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About this blog

  • This blog aims to follow the conversion of my existing layout to an earlier time-frame. I hope that others will find it of interest and helpful,

 

Entries in this blog

William Dean's Express Tank

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 ex

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

Broad and Narrow

One aspect of modelling, which interests me, is the ability to compare the proportions of locomotives that are rarely photographed together.   Many years ago, I built a K's Milestones kit of the GWR Broad Gauge 'Rover' class locomotive, so I decided to photograph this model alongside my Tri-ang Dean single, to illustrate the profound differences between these types:       The Broad Gauge locomotive takes advantage of the width between the wheels to use a much

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

GWR 19th Century Carriage Development

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

MikeOxon

MikeOxon

A Different Type of Railway

In my previous entry, I mentioned some of the research that I have been doing into Brunel's 'Broad Gauge' railway. There are several old books that provide a detailed survey of the early days of the GWR. One that I found particularly useful is the 'History of the GWR' by G A Nokes (2nd edtion, 1895). The preface begins: "I would remind the reader that it is 'The Story of the Broad Gauge' that is here chronicled, so that while in the first thirty years or so of the Great Western Railway's existen

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

"Read Me First"

(the following explanation is intended to help any new readers to find their way around this blog)   Since I started this blog in 2013, I have used it as a diary to record my progress in creating a Victorian GWR branch line. Since the blog follows the meanderings of my mind, it has no real structure and this 'introduction' is, therefore, an attempt to help a new reader to find his/her way around.   There are two main strands: firstly, the documenting of my exploration of the

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

Making Curved Coach Roofs

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

MikeOxon

MikeOxon

A Bit about the Track

As I mentioned in my first entry in this blog, my layout started many years ago as a Hornby Dublo layout for my young son. The plan was taken directly from the Hornby Dublo Handbook of 2-Rail Track Formations (1st edition), as shown below, drawn using SCARM software     Original Track Plan (as built in 1979)   This track plan formed the basis for a small, simple layout, to which I added a narrow gauge section (009) at a higher level, for additional interest. The up

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

Red Wagons - Experimental Archaeology

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

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

Back-dating 'Ratio' GWR Coaches

The 4mm 'Ratio' kits of GWR 4-wheel coaches have long been popular and probably provided an introduction to kit-building for a great many modellers. The moulds have been re-furbished and they continue to be available at an attractively low price. There's also a lot of useful prototype and construction information in an article by Mikkel at http://www.gwr.org.uk/proratio.html   I built several of these coaches back in the 1980s but now I want to add a little more variety into my late 19th-centu

MikeOxon

MikeOxon

Home-made Lining & Lettering - 1

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

MikeOxon

MikeOxon

Early GWR Coaches - 'Armchair' Research

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

MikeOxon

MikeOxon

A Distraction - Tilt Wagon

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

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

On the Victorian Cat-Walk

Having built a Victorian train, I now have to think about providing some passengers. Since I know far less about 19th-century styles of dress than I did about 19th-century railways, when I started, I decided it was time for some reading.   As I pointed out in a previous post, I have found the Internet Archive ( http://archive.org/ ) to be a very useful resource. Old 'out of copyright' books can either be read on-line or downloaded in formats such as PDF. In my current search, I found '

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

Tender Drive - a convenient short-cut

Although popular with several European manufacturers, tender-drive has never been well-regarded in UK, possibly because of some rather poor implementations back in the 20th century. Nevertheless, it does have some advantages, when modelling prototypes from the 19th century. Locomotives of that period were generally quite small, with open cabs, and most passenger classes used single drivers until quite late in the century. These characteristics create two problems for the modeller: there is littl

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

Comparing Armstrong 2-2-2s

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

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

A new 'Old Engine' - GWR 184 - part 3

I've re-titled this thread, so that it doesn't read as though I'm building a whole fleet of engines - one at a time is enough for me!   My first attempt at scratch building was a 'Queen'-class 2-2-2. I chose it on the grounds of simplicity, since building an uncoupled 2-2-2 is little different from building a wagon. My first step was to draw the constituent parts and then cut these out as a series of paper templates, so that I could check the fit of the parts and explore different asse

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

Broad and Narrow - 2

I visited the Swindon Railway Festival yesterday (15th Sep). It's always good to study prototype fittings, such as the sand boxes on the Dean Goods. In model form, these often show a 'draw' from the casting process, so it was useful to be reminded of the shape and details of the original.     Dean Goods no.2516 - Sand Box   There was also a sizeable model railway exhibition and I got talking on the Broad Gauge Society stand. I mentioned that I had recently photogra

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

Cleminson to the Rescue

I am very grateful to member KH1, who alerted me to the 'Cleminson principle', in reply to my earlier blog entry about 'Milk Churns and Syphons'.   In another thread in the forums, http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/6484-cleminson-chassis-drawing/, I read that there was an article in 'The Engineer' of Feb 15th 1878, describing this system. Back volumes of The Engineer can be downloaded free from http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/The_Engineer_%28Bound_Volumes%29 , so I show an illustr

MikeOxon

MikeOxon

On the Narrow Gauge

I have mentioned before in this blog that my layout includes an 009 narrow-gauge section. Most of this section does not need changing in order to fit in with my revised 19th-century timeframe but, a long time ago (1980), I built a 'Centre Models' kit of a Leek & Manifold 2-6-4T, of which the prototypes appeared in 1904. Whilst not quite fitting my new era, it is a handsome locomotive that I had never got to run well, so I decided to re-build the chassis. A body kit is still available from Me

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

Back in Time - 517 class

In my very first post in this blog, I mentioned converting an old K's 14xx to a fair representation of a 517 class. Since the 517 was a very variable class, it's impossible to select a 'typical' version - they vary from the earliest tiny saddle tanks, with a short wheelbase, to the final re-builds, which were very similar to Collett's 14xx series. Nevertheless, there were significant differences between even the latest of these engines and the 14xx - most obviously in the cab but also the 14xx h

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general

Instant Chocolate (with Cream)

Following my initial trials with the Silhouette Portrait (described in previous blog posts), I began to think about pre-printing the sides, so that no painting would be needed at all! The Silhouette machines have the important provision to align the cutter with a printed image, which makes this possible.   Just after I had been exploring this, JCL posted another excellent tutorial in the Silhouette Forum at http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/79025-a-guide-to-using-the-silhouette

MikeOxon

MikeOxon

Milk Churns and Siphons

My small layout includes a building representing a creamery, so I have been considering the traffic needed to serve this facility. I remembered that I had an old K's plastic kit of a six-wheel low Siphon, which had been put on one side as it had no chance of negotiating my small-radius curves.     Looking at this model again (30 years after building it!), I think it is an attractive vehicle, representing the earlier low-roof Siphon, with only two doors each side. I intend to change the roof

MikeOxon

MikeOxon

Early GWR Passenger Brake (Break) Van

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

MikeOxon

MikeOxon

Early GWR Coaches - Printing Sides

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

MikeOxon

MikeOxon

Turning Back the Clock - 1

This blog aims to follow the conversion of my existing layout to an earlier time-frame. I hope that others will find it of interest and helpful, if they are also considering the Pre-Grouping era.   By way of background: I built a small layout about 30 years ago for my then-young son. It was based on old Hornby-Dublo (2-rail) track and I added an 009 narrow-gauge section for additional interest. More recently, I had another look at this old layout and thought it would be suitable for ru

MikeOxon

MikeOxon in general


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