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whart57

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Posts posted by whart57

  1. 3 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

    [2] If luggage trains needed to be pulled at passenger train speeds, it would be logical to use passenger engines. The Liverpool and Manchester, as a pioneering railway, may well have so described an engine a few years old that had been superseded by the latest design from passenger traffic.

     

     

    Many railways used the term "coal engine" for an obsolescent goods loco fit only for the slowest mineral traffic. The South Eastern even used the term in their livery definitions, namely that "coal engines" were painted black with no lining and minimal lettering.

    • Like 1
  2. You are probably right that the British military leadership was too heavily committed to the flawed Market Garden plan to consider a change in emphasis. Even aerial reconnaissance photos confirming the presence of German armour near the Arnhem drop zones didn't cause a rethink. Nor did the fact that even if the First Airborne had managed to hold the Arnhem bridge until XXX Corps arrived, the British still had to cross the Ijssel river in order to hit the road into Germany. Something that took the Canadians a week in April 1945 against Germans about to surrender.

     

    What Montgomery and Eisenhower didn't know though was how close the Germans in the Netherlands were to collapse in September 1944. There was a brief window of opportunity to advance north from Antwerp and watch the Occupation regime panic and run East. Moving up to Breda would also have cut off the German forces on Beveland and Walcheren. It seemed such a no-brainer that the Dutch government in exile believed it had happened and broadcast that fact over the BBC. However, the German commanders restored order, Market Garden went ahead and the rest is history. Which unfortunately included the famine in the Netherlands and another eight months of Nazis winkling out Jews in hiding.

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  3. 16 hours ago, Arun Sharma said:

    I have an idea that although Antwerp and its port had been captured, the estuary of the Sheldt leading [backwards/upstream of course] to the port was still occupied by Germans on both North and South sides. It wouldn't be until rather later [with much thanks to the Canadian Army and the Royal Marines] that the taking of Walcheren and the Scheldt Estuary would allow Antwerp Port to actually be used.

     

    Antwerp without clear use of the Scheldt was of little value. However capturing the islands of Walcheren and South Beveland was surely classic airborne troops stuff. Drop in behind the fortified positions, secure beach heads and get in the support from ground forces.

     

     

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  4. Unusually the Dutch language version of this article contains less information than the English translation, but the place it was found might give a clue as to why it was there and why it was buried. The Noordkasteel was part of the nineteenth century defensive works around Antwerp harbour which were de-commissioned at the end of the century to expand the docks. Presumably the developments in artillery during the nineteenth century had rendered the fortifications obsolete. The wall and an underground magazine were not demolished then though. In 1944 however the Allied advance from Normandy was so rapid once the troops had broken through the coastal defences that the Germans were in panic mode. It's quite possible that something like a container was dug in to provide some form of pillbox along an existing defensive line, the underground magazine - which was apparently dynamited in the 1950s - would have been useful in WW2.

     

    As it happened, a combination of British troops and Belgian resistance fighters managed to capture Antwerp and its docks without too much heavy fighting, and it has been suggested that Montgomery should have reacted by cancelling Market Garden, which was just about to go, and refocussing on reopening Antwerp's deep water harbour to ease the Allies' supply problems. Most supplies were still coming in at the Mulberry harbours on the Normandy beaches, and as the saying has it, soldiers win battles, logistics win wars.

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  5. On 14/03/2024 at 19:28, Erichill16 said:

    I’m a bit further on, I’ve got a bit of stock and even half a dozen light signal. (N gauge)

    Hopefully I’ll be able to get away with traditional baseboards rather than open frame one.😉

     

    If you want a Minories style terminus then have you considered Enkhuizen? This is the terminus of a line from Amsterdam which these days is operated by double deck EMUs but in earlier years had double deck carriages in push pull formation with a 1700 providing the power.

     

    Go back a dozen years or so and there is a YouTube video of a rush hour service formed of Plan V EMUs, the traditional hondekop type.

     

    For more variety you could employ a bit of modellers license and have the Sprinter service from Alkmaar to Hoorn extended to Enkhuizen.

     

    It should be possible to figure out the trackplan from Google Maps satellite view.

    • Like 3
  6. The main part of the Ironbridge Gorge museum is at Blists Hill, a mile or so downstream from Ludcrofts Wharf, on the other side of the Ironbridge itself. I didn't realise until I looked more closely at the nineteenth century 25" to the mile map of the Ironbridge area (thank you National Library of Scotland) how extensive the tramway networks on the north bank of the Severn were. A few "what-ifs" for narrow gauge modellers there I think. Particularly as the eighteenth century mines and workshops they served were smaller than the later nineteenth and twentieth century versions.

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  7. The rails aren't there but the course of them is still marked on the quay at Ludcrofts Wharf, now part of the Ironbridge Gorge museum.

     

    view-of-the-outside-of.jpg?w=1200&h=1200

     

    On old maps rails are also shown going out the other side of the building and around the warehouse and then crossing the road and going up the valley of a stream. This dale is Coalbrookdale, and this was one of the oldest tramways in the world. Not only that but Coalbrookdale works collaborated with Richard Trevithick to build his first steam locomotive, arguably the first steam locomotive ever. In the early seventies some old rails of the long disused tramway were found near Rose Cottage in the dale, and are now preserved by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum

     

    A bit of important railway history commemorated by those ruts in the brickwork at the wharf.

     

    So quite a bi

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  8. I posted a little about one of these on another thread but I thought that a more wider exposition might justify its own thread.

     

    The lines in question are both in the South West of the Netherlands, in the province of Zeeland and both serve docks on the West Scheldt river.

     

    The first is the Sloe line. The Sloe is a former channel separating the islands of Walcheren and South Beveland. In medieval times it was an important sea lane allowing vessels to pass between the West and East Scheldt rivers without needing to enter the North Sea, but it became silted up and in the nineteenth century ceased to become a through route when a dam was built to carry the railway to Middelburg and Vlissingen (Flushing). The silted up areas were turned into polders in the 1960s and became an industrial area and an extension of Vlissingen port called Sloehaven. It was then remote enough for the Dutch to site the Borselle nuclear power station there.

     

    Sloehaven received a rail connection from the beginning, but initially the connection to the main line was over a former light railway laid through the rural part of South Beveland. Part of this light railway is now the SGB heritage railway. In the 1990s however a new connecting line was laid and the former light railway became a cycle path.

     

    An article in issue 354 of Rail Magazine (May 2018) describes the traffic to Sloehaven then. A list of five daily trains with another eight running between once and three times a week was in the piece. Traffic included LPG, coal, ore, cellulose and steel girders and coil loaded in Sloehaven for inland industries and car transport from Ford for export

     

    The other line is on the opposite bank and serves the industries and port facilities around Terneuzen in Dutch Flanders. This line was built by two Belgian companies, one building a line from Terneuzen to Ghent and the other building a line from a junction at Sluiskil to Axel, Hulst and eventually Mechelen (Malines). In 1948 the lines came under government control, Belgium assuming responsibility for the lines on their territory and the Dutch taking control of what was on theirs. Passenger traffic ceased in the 1950s and the line from Axel to Mechelen closed completely.

     

    The line was expanded as industry grew, particularly on the west side of the canal to Ghent. Some relaying and provision of new bridges was needed when the road tunnel under the Scheldt was built as level crossings on a motorway are generally discouraged.

     

    Rail Magazine covered the line in issue 377 which unfortunately I do not have. However the same sort of mix of tank wagons, vans and ore cars seems to be the traffic.

     

    The Zeeuws-Vlaanderen line is diesel operated, but the Sloe line has catenary up to the marshalling yard where diesel locos take over. There are still some 600 class 0-6-0 shunters (Dutch version of the English Electric model) in private use at Sloehaven.

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  9. 16 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

    This discussion started on the UK punters' lack of interest in the railways of other countries. Foreign locations with Uk stock must surely be a help in getting folk to stop and take a look.

     

     

    Well just across the North Sea there was plenty of stuff that would be familiar to UK eyes. The Dutch State Railway (not a nationalised company but a private company operating the state built and owned lines, not unlike our present franchise system here) got most of its locomotives from Beyer Peacock and they were much like the locomotives British companies used at the time. Passenger carriages were the same style of a load of separate compartments with passengers facing each other on benches, each with their own doors, as British passenger carriages of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were. When the Holland railway decided to buy British in the 1890s what they bought was a class of 4-4-0s which could have slipped onto any British railway of the time without raising comment. The Netherlands Central Railway also bought from Britain and rebuilt some old 2-4-0s to be 4-4-0s of a distinctly British appearance. The Staatsspoor (State railway) was even left side running on double track sections before 1921. You could put a British looking 4-4-0 with three compartment carriages and a van in front of a windmill and a farm on a polder without breaking any rules on authenticity.

     

    I would say the problem with modelling steam era Dutch railways in this country is that they aren't different enough, whereas bright yellow EMUs might be different but in these days of City Breaks hardly unfamiliar to UK railway enthusiasts.

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  10. What that was supposed to mean that an anything goes philosophy was a cliche of Continental layout back in the 70s and 80s. The "line is near the French-German border so I can run French and German stock with a smattering of Swiss because I'm imagining a secondary route to Geneva ....."

     

    As for Austerities not being of interest I was saying they were of less interest. They are after all just one loco class. OK two. By the late 1940s though they were only on heavy freight duties. Once the electrified lines were repaired the EMUs returned to take over most passenger duties. A whole new class of EMUs was designed and put into service in 1946 and 1947. The withdrawal of Allied troops from the three Western occupation zones and the creation of the federal republic of West Germany in 1949 also saw the return of German locos and rolling stock and the final return of captured Dutch stock, albeit not from East Germany or from other Soviet bloc countries. Rolling stock borrowed from Sweden also returned home. In short the period when Austerities might be hauling trains of mixed nationality rolling stock was very short, possibly eighteen months.

     

    One other problem with modelling Austerities in post-war Holland is that they did a lot of their work after dark. Passenger traffic required lots of trains working an interval timetable. Fitting in a slow and heavy freight could clog everything up during the day.

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  11. 12 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:


    How much of this is there, and did it used to be a larger network? In some ways it’s odd that it’s run by NS as elsewhere in Europe there are similar isolated cross-border railways run by the country that the line starts in (I think I’ve seen some on a map on the borders of France, Germany and Luxembourg).

     

    It was originally built by a private company to link the port of Terneuzen with Mechelen (Malines) and bringing railway connections the other main towns of Dutch Flanders, Hulst and Axel. The history of Dutch Flanders goes back to 1648 and the treaties that ended the Thirty Years War and the Eighty Years War that started with the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish king. The merchants of Amsterdam wanted to keep control of trade into their former great rival Antwerp and had demanded both banks of the Scheldt river. During the great religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that part of the river bank had also become protestant, probably as a result of the large numbers of protestant soldiers garrisoned there, which meant that when the Belgians revolted against the Dutch king in 1830, Dutch Flanders remained stubbornly loyal.

     

    Until 1914 though the border was completely open for ordinary people so there was no problem a private company building a cross border railway. The problems arose after WW2 when much of the line and facilities at Terneuzen had been destroyed and needed rebuilding and the private company couldn't raise the capital to do so. The Dutch cared more about Terneuzen than the Belgians did so it was the NS that took things over in 1951. The line closed to passengers but the fact Terneuzen lies on a bend of the Scheldt and as a result has the deep water channel just off shore, it was a good location for industries that needed things like oil from overseas. A fair few industries sprung up around Terneuzen as the Dutch revived their economy during the fifties and sixties.

     

    These days there is a tunnel under the Scheldt from Terneuzen to Goes and the rest of the Netherlands motorway network so the area is not so off the beaten track as it was. As a result there are a number of YouTube videos that give a flavour of operations today.

     

     

    This one is from the 1990s when the 08 look-alikes of the 600 class (don't hammer me with the differences please) were handing over to the larger 2200 class

     

     

    Or this one

     

     

    It's a measure of how successful the line has been over the last sixty years that the traction power has had to grow from 4 wheel shunters to the 0-6-0s of the 600 class to fully fledged mainline diesels.

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  12. 1 hour ago, Bernard Lamb said:

    I quite like the idea of a Dutch layout. Set around 1945 with Austerities hauling rakes of coaches from various UK companies. That would cause a problem with those who don't like foreign layouts. Through in an international mix of freight stock, including some of US origin and we satisfy or upset just about everybody.

    Bernard

     

    Sounds like the cliche of continental modelling which gets aired by the "foreign muck" brigade.

     

    Seriously though, there are a lot of possibilities with Dutch railways, some that haven't even been explored by Dutch modellers themselves.

     

    How many know for example that the first Dutch railways were broad gauge. The first lines were 2 metres centre rail to centre rail so 1950mm gauge. Regauging took place in the mid 19th century so it would be a bit of a niche affair.

     

    Pre-grouping/nationalisation could be colourful, there was the Netherlands Central Railway with its yellow locomotives - later like the LBSCR in Britain changing to brown - or the North Brabant railway with 4-6-0s in blue.

     

    There was an extensive local network with small tank engines and four wheel coaches. The preserved Hoorn-Medemblik line is an example of that. Post-war, for about five years, there was a local railway from Amsterdam's Haarlemmermeer station going south. Almost every tank engine type worked on it with Dutch and Swedish four wheel coaches. Freight traffic, primarily coal and chemicals, was hauled by outside framed 4-4-0s with large drivers. Later various diesel classes ranging from mainline types to four wheeled shunters worked the line, which survived for freight until 1986.

     

    The main thing though was the Netherlands pioneer status in electrification, the consequence of which is the obsolescent 1500v DC power over nearly all the network (high speed line to Brussels and Paris excepted I think). Streamlined EMUs which were mirrored by streamlined DEMUs on the secondary lines. One interesting idea for a layout I saw many many years ago was based on Roodeschool up near Groningen. Passenger traffic was in the hands of single or twin DEMUs, which could of course be coupled together for rush hour trains, but there was also the gas industry requiring tank wagons and other stuff.

     

    For freight traffic offering nearly every sort of wagon there is the small stand-alone network in Dutch Flanders. Run by the Dutch NS it connects with the Belgian railways. However the area served around Terneuzen has chemical works, oil refineries, sugar factories which get wagon loads of sugar beet and more. It's absolutely suitable for an American style wagon despatching layout. Unfortunately without mountains to hide fiddle yards in.

     

    Or for a shelf layout there is the Distelweg freight terminus in Amsterdam. On the wrong side of the river Ij this collection of sidings - some running through the street - was served by a small ferry which could carry a four wheel shunter and a couple of wagons per trip. That expired in the late 80s or early 90s but there are local history websites that describe it.

     

    And of course there was the temporary line that only ran during low tide that we modelled in the Great Model Railway Challenge.

     

    So those Austerities are probably the least interesting subjects.

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  13. The Silhouette cutter has come up trumps again. It would not be unfair to say that those who decorated the windows and walls of Thai temples didn't know when to stop, and the arches over the windows usually contain a complex design. The temple I am using as my example certainly does:

     

    image.png.d69fa53b95cf63a43e60e177d0429565.png

     

    The idea of painting that to 1:100 scale was a bit daunting, but letting the Silhouette cut out a slightly simplified version from vinyl and sticking that in place seems to do the job nicely.

     

    image.png.434714593a04c78529cfbfec705d588c.png

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  14. It's not a quick job, but the painting of the temple buildings is proceeding satisfactorilly. Colours are as the Wat Chai Monkol on Rama I Road, and according to some stuff on Thai architecture I found, the colours are typical of a central Thailand temple. The deep blue and gold that adorn some of the larger ones is apparently a Northern speciality, though Bangkok obviously has ones like that as well.

     

    temple_06032024.jpg.c546a31bb33c41c86985702b6120bba2.jpg

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  15. Five weeks to go to the Club Open Day.

     

    image.png.5e30095f37c745756d433f914a5bd55b.png

     

    It's time to focus on priorities, and not try to rush the completion of things that aren't going to be finished anyway.

     

    Stockwise I have two completed locomotives, a GE "shovelnose" and an Alsthom, and I have a shunter that runs but is unpainted and not detailed and a class 158 set that runs but still requires the glazing to be completed and the painting finished. I have four finished coaches and a further three on wheels but far from finished. There is also a smattering of completed and part-built freight stock to populate yards with. So the main job here will be to fit couplings to the things I expect to move but don't have them. I use Kadee H0n3 couplings which work as well as H0 Kadees but are better suited to my smaller scale.

     

    I am trying to complete the main temple building together with the bell tower and the chedi. Mostly this is a painting job. I occasionally do a bit more landscaping but that is no longer a priority.

     

    Two major jobs need doing. I am reverting to DC for electrical control. I wanted to go DCC and that is how the layout is wired, but I am concluding that the Bull-Ant motor bogie with its three worm gears draws too much current for the chips that can be fitted inside the locos. I have had a number of chips blow, one spectacularly while a chassis was on the rolling road. I have concluded that reverting to DC is simpler and more sure of success than trying to fix the DCC issue. Reverting the locos is simple, just a couple of links on the 8 pin socket to connect pickups to motor, but some section switching will have to be installed.

     

    The other major job is to make some legs. Originally I was going to lay the baseboards on two six foot tables but I'm not really keen on that, and nor is the exhibition manager who has more demand for tables than he has tables. I just need a few days dry weather so that I can do the dusty woodworking out on the patio. I have the design created for the club's Chesworth layout to work to. Those legs are light, strong and quite fast to build.

     

    More pictures as subjects reach the point where its worth taking their picture.

  16. On 22/02/2024 at 11:03, auldreekie said:

    A roughly H0 scale (6/7 x 4mm to 1foot) model  nearing completion,  of a Federated Malay States 4-6-2 built by Kitsons  in 1916,  NBL in1919.  Some of these found their way to Thailand during(?) and after WW2.  There were a lot of them  (of the order of 60 I think) in three related classes

     

    Seventeen went to Thailand in 1945. Two were subsequently sold back to the FMSR a few years later. They were somewhat under-powered compared to the Thai Pacifics and as the Japanese had left large numbers of their very good C56 branch line engine behind there wasn't much lighter work for them either. Most were scrapped in the 1950s along with the half dozen Werkspoor/Beyer Peacock 4-6-0s from the Dutch East Indies. The fact they were non-standard and spares hard to come by was what had them off to the breakers yard early. Two apparently remain in Thailand as museum pieces, though where now could be a mystery.

  17. A couple of carriage roofs have now been cut out, given formers and tested on the carriages they are intended for. I tried both 30 thou and 40 thou Plastikard. The old hoover I use for suction (a 20 year old Miele) needed a bit of servicing as its last job had been to clean up after decorators and that had clogged the filters. Cleaned up inside though and it could deal with the thicker 40 thou just as well as the 30 thou and that is what I will use for the rest as it is a bit more rigid.

     

    20240225_145109.jpg.4fe25a38ee7d364a1d9236b462720310.jpg

     

    On the carriage front I will need about ten. I have three complete and one 95% complete. Three more are at the stage of the one in the photo, namely basic shell done and painted, bogies fitted and, now, a basic roof. Two more are just a basic shell with a further two still flat etches. Give it a year or two and I might get there.

     

    With April 6 fast approaching I have also been doing more on the carpetry - node the missing 'n'. I've been trying a different approach to the wilderness areas. I start by painting the area a basic earth colour using cheap acrylic paints and then cover that with a mix of 6mm and 12mm long "grasses" using the Noch grassmaster. After the basing glue has set and the excess vacuumed off, some areas are treated with a bit of glue and a dusting of Noch "leaves". Areas where the grass is a bit bare are painted with thin PVA and scattered with Noch leaves quite thickly. Small pieces of lichen are dusted with leaves or flock for bushes and some featured plants placed.

     

    20240225_145208.jpg.17cc39545b2e4083910e07aa35202228.jpg

     

    I'm still experimenting with other ways of representing broad leaved plants. American war gamers refighting the Pacific war require tropical vegetation and things like palm trees and banana trees suitable for 20mm and 25mm wargaming figures can be found on the internet. Quality is very variable, and some offerings would certainly be unknown to the experts at Kew Gardens. But careful selection and a bit of repainting can give good results. A trio of banana plants are intended to fill that hole in the herbage, but the paint is still wet at the time of writing.

     

    Some other ideas are being worked on involving offerings from China via Amazon. If they work I will report further.

     

     

  18. 17 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

     

    There seem to be a few student/tram enthusiast types in shot, I wonder if this is an all lines tour or the Dutch equivalent?, hence the requirement to clear out a line left to fall into disrepair as "it will never be needed again".

     

    Mike.

     

    Mike.

     

    The handwritten DAT sign in the driver's window certainly suggests that sort of special, though the fact the overhead is still in place and functional suggests that the operations department of the GVB still regarded the line section as "needed". There were (are) certainly sections of tram tracks still in the road in Amsterdam but from which the overhead had been removed. But the "still needed" bit obviously hadn't been passed to the roads department at the council when they tarmacced the Vijzelstraat.

     

    The type of tram used suggests a special too. The motor car has had 1000 added to the number which is painted on in a non-serif script. That means post 1967. By 1967 however line 5 had been a bus route for two years. The fact the tram has been fitted with line 5 corner lamps and a large 5 in the bow-collector is probably down to these bits still being in the stores. (The modern line 5 to Amstelveen follows a completely different route)

     

     

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  19. 15 hours ago, cctransuk said:

     

    Looking immediately in front of the tram - the roadway has been ripped up and the gauge bars are exposed below the surface.

     

    This is not just a one-off use of a little-used curve - something else has / is occurred / is occuring.

     

    CJI.

     

    Tram tracks exposed with gauge bars showing was (is) not that unusual in Dutch cities where most side streets were (are) formed of bricks laid on a sand base much like our posher drive ways. When services work is required the whole lot was lifted but often the tram track left in place to minimise disruption to the tram service. There are signs that the road has been closed for roadworks on the left of the photo. In any case the tarmac scraping is not in the side street (Reguliersdwarsstraat) but in the main road (Vijzelstraat).

     

    The other point to make is that the first thing to be removed when a tram track is taken out of use permanently is to take down the overhead. The fact the overhead was still in place and operational suggests the GVB still had a use for that section. Which was, as I posted earlier, as a return loop to truncate services if an accident or derailment prevented trams continuing on to the Central Station.

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  20. Found it

     

    Amsterdam_tram_tarmacced_track.png.0341e24c055efe8bdf7cd5a011f70069.png

     

    Interesting are the ad hoc tools being used, The guy on the right is using the rod the trams carry to switch points when the automatic switch either hasn't worked or isn't there. The side street is up apparently though in Dutch cities like Amsterdam side streets are generally laid with loose bricks that are easy to lift and put back. The track's normal use was as an emergency loop for trams coming up from the south (back then lines 16,24 and 25) so they could return if there was a blockage between Muntplein and Central Station. Clearly hadn't been needed in a while.

     

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