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Nick Holliday

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  1. Slightly off topic, but the low open GWR wagon in the foreground of the Huntley & Palmer photo has unusual axleguards, at least for the GWR, in that the springs are inside the guard, and very little of the axlebox protrudes in front. I cannot find one like it in GWR Goods Wagons.
  2. With regard to the method of fixing the tank cladding panels, the original solution, at least, was neither rivets nor hexagonal nuts. The drawing is actually from a Stroudley tender, but the principles are the same, as the tender water was also heated using exhausted steam. The fixing consists of a threaded bolt, which is inserted into a captive nut within the tank. The head of the bolt includes an extended square shank, which allowed the bolt to be tightened with a spanner. When the assembly was complete the square head would be broken off, the necking making this easier to do, and the head of the dome dressed to match the rest of the head. To remove it for repairs the head would be drilled out, in exactly the same way that a rivet would be removed. This just demonstrates the lengths that railway engineers were prepared to go to for aesthetic reasons - just think of the additonal preparation required for flush rivets on smokeboxes - was it any wonder that in later days they eschewed such expensive items and went for coarse round-headed rivets instead. In the case of these fixings, no doubt cheaper and less labour intensive methods were adopted later, or when the specially made bolts were not available, including threaded studs with hexagonal nuts. A member of the Brighton Circle has examined over 200 Terrier photos and only found one that hinted at hexagonal nuts in pre-grouping days, so the standards were maintained as long as possible. The first restored Terrier "Boxhill" was given round headed slotted bolts and the slots filled before painting, which seems a very sensible compromise, but perhaps not durable enough for a working loco. How the Victorian engineers woudl have appreciated Allen sockets and keys! As for the sample Terrier, I am afraid I think it, as it stands, cannot exactly represent any Terrier, at least prior to preservation. The problem lies in the combination of the 10 cladding fixings and the early buffers. The latter can be detected because the centre line of the buffer stock is below the footplate level. Once they started working with the bogie autocars the buffers were raised by just over 2 inches, so they became the standard height of around 3' 6" from rail level, prior to that they had worked mainly with lightweight four wheeled coaches, which rapildy dropped on their springs as they filled with passengers. These raised buffers have their centreline at the footplate level, requiring enlarged housings above the footplate. The additional cladding fixings seem to have started being introduced around 1909, a few years later, so you could see low buffers with 6 fixings, high buffers with 6 fixings and high buffers with 10 fixings, but not low buffers and 10 fixings as per the sample. Although various Terriers were sold out of LBSC service over the years, their new owners did not make any changes themselves to these particular details, and I haven't found evidence that the Southern bothered to bring any into line either. Although several of these strays were rebuilt with the A1X boiler, the other changes the LBSC made to the sanding arrangements, including removing the splasher-mounted boxes above the footplate, were not carried out. All the Brighton A1X would have raised buffers and 10 cladding fixings, the mongrels could have any of the 3 combinations listed above, depending on their configuration at the time of purchase. The Edgehill example noted in another post is an un-rebuilt A1 with 10 cladding fixings, but with the raised buffers, as it was a relatively late purchase (1920) although I think it left Brighton during the Great War for military work.
  3. Have I missed something? Looking at the Backwoods Miniatures website the crane tank is boldly described as a 4mm model, suitable for OO, EM and P4, although I do note that the British HO society list it as an HO kit! It seems a very small prototype to be daring enough to try in HO.
  4. The photo taken at Eythorne shows the EKR Hudswell Clark No. 2. See http://www.hfstephens-museum.org.uk/locomotives/locomotives-of-the-ekr?showall=&limitstart= The loco was bought originally for the WC&P but was too heavy, moving to Kent in a year. It then moved freely around Colonel Stephens' lines as traffic demands on the EKR peaked and troughed. It expired on 23rd August 1943 and was bought by Thomas Ward but instead of being turned into scrap, or a tank, it somehow reappeared still in one piece in Essex and later acquired the superstructure of an ex-brewery 0-4-0ST and survived as "Churchill" until 1957.
  5. At the always excellent Epsom & Ewell show I picked up a second-hand Midland Record, and there was an article on Tom King's reminiscences as a driver around 1923, and he says: "I remember a small gentleman called Tidman Masters, who carried the nickname 'The Mighty Atom'. There were many small drivers on the L&NWR, apparently because the company preferred to take on as cleaners people who would be able to climb inside locomotive water tanks and clean them out. I remember that Tidman always carried a large wooden block around with him which he would place in the corner of the cab to enable him to look out of the spectacle glass. This practice was quite common at Ryecroft shed, not just so that small drivers could see out, but also to enable them to reach the steam brake handle on goods engines, or the vacuum brake on passenger locomotives. Often they used old wooden brake blocks, which were, apparently, fitted to many L&NWR engines so that the steel tyres on the wheels would not wear out or become flat." Perhaps Ken could provide 4mm castings of brake blocks to convert the drivers from HO to OO?
  6. The GWR had several travelling cranes to deal with such eventualities, when the receiving goods yard didn't have the equipment. Cambrian do an excellent kit for one, which might solve your problem.
  7. The Wantage Tramway did start off with skirted locos. Its original services were run using a Grantham self contained steam tram and Hughes, Merryweather and Matthews steam tram locos, which were fully enclosed and consumed their own smoke. (Scrap aid etchings for the Hughes and Matthews locos are available from Worsley Works) This no doubt satisfied the initial inspections, but shortly after opening they acquired a rather more orthodox 0-4-0 well tank from the LNWR for the goods workings, and nobody seemed to notice, having briefly used horses to haul the wagons the two miles to and from Wantage.
  8. I'm not sure, not having worked with real wood, but I think the problem with the carrier film is because the surface is a bit rough. The normal advice is that the transfers should be applied on gloss varnish, and then a matt finish given to seal them. As for your painting the headstock the same colour as the body - the way you did the Dursley wagon is correct - the buffer beam itself woudl be the body colour, as well as any wooden bases to the buffers, and only the buffer stocks, the coupling plate and the vertical ironwork would be painted black.
  9. Just a small point - the majority of wooden solebar PO wagons had their solebars painted the same colour as the body, with the ironwork picked out in black. There was also a tendency to leave the diagonal strapping in the body colour, although there are several examples where they were black, but it might interfere with the layout of your lettering.
  10. Colin As a callow teenager I'm afraid I probably took no notice of the "old fogeys" running the layouts, although I was very impressed (envious) that an MRC like that could have such roomy, dedicated premises, including the garden for an outdoor track. Pete The metal bridge is still there, or at least it was this morning when I walked my dog, although since it was substantially reinforced with extra concrete it is nowhere near as musical, although it can vibrate alarmingly if anyone heavy chooses to run across it. But do you remember the timber trestle bridge that it replaced? It didn't span the whole way across the lake, instead going to the island where there was a little viewing platform looking across the lake and the island seemed to be covered with bamboo.
  11. As another Old Walcountian, perhaps we should have our own sub-forum! Born in St Helier Hospital and brought up near Waddon station I used to cycle to Waddon Park, before we moved to Carshalton Beeches, and occasionally was rewarded when one of the coal trains clanked its way round the curve from West Croydon. Childhood memories seem to include seeing an H16 4-6-2T and W 2-6-4T as well as, probably, BR standard tanks, although I cannot recall any tender locos during that period (end of the fifties) although I watched N class 2-6-0's shunting at Wallington station from a friend's back garden which overlooked the goods yard. I, too, although aware of its existence, never joined the C&SMRC, although I did go to some of their exhibitions/open days at their Manor Road premises.
  12. I think you are being a bit harsh on Metr0land's recommendation. The product he has suggested is called Redutex, available from Model Textures, and is, I understand, a fully textured sheet costing around £6 a go, True Textures comes from a completely different supplier and is described as a "Photo-realistic" building paper printed on self-adhesive paper at £1.50 a sheet, or as a transfer, at £6 each. Hence the difference!
  13. HIgh Level already do a kit for the Lancashire & Yorkshire Battery Loco and they are working on the next one - the NSR one I think - or at least they were at the last Scaleforum.
  14. Oops, sorry about the lapse in direction - post edited - thanks Ian! Although going rather off-topic, I have to say that, apart from being contemporaneous, there is nothing that links the buildings of Carshalton and Christ's Hospital apart from the fancy ridge tiles. The latter building was one of the finest examples of poly-chromatic brickwork, with fantastic detailing over the pairs of arched windows, and an almost symmetrical two storey layout. (A Google Images search for Christ's Hospital Station should come up with a result.) Carshalton, on the other hand, is built of a rather harsh red brick, with areas of render at high level, a projecting bay window and single enormous windows, and in layout it has a two storey building at one end, a single storey structure at the other, between which is the booking hall area, which has an unusual glazed dormer above. See http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/48/55/485539_6cecc8f7.jpg
  15. Just a minor point, which doesn't affect anything else that has been said, but the original posting says: "The Original station, served the line which continued to the Eastbourne and Brighton junction. Built in 1868, the building was typical of the line, almost identical to others along the branch, ......" The actual history of the line and main building is not quite so straight-forward. Uckfield first opened as the terminus of a single line from Lewes in October 1858. There were stations at Isfield and Barcombe Mills and the line approached Lewes from the west, via the Lewes to Wivelsfield line. A single line was eventually built from Groombridge, opening in August 1868, with intermediate stations at Buxted and Crowborough (then called Rotherfield) and the line from Groombridge to Uckfield was doubled in 1894, ten years after the line from Oxted was opened and a direct route to London was possible. By this time Lewes station had been rebuilt and the line now approached the latter station from the east, offering a direct route to Brighton. Eridge was opened in 1880 when the Cuckoo line was built, and its building is an unique blend of styles. The station buildings at Isfield and Barcombe Mills were similar to each other, reflecting the then current style, similarly those at Buxted and Crowborough were to a later style then in use. Uckfield itself had a timber building, probably reflecting its temporary nature. This was not like the familiar LBSC timber buildings, but was very similar to the one provided at Carshalton on the Peckham Rye - Sutton line that opened in 1868, so perhaps this building was erected once the through route was open. Like Carshalton, this "temporary" building lasted over 40 years, and were replaced at the turn of the century, with Uckfield's new building dating from 1901. As a result, it is more typical of buildings of that era on the Brighton, such as Carshalton and some others in the London area. One particular dating feature is the loping canopy valance, seen on many of the suburban stations that were on the quadrupled main lines. Crowborough station was also rebuilt, but in 1905, when a rather more austere design had been adopted. So, by 1905, only Isfield and Barcombe Mills had the only two station buildings with common features.
  16. The umber livery would be correct for the model as shown, although I cannot be sure that the large gauge pipework along the boiler is appropriate for a pre-grouping loco. If it is produced without any name, that would be correct for the LBSCR era. If it is named Birch Grove then that would only be correct for its preserved state, as, to the best of my knowledge, none of the E4's retained their name following the application of the umber livery, and certainly not with the extended smokebox. If Bachmann were to do a yellow version, that would require a different smokebox and a change of boiler fittings as well. Just for the record, a number of the E4 tanks first appeared in Stroudley's goods green livery, as they were intended as mixed traffic locos, although all were in yellow by the end of the century, and 12 of them were sent to France during the Great War and I believe some of them retained their WD grey livery for a while after they returned.
  17. Sadly, the Bachmann version represents those fitted with an I1 boiler, with the extended smokebox. Not as drastic as the E4X rebuild, but quite a visual impact, nonetheless. This re-boilering took place after Marsh was in charge, and unfortunately all would have been turned out in umber with no name. It should be remembered that Birch Grove only carried a name and umber on the Bluebell. Perhaps Branchlines (the etched kit people) could be pursuaded to create a conversion kit from the Stenning/Weald Models E4 kit, but an enormous amount of care would be needed to preserve the yellow livery as the dome and possibly the safety valves would need changing as well as the smokebox, and all the extraneous pipework along the boiler should go too.
  18. The big circular layout you saw was almost certainly the Southend Circle. That was a proper layout which was fully scenic for the full 360° and 20 feet in diameter in OO gauge with a couple of mainlines and at least one branch line weaving in and out of the continuous backscene. I suspect that it was maintenance issues that forced them to build the oval and smaller Curate's Egg as a replacement - baseboard construction was in the bronze age then, and I seem to recall that the track was all hand-made by the various members of the Southend club, and many cut their teeth in the process. The majority of the worthy examples cited by others are at the opposite end of the spectrum, with generally a single station as the focal point and reduced in size to the point where I have heard of one which hung from the operator's shoulders!
  19. I know it is early days, and that the drawings are only sketches, but it would make sense to get them looking right at this stage. My problem is with the wing rails at the crossing on the simple turnouts. As this drawing shows, courtesy of Martin Wynne from a thread in 2009, the nose of the crossing should be approximately in the centre of the crossing timber, to get the full support of the special chair, and the wing rail should extend past the next chair, but no further, unless the crossing angle is very shallow, or there is another reason to have some form of check rail extending past the crossing. At the same time, generally, the opposite check rails would also stop on the same crossing timber, lining across nicely.
  20. Although I agree entirely with your comments, unfortunately the GNoSR is perhaps, not the best example. There is an excellent general history, including locos, albeit a bit scanty, from the Stephenson Locomotive Society, Lightmoor Publicaiotns have a detailed book on the Coaches and NPCS, and the goods wagons are farily well covered in the recent LNER wagons series, just leaving the signals and architecture, perhaps. There is also an active company society to support it. The line I feel sorry for is the Glasgow and South Western, which seems to have fallen through all the nets, although there are snippets in various LMS tomes, such as architecture and locomotives, and some shared Midland coaching stock.
  21. According to their website, the Gem NLR 0-6-0T is still available http://www.lytchettmanor.co.uk/OO_locomotives.html - designed to fit the Branchline chassis!
  22. I suggest you have a look at the Caley Coaches website. They sell a number of the bits and pieces for CR locos, and, although they don't list chimneys and domes, I am sure that they could supply if you knew what you wanted. I have found them very helpful in the past. It's worth viositing the website anyway because they have availabe to dowmnload detailed histories of many CR classes, as covered by their kits. If you are prepared to go down the SEFinecast route and butcher one of their LBSC D1 kits, then why waste your money when, for little more than they charge, you can have an accurate CR loco such as the Class 1 4-4-0T or Class 104 0-4-4T or an 812 0-6-0 or a 900 4-4-0, or others of even more exotic lineage.
  23. Good to see such a positive attitude, and best wishes for the future. Just a very minor point regarding the Midland cattle van - the dividing partition supports only occur at one end of the van, so that in the outermost position they create a space equivalent to a "small" cattle van, but it is good to see this detail, which is often omitted. There is a good picture in the NRM archive at http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/photo?group=Derby&objid=1997-7397_DY_9164
  24. A handful of Gresley catering coaches were transferred to the Southern and were seen in either green or maroon liveries and some survived to be painted in the later blue/grey livery. Try a Google search for Gresley catering southern
  25. The trouble with the East London line and the WIdened lines is that the length of tunnels required the locos to be condensing, which would have limited them to tanks only. However, there is another possibility, in that in the 50's, because of problems with the Bulleid Pacifics, a fairly large number of big LNER locos were drafted in to fill the gap, including, I believe, V2's, and they were timetabled in for a wide variety of mainline services. It only takes a small stretch of the imagination for various Pacifics to be involved instead. I also seem to recall that an A4 appeared on some sort of special deep into LSWR territory and it stayed around for a few days working local trains, but I may be creating an urban myth!
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