TheSignalEngineer

There are some who would be hanging from the coat rack by the collar if I had his job.

There's a section on the LMS Pull-Push coaches in the Jenkinson and Essery book. The Period 3 new build and conversions done in the 1930s didn't have a driver's side window. There were some Period 2 ones which still had the duckets. I built a Period 3 (Left) from a Hornby coach with a Comet end. My period 2 one (Right) was a cut'n'shut from Airfix/Dapol bits. The side window was an addition in the post-nationalisation new build ones according to Larry Goddard.

More than once I've found a plastic tray with a dismantled model in it. I took it apart to do some improvements and can't remember what I thought was wrong with it. Best course of action is to put it back together and see if something still grates on the eye.

We've both had them from Bedford numbers this week. Last time it was Leeds, the time before Leicester. More amusing when my wife gets one as she likes to string them along for a couple of minutes before telling them that she can't drive.

I gave up modelling for a while when working in signal engineering. I had too many work pressures and in the case of the job it was "Near enough is not good enough". Very true when you sign off the paperwork and the next train through passes at 125mph. As I moved away from the front line I started dabbling in modelling again and even years after retirement still have to avoid falling into the trap of wanting to do that extra bit to get it better, I have to tell myself that my eyesight is not good enough to see the difference when a train passes on the layout at a scale 40mph and three feet away from me.

I'm sitting under that big cloud on the horizon.

I've known personally 4 suicides. Two had work related problems, one was in a failing relationship and the fourth was a combination of work and relationship stresses. Personally I had a very black period when we had a dispute with a company which had done some work on our house. We had to get someone else to put it right and it took us two years to get redress. Finally when it got to the day before a pre-trial meeting with a judge they capitulated and made us an offer which covered the remedial work and our costs. One thing which helped me greatly at the time was talking to others. There was a woman nearby who Anne called my 'Morning Girlfriend'. We commuted by train together for several years and are still in touch over 40 years on. At the time of my problems she was in the middle of a messy divorce after her husband had left. She had been involved in some horseplay at her place of work and had got pregnant. The wife of the baby's father had found out somehow and gone ballistic. All in all she was in a far worse state than me, and it made me realise that my situation wasn't so bad after all. Later I was off work for a while with a mystery illness which the doctors eventually decided had been triggered by stress. Strangely this helped me a few years later when I was completely overdoing it work-wise. I realised that I was getting close to the edge and was in danger of imploding, so I had a long chat with my boss who I had known for about 25 years. We decided that my assistant would take over and I would move to another section which had a more stable working pattern for a break. As it happened the head of the section resigned about a month later and I took over his job.

My failed T9 is at Hornby and is waiting for them to find a part. I only sent it to them because they offered to do it FOC as a known mazak victim. Usually I source bits and do it myself. My Royal Scot 46146 bought s/h was a poor runner. I bought a second loco which looked like a victim of a collision with a concrete floor. Stripped it, fixed the first one, kept the known vulnerable parts for future use, then sold the tender and other bits I didn't want for more than I paid. Win-win. With Bachmann on the other hand I have sourced several bits for s/h locos. Recently I put into traffic an N Class I bought several years ago. I needed two bits to finish the job. Emailed them a query, got a reply next day, ordered by phone and delivered in two days.

I've been fortunate in my choice of life partner who I met in 1971 and married two years later. We have a number of shared and individual hobbies and give each other space when needed. Background may be part of it as when our respective mothers met we found that they were bought up in adjacent courtyards in the old back-to-backs in inner city Birmingham in the 1930s. My mother played with Anne's aunt as a child. We don't have money secrets and discuss big purchases like mountain bikes and so on. I maintain the bikes, string her tennis racquets and do the messy jobs whilst she is queen of the kitchen and sewing room. She prefers going by train where possible, enjoys visiting preserved lines and can tell the difference between a 37 and 47. Of course we've hit rough patches but worked through them, supporting each other through our personal bad times.

You may think what you like but I can't possibly comment as the Purity Patrol will block my post and may even expel me from web.

Agreed, Jason. We already had 50 Stanier Pacifics, 30 Kings and lots of Castles, the Merchant Navies and Gresleys Pacifics which could all run heavy expresses at speeds in excess of those permitted right across the system until the late 1950s. What was needed was to get rid of the mass of non-standard bit and pieces often inherited from pre-grouping companies. I doubt many of those would have lasted past 1950 had the war not interrupted building programmes of the Big Four in favour of military equipment.

Using speed and wheel circumference I would estimate that 90mph on a 9F would be equivalent to approximately 120mph on an A4 at the same rpm.

Choose your pub carefully if you wear the pink thingy.

Not Brent, but GWR platforms in the Birmingham area appear in a lot of photos on the Warwickshire Railways website. On older ones with the edging as shown in the OP, many had Diamond Paviors right up to the edge stones in the areas around entrances and buildings. In less used areas and ramps there was compacted gravel fill and sometimes what looked like ash or crushed slag ballast. Later rebuilds had wide flagstone type edging fully paved with slabs or diamond paviors around the buildings then with or without one or two rows of paving slabs behind up to the ramps. In one or two cases I remember crushed brick being used for the infill, another material locally available in plenty and cheap from brickworks waste. I think that Small Heath has probably encompassed most styles during its lifetime, although the paving slabs were tarmaced over when the buildings were demolished. https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/smallheath.htm Check out other stations on the line such as Acock's Green, Lapworth and Warwick for more pictures especially some old ones before and after quadrupling or showing evidence of platform extensions.

I am led to believe that OD has been spotted at a location between Dawlish Sea Wall and CK Towers.

The Kings Mill go a bit stale? It's all that time it spends in the van between bakery, distribution depot and shop.

I don't know. Way back when I was a youngster we used to check all gaps on 3rd rail bonding plans not only for track circuit integrity but also short lengths on conductor rail to make sure they were longer than the space between shoes. If possible an extra short piece was recommended on the opposite side to prevent gapping.

I think the ones we had on the Euston - Watford DC lines had extra shoe beams added when they moved from the GN to prevent them getting gapped. There were certainly a couple of moves where a 3-car sets could get into difficulties in the Euston area with the as-built configuration.

Sun, cricket and beer with a group of West Indies supporters. Pity Carlos Brathwaite got caught on the boundary when we thought he had made the winning hit. Good match and great company.

Don't you believe it. Most of the imported 'experts' I had to deal with came from the oil or building industries. I pulled out a manufacturing drawing of a crossover to explain to one some problems of getting interdisciplinary coordination right on a particular job. At first he thought it was a line diagram for a double junction. I told him it wssn't a monorail. Railtrack set up one of them to try to take me out of the equation as I was perceived as giving them a hard time on projects. They gave him a fancy title and lots of money although he was a QS on road jobs by trade. Six months later my boss gave me a big rise and the RT man was counting bricks on station improvement projects. The only one I had respect for was drafted into a project which was struggling for various reasons. He called the technical team together and told us 'I know sweet f-all about railways but I'm good at the politics and money. I'll deal with that lot and keep them off your backs while you get on with the job.' We went through the project with him and produced a realistic work programme. He sold our commissioning date to the politicos and agreed the budget with them and we delivered.

At least the passengers are unlikely to be subjected to Pacers. They wouldn't get round the 1st radius curves on the Princetown Branch.

CK's experience of this aligns with my own in the West Midlands. We lost a lot of passenger trains our local lines to Beeching, several just at the time of large housing developments nearby such as Castle Vale with a population of 20,000, Walmley to the east of Sutton Coldfield and those between Lichfield and Walsall. We almost lost Redditch off the map the year after it was designated a New Town with a population since increased to around 85,000, that's 14 times the population of Okehampton. Most lines affected were still used by freight at the time. In 1969 I was taken along to some meetings with the embryonic WMPTE and their consultants about reinstatement of various services. The Redditch situation was recovered in about 10 years as part of Cross City and its service has gone from 3 trains per day to 3 per hour but some of the stuff we discussed then is still in the 'To Do Box' 15 years after I retired.

I checked out an old PWI handbook. That refers to Base Plates for FB rail and Sole Plates at the toe of the points.

Yes, I've had some strange shades float to the top of tinlets when left for a while.

My colour perception is slightly different in each eye.