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Glad to have been of help. Yes, both the centre and right-hand arms in the above picture are corrugated ones. They eventually came up with the flanged edges as seen on the arm in your original photos - quicker and therefore cheaper to produce, I understand.

The back view indicates a pair of horizontal corrugations in the spectacle plate in which an arm with corrugations would have fitted. Such arms were in use by several railway company from around 1910 onwards and were originally used with cast-iron spectacles. However the spectacle plate in this...

A 23-lever frame could be lifted out as one unit and dropped into the new box. But this would need a complete engineer's possession of the line for some hours. My guess is that it probably took a day to do everything, starting in the very early hours of the morning. Preparatory work before the...

The frame couldn't be put in place without support being present as they weigh a lot, so I would expect boxes with brick or stone bases would have these bases built first together with the supports needed for the frame. Lever frames could be brought to site as a unit and craned into place...

'Royal Scot' and support coach running as 5Z70 from Barrow Hill to Southall, seen above passing the preserved St Albans South signal box at 2.40pm on a lovely sunny day.

I've no idea about carriage oil lamps, but tail lamps and hand lamps as used by railway staff had around a 24hour burning capacity. Signal lamps had generally an eight-day capacity but were replaced/refilled every seven days.

Bexhill West - alas, closed in 1964 - would be my favourite seaside terminus if the trains still ran there, due to memories of several family holidays there. The building still stands but is now an antiques centre and auction room with cafe. See...

Probably roundabout then, if not earlier. My source quoted in my post #4 above indicates that early electrical lighting was tried out in the 1880s but it was the development by J Stone of an efficient axle-driven dynamo charging batteries in the 1890s that led to such lighting being used...

According to "The Oxford Companion to British Railway History" the first gas lighting was using town gas. This was followed by 'compressed oil gas stored in cylinders usually beneath the vehicles...', a system invented by Julius Pintsch in the 1870s. But it doesn't explain what 'Oil Gas' was!

Seems odd to me to think of BR grey/blue as being a 'heritage' livery! But it's part of our railway history and it does look to have been well done. (Is that someone's Mini parked next to it?)

That would make sense - general lighting for when you are moving around or under a rail vehicle and a bit brighter in front for looking at something in more detail.

The design of the lamp is probably from the Victorian era, even if it was made for BR (W) after nationalisation in 1948! I note your comments about the precision of the side windows. I can only think it was used perhaps on a station as a sort of torch to move safely around at night. (The...

It's a hand-lamp, although not of a sort I've seen before. It's a bit odd in that it has glass in the sides, yet has a reflector to help throw light forward! I wonder if someone at some time has cut out the sides and added the glass for some reason? You are correct that BR(W) means BR Western...

See also the photo on my post #31 above from the Geograph Website which is one of a number showing the old 'Boom' gates, as they were referred to. The signalbox is tight up against the pavement as this photo (click on it to go to the larger original) of the new gates shows: Level crossing on...

Saturday 11th May, 10am-4.30pm. SW Herts Model Railway Society Show at Queens School, Aldenham Road, Bushey, WD23 2TY. See their website www.southwesthertsmrs.org.uk for more information.

The final total of 'unwanted' calls for April was 23. Each one failed to get through the 'Call Guardian' system on my phone, so I wasn't disturbed directly by them. Seven numbers were not mentioned on the 'Who called me' site - the rest were, all as scammers, mostly about insulation....

They do slide along as seen here: Level crossing on West Dyke Road, Redcar © Copyright JThomas and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence. They replaced these earlier barriers: Level crossing on West Dyke Road © Copyright JThomas and licensed for reuse under this Creative...

It would have been done in-stitu by the railway maintenance crew, as this splitting is due to aging, exposure to weather and the physical disturbance of the sleeper on the ballast by passing trains.

The Building Research Establishment (BRE) at Garston, N. of Watford, Herts, was asked in WW2 to look at concrete sleepers as an urgently needed substitute for hard to get timber. In 1942 they made measurements of the forces acting on sleepers on a main line railway. This led to the development...

The rhyme started off, I understand, from when the 'signal' indications were given by such coloured flags held by lineside policemen before fixed signals were introduced.