TheSignalEngineer

In Sectorisation we referred to RR Central or whatever it was as the 'Barmouth and Yarmouth Railway'

For those not familiar with the Black Country, the Bumble Hole is at the centre of this map See also https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=52.4903&lon=-2.0740&layers=168&b=1

Platform height was laid down in the Board of Trade Requirements. Prior to the 1902 amendment these stated that the height should be no less than 2' 6" above rail. In 1902 this was changed to shall be 3' except in exceptional circumstances. The Requirements were only mandatory for new works and alterations. This is why it is possible to find platforms with one section at 2' 6" and a later extension at 3' above rail.

It was a branch between Blower's Green on the OWW south of Dudley and Old Hill on the Stourbridge line. There were intermediate stations at Baptist End, Windmill End, Darby End Halt and Old Hill High Street. Auto Trains and Railcars ran between Dudley and Old Hill. "Windmill End" were the last words of the Flanders and Swann song The Slow Train The Bumble Hole itself was an area of coal mines, brick pits and factories which is now a nature reserve. It was also served by the Bumble Hole Branch canal. Besides serving local traffic the line was useful as it was a Dotted Red route and could be used to divert from Handsworth Junction to Priestfield on the Snow Hill - Wolverhampton line. It occasionally saw locos as big as Castles on diverted expresses when the bridge at Wednesbury was being rebuilt

Those who forget the lessons of history are at the greatest risk of repeating them.

New rail would be 60' lengths. If it was second hand track the ends may have been trimmed and redrilled but that would be for use on secondary lines, lengths being around 57' down to 45'. When prefabbing for CWR the panels used for laying in were often 30' due to the weight of concrete sleepers and crane capacity. The 30' rails would then be tipped out and CWR put in.

Didn't seem to bother them on the Bumble Hole. If they were short of a railcar or 64xx they pushed an autocoach with an 8750. What the boss doesn't see......

During a Saturday night heavy job at Kirkby-in Ashfield a local turned up with a large dog of a now banned breed and a shotgun and requested to contractors to stop making a noise. When he offered to let the dog make their acquaintance they didn't stay around long enough to find out if the gun was loaded.

The meeting at the Station Hotel took place on a very warm summer afternoon. It was just after the Transport & Works Act came in so whilst the natives downed copious quantities of brown liquid the railway people and the Inspecting Officer were on orange juice and lemonade.

Big job! Based on the figures NR quotes on their website they are responsible for 1.6 million chains of track.

Those were only a couple of events, they were almost weekly right through the job. On Phase 1 the PWay went along recovering one track and using the best stuff to improve the other,. The estimated that they had 'lost' something like seven hundred chaired sleepers to the local 'Night Shift'. They were also partial to cable troughing for some reason. We stored it inside the REB at one crossing but they still managed to take it. Breaking into the REBs only reduced after we put large High Voltage - Danger of Death zapped corpse graphics on the doors. When we were developing Phase 2 we had a public meeting in the Station Hotel at Newstead to show the level crossing proposals. The dartboard in the back room was rawlbolted to the wall. The barmaid told us it was to stop the players using it as a weapon when the game got out of control.

Last time I saw the layout, for the third or fourth time, I didn't really notice whether any trains were running or not. I spent about 30 minutes studying the quality of the modelling and talking to the crew.

Yes, I remember testing the locking frame for the remodellong of the Calverton Colliery junction in 1993. Half way through the Plod turned up at Bestwood box. There was a siege in progress with a gunman holed up nearby and they wanted to evacuate us. We suggested that we were probably safer working inside that box than he was on the road outside and he finally agreed that we were out of the line of sight so we carried on. Later on phase 2 they were suspicious of the number of comings and goings on the track across the fields up by Warren House so it ended up with two members of the Drug Squad being loaned BR orange coats and accompanying us on a walkout along the old trackbed so they could get a closer look at the area.

At least she wasn't the old lady I met walking her dog down the four-foot between the two Linby crossings a few days before the service started.

How many would actually have received lining? They were turned out in unlined maroon from 1956 to 1959 and scrapping started in 1960.

I've not found a drawing for the Signal House 4-hole fibre optic one, seems to have been abandoned. Tried my usual ways of archive searching and got redirected to an 'investment' advisor in Nigeria and a house of dubious pleasures in New York. As an aside The VMS one is 430mm wide and 350mm high excluding the feet according to their catalogue. The one with filament lamps made by Westinghouse shown in the 2002 catalogue as being to BRS-SE160 series drawings is 437mm wide and 410mm high. This looks the same as the one made by Aldridge for Australia and the Far East. The disc on a BR Standard (ex-LMS) mechanical ground signal is 394mm diameter.

Pity my Dad's not still around, he would love that streamliner. He used to talk about seeing them on the Coronation Scot at Glasgow when the family went to the Empire Exhibition at Bellahouston Park during their summer holiday in 1938.

Did I meet her back then in 1992? I spoke to a lot of residents in the area and that bungalow appears in some of my pictures. I think it is also in the video I made when I took a train up there to check the new crossings but unfortunately I don't have a functioning Sony Video8 camera these days. Must get it converted to a DVD.

I'm not sure about the RRPs quoted on many models these days. I doubt if many people would have bought 31-128 at £142 when it was introduced which was about 2011. Anyone got an old Baccy price list or receipt?

Nuneaton has always bugged me from the moment I heard the circumstances down the grapevine that morning. Some time earlier we were doing a new bridge which involved moving the two tracks of a former 4-track line from their old position to the vacant track bed of the ones which had been recovered. The tracks were cut and pulled across onto the new bridge on the Sunday but had not been fully ballasted and aligned so there was a pre-arranged 20MPH temporary speed imposed through the slues and across the new bridge deck for a week until the follow-up work due on the next Sunday. At about 7.45 on the Monday morning a well-loaded 6-car Class 116 on which my assistant was travelling took the temporary alignment at over 60MPH, fortunately without damage or injury. At the time we had been working on advance signing PSRs (Morpeth Boards) so following this incident we submitted a suggestion for providing TSRs with AWS using a Shed Test Magnet and clamp with packing which I designed for fitting it to any type of sleeper in a few minutes. It was turned down as being impractical and no real benefit just before the Nuneaton incident. Even if accepted I doubt if it would have been implemented in time to prevent that crash but some days you just have to sit on your hands and bite your lip.

If the boards and magnets were correctly positioned and the loco gear was correctly operating the driver would have to cancel the warning at the Mickey or he would have been brought to stop with the coffee in the buffet travelling further than the train.

There is a picture of the ice cream man driving on Getty images. It's at Marylebone in 1960 so probably a publicity run or a jolly for the Kremlin before it entered service. I had seen the first one a few weeks before parked outside the old part of the Met Cam works at Saltley.

We're they just for the film? There are pictures from 1962 at Snow Hill with the driver apparently in a dark uniform

Considering the available space in the 12" to the foot world, ground signals are designed to fit in the 6-foot, for example in an extreme case at a crossover between platforms. Assumptions for calculation in this situation based on the old MOT clearances Track centres :- 3400mm. Gauge :- 1432mm. Min. Clearance structure to static vehicle below 1000mm :- 730mm each side Available space between tracks = 3400 - 1432 - (730*2) = 508mm Converting this to the 4mm world 508 / 76.2 = 6.66mm Have they just used the space between the maximum vehicle size which doesn't allow for sway? This is 50mm each side at below 1000mm. That would give a 608mm space or 7.98mm at 4mm scale

Not only Simon's opinion. Others with combined experience of several hundred years think the same. Edit Beaten to it by one of them.