Old Git

Apologies for the delay in coming back to this thread, I moved house a couple weeks back and it's been manic ever since! Anyways, herewith those pictures of the Switchboard? Anyone recognize this switchboard? Can anyone give me a brief over view of connecting two Set D Mk V phones direct to each other, or is this not possible?

Thanks for the replies chaps, will endeavour to get a picture of the switchboard later today.

Hi All, anyone got any pamphlets for old British telephone set D, MkV and a GEC Universal 6/7 line switchboard, serial no 733? The switchboard and phones have been in my garage for a few years and all the gubbins seems to be there so thought it would be nice to see if I could get them working. If no pamphlets then any advice on how to get them working would be much appreciated. I know the phones take a 3 volt battery but not sure what size of battery to use in the switchboard, anyone know? Rgds Pete

Another Cracking thread chaps and hugely informative, love the diagrams they explain a lot!

Hi Ron, thanks for these, and the additional info, sorry for the late reply but had to go away for a few days and haven't had much time to myself. I'll have a look over these drawings this weekend and maybe shoot you a PM early next week. Thanks again mate, I really appreciate the help. Pete

Anyone got any dimensioned drawings of the BSA M20 Girder Forks, or any of the various components that go to making up the forks?

Hi Chaps, sorry it's taken me so long to come back and update this thread but I've had a hellishly busy week, beset with some personal issues, that has taken up all my time. So, I've heard back from my mate and this is what he had to say about the two bridge sets... He also attached some pics 1/LFB 6FT LONG TWO PIECE PIER 2/ THE LFB TRUCK 3FT 6INS LONG 3/ THE HFB PIER IN 3 PARTS TOTAL LENGH 5FT 3INS I'm afraid they're not selling off vast amounts of stuff, just clearing out some old store rooms and ridding themselves of some surplus pieces. I am going down there tomorrow morning, and will ask if/what else they are selling off. Not sure there will be anything much though, otherwise he'd have mentioned it already. So, if you're seriously interested in the above, shoot me a PM with a contact email address and I'll see what can be worked out Rgds Pete

Just heard back from my mate and he tells me he won't be back in the Museum till Tuesday at which time he'll determine exactly what it is they'll be selling, the crate dimensions and the final price. He reckons it may not be cheap but I've often found that his definition of cheap and mine differ wildly. I'll post whatever info I get here and you can take it from there, in he meantime here's a couple of images from ThinkDefence website that shows both the LFB, according to the ThinkDefence website the HFB was a scaled up version of this The original ThinkDefence article on Bridging can be found here... http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2011/12/uk-military-bridging-floating-equipment/ Pete

Hello All, I've been asked by a contact at the RE museum if I know anyone interested in buying some old MoD instructional Bridge Models of the post-war Light Floating Bridge and Heavy Floating Bridge (these bridging systems would have been contemporaneous with HGB and pre-dated MGB). The models are about 1/10th scale and as my chap at the RE Museum puts it, "for someone with a garden pond they'd make great garden ornaments". They'd also make great centre pieces for shows and, given the scale, could easily be mixed with figures and vehicles from the HM Forces range. The kids would never leave your display area!!! As some of you know I have a sizeable collection of the 1/6th scale Bailey Bridge and that takes up a lot of space, I have a set of old stables that double as storage and workshop space so it's easy for me. However, I have owned some of the LFB components before and, from what I remember, these should easily fit at the back of a standard garage. Admittedly my mate hasn't given me the crate dimensions yet but I'll get on to him today for those. I'll also get prices but I wouldn't expect it to be too much as the game plan is they either sell them or destroy them. This is a good chance to get a really cool piece of post-war kit that no-one else will have and which you can, and will, pass on to your kids and grandchildren. My three boys and my daughter are already fighting over who gets my Bailey Bridge when I pop my clogs....the little treasures that they are! If you're potentially interested, notwithstanding dimensions and prices, post a reply here and I'll see if I can't put you in touch with my mate! First come, first served. Pete

A stunning piece of work is spot, it's just superb! I'm reading Gunbuster's novel's from 1945; he was a serving artillery officer during the war who wrote a series of fictional works which are quite obviously based on his own experiences. "Return via Dunkirk" is about a 25 pdr troop during the war in France and the retreat to Dunkirk "Battle Dress!" is a series of vignettes covering much the same period "Zero Hours" is set during the North African campaign "Grand Barrage" is set on Malta during the siege and concerns an Ack-ack crew and the final book is "Victory Salvo" which is also set in the desert. I'm reading this last one now and I've just got to the section where they've had their 6 pdrs replaced with the new pheasant. It's a very interesting read, in fact they're all very interesting reads and have a great deal of authenticity to them. I recommend them, they were all first published between 1941 and 1946 but I believe they were reprinted in the 1990's by Windrow & Greene under their 'classic military library' series. That said you can still get the original's very, very cheaply. If you do go after the originals try to get copies which still have the original dustjackets, the drawings on them are very nice and evocative of their time.

Fantastic information guys thanks for posting it!

I think these boogies might have been a universal design thing because I'm pretty sure that something very similar was used for Mobile Bailey bridges. In hostile areas bridges could be jacked-up onto these tracked contraptions and then pushed into place with a Churchill. Here's a link to an image from the Think Defence web site which shows this in operation. http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Churchill-AVRE-propelling-a-Mobile-Bailey-bridge-740x364.jpg

Just Beautiful! :-D

Absolutely cracking pictures mate, keep em coming. I'm loving this thread! :laugh:

Cracking stuff! It's wonderful to see the internals of this beautiful wee vehicle!

Please pass on my regards to Mr Surrey and let him know he is in my thoughts and prayers. I have just been reading through his memoirs when I came upon this... This is heart-rendering, as a parent of four I cannot imagine the pain involved in burying all of your children and I'm not sure I could endure it if ever it happened! And yet I'm sure that before the war was over it had become a common experience for very, very many families. We forget so easily how others suffered so much that we might bask in the sunny uplands free from fear and oppression. Everything we are, and everything we have, we owe to those who gave their tomorrows for our todays!

By and large I'd think most images are stored off-site on individuals photo hosting accounts. They are posted in-line in posts/threads here on the forum by using special BB IMG tags to load the picture directly from where it's hosted. Essentially, this forum has no control over the pictures and is not responsible for storing them, the benefit to the forum is that it puts less tress on the web server and requires infinitely less disk space to store the forum if you're not also storing the pictures. However, the downside to this arrangement is that if the individual closes that photo hosting account or deletes his pictures from that photo-hosting account then they disappear from the forum threads as well and they show as red X's. It's a perennial problem on all Internet forums when the pictures on very old posts disappear. Vbulletin, on which this forum runs use to have an 'attachment' system where the pictures got attached to the post and either uploaded to the database or a backend file system. As I say the problem there is storage for the 100's and 100's of photo's you can end up with, especially on a site such as this one. I don't know if this site ever employed the attachment system as I've always used photobucket and remote linked to images. However, the attachment system in Vbulletin was a third-party add-on (made by Yahoo I think) and a major security vulnerability appeared in it a few years back. Yahoo end-of-lifed the app and said they would not fix the flaw and all Vbulletin boards were forced to cease using it. I think there may now be replacement apps but I haven't looked into that as I prefer to force my uses (I run a wee hobby board which is also hosted on Vbulletin) to use their own photo hosting sites. I then make my own decisions about which threads I feel need archiving and for those threads I have a small app that automatically imports the attached pics as soon as I move the thread to a special archiving area. It sounds wonderful but it sometimes barfs on me and periodically I have to go in and manually fix some bad import links! So a long winded answer, sorry about that (Brevis esse Laboro, Obscurus Fio) but in short, the chap who originally posted the pictures has most likely deleted them off his own photo hosting account. Maybe PM him directly and ask him for copies.

I've somehow missed the last couple of updates on this thread but I'm glad to see it's still ongoing nd as Rick said you're doing a cracking job mate. Lots and lots of pics please, nice close-ups on all those lovely details too! I wonder if this site is being backed up by the British Library archiving program, it ought to be!

it may have something to do with mines which is why the flails are going forward to deal with it? Re the LRC in the second picture, given the date there were only three possible units in that area (Bretteville-Sur-Orne) and those were 11th Armoured, 43rd Wessex and 15th Scottish. What little I can see of the Divisional sign doesn't convince me that it's 11th Armoured so that leaves either 43rd Wessex or 15th Scottish. At this time 43rd Wessex were dug in on a line running from Tourville, Mondrainville & Mouen, along what is now the D675, which runs east via Bretteville and on into Caen it is possible that these are 43rd Wessex Divisions bridging engineer's being called forward to deal with some bridging op on the Odon. It wasn't a particularly wide waterway which may account for the FBE going ahead of the pontoons, just guessing though! Of course it might just be an 8th Corps tac sign which may mean the LRC belongs to the Corps RE HQ unit? Thanks for that Barry, much appreciated mate. I've signed up to the Yahoo group and pulled off a lot of stuff that was up there. Looking over it all has made me want to start on the LRC immediately! Here's a pic of the cardboard mock-up that I did to test the viability of the project. The wheels aren't correct they're just there to make it look better!

Fantastic project and great pics so far, keep em coming, nice large pics with lots of detail! We love details. Best of luck with it mate, I hope it gives you hours of endless fun!

The other body is the frame work for Folding Boat Equipment, similar (but not identical) to the winches on the Pontoon body. Someone on MLU posted drawings for both a few years back. I think I've squirreled them away to my hard drive though. A Leyland Retriever is on the long term plans list as I've got a load of 1/6th scale Pontoons for the Bailey Bridge set I have! The picture above is of a Mk I, I think, and was taken somewhere in Tunisia. If the records I quoted are correct and the RAF only had a couple hundred of these then they do seem to have gotten better photo coverage than the other 2,000 or so that served in the Recce and then the RE role. Certainly, given the pics above, I'd say for Normandy you couldn't go wrong using it as a Liaison transport or recce vehicle for an RE unit! I think I'll get on to the IWM and see if I can't get a better copy of that picture to see if I can't make out the divisional sign next to the unit designation.

Thanks for those additional pictures Barry, some lovely detail there mate:D

Wow, thank you! You've just made my day, in fact my whole week!!!! I'd love to see your docs, can you link me to the Yahoo LRC group? (EDIT: Just found a Yahoo British Armoured Cars group on Yahoo) I'm not sure where I got the following note from but it may well have been from documents in the National Archives... Below are a couple of famous shots of LRC's in Normandy, (and somewhere I have a pic of an LRC driving over the rubble that was Caen). I'm assuming the Sherman Flail in the first picture, and certainly the Folding Boat Equipment in the 2nd picture, indicates RE? If they are RE then 40 would indicate an RE HQ Unit for either Armoured or Infantry Division, whilst 51 might indicate an RE Field Company for an Infantry Division. EDIT: Just looking at these pics again and I can just make out the 3rd Inf Division symbol above the 51 in the first picture. Old eyes ain't what they used to be, doh! THE BRITISH ARMY IN NORMANDY 1944. © IWM (B 7540)IWM Non Commercial Licence A Morris light reconnaissance car and, in the background, Sherman Crab flail tanks move up to the battle area for Operation 'Goodwood', 18 July 1944. THE BRITISH ARMY IN NORMANDY 1944. © IWM (B 6233)IWM Non Commercial Licence A Morris light reconnaissance car and other vehicles passing through Bretteville, 30 June 1944.

I am really looking forward to seeing the strip down and rebuild of this lovely wee vehicle. I've mocked up a cardboard 1/6th scale model of one of these and I'm waiting to start work on actually cutting up the plastic for it! So please, please post as many pictures as possible of every conceivable angle, feature and detail. It's amazing just how little documentation is available on these great little vehicles, which is surprising considering how many were actually built. I'm pretty sure one of the Osprey authors stated that they none ever saw active service:wow: notwithstanding the pictures of then in use from Tunisia to Normandy! I've also read that by 1944, when the Tankies finally got to evaluate it, that very many of them were then moved over to the RE. I think I read that in a doco in the National Archives and I think I have a copy of it somewhere. I'll have a dig around for it and upload it when I find it.

Thanks for that Rick, however I am cutting corners here and there and fudging a few details as some things just can't be done without loss of sanity and lots of cussing! I've got another quick question for you Rick, if you don't mind. I'm attempting to make the MG Cradle for the Besa and the documentation I have shows the MG cradle for the Cromwell mantlet as being this one below. And here's the beginnings of my attempt in 1/6th scale. I think I can actually make this functional with little bolts that hold the Besa in place, (I know, I know, I'm completely radio rental but blame it on the OCD, I do and so far I think I'm getting away with it) However, unless my measurements are off, it seems to me that the MG Cradle above is too tall to fit on the back of the hull gunners ball mount. There's another, similar but smaller, MG cradle that can be found in the early Churchill's, see below, and I wondered if something like this wasn't used on the Cromwell's ball mount in the hull gunners station. Do you remember if there was a difference in the MG cradle's used on the mantlet and that on the ball mount? If the same MG cradle (i.e. the first one shown here) was used in both places then I'll have to revisit my ball mount design :-(