Nick Holliday

I can confirm this identification. Found it in my round-tuit cache. Note the price! All the MWC kits I bought came with etched axleguards, and many had the springs cast with the solebars. The casting in the original picture doesn't look quite as crisp as mine, and I wondered if it might have come from Kingswood Models of Milton Keynes, who seem to have been in position to reintroduce some of the MWC range, but disappeared after a short existence.

Having derailed this thread, I thought this suburban house near me showed a triumph of money over good taste(?) might be of interest. Lots of polychrome bricks combined with plenty of flint and other materials. I have no idea of its history, as otherwise it is a fairly unremarkable building. In my searching I also came across a PhD dissertation by Moses Jenkins of the University of Dundee on the history of brickwork in Scotland from 1700 - 1900 which goes into great detail on many aspects of brickwork, which makes interesting reading, if you have the time. https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/10228188/Jenkins_M_201

Sorry if I came over rather too strongly. The first time I was aware of the style, over fifty years ago, it was described as polychromatic, and the term obviously got lodged in my brain and, since then, I must have been using autocorrect whenever I saw the word polychrome. I did check online before posting, and, although the two words are synonymous, it was only in the polychromatic meanings that Oxford actually quoted “polychromatic brickwork “.

I've just looked through some of the photos I'd taken of Brighton station buildings in the eighties, and I'd forgotten how popular polychromatic brickwork was through the years on the line. Too many to list, but Leatherhead and Eastbourne are worth checking. Unfortunately Christ's Hospital station was demolished before I visited it, but even the surviving goods shed had some interesting details, but the murky weather made my shots not worth posting, but a couple of views of Tunbridge Wells West just after closure give a taste of the wide palette of brick and stonework types and colours the LBSCR architects had at their disposal. The details are very similar to Christ's Hospital, and there is a lovely colour view of that onein Michael Welch's Sussex Steam book from Capital Transport.

The usual term when applied to brickwork is polychromatic. The LBSCR had a wonderful example at Christ’s Hospital Station, but I haven’t been able to find a colour photo on line.

This might show its original form, in 1939. courtesy Reddit

As @34theletterbetweenB&D noted at the beginning, the intrinsic problem is the plastic frog, not the contact of the blades; after all, a large number of modellers have been quite happy to use unmodified Peco points and not reported problems in this area, although you work rewiring will have made things reliable. With a rigid chassis 0-4-0, you are relying on the one wheel on the metal part of the blades making contact whilst the other is on the plastic frog. If that frog is not exactly level with the rest of the track, contact can easily be lost, resulting in stalling or stuttering If careful fettling doesn’t resolve the issue, and you’re not in a position to have DCC with Stay Alive in all your smaller locos, then it might be possible to convert the frog to provide a suitable contact surface, although this would require some switching to ensure the frog is the correct polarity. I have no experience of this, but I have seen proposals whereby short lengths of rail have been inserted (perhaps this could be wire or shim), the plastic has been coated with conductive paint (probably a short term treatment requiring constant renewal) or even shim applied to gap to make contact with the flange (might not work for all locos and might cause bumpy rides).

Since the overhanging timber would have needed a runner, it does seem logical that the three-plank wagon was used. But why has it been uncoupled and the loaded wagons drawn away from it?

Or this https://britishrailwaybooks.co.uk/magazine/modellersbacktrack/1992v1n6februarymarch.php

One of the Brian Jeyes photos, thanks to being in colour, clearly shows that the brickwork above the arches up to the roof is newer than the rest of the building.

Trying to recall details from over fifty years ago, when I did noise surveys during my gap year, as you say, it’s a logarithmic scale, so it’s 3dB that indicate a doubling of the noise level, and 10dB difference, ten times. So the difference recorded using the crumb is a reduction by a tenth. Background noise levels obviously depend upon the local environment, but 40-45dB is fairly normal for a suburban area IIRC.

I can see your dilemma. The majority of the brickwork is in Flemish bond, but the corner details and the dentils have given the bricklayers doubts, and the right hand side of the right doorway looks a bit of a dog’s breakfast, although a Flemish pattern is vaguely apparent. The top four courses, inconveniently in deep shade, also appear to be a mess. The dentils and the stepped corner have made it difficult to reestablish the Flemish bond, and perhaps the brickies extemporised as best they could, whilst maintaining the stability of that top section. The modern infill of the two windows has not been executed sympathetically either, which doesn’t help you.

Since that item is actually a rough estimate to have a bespoke layout built to your own design, it could be quite a good guide to calculate the value of a layout for insurance purposes. The builder is suggesting £16,000 to build a 14’ x 7’ layout, which works out at £160 per square foot. I’ve no idea whether the figure is representative but it might be a starting point. It obviously does not reflect the secondhand value.

@grandadbob was showing off his vast wealth and acreage. Us paupers in the great and green London Borough of Sutton have to make do with just three wheelie bins - the plastic etc. recycling goes into a green crate similar to the picture.

Using the inflation calculator I prepared from the prices of Railway Modeller, the inflation factor for 1963 is x44, so that 5 shilling coach would be £11 in today’s money. Don’t know how salaries might have related.

Overall an excellent edition, particularly the County Donegal layout. However, in my printed edition, I was disappointed by the number of murky photographs. Jesse Sims’ piece suffered most, with the differences between examples, apart from Wagon 3, being virtually indistinguishable. A couple of the RMweb Community views suffered similarly, and the picture of the Hornby Fish Wagon(?) looked like one of O. V. Bulleid’s more experimental Irish wagons, with diagonal corrugated sides and a continuously curved roof. Being picky, I realise that Michael Russell’s piece on weathering was applicable to all scales, but then specific dimensions were quoted, unnecessarily, for the mudflaps, and it would be interesting to know the source of the model used.

Google comes up with 26’ x 2’

William Stroudley on the LB&SCR was an enthusiastic proponent of close-coupled sets, and is sometimes considered the originator of the idea. Regarding saving in length, his close-coupling design was very compact, and, in fact, saved a touch over 3' in every gap, so, in a typical South London Line train, for which they were initially built, a 10 coach set was 27' shorter, and the coaches were only 26 feet long, so, effectively, an extra coach, perhaps able to carry some 50 passengers (in discomfort) which seems a decent gain, if platform length is a criteria. One thing I am pretty certain of is that close-coupling was not done to improve the comfort for the passengers. Whilst the set will work as a block, and individual coaches might not be prone to movement forwards and back due to sprung buffers, every jolt and surge would be felt throughout the train, not improved by the bare wooden seats in the, predominantly, third class carriages. If close-coupling did improve the ride, why did Stroudley provide "main line" versions of this four-wheeled stock, with full buffers etc.? Inner London commuters were only interested in getting a seat and then getting to their destination as quickly as possible. One factor overlooked is the considerable saving in weight achieved by dispensing with four buffers and two couplings. The carriage bodies, largely wooden, were fairly lightweight and this additional ironmongery would have made a substantial difference. This reduction of weight was perhaps a factor in their introduction, as the South London Line was largely at high level and subject, initially, to load restrictions, and it also gave the Terriers built for the service a better chance to keep to the timetable, even with fully laden trains.

Just for the record, D&S did produce a kit for the NER cattle wagon. I’ve always wondered whether the majority of Danny’s NER wagons were somehow merged into the Wizard range, which features many of the company’s wagons, but I can’t recall anything being officially reported in the model press, and I suspect it was well before the inception of RMweb where speculation would have been rife.

For my version of Fittleworth in 4mm, I cut 6mm wide strips from a sheet of plastic siding which had grooves at 2mm spacing, with additional plastic strip underneath to give the required 6” depth. I can’t find whose sheet I used, but this is something similar already prepared to give the 18” length of the brick. https://www.greenstuffworld.com/en/46-textured-sheets Sadly it isn’t embossed with the non-slip pattern, but I don’t think that was always present. Masokits used to do an etching, but that is no longer available.

Apologies if this has been noted before, but this topic is not one I often visit. https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?item=145120551750&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m3561.l2562&_ssn=calds69 £10,000 for a large collection of Graham Farish which is over twenty years old seems a bit optimistic if it were in N Gauge as the seller describes it. However, it turns out to be the 00 gauge range, which is fifty or more years old, so perhaps it might be worth something.

I suspect that modellers tend to under-estimate the capabilities of the smaller locos, such as the 14xx and the Brighton Terriers. They were built to be capable of handling quite substantial trains, and it is their association with bucolic branchlines and short trains which has coloured our attitude. There is a photo of a 14xx at Ashburton with a train of around 25 cattle wagons, which I'm sure was within its capacity, and the Terrier's first job was to haul trains of 14 or more 4-wheelers around the South London Line, yet reviewers seem amazed, and satisfied, that the Darnby Terrier can pull three bogie coaches! On the Brighton the larger D1 and E1 tanks, probably around the same size as the 14xx, were expected to earn their keep with 7 or more bogies or 30 wagons. I'm not sure the milk tanks were quite that heavy. Photos of SR and GWR tanker wagons show a tare weight of between 12 and 15 tons, although this may be just the railway companies' share, excluding the tank itself, as post-Nationalisation views show a higher overall figure, with another below, around 8 tons, which may well be the weight of the tank, which had been the property of the dairy company, so the overall tare weight was around 24 tons, and 3,000 gallons of milk, at 10lbs per gallon, would add about 15 tons, making an overall loaded weight of under 40 tons. The adoption of the six-wheel chassis was more to overcome stability problems, as they would have to run at high speed on their way to London. A photo of Hemyock shows a 14xx with four such tanks and a bogie carriage, so such a scene is prototypical. I have to agree with @The Johnster and others, that the presence of coal bins adjacent to the siding is not representative of GWR practice in the West Country, and, if you must keep them, they could be relocated to a quiet area at the perimeter of the yard, and to do so would increase the flexibility of the use of the sidings considerably.

Sorry. Missed that, rather hidden by the #### advert.

The South London line started operation with the overhead electrification in December 1909, I think the 1911 dates are thassociated with the extension to Crystal Palace. The next expansion was to be to Cheam and Coulsdon, and much of the work towards Cheam had been virtually completed by the time the Great War started, and, as all the vital missing bits were to have come from Germany, which rather stalled things. Recovery after the war was slow, and the scheme was trimmed back to Sutton, eventually opening under the aegis of the Southern Railway in 1925. Returning to the original topic, I don’t think the North Staffordshire’s single example has been mentioned. Hookham designed a four cylinder 0-6-0 tank in 1922, in an attempt to achieve electric-style acceleration on commuting services. Like the Decapod it was not a success and the LMS quickly rebuilt it as a tender loco, retaining its four cylinders, and its rather unusual front platform arrangement. There’s a video-style piece by Stephen Dawson on YouTube that has a number of photos.

I’ve just been looking through the photographs I’ve taken of Brighton stations, and most had retained the brick edgings. Most notable is Tunbridge Wells West, hardly a way station. However, I can’t avow to the actual height; it looks as if it has been raised at least once in its lifetime, but it’s well within the realms of reality that the parsimonious Southern would have reused the edging bricks once the extra courses had been built. Interestingly the additional courses were not corbelled out, as might have been expected.