TheSignalEngineer

A lot of vehicles on the west side of Birmingham and the Dudley end of Worcestershire had HA plates as well as those in Smethwick itself.

Smethwick registration plate.

Talking of Velocette, I used to live near to the site of their factory. I recently found this from 1933 showing bikes packed up and being loaded at Hall Green for transport to the 1933 TT. The van is a Python, the type regularly used for moving cars from the Singer factory at Tyseley a couple of miles away. https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrhg3881.htm

The basis of my tree started back in the 1980s. After we got talking to our Great Aunt who was approaching 90 years old my sister drew up all she said on a roll of lining paper. She proved to be a great source for the first eddort. In her own family, she was my paternal Grandmother's sister, she went back through her direct line and all of their children to 1823 off the top of her head. She also added a lot of our grandfather's family. As information became available on line I checked through what she had told us and there were only two errors in something like 100 names. Not copying other research on Ancestry is good advice. I use the Family Tree hints as pointers to possible lines of investigation. One particular branch which appears on about 20 trees on the web never looked right to me. One night when I had been unwell and unable to get to sleep I did what we used to call in our project planning a 'Post-It Party'. I wrote down the known confirmed details - DoB, Death, Baptism, Parents, Marriage, Occupations, etc, of all of the possibles for this line. They were all stuck in order on an old roll of wallpaper and relationship lines pencilled in. It confirmed what I suspected in that the person most people had as my great great great grandfather was probably incorrect.

Locos for that working were provided by the LMR. They didn't have any 37s.

With people being encouraged to meet grandparents outdoors during the festive season we will probably see more death from hypothermia than covid. I live by the Pennines not Bondi Beach ffs.

The one made from a dining car shows it would be possible to do a D1807 Vestibule 3rd. Hadn't thought of that when I did the Comet one.

Taunton always had a few. I managed several rides out of Ilfracombe behind them in the 1950s and 60s although I don't have the numbers. The last one was a Collett with the side window cab.

This points to to at least one of the gang or their helpers having S&T knowledge. I knew several people who were working on the resignalling of the area at the time who were asked by the police as to their whereabouts that night. It should be remembered that in addition to the S&T work on the electrification and track upgrading. Much of the work was being done by a largely itinerant workforce with no records of who they were. 'The Lump' was still prevalent in construction in those days. Labourers for the weekend shifts were recruited at the 'First Mass of Sunday' (6pm Saturday) and told where to catch the bus to that night's engineering possession. Fact, I knew people who used to do it.

I had a similar situation with an ancestor born before the introduction of the national system of registration. We came to a dead end at the 1841 census. The 1851 census had him as born in Oxfordshire although he lived in Shropshire. Finally when a set of Oxfordshire Parish Records was transcribed his name came up in the correct birth year, listed as illegitimate and his mother's name but the father's name added later by the church authorities. Now to find the missing link between the mother and villiage where he lived, the name having appeared there at least as far back as 1620.

My son and his partner have traced a lot of her tree back to the 1600s. One part of her family crops up frequently in the north of England during the Civil War, whilst others seem to bounce between the west of Scotland and Ulster. Later there are many connections in North America.

Agreed, and that makes the number of inter-relationships much higher I suppose, at least prior to the coming of the canals and railways. In earlier times it was mainly fighting that moved people over any distance. The name of one branch of my family is thought to date from the Norman Conquest. Later it was unknown in North America for the first 100 years or so of settlement. During the march south of a certain Scottish Prince in 1745 he was reputedly accommodated on their land in the North Midlands. Within five years there were several hundred people from that area with the same surname living in the American Colonies.

Statistically if you go back to the time of Henry VIII, given the size of the population in those days we should all be related to each other twice over.

There was an internal user which stood at Banbury for many years. I was aware of different paint colours as it rusted away and think it had a coat of lighter grey over the standard GWR grey.

Try this page https://www.railcar.co.uk/type/class-101/later-operations

Easiest thing to use with Westinghouse EPs (IIRC from 40-odd years ago) was a Pway bar through the hole in the drive rod. Important not to forget the plug coupler

It's always a minefield when things have been around for a while. Not related to a loco matter but when my Grandfather was a Signal Lineman and his old district was about to be taken over by a power box he had a visit from some historical archivist or similar within BR as some of the equipment was nearly 100 years old. He commented that he had never seen signal with ironwork supporting the flitches like one in the goods yard. Grandad replied you'll probably never find another. Before I put those on there they were holding up a cistern in the toilet block.

Sidings all over the system were used for this especially in the days of PO wagons. A question came up on another thread recently about Loco Department hoppers used for coal to the GWR gas works at Swindon. They were branded for return to Markham Main via Bordesley Junction IIRC and photos on Warwickshire railways show several parked in the sidings near the BIF at Castle Bromwich station.

The originals seemed to be a cut'n'shut of anything the works had on the scrap line from the old Ambulance stock. I've found 7 pictures so far and all are different. They lasted until the mid 1960s and certainly got around. The pictures I have found range from Birmingham to Leicester Central, Hertford, Hull and York.

I can empathise with that. My stock has gradually morphed from RTR carriages and wagons to something a bit more varied. My LMS Period 1 stock now has two cut'n'shut coaches not done RTR, an all-third and BCK. Instead of all Hornby Period 3 and Baccy Porthole stock I now have a rake of Period 1, 2 and 3 LMS Vestibule stock. Latest up is a start on a rake of LNER Open stock. Goods wise, although I have some TMC Plate and Bolster wagons I have now added LMS wood bodied versions from Matt Chivers, About 1/3 of my wagons are kit built and many others have been altered such as typre which had quite a good body but generic chassis have been rebuilt using kit parts.

When I was involved in these things about 30-40 years ago the 'official' required time to get a notice in the book was six weeks. IIRC the draft was prepared about 4 weeks out then the proofs were done by the printer. the final version went to press a week before distribution was due. Depending on how well in you were with the Line Manager's Office you could get one in at about ten days before the book was sent out. When the use of temporary AWS was introduced* I was responsible for the S&T input on our Division. The PWay delivered all TSR proposals to me, one of my staff worked out the braking distance required and any conflict with signal positions and fixed AWS to determine the optimum board position. I then checked his proposal and passed it back. ESRs were put to the front of the queue and usually turned round on the same day if we were both in the office. Converting to a TSR was then down to how fast the PWay could get the LMO to issue an emergency notice to all affected traincrew depots. *Still narked that my staff suggestion for it was turned down after my assistant had a brown trousers 60 through a 20 moment on his way to work one Monday morning two years before Nuneaton.

I remember the sidings being used when I first ventured up there for work purposes c1966. I think they were usually occupied by empty mineral wagons waiting for instructions to go back to the collieries. There were about six sidings on that side, probably having a capacity of 200+ wagons. You can still work out the alignment from Google Earth by the perimeter fence of the new depot. I think the sidings were put in during the building of Hams Hall B station which took place in 1937-42. The signal box was replaced just before WW2 which would tie in with that. The house was on the Whitacre side of the level crossing IIRC. It was possibly built when the sidings were put in and lasted a lot longer than the original station although I don't know what it was used for. The level crossing used to lead to some farms and Hams Hall, the house not the power station, when the railway was first built.

There was a derailment, in the Willesden area IIRC, just after privatisation where the ELR mileages at the meeting of two districts didn't match up. There was a section of track effectively in No Man's Land between two maintenance contracts. On the subject of mileage discrepancies when the Weaver Junction to Glasgow electrification was started the WCML was re-surveyed in metres from the stop blocks at Euston. By the time they got to Weaver Junction there was quite a big discrepancy from the chainage in the Sectional Appendix coming mainly from two sources. The station at Euston extended beyond the original 0MP and the line had been diverted round the works at Wolverton.

Our depots had Safety Reps elected by the staff. When I was in charge I would meet with them on a monthly basis to brief any forthcoming changes, review any accident reports and duscuss problems raised by site staff. On top of this they could request a special meeting with me if an urgent issue arose. During the aftermath of Clapham and the S&T fatalities at Edge Hill we reviewed the working methods on all of our projects from the necessity to work on live railway and equipment right down to how kit was safely stowed in the van. All were done in conjunction with the staff reps and I arranged for them to have open forums with the men to discuss how things were done with management staff only involved for the round-up session at the end of the day.

We used a bleep system operated by the advance lookout but not in ear defenders. There was a second lookout stationed with the team to ensure the warning was heeded. To be fail-safe the lookout held the handset button pressed to operate the bleep. He released the handset when a train was approaching. No bleep meant keep clear of the track until the person in charge said it was safe to do so. We also had a similar fixed system operated by train movements in a particularly noisy spot at Willesden.