TheSignalEngineer

For anyone interesred or has a week to spare, the mileages used present day are shown in the Sectional Appendix. The electronic version is available on the Network Rail website. https://www.networkrail.co.uk/industry-and-commercial/information-for-operators/national-electronic-sectional-appendix/

Definitely for C of E graves, although churches are not all exactly east-west depending on the land available. Some do vary a bit but sticking to the general rule. Council graveyards tend to follow the alignment of neighbouring roads a lot more, but the grave layout would usually point somewhere between northeast and southeast.

I thought you were going to say that you could see the pile next to the conservatory on Google Earth.

Having had a closer look at the APT run, stripping out the 13 minutes recovery time as had been done with the Pendolino would have given a schedule time of 3:44:30. Three TSRs between Kilsby and Lichfield plus a signal stop at Queensville lost approximately 9 minutes against the schedule between Weedon and Norton Bridge. Allowing for the delays in the Rugby and Stafford areas the APT and Pendolino runs were almost the same as far as Preston, but when it came to the hilly areas with more curves the APT won hands down. Given that the APT suffered 2 minutes of TSR delays at Lancaster and Motherweel, similar to the Pendolino delay around Carstairs, the APT was about 11 minutes faster between Preston and Glasgow

Sorry to hear about your predicament. Your input to GWR / WR modelling and knowledge in general has been a great help to many of us. Long may it continue. On an optimistic note my Dad had heart problems in his 60s. It was touch and go at the time but he recovered and was able to resume chasing trains around for over 20 years.

Just had an e-mail announcing that I have won a £1000 Primark gift card. Before I give them my bank details does anyone know how many stores would I have to visit to find £1000 worth of stock?

An impressive run given that it had several speed restrictions and a signal stop at Queensville. Also from the average speeds quoted it wasn't doing much above 125mph most of the way.

I never had a problem with the Virgin onboard staff, even in the dark days of Operation Princess and post-Hatfield days. We developed a sort of black humour with some of the 'train managers' and catering staff on services we regularly used. We even mucked in with them at times helping passengers in times of late running and train failures, down to spending most of a two hour journey distributing free cold drinks on an overloaded XC set with failed aircon on the hottest day of the year. My eldest grandson still has the teddy in VT uniform that the staff sought out from the office at Piccadilly following his first Pendolino ride. While we were waiting for them to come back with it the driver took him into the cab and sat him at the controls. Still proper old school railway at that time, I don't know the situation since the franchise change, will be interesting to see when we get back to longer distance trips again.

Perhaps we could start a petition to get Tom & Jerry screened after the watershed. Otherwise, don't try this at home kids https://youtu.be/IC7kXsnYCWk

Not quite sure what Branson had to do with the state of BR Infrastructure. He was a self-publicist who gave his brand name to two TOCs in return for cash. Virgin Trains were pretty dire, I had the pleasure of having to travel on their services on an almost daily basis for six years. The original WCML bid was a disaster and it had to join with others to run the service on a management contract basis.

Looks like The Bodger organised a superspreader event.

What a difference from yesterday, when an afternoon was spent basking in hot sun watching cricket. The lads had a brilliant win against the top team to overtake them at the top. Little Thomas got his best score so far with 15 not out off 11 balls, not bad for someone who should be playing U9 level appearing in the U11 team. Sammy got a bit ratty after being hit for 4 then came steaming in for the next ball which almost took took the batsman's bootlace out on the way to hitting middle and off. Today, after a sunny start with a bit of the G word followed by coffee in the sun the day went downhill. Cloud came in and the temperature dropped rapidly. A stiff north wind got up so it was lunch in the conservatory and indoor jobs. Upside was that I successfully converted a pair of MTB wheels to tubeless tyres for Mrs SE so I may be allowed some quiet time in the Railway Room for the remainder of the evening. The rain hasn't reached this far so watering will again be required unless we get some later.. Doh. The first thing I thought of when I read this comment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yShvgXZQBTs

I think that the SM numbers were definitely a wartime thing. In 1944 the British Railways Press Office based at Waterloo published a booklet titled 'British Railways in Peace and War'. it has a section about how railways had been serving war factories with a picture of siding at one. In the foreground are some wooden open wagons then a siding of oil tanks with no ownership branding visible but the letters 'AA' above the number, presumably indicating that they came from the Anglo American Oil Co. Incidentally the picture demonstrates the spread and use of PO wagons after pooling. In a rake of empties there is an Emlyn Anthracite 7-plank from Swansea coupled to a 5-plank from Hamilton Palace Colliery in Scotland. Behind these is a mixed rake carrying scrap consisting of mostly 5-planks but with a 7-plank from PJ&JP. In 1945 they published a further booklet titled "It Can Now Be Revealed" continuing the story of the railway during wartime. There is a picture of an oil train being shunted. There are only two vehicles with any markings visible, The first is part of a 24T Toad on which I can't quite get the number but it may be a six-wheeler. The second is a tank similar to the Oxford models with "SM" visible on the manhole. Tourret's book in the second edition shows on p29 a tank with what he describes as a "Shell-Mex and BP 1949 patent" flame heating device for bitumen wagons. The wagon is stencilled SM698 and looks as if it has 26/5/50 chalked on the solebar. Originally a lubricating oil wagon built by Hurst Nelson in 1943 and numbered AM2573 it later became (c1955) 8160 in the SM&BP list.

@Mallard60022 I have seen a picture of a Class A Esso tank in a train at Meldon Viaduct. Also there was a fuel depot at Barnstaple Victoria Road GWR station.

Yellow painting only came in during the BR period. When exactly I can't remember but they were still white when I joined in 1966.

The 1913? Distance Diagram shows the junction with the LNWR at Grand Junction being 41m22c from London Road Junction. The thick line is then dotted and the lines shown thin with L&NW against them up to the West Suburban junction at 42m38c from London Road Junction. Grand Junction replaced Derby Junction and Gloucester Junction ( at the east end of Exchange Sidings) when the 'Blue Hole' was built taking the Midland under the LNW at Landor Street. This remodelling came about due to the congestion as traffic increased culminating with the Derby Junction Collision in May 1892. https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3231063/3231066/46/rev george evans babell pensarn carmarthen The use of Midland mileage up to Proof House dates from the remodelling which took place under WCRM in 2000.

That was done in some places, although not consistently on the same company. The Midland mileages to Birmingham come from Derby and continue from the same datum between Kingsbury and Water Orton via the old line through Whitacre or new (1908) direct line with a mismatch at Water Orton. The New Line mileage of 33m22c at Water Orton East jumps to 34m43c as measured via Whitacre. Landor Street to Kings Norton and beyond to Yate is even more complex. The old line is easy, continuing from Landor Street via Camp Hill to Kings Norton and Barnt Green. Via New street the mileage goes as far as 41m51c at Proof House Junction then changes to the original London and Birmingham Railway mileage of 112m51c to the centre of New Street Station at 112m73c. There it changes to the Stour Valley Railway mileage of 0m05c. Why there and not the original Stour Valley datum I have no idea. Outside New Street PSB at 0m16c Stour Valley it resumes the Midland mileage at 42m35c onto the West Suburban Railway. At Kings Norton 48m02c via New Street reverts to 46m77c via Camp Hill. Midland practice on the Derby - Bristol line at least seems to be that if you diverge when running from Derby the mileage continues and if a line converges a new mileage starts back from the junction e.g the Nuneaton line starts from zero at Whitacre but the Walsall line runs continuously with the Derby mileage from Water Orton West Junction.

Last time I saw FS running on the main line was north of Settle shortly after its last rebuild. There was just me and my wife watching at Helwith Bridge. We were joined by two coup[les who were dog walking and stopped to ask us what was happening when they saw me with my camera

She has a Fatbike with tyres like an off road motorbike. I gave it a ride on Crosby Beach just below HWM recently (Tide was out at the time). Amazing machine. Not as hard going as I expected on roads or gravel trails and easy going on firm sand. She only managed to get it out on snow once last winter but said it was really easy compared to a mountain bike.

Fortunately Mrs SE has a habit of accumulating bicycles. She has different ones for different types of ride be it on gravel tracks, road, across rough country or stony, hill stuff. This means I do not have to feel guilty when buying model railway equipment as some of the specimens would purchase a whole shed full of locomotives. She is considering giving up the rather nice road jobbie which was a manufacturer's demo sample bought for cost price. I know how much it was because I picked it up from the shop owner who did a review of it for the builder and would guess that with the current supply problems it will go for more than that. Unfortunately that means I may have to make a token gesture with the sale of a piece from my collection. Fortunately I do still have a few things in the cupboard which were made redundant when replaced by retooled versions or cobbled up from the spares box using the surplus bits from cut'n'shut conversions.

The important thing is to keep it up enough to maintain what you want to reach. I actually lost two inches off my waist when I retired as I wasn't spending a large proportion of my waking hours behind a desk or sitting on trains with the associated snacking etc. I found that lockdown actually improved my walking performance as I got into a routine of walking 3 miles every day and doing at least one longer bike ride of 25-30 miles each week. I can now do most of the things I could do 20 years ago and in a few things am probably in better shape than 40 years ago. What you will notice has nothing to do with weight. That's if you do the same walk our ride on a regular basis you will see how the view undergoes subtle changes from daty to day depending on the weather and how nature runs its course through the year. I take several photos each week and find it interesting to compare what the countryside looked like this time last year and years before.

My mother worked for a group of 4 GPs for about 15 years. I sometimes used to earn a bit of pocket money by tallying up stuff for their pet research projects and filing away those old cardboard medical record packets when her assistant was on holiday. Certain ones had symbols on the top corner which indicated patients who were difficult to deal with especially hazards encountered on home visits such as over friendly pets or houses where you came out feeling you needed a shower before the next visit. As all of the patients lived in a fairly small area of the city mostly within 15 minutes walk of the surgery, these were used for determining the order in which the list of home visits were arranged. Easy ones were put on top of the pile and mopped up quickly on the first circuit after morning coffee with those who liked to keep talking next and truly obnoxious ones done after lunch as the last thing on your mind after entering certain houses would be eating. On holiday in deepest Northumberland last week we were in need of one of those adaptors for plugging in a 2-pin device to a 3-pin socket. SiL ordered one through the aforementioned company at 8pm. We went out next morning and when we returned at 4pm it was waiting on the doorstep.

Another week ends, where did the last one go? The west side of the Dark Peak seems to have missed most of the rain this wreek soi much of the G word done and now almost up to date. The grandsons had two cricket matches played. Third one postponed due to Covid outbreak at school attended by several of the opposition so they couldn't raise a team. Two big wins with both getting plenty of runs in their allotted overs without penalties for losing wickets.Both bowled their overs well with no wides or no-balls and both took wickets, so happy bunnies. Sammy seems to have been made preferred opening bat and 'Death Bowler' Weather looks dry here today so some outside jobs to do but can't see much chance of the cricket or Mrs SE's tennis match tomorrow, so may even get round to invoking the M word. Have three lots of etched sides to prepare for the waiting donor coaches.

Ah, the Trix Western. First model I had which died of Mazak Rot. Despite being a different scale to the other companies it looked good with a rake of maroon Trix coaches. The dodgy scale did have an advantage with the 16t Minerals which were closer to the correct length than the Dublo ones.

Rest days are important in these things. When we used to do cycle touring and long distance backpacking I always planned in some short days, particularly after a hard day. It also had the advantage that you had some slack in the schedule in case of bad weather or being unfit to go on a particular day. I learned the hard way after getting it wrong the first time I attempted the Pennine Way in 1987. Bad feet due to the bad ground conditions then trapped at 2000ft in the middle of a thunderstorm near Appleby, reputedly the worst rain in the area for over 200 years caused us to abandon. Second time I got it right and we were able to stay put for a day when the weather over Cross Fell was to bad to attempt it and we had an extra rest day planned immediately before the final two-day push across the Chevoits. Around 1990 we did a three week cycle tour of the WW1 battlefields where we racked up just over 1000 miles, so averaging about 50 miles per day. Some days we only did about 30 miles and on the longest section we did 83 miles in one go. Regarding eating, my Dad spent 25 years on shifts in the Fire Brigade. With constantly changing shifts and interrupted meal times because of fires he constantly suffered from stomach problems. It was an occupational hazard for full timers in those days. I always disliked the changeover if I was doing nights on big signalling commissionings. Except for very local staff I would book people into a hotel near to site. The night shift would usually travel out in the morning and sleep at the hotel in the afternoon on the first day. I would arrange meals for day and night shifts at the hotel and we would all eat together so everyone had a meal an hour before transport to site and on return at the end of shift. There would also be a supply of sandwiches, snacks and drinks available at site control during the shift so no-one went hungry.