Some time has elapsed since I first decided to paint the wagons red on my GWR 'North Leigh' railway but I still look out for any further information that may shed further light on when and where this colour was used.
My 1st edition copy of 'Great Western Way'(GWW) stated: "it would seem to be about the end of the 1870s that wagons and vans first sported a standard pattern of painted lettering. It was about this time, too, that the change from red to grey as a body colour
A comment on my recent post about modelling Rocket reminded me that my first scratch-built locomotive was an Armstrong 2-2-2 that I constructed 10 years ago and described in ‘Railway Modeller’, July 2014 , as ‘Simply Victorian’. I explained in that article that I was encouraged by a drawing of one of these engines in Russell’s ‘A Pictorial Record of Great Western Engines’ with the caption comment that: "The utter simplicity of these early engines can be seen." The idea of ‘simplicity’ appealed t
Being somewhat of a back-water in railway history, the Witney branch via North Leigh became home to many unusual vehicles, rarely seen elsewhere. I have already shown the standard-gauge Tilt Wagon ('Hat Box') but a particular claim to fame for this line was that it became the 'stamping ground' for William Dean's experimental 4-2-4 express tank engine, shown below entering North Leigh station.
William Dean's e
More than three years ago, I wrote about some experiments I did to add to the debate about GWR red wagon livery. I showed photos of wagons at Cinderford Iron Works, taken around 1890, which had marked differences in (monochrome) image tone.
I thought, at the time, that I was doing some ‘original’ research but recently I have been looking through back issues of the 'Broad Gauge Society' magazine ‘Broadsheet’. There I found that this ‘well known’ photograph was discussed
I feel it is time for an update on progress with my model of GWR No.184. After a rather static period, when I did little actual modelling but thought quite a lot about the details of this engine, I have at last been cutting metal.
In fact, apart from the fact that it is now made of brass, I have made few changes to my initial paper template. My method of construction followed that used on my first scratch-built model (GWR 'Queen'-class - described in Railway Modeller July 2014). In s
I thought it would be easy to modify my U29 model, to represent the body of a diagram G13 Family Saloon but various gremlins struck with a vengeance!
Omit reading the ‘Gremlins’ sections, if you just want to follow the progress of the model itself.
Gremlins
I have now learned the necessity for taking great care when selecting entities to modify in Fusion 360.
For example, when selecting parts of a drawing in, say, the X-Z plane, it is easy to inclu
I've read that some people like blog posts to be fairly substantial, so I'll include a resumé, in this post, of the story so far, before showing photos of my model of GWR No. 184. There are more details in the earlier posts in this series.
Background
I chose this prototype since it was one of the first standard-gauge engines to run on the GWR, following the absorption of the Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton Railway (otherwise known as the 'Old Worse and Worse'). No.18
A couple of members on the forums have indicated that they would like to know more details of how I create my own transfers for lining and lettering pre-grouping models.
I have already written a little in my earlier post "Cheats Lining & Lettering" and I must also admit that, because I model GWR prototypes, much of what is needed can actually be bought from the trade! I am one of those "scratch-builders" that likes to do things "because I can"
I use a Windows PC, together with Adobe
In my previous post, I made the self-fulfilling prophesy that I would be distracted by the forum thread on GWR standard gauge 'tilt' wagons, started by drduncan. Initially there was some discussion as to whether the photo shown was, in fact, of a Broad Gauge wagon but the dimensions (especially the height) seemed sufficiently different to indicate that the vehicle under discussion was indeed Standard Gauge.
Something 'clicked' for me and I decided that I had to add one to my stock, s
Five years ago, I came across JCL's splendid thread about the Silhouette cutters at an appropriate time for dropping heavy hints before Christmas. This resulted in my acquiring a 'Silhouette Portrait' machine and loads of ideas for making my own coaches and buildings.
It proved very fortuitous since, only a few months before, I had decided to return to railway modelling by re-furbishing my old small layout and turning back the clock to the 19th century period. The cutter was a great
It's been a while since my last entry in this blog - lots of summertime activities getting in the way of modelling! I've also had that common modeller's problem of having so many things to do that it's been hard to decide where to start.
I'm afraid that I have, once again, ignored Blanche's petulant pleas for new dresses and got down to the more mundane task of building a tender for No.184. I produced an outline drawing for this tender by starting from a side-on photograph of what ap
I have not forgotten about my plans to create a diorama, as described in my Broad Gauge blog.
While I was researching the early days of the GWR, however, I found myself thinking about what had gone before – back to the ultimate pre-grouping period! This led me to Trevithick’s engines, of which I photographed a replica at Blists Hill Museum near Telford:
Trevithick replica at Blists Hill Museum
Trevithick was a remarkable inventor but, sadly, not a good
At the end of my last post, I felt that I had solved all the main problems associated with building my Armstrong Goods engine, although a lot of detailing remains to be done.
To complete the model, I needed to add a tender, which I intended to contain the drive unit. I have made several powered tenders based on 'Hornby' ring-field mechanisms, around which I used components from either plastic or white metal kits. I have used two different 'Hornby' mechanisms: type X9105 with 7' 6" +
I meant to mention, in my previous entry, how I made the curved plasticard roofs for my early GWR coaches. I have read about wrapping plasticard sheet around an empty wine bottle, filled with boiling water, in order to 'set' the curve. Somehow, I'm always uneasy about pouring boiling water into glass bottles, so looked for an alternative - beer cans came to mind but these seemed of rather too small a diameter for my coach roofs. After searching around the kitchen (strange, alien place), I fou
Although this may seem a short post, it represents a very big step for me! I had been seriously concerned that I would not be able to construct a chassis with sufficiently well-aligned axles, within the constraints of my own abilities and my lack of any real workshop facilities - just a desk and Dremel drill on a stand.
My work-desk
When one builds a kit, the designer has already made lots of difficult decisions for you. A scratch-builder has to think out eve
Whereas 2014 was a time of heady excitement for me, as I started to realise the possibilities of my new Silhouette cutter, 2015 has been more a period of consolidation.
The potential to build my own timber-framed carriages meant that my aim of re-creating a small glimpse of the Victorian railway scene became a reality through 2014 and, inspired by these possibilities, I also embarked on a spree of kit building and locomotive construction.
Locomotives at North Leigh
On a number of occasions over the years, I have posted comments indicating my dis-satisfaction with the ‘Mainline’ Dean Goods that is currently serving on my North Leigh layout. It’s really too late for my period, with Belpaire firebox and other details that place it long after the turn of the century.
My model Dean Goods at North Leigh
I have recently been following Mikkel’s conversion of a ‘Belpaire’ Dean Goods into an earlier ‘round-top’ version and have thought o
I've finally worked out a simpler method for constructing a clerestory roof, so now I have all the vehicles needed to take Sir John's family up to London for the season.
On my first U29 composite, described in recent posts, I folded the roof from a single sheet of 5 thou brass sheet but found it difficult to make the reverse folds correctly. For the family saloon, which I now believe to be Diagram G13, I have therefore made the roof in three parts - two separate sides and the raised
It's been a longer interval than usual since my last entry in this blog. Readers of the forums may know that this is because I recently spent a month in SE Asia and, in passing, took a few photos of the Sabah Railway
Before I left, I had decided to build a brake van to accompany the early 4-wheel coaches that I described in a previous post . Like the coaches, the brake van is based on the photograph taken at New Milford shortly after conversion of the South Wales lines to standard ga
Whereas there are 'umpteen books about the development of the steam locomotive, relatively little has been written about early railway carriages. One of my aims in making models of some earlier carriages was to hep me visualise the changes that took place in the mid-19th century.
As railways moved from purely industrial uses to the carriage of people, the first thought was simply to mount benches inside ordinary wagons. The next step was to adapt the road carriages of the time to run on rail
My previous post in this series about modelling early GWR coaches ended with the comment: " All that remains is to try and establish some dimensions and start cutting."
Since there are several good side-on photographs of these early coaches, it is only necessary to establish one firm measurement and then scale all the other dimensions to this known 'yardstick'.
Rather perversely, I have decided to model a different coach from those I illustrated in the previous post I was looking at a p
Last Saturday I visited my local model railway exhibition - AbRail 2015. I was looking for ideas on scenery and there was a good number of interesting layouts. Several featured canals and water and, of these, I particularly enjoyed the 'Aldford Brewery' (Wimbledon MRC) and the canal-side inn at 'Mulldale' (Letchworth MRC).
I also thought that there were some impressive trees alongside 'The Abingdon Branch'. Initially I thought 'Highclere' (Julia Adams) looked rat
In my previous post in this blog, I described my chance discovery of the former narrow-gauge system that linked the farms on the Buscot Park estate to a distillery and other works, located at a wharf on the upper River Thames.
This was especially interesting to me because I had introduced an imaginary narrow-gauge (NG) line on my ‘North Leigh’ layout, to serve the local quarries for Cotswold stone and the sawmills around Wychwood Forest, by connecting them to a railhead at North Leig
It's now over two years since I built my first locomotive from scratch, using brass sheet. It's still looking quite good and helped to inspire me to continue with building lots more scratch-built stock. For more information about my model, see 'Railway Modeller', July 2014, "Simply Victorian".
My model of the GWR 'Queen' class
It really was simple to build - basically a brass tube over a brass plate, with a very simple 'chassis' to hold a set of wheels at the right
Since my previous entry, I've been spending some time thinking about possible coaches to model for my North Leigh branch. I have found that information rapidly becomes much more sparse, as one delves earlier into the Victorian period
There's an additional twist, in the case of GWR coaches, in that the early GWR was a broad gauge railway and the earliest narrow (i.e. standard) gauge stock only came into the company as a result of acquisitions. There was a long, depressed period, when the comp
