The LNER Encyclopedia

This is a sight I recall a couple of times in fast freights on the ECML, the sheet on an open wagon having partially broken free, and wildly flogging about in the airflow. (I would like to model it, but much as with steam loco exhaust the physics are against a realistic representation.)

I assume that if the guard or footplate crew observed it, they would stop adjacent a signal box to report and correct, much as if a hot box had become evident. Would the signalmen have likewise called ahead to the next box for 'stop and inspect' if the train crew hadn't observed this happening?

Not really. There is no reference to this in the signalmen's regulations. If it looked as if it might cause injury or damage that would be different.

John

Thanks!

I wonder though, that it could be envisaged in the more general interests of 'the job' Hatfield Shed, that a message might be passed forward to the next place where the train was due to call, or perhaps likely to get stopped for other reasons, or somewhere where it could be stood 'out of the way'.

A late friend of mine was a signalman at Chiseldon Station on the Midland & South West Jct. Rly. close to Swindon.

He was on duty when an army train went south loaded with battle tanks, one of which had its gun and turret assembly flailing loose. By his reckoning quite a bit of the station got re-modelled but he called ahead and had the train stopped for the offending gun to be locked down.

NG.