Horses by Rail 29.04.07

Guess what we were doing in bed this morning? It's OK Richard, this is quite safe to read. We were finding out about the history of horse transport by rail. I had stolen Robbie's Model Rail magazine, because there was a long article about horse boxes and horse transport by rail. I like Model Rail because you can learn loads that perhaps wouldn't get a mention elsewhere, but it matters to modellers because they want to be as accurate as possible. I was surprised to find that horseboxes were usually incorporated into passenger services rather than freight services, where they would be positioned at the head of the train next to the engine. If four or more horseboxes were required a special could be run with just horseboxes and a passenger brake.

I was quite surprised at the extent of horse traffic on the railways. I had thought of the Race traffic, but there was also military movements, hunt specials, theatrical specials and general traffic. My favourite film from the British Transport Film Collection is Farmer Moving South because I love the way the special train is made up, I could watch that film over and over again!

When 'Sleeping Beauty' woke up and realised he wasn't going to be able to wrestle his magazine from me until I had read it from cover to cover he decided to distract me with other book's. Out came a book of plans, it was A Pictorial Record of Great Western Coaches (part 2) to be precise. It was really interesting with line drawings showing the layout of the horseboxes, there was even a specially strengthened version for Elephants! In the end Robbie gave up and plodded of to make a cup of tea because I wouldn't relinquish the magazine and I had swiped the book as well.

It isn't often that Robbie is unable to answer a question, but when I asked him what a clerestory carriage was he just showed me some pictures. I had to search the internet to find that it is a passenger vehicle incorporating a raised central roof portion in order to enhance headroom, lighting and ventilation. On the subject of questions I was looking at Class 20's this morning; why are they so weird? Nose first it looks like an alien and cab end first it looks really scary. I certainly wouldn't want to meet that on a dark night!

On the subject of dark nights, I had the strangest dream about Robbie last night. In my dream he arrived in the cab of a train and jumped out and killed an alligator in Morrison's car park. Oddly enough they do have a bit of a drainage problem in the car park, but I have absolutely no idea why I should have been thinking about Alligators! Anyway Robbie would have run a mile, he is even scared of the guinea pig.

This Way to Plymouth, or Maybe That Way! 28.01.07

Robbie watched one of his DVD's this morning, about the southern holiday routes. He sat there on the bed like the Buddha, competing with the narrator, trying to squeeze in even more exciting little snippets of information about the routes and the stations. I now know all about the peculiarities of Exeter St Davids. Trains to Plymouth could enter and leave the station in opposite directions on either the Southern or Great Western line, that must have caused no end of confusion.

I finally coaxed him out of bed and after a bit of dithering he headed off to town to for the last little bits for Emily's birthday. I wrote him a list of what was needed including 4 sheets of gift wrap and he bought 4 pieces of wrapping paper, nothing more or less. I forgot that train planners have no imagination, when he got home he presented me with 4 sheets of the SAME paper and 2 identical gift tags! He got very upset when I refused to wrap everything up in the same paper because it would be boring. He asked how he was supposed to know if I didn't write down exactly what I wanted! I give up!!