Compound2632

I've not experimented with printing transfers. Years ago when I hand-lettered some PO wagons, I started off by painting the lettered area white and then building up the body colour and shading - relatively straightforward with unshaded white lettering on black, using a range of Rotring pen sizes. Grey bodywork was trickier as this had to be done with a fine brush, though with black shading using the Rotring pen for the right and bottom of each letter, it wasn't so bad. I think I've shown this before: The script lettering for tare weights and empty to instructions is less than ideal, if one has one of these alongside a wagon with transfers. The Pelsall and Drake and Mount wagons don't have such small lettering, fortunately. I've used a variation on this technique for the Pelsall wagon, painting the red background for the shading then filling in with the Rotring pens. An advantage of full-on hand lettering is that one's not limited by the transfers and can follow the prototype more closely. But the letter S is a nightmare. That's why I like POWSides, even though the rub-down transfers require great care - they do reproduce lettering styles most faithfully. At an exhibition I went to last year - Scaleforum or possibly ExpoEM at Bracknell - there was a demonstration of hand lettering. I'm afraid I forget the guy's name but hi was using Rotring pens to apply white lettering directly onto the wagon body colour - I'm afraid I can't recall if he was using a Rotring ink or paint. And advantage of the white basecoat method is that one can get sharp outside corners to the letters; conversely it's hard to avoid a rounded inside corner, unless one goes back and touches up the white. Any form of printed lettering ought always to win out for sharpness.

Well, if modelling the later 60s, why not The Bradford Pullman?

In some versions, yes - the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris. Lest you scoff at these mythically large families, my grandmother Doris, born 1899, was the youngest of thirteen. I thinbk I've already mentioned her in relation to teapots.

The Midland's West Riding lines left the North Midland line at Royston Junction, just north of Cudworth. The Midland did in fact have running powers over the L&Y from Thornhill Junction, just short of Dewsbury, to Bradford, Halifax, and Huddersfield. These powers were exercised for regular goods traffic and, I believe, some excursions. There is an article in the Midland Railway Society Journal that I would have to look up to check chapter and verse. The Dewsbury branch was laid out as a first class main line which it would have been, if the gap between Dewsbury and Bradford had in fact been closed.

That comes from a mis-hearing: 'you Dora? i.e. Are you Dora? EDIT: I read that Eudora was one of the three thousand daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, so there's plenty more where that came from.

Gloss varnish, ready for the Archer rivet transfer "boltheads": The A is made from two condensed-style Is from the largest size of lettering on the HMRS sheet, with the horizontal from a condensed-style I of the middle size. I'm not really happy with the S - too thick - but the alternative on the HMRS sheet is even less like the S seen in the film. Axleguards and axlebox/spring castings are from MJT - the latter the Birmingham RC&W Co. grease boxes, which do for a generic round-bottomed box. The V hangers and brake lever are from a Cambrian Gloucester RC&W Co. underframe and the brakes are Slaters Midland, with replacement microstrip safety loops as usual. I made a paper box to go over the wagon body, held in place by a rubber band, then gave the solebars and running gear a quick waft of Humbrol No. 33 from a can - I wanted to avoid building up too dense a black. Then Humbrol gloss varnish, again from a can. At some point I need to paint what's visible of the inside!

Superb. I really must do some more on 2390, which sort of stuck at the proof of principle stage.

Ah yes of course, I'd forgotten that the RCH would be involved. Even so, there's plenty of evidence for merchants shipping in coal from places off the home system, if that particular coal was what their customers wanted. Just one example, there's a photo of Vastern Road yard, Reading, c. 1905 to which I have often referred. Prominent in this is a line of wagons from Wyken Colliery, on the LNWR Coventry - Nuneaton line. The eastern South Wales coalfield clearly couldn't supply all the types of coal Reading customers wanted. As an aside, when my boys were of CBBC age - 15 years ago now - there was a programme whose characters were digits who lived down the back of a sofa. The dastardly villain who was out to capture a different number in each episode was The Numbertaker.

Also need to be set up relative to the position of the coupling rods... (I don't do sound myself, or at least, if I do, I'm making the sounds myself.)

I put that through the Bank of England inflation calculator, which gives a figure an order of magnitude less - £3 in 1972 => £39.88 in 2019. Looking at the pricing of the Hornby Railroad range, I'd say that £40 for a model of the quality of the 1970s Hornby pannier would be exceptionally good value.

Indeed, my favourite bit of early film shows a Bracknell coal merchant's wagons heading south on the LNWR main line - presumably to be worked from Willesden via the N&SWJ to the LSWR. I'm not quite so convinced that the Midland, LNWR, or Great Northern could offer a competitive rate routing via London for traffic to a place as far north as Oxford, though. I don't see why exchange between companies should increase the cost?

Deeply unlikely in this day and age. No mother has time for knitting - if she's not dealing with the immediate demands of the children she's worrying about the week ahead at work and the childcare arrangements. If he's got any conscience, so is Dad.

I like your thinking. I'll just point out that West Riding and Scotch expresses need not have run via Sheffield - the "Old Road" (the original North Midland line) remained an express route. Just as, further south, there was a choice of routes via Derby, Trent, or Nottingham. My guess is that if the West Riding lines had been completed, Leeds might have declined in importance as far as the Midland route was concerned. Perhaps one can imagine Scotch expresses running via Bradford, maybe leaving a portion behind there to lessen the load over the fells, with Leeds having its own services, perhaps calling at Leicester, Derby or Nottingham, and Sheffield - slower, leaving the fast London-Leeds traffic to the Great Northern route - much as today?

Although not directly relevant to the subject, just as a point of information, in pre-grouping days and up to 1928, the stock for trains over the Waverley route and on into England over the Settle & Carlisle to Leeds and St Pancras was not North British, but Midland & North British Joint Stock of Midland Railway design. Sleeping accommodation included some 54 ft composite and 65 ft first class sleeping carriages built 1905/6, originally Midland vehicles but transferred to the joint stock in 1906 and 1908. The 65 ft carriages were replaced by new LMS-built 68 ft sleepers in 1927. When the joint stock arrangement ceased in 1928, the carriages were divided 2/3 to the LMS and 1/3 to the LNER but as far as I can work out continued to be used on the same duties, at least for a while. [Ref. R.E. Lacy & G. Dow, Midland Railway Carriages Vol. 2 (Wild Swan, 1986).]