Annie

So if I change the 'J' Class's number to 1517 and find a suitable model figure and name it 'Mr Smith' and place him on the footplate I might do better and achieve 90 mph.

I also have N.E.R. No.1619, - the Worsdell-Smith Compound 4-4-0. This snap was taken at Appleby Junction on the Settle & Carlisle route that dates from Trainz Classics 3 which was released back in 2008, - though it's had some updating since then. Time period is the BR dismal transition error which can't be helped, but it's still a darn fine place to run steam engines around on.

Sorry only 84 mph on DCC controls. 0.6% gradient, 146 Ton train of seven N.E.R. 6 wheelers. (S&C Route borrowed for the test) I might try it again using the steam control set.

All on hold for the foreseeable future unfortunately. Doing basic self care as well as what light housework tasks I can manage are about the limit without trying to add layout building into the mix.

Haven't tried giving it a proper run yet. I'd need to do it on 'Tristyn in Winter' as it's got a long mainline that's better set up for speed runs.

A little more pottering around my 'Cairnrigg to Balessie' layout. Took a snap of Ed Heaps's exquisite N.E.R. Worsdell Von Borries Compound Class 'J' at Balessie MPD. Not really the kind of engine that would have been seen in the district, but I couldn't turn down the opportunity to take a nice screenshot.

Placeholder snap to let you all know I'm doing more or less Ok. Very sleepy and needing to sleep a lot, but I seem to be getting past the worst of having caught the plague.

Nice that my freelance No.5 sparked off some inspiration for your own interesting Broad Gauge freelance 4-2-4T engines Isambird. I originally assembled it from a collection of parts that weren't really meant to fit together to create a track testing locomotive for the Trainz simulator, but as it happen it turned out to be a reasonably useful engine to have on the roster.

Similar to Brunel's attitude towards GWR engines carrying any identifying markings, - 'People know who we are'.

https://broadgauge.co.uk/locations/kingswear_station.shtml

Exactly that, - which always made me wonder what went wrong when the design was transferred to the N.E.R.

That is a superb image, - the detail captured by the photographer is amazing. A Broad Gauge classic and one that is well worth seeing again.

Ex-S&D No.161 'Lowther' having a run about on 'Cairnrigg to Balessie'.

Thank you very much James. It pleases me no end when people who have actually lived near a particular location tell me that the layout I've built up has a correct look to it. I was aiming for a bleak northern landscape under a gloomy sky and if I've managed to capture it makes me very happy. I'm fond of my two Bouch 4-4-0s so there was no way that I was going to leave them out. They were withdrawn in 1888, but I'm going to quietly ignore that. Yes the poor old Class '59'. Shunned by N.E.R. engine men and sent to the naughty chair of shame for not being as good as the engines they were supposed to replace. Being a mixed traffic type with the Westinghouse brake and steam heating they found a niche with being useful at working secondary passenger services and that is the role my Class '59' fits into on the layout. Thanks for the photo, - for all their faults they certainly were a handsome enough looking engine.

That photo of Watchet I know because I have the book published by Lightmore Press. I don't know whether the logs were incoming or outgoing from Watchet, but every photo of the wharves certainly shows heaps of them. The Newton Abbot photo is a favourite with that 'Hawthorne' Class engine front and centre. But I still don't see how the OS maps for Kingswear show no railway at all until the 1904 OS maps were published.

Now that is very strange because the NLS OS map from the 1887 survey published in 1890 shows not a jot of it and the railway was supposed to have been there from 1844.

Ooooooooooo! Was that ancient Broad Gauge snap taken at Watchet?, - or am I getting myself horribly confused. Looks like a B&ER 4-4-0 saddle tank, but with the turntable 'speed blur' any kind of detail is almost non existent.

This is the little engine I need to put back together again for use on the plateway at Rostyre. I forgot to take a saved copy of it so I'll have to reassemble it again. Only a two minute video.

Oh dear it was an awful long time ago, but I'll see if I can find which one it was. I fitted it into a smallish possibly Saxby & Farmer GWR signal box that I'd scratchbuilt from card and as a method of signalling it was very effective and looked reasonably realistic in operation. As the article says the signalman was completely out of sight and invisible at the back of the signal box interior until he was moved into position. Only a fairly narrow slot was needed to be made in both the baseboard surface and the signal box floor. EDIT: The signal box was the ex-B&ER signal box from Hatch on the Chard Branch as featured during the three part series on the Chard Branch in RM in 1969. RM May 1970 Pg.143

Looking over 19th century OS maps for small terminus stations bears this out. Signals tended to be laid down on the 'less is more' principle with any special movements handled by the bobby's flags or handlamp. Edit: Reminds me of a layout I built back in my twenties where following an article in RM I installed a mechanical push button that would make a signalman figure lean out of the window of his signal box with a green flag in his hand.

Supplementary snaps:

It's a good while ago now that I put together 'Cairnrigg to Balessie' as a kind of generic pre-grouping Scottish layout in TS2012. At first it was no more than a test track, but little by little it got added to until it eventually became a reasonable looking layout. Made up of 12 standard Trainz layout boards it had portal tracks at each end and three stations in between. It eventually ended up on the Trainz DLS and people seemed to like it. When I first took up with Trainz TRS22 I rebuilt 'Cairnrigg to Balessie' as an experiment to see what this new version of Trainz was like. The layout was lengthened by a standard Trainz board at each end and hidden return loops and sidings were added in tandem to the portal tracks. Bridges and a tunnel were rebuilt, various parts of the landscape were smoothed out and reshaped and each of the stations and their surroundings received additional scenic detailing and improvement. The only problem was I wasn't happy with the way N3V was developing TRS22 with every 'update' patch causing problems, - and with many of the engines I was using on the layout being older models it was plain that they were vulnerable to having their scripting and animations broken. So I packed the layout away and archived all its dependencies and rolling stock in the hope that I might be able to resurrect it in one of the earlier versions of Trainz. As it happened when TRS19 reached the end of active support the final update patch it received from N3V made it a close enough match to the TRS22 build version 'Cairnrigg to Balessie' was last saved under that I could successfully load it into TRS19. Since I was feeling quite a bit better this morning I set about installing the first of the engines and rolling stock back onto the layout. In TRS22 I'd put together a session in 'Cairnrigg to Balessie' for some of my collection of N.E.R. engines and rolling stock. Possibly a slight stretch for a Scottish layout, but for quite some time they haven't had a layout to call their with my old installation of Trainz TS2012 having been archived away. Later on I will do a session for my mid 19th century collection of NBR engines and rolling stock. Part of the goods yard at Cairnrigg with the MPD in the background. My pair of William Bouch designed ex-SDR 4-4-0's are a slight anachronism compared to my other N.E.R. engines, but they happened to be favourites of mine. They are Trainz TS2006 era models and despite only having basic detailing they do resemble the prototype engines in a way that pleases me well enough. After a little fettling on my part they run very nicely. No.161 'Lowther' has a tender fitted with double buffers for dealing with cauldron wagons. The other N.E.R. engines on shed. Class 'C' left front, Class 'P' right front, Class '124' left rear and Class '59' right rear.

Oh I'm sure that there will be more if I can set my mind to it. Spent far too much time asleep today, but I thought I'd take a snap of of the new goods shed and goods yard at Rathtyen from the other direction. I'm not sure what is going to happen with the gasworks just yet as some of the models made for London's Beckton gasworks are a wee bit on the gigantic side for Rathtyen town. Nearly all the industrial buildings at Rathtyen are going to get changed for something better and since Steve Flanders has given me a concrete pipe factory kit I'd like to see if I can put that somewhere. A fair bit more terraced housing and some proper streets need to be done as well, but that's not exactly hard to do, - it's just a little on the tedious side.

No it's me with the sense of humour 😎 Using 'error' instead of 'era' was a deliberate choice.

And back to Rathtyen on 'Tristyn in Winter'. I woke up feeling much better today so I decided to see what I could get done at Rathtyen. Rathtyen is the largest town on Tristyn and in many ways it was the worst mess. It didn't even have a goods shed. 😲 Completing everything that's needing doing with rebuilding the town is going to take a while so I thought getting the railway infrastructure sorted so at least the trains can run would be a good thing to do. Where the new goods shed is now was an area filled with mostly old scrap, rubbish and discarded sleepers. Possibly fine for the late BR error, but not for the GWR. Arranging a workable solution for accessing the goods shed and shunting the goods yard tested my slowed down brain a wee bit, but I think I've got something workable. The test of course will be sending a trip working to Rathtyen and seeing how successfully I can manage to work the yard.