|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 17, 2021 21:07:45 GMT
Wasn't the B to indicate they could run in the tunnels to/from Bank? The older trains contained materials that were considered unsafe if there was a fire in the tunnels. This came up a while ago, I think the general view is that B denotes Beckton (Depot), but I don’t think anyone swears by it, especially as the B90 stock pre-dates Beckton by some while. The P89 stock could work to Bank, but the P86 couldn’t. By the early 1990s P89 stock to Bank was rare, but it did happen. Front seats on the P stock were better than the B stock as there wasn’t the emergency door to hinder views. My understanding is that it was P for Poplar depot and B for Beckton depot.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 15, 2021 21:12:24 GMT
From a training point of view we have been working hard on getting people trained since July. The backlog of newly promoted people in training when Covid hit has been cleared and I believe we're now into the tail end of of cross line transfers that were delayed by Covid. What that essentially means is that we've got a gap of about nine months or so of new promotions across the combine to make up for so we're in a much better place than we were four months ago. This sounds like very good news, and now that the training of new people has been mentioned, I realise that it is quite a while since I heard of the Met line (and other services which depend on its signalling staff) closing down because of a lack of signalling staff in the control room.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 15, 2021 21:03:58 GMT
Thanks, I knew that - what I do not know is why I did not use that term in my message ... must of written it late at night when half asleep
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 14, 2021 23:21:19 GMT
I can remember seeing tripcocks part way along the platform - and seeing / hearing them lowering as the train approached. Liverpool Street Central line westbound had that type of multi-home signalling; as a schoolboy I used to listen out for the the hiss of air as the tripcocks raised as the back of the train was passing over them. I almost always travelled in the last car where I could watch the guard at work. But, re: the Victoria line I seem to recall that the sight of two moving trains partially in the one platform so upset the passengers on the platform (who feared that there was about to be a crash) that LT changed the signalling to prevent this from happening. Spsmiler, the hiss of air you listen to on the Central Line was from a trainstop on the track. Tripcocks were on the leading bogie and rear bogie of a train . ooops! late at night... yes I was thinking of the trainstops ... which interact with the tripcocks on the trains if a signal was passed at danger!
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 13, 2021 22:46:53 GMT
I'm just surprised that the conductor rail layouts were changed from the days when shorter trains were operated. There was a time when many lines ran short trains.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 13, 2021 22:41:12 GMT
This did happen with multi-home conventional signalling, intended to bring trains close together to improve platform reoccupation. As a train departed, the following train received progressively clearing home signals, but the final one had no signal alongside its trainstop. If a departing train stopped in an unusual position, the following train could be tripped to a stand part-way down the platform. So the original Victoria line signalling provided an auto version of this. I can remember seeing tripcocks part way along the platform - and seeing / hearing them lowering as the train approached. Liverpool Street Central line westbound had that type of multi-home signalling; as a schoolboy I used to listen out for the the hiss of air as the tripcocks raised as the back of the train was passing over them. I almost always travelled in the last car where I could watch the guard at work. But, re: the Victoria line I seem to recall that the sight of two moving trains partially in the one platform so upset the passengers on the platform (who feared that there was about to be a crash) that LT changed the signalling to prevent this from happening.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 13, 2021 22:30:49 GMT
Yes and paint it in a BR livery - indeed even do each of the cars in a different livery to represent the liveries they wore in real life - Southern Railway, BR green, BR blue, BR NSE toothpaste!
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 10, 2021 11:50:55 GMT
More from Ilford - Friday 8th October 2021
btw, I suspect that they are putting up brackets of some sort. My photos include showing one of the men using a drill, at some stage whilst watching them at work I saw one of them using that 'most important' of all tools - a hammer!
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 10, 2021 11:47:22 GMT
Even with 2 sets of these each platform you wont see them correctly as they too small. LU's position seems to be that so long as they are it doesn't matter whether or not they are visible/readable along the entire length of the platform. This position is to some extent forced upon them by various other necessary items obscuring their view. Presumably they decided that there was no point in going to the expense of giant indicators when there was so often a need for passengers to reposition themselves to avoid obstructions. Its a matter of astonishment, because the large displays which had larger text and often also displayed several colours were ever so much easier to read from a distance along the platform - and now these have all been replaced with displays that are physically so much smaller so even if they did not show another line of text they would still have been unreadable unless one is very close to them. Also, I wonder how disability groups (especially those that deal with partially sighted people) feel about the new smaller displays. My thoughts are along the lines of something that could be read by the 'visually impaired' being replaced by something that is too small and hence much less easy to read by visually impaired people. Maybe though my thinking here is flawed and I am missing something?
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 9, 2021 14:27:22 GMT
The historic Train Describers (already heavily modified circa 2008) are listed assets. Underground News reports that they are undergoing modifications to continue to be operable when CBTC is commissioned in this area as part of SMA 5. Good! Its a shame that the westbound historic train describer at Barons Court has now fallen by the wayside. Oh and that not even one each of the Central line and Northern line similar devices remain extant at a station somewhere.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 9, 2021 14:23:13 GMT
I too cannot imagine any other use for the majority of the fleet, although there may well be some niche that wants an old tube car for some non-railway purpose, perhaps similar to the four 1983ts in Shoreditch. Farmyard chicken coup?
Because of the internal height issue they would probably not even be wanted for use as a holiday home camping coach.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 9, 2021 8:22:00 GMT
I too recall that people were allowed to smoke during their journeys. The inside of the smoking cars reeked of tobacco and the paintwork had a yellow-ish hue.
As a non-smoker I always aimed to travel in the non-smoking cars.
I recall accompanying some relatives who lived in New York on a train journey back to central London (where they were staying in a hotel) and they were delighted to find that smoking was allowed on our 'subway' (sic) as it was prohibited on the New York Subway. I this was in the 1970s.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 7, 2021 23:43:11 GMT
The artist using that term somewhat peeved me - was it ever foggy - apart from when steam trains were running?
However, as a painting this is superb. See tweet below.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 7, 2021 23:39:48 GMT
None of the standard stock driving motors have seats as I haven’t made them yet! I will get round to it as I am retooling the 1926/27 motor car. The seats will be separate as I think the motor chassis should be white metal. The current 1927 is more akin to the 1924 MCCW car. Phil used to do a 1925 C Laird car too. Thanks, I'll be interested in having one, when it is ready. Also the Waterloo & City DM - but only with trailers / not as a single car. Time is not an issue, especially as it will soon be too cold to paint (using spray cans) outdoors. To answer a previous question, I am more interested in having a representative of the train types, it never occurred to me to wish for anything built by one train builder over the others.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 7, 2021 23:31:48 GMT
This is 1923 trailer No. 7296, painted in a 1930s livery (with red doors) which included naming the line it ran on. This is 1925 control trailer No. 5279, painted in 1923 livery Carrying its original number, I see. I can't make out the number on the trailer, but the original number of 7296 was 846,which doesnot appear to be the number on the side of the car. I wish I had taken more photos but was also filming video - so needed to film everything twice! btw, did you see all the external rivets on the the control trailer? I think only Cammell Laird built their versions like this - not the other train builders.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 6, 2021 23:01:30 GMT
StandardStck1990MordenDepotOpenDay3This is 1923 trailer No. 7296, painted in a 1930s livery (with red doors) which included naming the line it ran on. This is 1925 control trailer No. 5279, painted in 1923 livery edit to add: According to page 16 of the London Underground Railway Society publication "Standard" Tube Stock - A Photographic History By Brian Hardy (Part One) the specification of the prototypes of these trains cited a livery of vermillion, black and cream. Vermillion is an orange-red. I state this because it seems that the adopted livery was different - the train doors look quite different to the cited livery colours (dark berry, perhaps?), although this livery seen here would very likely meet the present-day requirements for contrasting door colours.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 6, 2021 20:28:05 GMT
The earliest Standard Stock DM (as a passenger car) they sell is from a 1926/7 batch.
What I did not realise is that Radley do not include a seating unit for the DM's. On discovering this my next thought was to buy a control trailer / trailer seating unit but with these the seats are integral with the chassis, and anyway the door / window spacing is different than the DM's - so that option is also not viable. When I make my next purchase I will ask if the 1931 DM's have seating units and if not then I will have to use cardboard or plasticard to create the seats. Probably I'll attach these seats to the inside of the body shell.
Seats are important as I will be including model passengers and working internal lighting, so I very much expect what is inside the trains will be seen. I am using HO scale passengers bought cheaply from eBay and what I have from when I was modelling railways 30-40 years ago. Being slightly small it usually means that HO passengers do not need their legs chopping off to get them to fit in the transverse seats. Also, whilst they will be painted it will be only 'lightly'. eg: jackets will be painted - but not shirt and ties!
re: the tube car liveries, I think that if it was OK for a 1959 Northern line train to wear 1923 livery then it will be OK for a one part of a 1927 Standard Stock train to also wear that livery. I am thinking of having each of the three tube cars in this train wearing a representation of a different livery that these trains wore in their time in service. It would be nice if the real LU Standard Stock train also did the same - there are at least four versions that I can think of, and thats before thinking of their second lives on the Isle of Wight. What I need to do is find the correct colour codes for the cream window bands and dark red doors.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 5, 2021 19:00:10 GMT
I have also been doing other things too, but finally, the signal is almost completed. making it has not been that difficult, rather its been a saga of trials and tribulations, such as when the green pre-wired smd LED light (just as I thought I could glue it) lost its negative power supply wire and I had to replace it - a task that required me to thread two power supply wires through a signal post that was also a very tight fit. Oh and the hole at the top of the signal post was very small so that I could barely see what I was doing! As some people will know, many London Underground signals have an extra downwards facing light that is easier for train drivers to see when they have drawn right up to the signal. I got this to work too!
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 4, 2021 9:43:01 GMT
Hmm, please be aware though that if you are making a point to point journey and are asked to travel by bus instead (for the entire journey) then you will almost certainly end up paying a cheaper fare on the bus than the train! The only possible exception to this is for people with railcard discounts (on Oystercards) which only apply to train travel - not to bus travel. Unlikely though - very few rail fares, even when discounted, would be less than £1.55. A more likely outcome is that you might end up paying for a bus fare as well as a train fare if you have to complete your journey by bus, or even paying for a second train fare as well if you use a bus to bridge a gap in train services. Right now if I used my personalised Oystercard which has a Senior Railcard loaded on it I will be charged just one guinea (ie: £1.05) for an off-peak journey that does not include zone 1. For instance, for me to go to from Gants Hill to Westfield Stratford. However, peak fares are not discounted - not even in the evening peak, which I suspect is a new 'post covid' thing because I feel sure that discounted fares were charged in the afternoon peaks prior to the covid era. Returning to the topic of ticket acceptance, as I understand it in some circumstances *Baker Street is an accepted 'London Terminal' for mainline railway tickets to London from some locations to the north of London. Because of the very limited direct 'reasonable' connections nowadays with the routes out of Euston it is unlikely that a 'reasonable' route could be devised but if (for instance) the Croxley Link had been build and disruption meant that all trains had to terminate at Watford Junction (and the Overground dc tracks were also closed) then passengers could legitimately find themselves on a Met train to Baker Street as a 'rail replacement' service. *This dates from years ago when Met trains went to Aylesbury and Marylebone trains went to Manchester.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 4, 2021 9:21:37 GMT
I've ordered a 1923 DM from Radleys and am thinking of painting it in the original 1923 livery, which is similar to the Heritage livery being worn by the 1959ts train seen below. 1959-Heritage-Train at Morden during the depot open day event in November 1990When first built the 1923 trains had differently coloured train doors - my photograph shows this on the cab doors but it also applied to the passenger doors - which being open cannot be seen in this photo. So... they are probably compliant with present-era visual disability regulations! For a while they also had the line name on their sides, which for the ones that ran on what we nowadays call the Northern line was Morden - Edgware Line. As an aside, I was surprised to discover that my 1990 Morden Depot Open Day photos of the Standard stock train with some of the trailers in this livery (and a DM in Network SouthEast livery) are not on Flickr. Thats an omission I need to rectify!
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 2, 2021 20:52:17 GMT
I’ve done that before. Dropping it on the floor is a nightmare. Perhaps a bit of wet and dry might work and then a touch up the paint. Dettol might well work too. Thanks. I am considering using weathering paints so maybe a few paintwork flaws / blemishes (after I've repaired the paint damage) won't matter. Then there is rust... I've recall seeing around the roof guttering on trains such as the CP stock in their twilight days. I've discovered another issue regarding Cerulean Blue. In the photos below the colour in the first train looks lighter than the colour in the second image. The first image even has a slight bluish tint. (image source: www.abc.net.au/news/image/4459284-3x2-940x627.jpg - the website used this image with permission from TfL, I hope my embedding this image is not breaching copyright regulations) 1938TubeDM-LTMuseum-P1400078(one of my images) Maybe its just photography... but from my experience the Citadel paint is even darker than the colour in the photo I took at the LT Museum. edit to add: I should have done this ages ago... I looked up this colour on the internet and got a HEX colour specification (#32A189), from which I made the image below: This really does have a blue tint! Comparing this colour rectangle with the 1938TS car at the LT museum I suspect that LT may have changed the colour very slightly - I now suspect that the confusion has come about because all my photos from the 1970s and 1980s which show the insides of trains painted with this colour show the newer (more green) version. Perhaps to match the dark green colour in the seat fabric.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Oct 2, 2021 20:48:42 GMT
Hmm, please be aware though that if you are making a point to point journey and are asked to travel by bus instead (for the entire journey) then you will almost certainly end up paying a cheaper fare on the bus than the train!
The only possible exception to this is for people with railcard discounts (on Oystercards) which only apply to train travel - not to bus travel.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Sept 29, 2021 10:13:02 GMT
I regret it now but I cannot recall ever taking photos at Dalston Junction before it was closed.
Gunnersbury is a different issue as I never travelled though the older, multiple platformed station.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Sept 29, 2021 10:09:55 GMT
Driverless trains have been around for decades - but apart from perhaps the Nuremberg Germany U-Bahn plus parts of the Paris metro this has always been on new-build services designed for driverless trains. Here in London we did have the FACT Project on the Hainault - Woodford route (FACT = Fully Automatic Control of Trains) I understand this as having been concluded in 1978 - due to lack of funds. This website may be of interest, I admit it is some years since I reviewed its information. metroautomation.org/ (Observatory Of Automated Metros)
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Sept 27, 2021 9:16:11 GMT
Had a disaster when painting a Q38 DM ... it was not securely enough fixed to where it was and the spray paint pushed it over - so it fell on the floor! Since I was in the garden (because of the smell of the spray paint) it landed on some soil. Brushing it off did not work.
So I now have a choice, either I use dettol to strip the paint off and start again or I 'distress' the Q38 DM, painting the surface blemishes as rust.
re: the citadel green paint, I have found a worthy alternative - at Hobby Craft. Its their own brand, paint number 6309481012 Green and its a lot cheaper than the Citadel paint too. however, whereas the Citadel paint seems to be thin enough for using with an airbrush undiluted the Hobbycraft paint is much thicker. But since the seats are being painted using a brush this is better, as it means I need less paint (can still thin it, if desired).
Also, after using the green paint on the seats I added some white (to the green that had been poured on to my paint tray!) and used the much lighter green to paint some clothing on model people. Painting model people is a Herculean task that to preserve sanity is best accomplished either in small batches or when wearing headphones and listening to a podcast. I am yet to paint the inside the trains. Primarily this will be just the walls, doors and ceiling. As I will be fitting interior lights I think these will need doing - erm, I'm not adding adverts / route maps etc; possibly these would need doing in O gauge but not in OO.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Sept 24, 2021 13:36:55 GMT
Work progressing at Ilford - see tweet below
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Sept 24, 2021 13:27:40 GMT
The tunnels below the River Mersey are of interest to underground train scholars and historians because the service originally used steam locomotives ... but it became bankrupt because the tunnels were so unpleasant from the smoke that passengers actively avoided it*. Quite possibly the same would have happened in London had the deep level tube trains used steam traction for their passenger services - at least London's subsurface tunneld were partially ventilated.
*After bankruptcy the tunnels were bought and converted to electric traction, and the service then became so successful that it is still open today, as a part of the Meyseyrail Wirral line.
Also, another London Underground connection is that during WW2 withdrawn Metropolitan & Great Western Railway electric trains which were built for the service to Hammersmith were sent to Merseyside in case of air raid bombs destroying the Mersey Railway rolling stock. As far as I am aware the Met & GWR trains never actually carried fare paying passengers in Merseyside.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Sept 24, 2021 13:13:15 GMT
Good to see the Greenford - West Ealing line included It doesn't make the map look any more crowded Maybe because it will soon be using former Underground trains? Or to boost patronage by showing that it exists?
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Sept 24, 2021 13:08:20 GMT
Am I correct in believing that one side effect of the extension is the ending of the Bushey Heath - Edgware - Mill Hill East - Finchley Central shuttle service and the return to through trains 'all day'?
If so I bet the passengers who no longer need to change trains at Finchley Central must be delighted that the new extension has opened.
|
|
|
Post by spsmiler on Sept 22, 2021 23:26:01 GMT
Finally completed my film...
|
|