Jump to content
 
  • entries
    111
  • comments
    916
  • views
    35,558

About this blog

This blog complements my Pre-Grouping Blog by covering my modelling activities in the Broad Gauge era of the Great Western Railway.  As with the earlier blog, I intend to cover the various methods by which I construct elements of the Broad Gauge scene.  For more background see https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blogs/entry/17705-a-different-type-of-railway/

 

Entries in this blog

General

Broad-brush Planning

One thing leads to another ... back in 2013, I started a blog to cover my growing interest in 19th -century railway models. Since I chose to model the GWR, this inevitably brought me onto a collision course with the Broad Gauge. At first, I thought of this system as something that was only associated with the 'primitive' stage of railway development. It was something of a surprise to realise that broad-gauge trains ran almost until the end of the century: the 'last gasp' being in 1892. As I have
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

12
General

Broad Gauge Trio – 2nd Movement

In my previous post, I described modelling of some of the earliest wagons ordered for the GWR in the late 1830s. At that time, much of the railway was still under construction – the complete route from London to Bristol was not opened until 30th June 1841. Information on these early wagons is sparse, although we are fortunate to have several illustrations by J.C.Bourne, which are sufficiently accurate to indicate the main features.   Bristol Goods Shed – J.C.Bourne 1842  
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

6
General

Broad Gauge Mail Coach - part 5

My progress, since the previous post in this series, has been slower than anticipated, mainly because of the need to build a chassis that deviated from that intended for the BGS kit. I also took a few false turns, which led to a significant amount of re-work.   In the comments following my first post about this coach, I said that I prefer scratch building to kits. I suppose what I really meant is that I like to do things my own way. The down side of the scratch building approach is tha
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

4
General

Broad Gauge Mail Coach - part 4

I’ve been spending quite a lot of time thinking about undergear for my Mail Coach. Apart from building a kit for an N6 Horse Box, which included fairly detailed brake gear, this is an aspect I have tended to ignore in most of my scratch-built models.   I have described myself as an ‘impressionist’ modeller but, somehow, now that I am exploring the Broad Gauge and an earlier period, I feel a certain responsibility to try to be more historically accurate.   The Broad Gauge Soci
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

6
General

Broad Gauge Mail Coach - part 3 (research)

Much of what we now accept as standard railway practice was actually developed towards the end of the 19th century, so that it is easy to forget that there was a long period of evolution, before the 'norms' with which we are so familiar became established. Whereas we have plenty of photographs to guide our perceptions of the later years of the century, our 'picture' of the earlier years remains much hazier, so it is easy to lose sight of the many major changes that occurred.   For exam
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

18
General

Broad Gauge Mail Coach - part 2

My previous post in this series ended on a 'cliff-hanger' – how was I to escape from the 'hinge' problem?   After a little thought, the solution proved very simple. I used my jewellers' snips to cut a 1mm strip from the edge of some brass sheet and then folded the strip to make three staples, which pressed into the slots on the adjacent compartment doors. It was fortunate that the doors were hung 'back to back' so that the staples could be kept quite short.   I did discover a
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

5
General

Broad Gauge Mail Coach - part 1

In my first post in this blog, I explained that the inspiration behind my exploration of the Broad Gauge was the discovery, when researching family history, that during the 1860s, my wife's great-grandfather worked for the GWR on the South Wales line at Bullo Pill.   During his time there, there was a serious accident in 1868, south of the station, when the 5 pm fast Mail train from New Milford ran into the back of a special cattle train, making its way laboriously from Carmarthen to G
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

10
General

Broad Gauge Horse Box

My ‘Geeetech E180’ printer seems to be performing exceptionally well at present, so I have been cracking on with some items from my ‘to do’ list.   After the poor results I was getting last year, I made a point of going through the long list of adjustable parameters in the ‘Cura’ slicing software. I suspect that the most significant change I made was to the ‘line width’ setting. The default setting matched the print-head diameter of 0.4 mm but I reduced the setting to 0.3mm. Since the
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

6
General

Broad Gauge Covered Van

Because of various distractions, I’ve not had much time for model-building recently. I have however been spending quite a lot of time thinking about those very early days of the GWR when those first engines, which I modelled last year, were being delivered. Some of these engines were delivered by canal to West Drayton, where it seems that the first depot of the GWR was established. At that time, the way ahead was far from certain and concerns about the desirability of adopting Brunel’s proposals
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

7
General

Broad Gauge Cattle Train

Now that I have completed my research into, and constructed models of, the Mail Train that is described in the BoT Accident report of 1868, regarding the collision near Bullo Pill on the South Wales line, I am turning my attention to the Goods Train.     my Mail Train models, based on accident report from Bullo Pill 1868   According to the accident report, the goods train was headed by the locomotive ‘Tantalus’ and comprised 20 cattle wagons, plus a third-class carr
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

5
General

Broad Gauge at Didcot

A visit to Didcot Railway Centre is always good, when in need of a little inspiration!   In this case, I was invited along to help introduce my grandson to the delights of steam trains. At 3 months age, he seemed to enjoy a ride in the steam railmotor but was not too sure about the joggling over points.   Meanwhile, I slipped away for a look around the Transfer Shed, where various Broad Gauge replicas are stored. Outside the shed, a length of broad-gauge track shows the detai
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

7
General

Bodies & Components

I’ve had one or two messages from people who say they have enjoyed reading through my blogs. I should therefore sound a note of caution, especially in the field of 3D printing – my posts follow my own, often halting, progress along a learning curve and I still feel myself to be a long way from an end-point. I was looking back at some of my earlier designs and although they came out reasonably well in the end, my methods were something of a ‘dog’s breakfast’. I hope you won’t repeat too many of m
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

6
General

An Ugly Duckling – Part Two

As I commented to @Mikkel, following my previous post on this project, this bit of modelling was a spur-of-the-moment idea after a fallow period when I was lacking imagination.    It was triggered by a post on @Annie’s thread about modelling one of the B&ER 4-4-0ST engines but now I’m not sure whether this is the prototype I want to model. While thinking about the possibilities, I came across an appraisal of Broad Gauge 4-4-0ST engines in an early issue of the Broad Gauge Society m
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

9
General

An Ugly Duckling – 4

Now, wake up at the back there, @Mikkel, this is a new post on this subject.   At the end of my previous post, I wrote “Next, I shall turn my attention to designing and constructing a suitable chassis.”, so that’s the subject for today.   Frames   The frames of these early engines were rather unusual in that they stopped short in front of the leading drivers. The front bogie was attached directly to the boiler in traction-engine style. The frames were also quite lig
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

5
General

An Ugly Duckling - 3

If my last post was about ‘making choices’, the subject of this one is definitely ‘rivets’. These earlier engines seem to have been covered in the things so, thank goodness, 3D-printing software tools have come to my aid in reproducing them all. In fact I only had to draw one or two and all the rest were produced by tools such as ‘pattern on path’ which instantly created long rows of the things, following the contours of the surface on which they are placed. There must be at least 350 rivets on
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

5
General

An Ugly Duckling

Having been inspired by a recent post by @Annie, I’m having a go at creating a 3D-print of one of those ‘ugly-duckling’ 4-4-0STs, much liked in the West Country as very successful engines.   As usual, I’m applying ‘quick and dirty’ methods, to create as much as possible by extruding ‘bodies’ from existing drawings – in this case those by Ian Beattie, reproduced in the Broad Gauge Society magazine ‘Broadsheet No.73’   I imported the front-elevation drawing as a ‘canvas’ into ‘
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

3
General

An 1850s Broad Gauge Tilt Wagon

The ‘tilt wagon’ seems to have been a popular design in early broad gauge (BG) history but I hadn’t got round to building a model before now. A very few of these wagons were converted to standard gauge and I did model one of those back in 2014, regarding it as an interesting curiosity!   In the early days, it seems that most goods (and 3rd class passengers) were carried in open wagons but a growing need for weather protection led to the addition of canvas covers, known as ‘tilts’ (from
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

12
General

Aeolus Valve Gear

Interpreting the Valve Motion   At the end of my previous post, I commented on the surprising layout of the valve gear, as shown on the Lane sketches. The Works drawing of the engine, as originally designed, shows a more usual arrangement, with the weigh-bar placed under the boiler behind the smokebox.   Following further research, however, I have re-interpreted the drawings of Aeolus by E.T. Lane and have, therefore, revised this post on 16th April.   According to
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

14
General

Aeolus in Context

At the end of my previous post , I wrote that the engine and tender would next enter the paint shop. Because the various major components (boiler, firebox, etc.) were all printed separately and simply plugged together, it was easy to paint each part in its appropriate colour, with no masking required.   I use acrylic paints, which I like to apply in the manner of water colour. I use an alcohol/water mix to ‘wet’ the surface and then add pigment to achieve the desired depth of colour. F
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

9
General

Aeolus Chassis and Tender

I constructed the chassis for my Aeolus model from several separately printed components:   Outside frames, with rivet detail Inside frames, with splasher tops Front Buffer beam, linking frames Rear drag-bar and footplate, linking frames   After printing these parts, I fused them together by welding the seams using a fine-tip soldering iron set to 200°C. This proved easier than I expected, partly because the PLA plastic has low thermal conductivity, so i
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

6
General

Adding Cladding

In commenting on an earlier post, Michael Edge pointed out that the visible diameter of a locomotive boiler is greater than the diameter of the metal boiler itself and he suggested that I should have bought a larger diameter tube for my model of 'Tantalus'.   I had already been thinking about how to add the visible boiler rings and then had the idea “why not 3D-print the boiler cladding?” After all, the prototype boiler was metal, whereas the cladding was initially of wooden planks, th
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

4
General

A Year in Retrospect

Last year, as 2020 drew towards its close and we prepared for the holiday season, I showed a collection of my North Leigh engines ‘on shed’. I think that, at that time, we were all hoping that the difficulties caused by Covid would soon be over. Sadly, as another year draws to its close, we are still in a period of uncertainty, waiting to learn what sort of threat the latest variant may pose.   Whatever else has happened, I have found plenty of time to practise my modelling abilities w
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

14
General

A Tender for 'Rob Roy' - 1

It’s been some time since I last tackled an etched brass kit, after spending most of my time recently in learning about 3D printing and, before that, Silhouette cutting. I had to refresh my memory on ‘the rules of the game’!   I bought the Broad Gauge Society kit (FL07) for a 6-wheel tender some time ago and have only just got around to its assembly. I was pleased to see that the instructions start with the reminder that “… some parts are a little over scale due to limitations of the d
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

8
General

A Tangled Web

I’ve referred before to the problems that arise from using published drawings as the basis for creating 3D models of early locomotives. The usual dictum of “find a photograph of your selected prototype” simply doesn’t apply to the years before photography became established.   That leads to the next problem – so much of the information we read about early locomotives comes from books that were written decades after the time to which they refer. Even Gooch’s own ‘diary’ is considered su
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

3
General

A Missing Link?

In my last few posts, I’ve been delving into the almost lost world of the early days of the GWR broad gauge. I notice that my previous post aroused little comment so, perhaps, I have moved rather too far from what most people think of as ‘railway modelling’ - but I do like using models as a way of improving our understanding of these early engines.  I do appreciate the various 'likes' that many of you have given me.   Before I move back into more familiar territory, there is one more p
MikeOxon

MikeOxon in General

16
×
×
  • Create New...