Loco sheds and other railway buildings...

Interesting - you usually get inverted arch foundations underground, not at ground level. But the function is the same - they tie the 'pillars' (in between the windows) together and spread the load over a wider area of ground. You can see that the arches are running under the parts of the building where the structure is broken up by the windows. I wonder if the use of wooden infills between the windows on each storey is also to reduce the weight on the arches between the pillars? Before structural iron and steel was common you often got underground inverted arches running across buildings that needed to have large internal spaces unencumbered by pillars - I wonder if the GWR engineering shops had them as well as these visible ones in the walls?

These brick railway buildings near me in Peterborough are somewhat interesting:



They're just north of the station, and when they were built in the early 1900s they adjoined a wagon repair works. They were built by the GNR which found itself in rapid need of office space, so these two buildings were thrown up as quickly as possible. They're sort of the Victorian equivalent of portakabins - built with walls of only one-brick thickness. The larger one (nearest the Google car) has brick inbuilt pillars to take the load of the floors and roof, while apparently the smaller one has brick pillars inside it to support the roof trusses since the exterior walls aren't thick enough to do so. They were only meant to be temporary until the GNR could build some proper new office buildings, but they're still there 120+ years later. Both seem to still be in railway use, too.

Down in Cornwall for a week, saw this HST in Truro station, it's used from Plymouth to Penzance only I think.
If you can't read the plaque it says that it's the last HST from Old Oak Common

Some odds and sods I've dug up recently...

Old school muck and filth with 7903 'Foremarke Hall'...







Collett 0-6-2T 5619 between jobs...





9F 92203 gets a drink and a once over...





Solid and timeless GWR / WR engineering...

BBC news shows track maintenance workers painting the inside and outside of the rails with what looks like thick white paint, anyone know why, is it connected to the nearby fires?

Ah, thanks I thought it might be heat reflecting but did not think it was an efficient way of dissipating heat from a railway line, the top of the rail is still absorbing heat.

Must work though if as you say it is common practice.

Good point

Surely the trains would remove any paint from the top surface in pretty short order too?

It is certainly a struggle when things that shouldn’t be on the line interact with the trains. My sister works for Network Rail dealing with incidents and has shown me some of the reports

I’ve sadly not seen him since the mid- 1990’s. I think he went from Brighton MT to EWS at Hither Green, after that, I’m not sure.

He was/is certainly an effervescent character even in the eclectic ‘Brighton’ train crew. He performed regularly as ‘Captain Barrington-White’ with Captain Sensible (oh gawd, the memories of The Battle of Trafalgar pub)…

I doubt I’ll see such hilarity again.

Incidentally, in the photo, he was probably route learning as he was originally Brighton EMUT with an 8B into MT. Mick Hawkins was the MT health and safety rep… (And there’s a story there, too)..