TheSignalEngineer

We used to get them on the trains via Birmingham. Rode very hard when going down the bank through Betley Road especially on the Slow which was still jointed then.

On Grandad duty for the football last Saturday. The venue is in Gorton right next to where Reddish Electric Depot used to be. This is the view from where I was watching A screen shot of Google Earth. I was about where the pin is and the red line is the direction of view. The outline area is where the depot was and the inner rectangle is the approximate position of the building.

Recovered from an old colour slide is this one taken at Boulogne in August 1964

Not a lot of space in the cess just there and around then a new cable route was laid on that side - is that the corner of a trough lid I see at the bottom left? I would say temporary work in preparation for resignalling and electrification.

Never did it quite like that myself, but in awkward spaces I have put rollers on the metal channels shown but with two spare holes at the track end and screwed those directly to the sleepers. As that picture was taken at Rugby in 1962 it would have been at the time of preparation for the WCML electrification so all sorts of Heath Robimson runs were constructed during digging of mast foundations and track realignment. Do you know where at Rugby it was? I assume it was part of a wider scene.

Glad you got through the show relatively unscathed. The layout standard was as I have cone to expect and the arrangemnet in the halls made it easy to pick the traders to visit. I agree with the difficulties of getting aroung the Northern Powerhouse, engineering work curtailed my usual route so it was the endurance test of a Stagecoach bus to Stalybridge and train via Victoria. Wallgate station seemed absolute chaos when I arrived and the usual Saturday morning traffic made it easier to walk to the venue. Took the special bus on the way back but nearly got scuppered by a bit of dodgy parking by whitevanman. Despite the travelling it was worth the effort and will be interested to see who is on the 2018 list.

Slight variation on the old chiche. Canal boats on a bridge, alihough at that time they were far more common than trains in the area. You could wait over an hourt without seeing one.

In the interests of space saving it could be a mobile toilet.

You missed the toilet

Rule 1- Don't contact anyone asking for money. It sounds like a scam where if you reply to the email address they have a way into your personal details. Personally I would do nothing unless there is a second attempt to make contact. If there was I would contact them via a Signed For letter to the M.D. by name, asking him what is going on.

Is there a maximum height? The 20 cm cake boxes from Lakeland are 15cm deep.

At that time a lot of kegs were aluminium, so I doubt they were for spirit use. May be empties going back to a brewery by the way they are loaded. Barrels stacked like that tend not to move around with rough shunting. The advantage of using Cattle wagons was that the lower doors dropped down onto the loading dock for easy rolling of barrels.

In 2006 my son suggested we had a boys' excursion to do Canada coast-to-coast by rail. These are a couple of his shots from a Dome car on the Canadian between Mount Robson and Jasper. We had been held up because of a failed freight train. It took about three hours to get it shunted clear into one of the loops, which then caused a knock-on effect because of having to work a double length single line section. Some of the passengers on our train were due to change at Jasper for Prince Rupert but we were so late that the connection would be missed. We stopped at a passing loop between Mount Robson and Jasper where they were detrained along with their baggage then the Prince Rupert train came in from the opposite direction to pick them up.

Salop Goods Junction at Crewe, taken from a diverted train on the Up Liverpool Independent line in the Summer of 1985.

An example from the 1990s. The signal on the bridge was my solution to architect/builder interference late in a project. At Jewellery Quarter on the Up line the signal was originally positioned where the red arrow is.The post was approximately in the position of the blue OLE mast on the Metro line. The signal was sighted, the station civils contractor put in the base and we put up the post. During an inspection of the station works we realised something was seriously wrong. Coming into the station we couldn't see the signal which was at red. On checking the drawings everything was to plan as far as the signal was concerned but the type of the lift had been changed. A new plant room which wasn't there at the time of the signal base being put in had been added and it had a pitched roof sticking out almost to the limit of the structure gauge directly in line with the red aspect. A quite interesting discussion ensued. We couldn't lower the head as it would be obstructed by passengers on the platform and we couldn't raise it because of the canopy. Physically it couldn't go in the ramp because it would block the access to the plant room, and putting it on the platform would compromise passenger access to the lift. I suggested that it therefore had to go over the track. We had probably three weeks to get it there and the architect and civils telling me that there was no way it could be done in that time. They had already had to alter the design of the bridge to add an external walkway as originally there was no way of maintaining the outside of it or even cleaning the windows without a possession, so I suggested altering it a bit more to mount a signal head. By the time I rode through with the Inspecting Officer to sign off the signalling the new arrangement was in place, and is to this day, albeit that the head has been renewed.

Same from me. When we needed to put up extra signals at New Street around 1972 the Regional Architect's Office tried to insist on us getting some more 'Daleks' made and putting the signals in specific totally unsuitable positions. My boss told the Project Manager in no uncertain terms that we wouldn't do it and when he next wanted a new station built he could have one of our Signal Engineers to design it for him.

Difficult to tell as it is monochrome, but the Distant arm on the running signal appears to be painted in the old style, and the Home arm looks as if it shows a white light for "Off"

Yellow was not introduced for Distant signals until the 1920s. I think it may have been mandated in the 1925 revision of the Board of Trade requirements. Until then the only distinction was the fishtail end to the arm.

Any appeared on Fleabuy yet?

Does monorail count? Sydney, NSW, had a monorail system serving six stations over by Darling Harbour, Chinatown and the Business Disrict. It operated from July 1988 to June 2013. These show a train on a now-dismantled section in Market Street in January 1999. Photos ©2017 C E Steele

101 minutes wasn't particularly late for arrival at Penzance on a Summer Saturday in the 1950s. I always got the impression that the timetable was based on the calendar rather than the clock

I'll throw in a bit of an off-beat one. One of the last remnants of the Pentewan Dock & Concrete Co Railway, seen here near to the shoreline in 1986. It was a 2'6" gauge line which operated from 1939 to 1966. It used part of the trackbed of the earlier Pentewan Railway which dated from 1829 and was built to carry clay from St Austell to the port. At its height it carried 45000 tons of clay in a year, but silting of the basin and building of other lines in the early 20th century led to its rapid decline. It closed in 1918 and was lifted shortly after.

Froth Alert issued by Met Office.

One of my former colleagues who spent time both on the footplate and as a signalman on the WR told me of the handsignals at his box. From the signalman there was one to say pulled off right through after the train had passed the distant at caution and three from the driver to be passed on down the line - put me in the back platform for water, get me a clear road to take a run at the bank or I need the banker.

BR caused the opposite effect during the commissioning of the Cambrian RETB signalling. When the transmitter was initially turned on it completely trashed TV reception along the Irish coast