TheSignalEngineer

In an ideal world I think that the designer should be made to assemble the first sample kit, writing the instructions as he goes along. A second kit and the instructions should then be handed to a builder who has had no previous involvement. Any problems he finds with either the kit or the instructions should then be ironed out with the designer before full production.

Birmingham Snow Hill had Theatre indicators on the main platforms and through lines. 7912 at Birmingham Snow Hill (pjs,0673) by geoff7918, on Flickr The bays had stencils. Snow Hill in decline(9) 1969 by Stephen Burdett, on Flickr

First Optical Fibre one I remember was a banner at Smethwick Rolfe Street, I think mid 1970s.

I'd just found one starting 22 when Phil posted a D63xx

A Class 20 had already sneaked into my Class 15 picture, so here we go for double or quits. A pair of Class 20s with the Saltley re-railing train dealing with a derailment of the Bordesley trip at Tyseley in 1982. Shaky picture from the rejects box taken with a pocket camera from the train home.

Class 15 D8233, Work In Progress, Bury 2013

Apologies for the scrawl, but a few initial thoughts to open up the debate.

At the time of the Harborne picture my Dad was based at the fire station which was just out of shot to the right. D2387 was one of the regulars on the branch after the Midland 2F 0-6-0s were withdrawn until closure. I remember quite a lot of LBC lorries around Harborne at that time. They seemed to deliver to convenient yards in the Birmingham area then in their own lorries to the users. IIRC the last active brickwork in the Harborne area was California, by the old Lapal canal tunnel which stopped production just after WW2.

Summer in Ross-shire. A McRat waits to depart from Kyle of Lochalsh fo Inverness, August 1982 Carry on with the Shires

Leamington Spa 1978

BL Vulcan at Tyseley Open Day in 1970. To me this Bagnall 0-6-0ST always looks like a crossbreed between an Austerity and a 15xx.

Hope you don't have to wait too long.

The Telegraph is reporting that 10 new power stations will need to be built to provide the electricity. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/25/new-diesel-petrol-cars-banned-uk-roads-2040-government-unveils/

They had to cancel rail electrification to make enough power available for all of the electric road vehicles. Think I am going to invest on companies making cables for the National Grid. It will need a lot more capacity unless we generate it all at home.

Are you going to do some more cottages?

I had a couple of Seeps with the same problem. The operating rod was not straight. I held it in place with small pliers and bent it back. I also found problems with them not making the contacts reliably on thinner baseboards in 00 so I now mount them on wooden packers about 10mm thick. Slightly ofsetting the screws holding the packers from the line of the points tie bar also allows a bit of fine adjustment before they are fully tightened.

The engine management system on the Pennine 185s also helps. When cruising speed is reached one engine can be shut down, restarting for accelleration. On stopping at stations only one engine will remain running until the others are restarted when due for departure.

Scope drift warning. Stove-fitted SR Passenger Brake Vans often seemed to be on fixed workings given that there were only an small number of them. Southern Goods Brakes were a different matter, there are pictures on the web of a Pillbox at Stechford and a Dancehall at Water Orton in the 1950s.

Although there is a picture of a stove fitted Van C steam-hauled on Shap they were supposed not to work off the Southern Region according to the carriage working books from the 1960s.

East terminus as currently being modelled by Worsdell forever. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/106646-the-depots-low-baring-rosedale-east/

There was no financial case for 140mph running with Pendolinos. The extra time savings for the full scheme as opposed to 125mph were about 4 minutes to Birmingham, 8 minutes to Manchester and 11 minutes to Glasgow. The extra cost of developing the cab signalling and more civils works was likely to cost £8bn.Cost escalation to speed increase tends to be exponential especially over 100mph. Before the 4-tracking to Colwich I was asked to review a proposal for 125mph on the old layout. The estimated cost was about £9millon, and deemed too expensive for the saving of 15 seconds. Reducing the top speed by 10mph cut the time saving to 12 seconds but the cost estimate came down to below £3million.

For a long time it did.

But have you done a 90 minute each way commute in them? I got adept at finding alternative permitted routes preferably using electric stock.

Continuity of work is also important in keeping costs down. Staff become more experienced, doing the job quicker and better than when people are always coming and going due to peaks and troughs.

Another cost driver is the increase in the specification these days. Signals and their foundations are strong enough to tie up the Queen Mary in a force 9. I don't think many put in on the WCML during 1959-66 have fallen over except due to train impact despite just having about one cubic metre of concrete holding them up.