Leaderboard

Here are a couple of PDF files that may be of interest to pre-grouping modellers. The first document is an 1896 article from Moore's Monthly Magazine (later renamed "The Locomotive") on British pre-grouping liveries. It includes brief livery descriptions for a number of the railways (but not all). MooresMonthlyLiveries.pdf The second document is my personal selection of quotes and news items on GWR liveries and selected other liveries from the archives of the Railway Magazine during the period 1898-1924. RailwayMagazineLiveries_OK.pdf A few notes: Apart from the general observations on British and GWR liveries, the documents contain two key sources for the theory that GWR wagons were red until 1904. I'm a follower of this theory, but thought I'd have a look at the contemporary sources to see for myself. I have to say though that the references to wagon liveries are very brief, and to me emphasize the very scant attention given to wagons by railway observers of the time. More generally speaking, this material also suggests to me that contemporary magazine articles are a somewhat problematic source of livery details. I can't help feeling that the livery descriptions herein seem rather subjective and not necessarily well researched. That said, the material does provide some snippets of information on various details of GWR loco and carriage liveries that I had not previously encountered. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. If nothing else, it all gives a sense of the ethos of the time! Many thanks to the RMwebbers who have helped with this.

Some progress has been made, a few more wagons are now in rakes with magnetic ajs and I have been generally fixing some of the minor details. Of course all this photography is like going over the layout with a magnifying glass, you see all sorts wrong that you thought were ok. However none of that is really interesting to the observer. Far more fun to have a session of playing trains and take a few pics of that. So here we are , just a few snaps of the faithful pug doing a bit of shunting. It also keeps my mind focussed, it is after all the whole point of it all. A dray from a langley kit. Sepia just for a change. Off heading East

I'm glad I started to put the year in my blog updates as progress has slowed! Pleased to report that the panel/frame for Cheddar has reached my 'that'll do point', for the time being at least. I finally managed to get the MSE lever frame into some semblance of working order. I think it is probably one of the worst things I have ever had the misfortune to make. It certainly shows it's age and the fact that the art work for the etch was hand drawn If I was starting down this path again, I would use the Scalefour society's kits for these as they're much, much better in comparison. In the end I gave up with the sprung catch block because the parts as supplied had a working clearance of about 3mm on all sides, rendering them pretty much superfluous. I put the first one on but as it didn't work and had no bearing on the operation of the switches connected to the tail of the lever, I duly stopped. I also had to drill holes closer to the pivot of the lever so the arc equated to the throw of the DPDT slide switches shown in an earlier picture, but that's obviously not the kit's fault! I've put all the other switches in along with the ability to change from DC to DCC at a future point in time should I ever go down that path. To keep my sanity, I've also been building a couple of Slater's MR 5 planks for eventual use on the PDSWJ layout which may or may not be called China House Quay. That I'm still thinking about! So I've attached some really interesting pictures of the panel and the rats nest of wiring under board 4. It will get tidied up, I promise. At least with the panel finished I can carry on wiring the Cheddar boards over the winter. I'm sure I said the same thing last year mind you...

Well, that's one down! I think I have reason to be quite pleased with that. Now for the other five or six. Once I've built that dreadnought of course.

As the nights are drawing in, I have been adding the interior lights supplied in the same pack with the DCC concepts swan neck platform lights. These are connected to the same 12V power supply and have a choice of resistors supplied. I was able to connect all 6 LED's in a line and marked out the alignment corresponding to each room division. The effect of the lights is to create a soft glow in the rooms, very different from the brightness of the platform lights. The flickering fireplace lights are also installed on the same circuit too and add a warm glow to keep the cold evenings of the Peak District at bay!! The next job is to install the signage and posters round the station. I have downloaded these from the Scalescenes website

As we are coming rapidly to the time of year for giving I have entered completely into the spirit and have given myself a rather large pressie! Of course money isn't important and it is the thought that counts and I have put quite a lot of thought and effort into this and only a modest amount of money so I am very pleased! I have known about these for quite some time and have been the grateful recipient of the product of Trevor's on a few occasions but the hunt for my own has finally been fruitful. I could of course just thrown money at the problem but apart from not really having any and it not really being satisfying anyway my patience and ground work has paid off. Can't really keep this suspense going for much longer so what I no have taking up a large chunk of my garage is a 1960's vintage Taylor Hobson CXL Pantograph Egraving / Milling machine. I effect these are huge Etch O Sketch machines the principal being that you make up a pattern and then the machine mills as many of it as you want. The secret though is that they can scale down so you can make the pattern up to ten times bigger than the finished article, it being much more accurate to make the pattern bigger. The machine came from a company which no longer used it and needed the space while being more interested in it going to a good home than financial gain. With thanks to Trevor for making the trip over from Wales and then another 100 miles of motorway with me, we got it dismantled and snugly stowed in the back of the Freelander. An uneventful trip back then posed the problem of how to unload it without the help of the two burly blokes who loaded it for us. Well we managed it with only mild language but lots of ingenuity but getting the top casting back on the plinth defeated us for now. This machine really is very, very solid and massively over engineered - they certainly don't make them like they used to! A plan has now been hatched to build a small scaffolding tower around it and hoist the heavy bit up onto the base with this. Once we have managed this I only need to get some suitable cutters and engraving grade brass and then decide which of the various projects in my head gets worked on first!

Porter Street Station. Set in 1933 this semi-fictional station (based on Baker Street) is set in 12' x 3'. The photos below show current progress, the rails will now be lifted to allow a cork base to be fitted below. The layout will be framed by Georgian terraces and retaining walls.

Work on Cheddar is so slow at the moment. I seem to be doing quite a lot but for minimal signs of meaningful progress. With the wiring on board 4 finished, I've started on the control panel that will be attached to the back of the layout at this point. I'm using 2 lever frame kits from MSE; one is of considerably older vintage than the other. I really liked having levers on Wheal Elizabeth, though that was only 5. Cheddar will have 25. I'm wiring the turnouts and signals to be independently operated from the track power, be it DCC or DC. So far I've made up the frame kits which were a bit of a struggle but once painted they don't look too bad. The levers will be linked to DPDT slide switches to change the polarity on tortoises for the turnouts/signals and I'm presently wading through the delights of wiring them up. Eventually the frame will sit in a box with just the top of the frame visible and the section/uncoupler switches located alongside. In between all of this I've been playing with the odd wagon to break things up a bit. The mink D & mink G were acquired part built in OO so have had springing and under frame detail added. The BR Fruit diagram 1/230 is a straight Parkside kit with springing.

Evening all Time for an update, even if it's not all that interesting. Modelling does slow down in the summer. Must be all those long sunny evenings (looks out window at rain and damp seagulls flying backwards in the wind)... Inbetween the golf and the odd walk or two, I've found a little time to make a bit of progress on Cheddar. We're on to board 5 which is where things start to get interesting track wise. This is bar far the 'busiest' board, as the tracks fan out into the up and down sidings. The sequence is the same though. The boards have the combination of ply track base and foam every where else. Tonight I've been sticking the foam laminate floor underlay down onto the ply track bed. The Templot track plans have been laid temporarily just so you can get an idea. The track has been laid across the board 7 to 6 join including the up sidings. I'm rather pleased to have acquired some of the LMS models short GWR buffer stops which will be perfect here. These were the sidings that housed a camping coach and the old Perry coal yard. I got distracted for a week or so, playing around with the station drawings on Coreldraw. Don't think I'm too far away from the finished plan and being ready to cut some mdf. Still pondering the best method of doing the stonework though. Modelling wise, I've managed to paint a couple of wagons but that's been about it.