Well, isn't it great to have an agricultural consultant for an uncle? It almost makes up for the fact that my father didn't follow my grandfather into dairy farming ...
Anyway, my uncle tells me that cattle in Surrey in 1920 would "almost certainly have been dairy shorthorns".
That's good enough for me. When I model that watermeadow scene, I'll put some dairy shorthorns in it.
Now ... what does a dairy shorthorn look like? And how can I model it in N?
I intend to build my first Pre-Grouping layout to depict Shalford Junction in about 1920. All three of the major pre-grouping constituent companies of the Southern railway ran their trains over the same metals here, taking advantage of the narrow Wey valley to get through the North Downs just outside Guildford, and this makes it an ideal location for my purposes. So I went to Guildford last weekend, and I had a good wander around in the general area of the Junction to get the feel of the place a
At the moment I'm building up my collection of stock before I start on my first dedicated pre-Grouping layout (which will depict Shalford Junction in 1921: LSWR, LBSC and SECR all running their trains over the same metals - and mud in the eye to all those whingers who bleat "the trade doesn't do enough for those of us who want to model the Southern in N"!) and, perhaps inevitably, I'm initially focussing rather more on locomotives than on wagons and coaches.
I'm putting more emphasis on acqu
A little while ago, when I was trying to figure out WHY I never got very far into any modelling project before stalling, I realised it was because my heart wasn't really in any of them. After nearly 30 years of pretending to be interested in all things LMS, it suddenly dawned on me that actually I WASN'T.
What interested me was the pre-Grouping period; and the challenge of modelling it in N.
Was it even POSSIBLE to model the pre-Grouping in N, I asked myself.
Well, there was only one
