previously produced. D1902 65' RFO Coronation Scot version of standard D1902. Not previously produced. D1981 57' RTO Coronation Scot conversion from D1904. Not previously produced. The Coronation Scot coaches were taken from existing designs, Stanier coaches were pretťy high up the quality scale for the time. The six kitchen cars were standard ones taken from the 1936 Gloucester RCW order with additional jumper cables at the ends. IIRC twelve of the other cars were conversions of existing recently-built coaches that could be spared from traffic and nine new-build to existing designs with the addition of pressure ventilation covered by the duct referred to by Clive above. All were put into ordinary traffic after wartime storage and lasted into the 1960s. Eric

Wrexham Lager apparently started c1882 but had gone bankrupt twice by the mid-1890s. Experiments in lager brewing had been made in the 1830s in Edinburgh but propagation of the yeast was unsuccessful. Allsops lager which became Graham's Golden then Skol was I believe started in the early 20th century.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt as I thought he may mean on the end out of shot.