‘Reflect upon your present blessings... not your past misfortunes ... fill your glass again, with a merry face and contented heart. Our life on it, but your Christmas shall be Merry, and your New Year a happy one!’
Sketches by Boz, Charles Dickens.
Just a small filler project to sit between the Stables and Greyhound Place at Bricklayers Arms. Bermondsey was the centre of the London leather trade chosen because it was sufficiently south of the Thames for the inevitable stench not to trouble the great and the good, notwithstanding the fact that at that time they had their own stinking cess-filled river to contend with. Apparently, at their peak, the tanneries of Bermondsey supplied one third of all the leather in the country.
I c
Continuing the theme with some ModelU 3D printed figures, I've been experimenting with 'Tartan paint'.
Seems to work quite well on Rose's shawl as she has it out with Charlotte over some recent unladylike behaviour. I mean really! What is she doing out in the street without her bonnet on? Disgraceful!
Apologies for the horrible model makers fingers!
I hesitate to call this 'Bricklayers Arms Stables' because that's not what they are. However, they are the stables for Bricklayers Arms which is confusing I know but I'll explain.
Whilst Bricklayers Arms station building, goods shed, carriage and loco sheds and coke depot are recorded (some photographically, others as outline drawings) the original 1844 stable block is not.
There appears to be no record at all of its appearance. Therefore I have chosen to model the 1856 stables
In 1845 the Swiss engineer John George Bodmer constructed a pair of 2-2-2 locomotives at his Manchester workshops for the Joint Committee of the Brighton, Croydon and Dover Railways. Born in Zurich in 1786 and later apprenticed to a millwright, the young engineer showed much promise and a strong talent for innovation. He moved to Lancashire in the 1820s but continued his connections with Switzerland and Baden in Germany. His particular invention was that of an opposed cylinder steam engine in wh
Over the few years I've been a member of RMWeb, I seem to have erroneously created several blogs. My clumsy grasp of computers has been a bit frustrating as I never know where I've posted and have a horrible habit of posting new material on the wrong blog and so on. Therefore a little bit of belated Spring Cleaning is required and I have copied the info from my previous 'George England 2-2-2' blog to this one so that I can have it all in the right place. So, apologies to those who have read the
I think I have finally completed the buildings at Greyhound Place, Bermondsey. This is the collection of buildings next to the Greyhound Pub at the Eastern end of Bricklayers Arms c1845. I've slightly tweaked the date of the layout by a year as I want things to show signs of settling in, and it allows a bit more artistic licence when it comes to the rolling stock.
These images show the back yards, there are only a couple of children to add and a few bits of general domestic 'stuff' t
It's been a very long time since my last post (which I think was a 4mm scale chair!) but I've nearly completed my latest build: Canterbury & Whitstable Railway, Taylor 0-6-0 goods loco, no.121, c1847.
The bulk of it was constructed whilst convalescing with a broken left metatarsal. What a tragedy to be signed off work and have to sit there day after day with my foot up, drinking tea and model making, life can be so cruel!
A friend offered some Portescap motor/gearboxes in exchange
A bit of history
The earliest record of a tenant in The Greyhound public house was a Mary Stiff in 1822. The Upper Grange Road (now Dunton Road) Bermondsey was likely a relatively quiet lane leading off the Kent Road before the arrival of the Bricklayers Arms Extension Railway in 1843/4. At first it was suggested that the railway should cross the road on the level, but the contractors Grissell & Peto constructed a bridge to carry the road over the four running lines. The inconven
Once the children were safely tucked up in bed and with an unexpected hour to spare and not really fancying tackling anything big, I decided to make a chair. Scrap brass for the seat, a bit of wire, some solder and a lick of paint.
London & Greenwich Railway No.1 Royal William - Pt.5
This is the last part of the series on Royal William for now until I make the Stephenson tender to go with it.
It's all done, an interesting project and a good opportunity to try out a few ideas on the cheap! So the lessons learned are as follows:
Sprung plunger pick-ups on such a tiny engine were more trouble than they were worth. In the end I simply fitted some tee shaped wiper pick-ups between the wheels. Easy, simple and ef
London & Greenwich Railway No.1 Royal William - Pt.4
RW is now painted and final tuning is underway. An issue cropped up on track testing that I had my suspicions might just be the case. It was ludicrously slow! The spur gearbox is very effective but the ratio much too high. So what to do? After staring at it for some time over a cup of tea, I decided it was possible to remove the final pair of gears and shunt the final drive gear back to take the place of the gear that drove the shaft.
Royal William Pt.3
A little more progress and I've been able to trial fit the driving wheels. Clearance was a bit tight on the central boiler stays but I think this is due to the slightly over-scale flanges on the 00/EM tyres. A bit of fettling to the stays with a swiss file sorted the issue.
The leading axle is only a spare carriage one at the moment, just to get a feel for where the front axle rocker should be and to determine the correct height and levels etc. It's difficult to ap
Royal William - Pt. 2
Having made a bit more progress over the last few evenings, here is a little more about the loco itself.
The image below shows the mainframes with firebox and flimsy inner frames (more trunk guides than frames). The firebox and frames will be detachable from each other in order to remove wheels in the future, although I can't image a scenario where I would want to do that. The boiler and smokebox are also detachable in order to extract the motor if needs be.
London & Greenwich Railway - Royal William – Part One
The London & Greenwich Railway opened for traffic in 1836. Built on approximately four miles of brick arched viaduct, it was the first Railway to serve the Capital. Royal William was L&G No.1, built by Charles Tayleur & Company to Stephenson’s ‘Planet’ design. Although there is a fairly well known tinted drawing of this locomotive, we are lucky to have a drawing from the Vulcan Foundry archives, which confirms (or othe
In the Summer 2016 edition of the Brighton Circular I posed a question regarding the identity of a loco illustrated in Samuel Brees' 'Railway Practice' 1846. His claim that the drawing was of London & Croydon Railway locomotive 'Croydon' was clearly an error and thanks to the perpetuation of this mistake by E. L. Ahrons and others, it's identity has never really been queried.
Thankfully my article sparked a bit of debate and some excellent responses were written in subsequent Circulars.
The London & Croydon Railway ran it's first trains in 1839, and typically for Railways of that period with no facilities to build it's own locomotives, the L & C turned to established engineering companies. Some of them, G & J Rennie for example had reputations forged in other industries but we're nevertheless keen to exploit the rapidly growing demand for engines to run on the newly created iron road.
Aside from a later locomotive Coryndon designed by John Chanter and built by P
I've had this loco simmering away in my work-in-progress tray for a year or so now. Originally it was to be South Eastern Railway No.13 'Vortimer' of 1842, but due to the way I've built the power bogie in the tender and the fight for space between the brakes and the pick-ups I've decided to complete it as L & C No.5 'London'.
Essentially 'Vortimer' was braked on both sides as far as I can tell, whereas earlier Sharpies such as this one were braked on the right hand side only. I will post
Just completed the first cassette of dummy wagon turntables to go outside the goods shed at Bricklayers Arms. This is a set of four, one table inside the shed and three outside. The set will sit at 90 degrees to the front of the shed serving one of the bays. There are six bays each with a set of turntables, three with three and three with four, plus another set of four at one end. Each set is joined by the running lines, one inside the shed and three outside.
To start, two long rails we
Loco No.126 was made at Ashford in 1848 but was not completed until 1850. The engine was either started at Bricklayers Arms and finshed at Ashford or visa versa (I would be grateful for clarification if anybody knows better). Primarily used on line inspection duties, it remained in service until 1861 when it was sent to Redhill as a pumping engine, returning to Ashford in the early eighties where it was scrapped.
The 4mm scale model is very small, I've posed it with a contemporary goods wago
The coke shed at Bricklayers Arms is now 'fitted' to the layout, wired in place from the underside instead of being glued so if it ever needs to come off again just undo the wires and 'voila'! At least that's the theory.
The cobbles are laid and weathered and I've posed the recently completed London & Croydon First to give an idea of scale. In reality passenger stock would not be on this part of the line and anyway, the footboards rub on the base of the pillar brickwork!
The construction of Rennie's 'Croydon' banking loco for the New Cross incline continues. Last night's milestone was managing to shoe horn a Portescap RG4 into the very limited space available.
Next job will be to make the sub assembly of footplate/outside frames and cylinders.
Mrs Rennie looks on wondering just who her husband expects to be polishing all that copper!
Finally completed the first building for Bricklayers Arms. The 'Coke Depot and reservoir for feeding engines' as described in 1844. More images available in my gallery.
