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stop blocks

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 10:51 am
by steve howe
This query came from a modelling colleague at our Club. Any one have any suggestions?
Steve

I am currently working on a locomotive yard, similar to Ranelagh Bridge or Kings Cross Yard, with several Mike's Models LSWR-type stop blocks (buffers) at the ends of sidings.
These days, the buffer beams on siding stop blocks are white with a central horizontal red stripe but I have an idea they used to be plain red (which would certainly be easier to paint).
My layout is set around 1959 but the stop blocks could well have last seen a coat of paint much earlier than this.
Colour photos are hard to come by as, for some reason, photographers seem to have preferred to point their cameras towards the train rather than the end of the siding.
With your knowledge of industrial sidings, etc. do you know what would be correct?

Re: stop blocks

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 11:37 am
by dal-t
I've seen this discussion on two if not three other Forums without it ever, AFIK, coming to a conclusion - so it would be excellent if someone here can nail it convincingly. If I recall correctly (not impossible, if increasingly unlikely) the last time it petered out with the revelation that Bob Essery wasn't sure what had happened. The conclusion I drew from that was no-one could prove you wrong whatever you did, so my (7mm) layout at the time had a mixture of all-red and red-and-white blocks (still carefully preserved for the next effort - just got to decide which part of our now much more extensive garden is going to host the tracks).

Re: stop blocks

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 11:44 am
by John Palmer
The HMRS Livery Register for the LSWR and SR says that the working faces of stop blocks for these railways were 'usually' painted in the white-red-white scheme of horizontal stripes and that the earliest photo showing this is dated 1905.

In May 1935 the seaward end stop blocks at Burnham-on-Sea were newly painted in this way, but at a subsequent date that I haven't been able to determine the timber forming the working face was replaced and painted red, and there were plenty more stop blocks on the S&D Section similarly painted with an all-red face. S&D Section blocks are likely to reflect the practice of the Southern Railway's CCE's Department.

Similarly, a quick skim through photos of the LSW section west of Salisbury suggests indiscriminate adoption of both painting schemes, but with a bias towards the striped scheme. Many of the beams with the striped schemes also have their ends rounded rather than square cut.

My conclusion is that you can't be faulted for adopting either scheme.

Re: stop blocks

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 11:51 am
by LesGros
Perhaps the white red white scheme was to make them easier to see in poor light, in the days before floodlit yards?