Compound2632

I had better go and re-read it.

That's because you're careful not to post photos of it!

Surely the driving wheel diameter was the principal difference, at least between superheated Midland Compounds in 1923 and LMS Standard Compounds. Same boiler, same cylinders, same motion. The differences between the original Smith-Johnson Compounds (see avatar) and the Deeley Compounds were much more fundamental, as Deeley was keen to stress. He was out to avoid paying patent royalties to Smith's executors, whereas Johnson and Smith had been close friends for nearly forty years.

The claim was very specifically directed towards LNWR 4-6-0s that were being built at Crewe at considerably less expense than Churchward's 4-6-0s at Swindon. I think the comparison was Saint v. Experiment, rather than Star v. Prince of Wales but regrettably it was never put to the test. I have no doubt that Churchward's engine would be the one going backwards in either such unequal competition. A couple of Midland Compounds would have walked away with a Saint. I'd put my money on a pair of Dunalastair IVs too.

Once you've worked out which bell is which, you'll have to record the information on a grid for future reference. That's tintinnabulation.

I understand how it is.

The Cadbury steel hopper wagon is quite entertaining - especially described as a 24 ton ore hopper (cocoa ore direct from the Lincolnshire chocolate mines?) - but labelled 12 tons per the reference photo! The Chas Roberts builder's plate is nicely printed, though. Is the top half the old Mainline moulding? If so, hasn't it already done the rounds in Cadbury liveries, both yellow lettering on blue and blue lettering on yellow, the latter possibly via Dapol? A quick google only turns up prototype photos with (supposedly) yellow lettering on blue...

That explains much, I'm sure.

No. 1 Son has just submitted his undergraduate dissertation which has some great long technical title but is basically about some details of glaciation in the Lake District. I mention this here because he was explaining to me how sediments can be dated to particular interglacials by their biological component - particularly the type, size, and quantity of hippo remains. Hippos were particularly plentiful in certain interglacials - great herds of them throughout what is now the Severn basin. I though that might be of interest to some.

Ah but weren't the Scots in Ireland at the time of the Roman occupation*? Or was it the Irish in Scotland? Either way, it was Picts who were on the wrong/right (delete to taste) side of the Wall. Then, or a little later, Strathclyde was Welsh. *Busy people, the Romans. Always needing to do something to keep themselves (and, especially, other people) occupied. NB It was climate change and pandemic disease that did for the Roman Empire.

In the summer 1903 timetable, the only Midland through carriages were between Birmingham and Swansea, two daily each way, via Brecon, Hereford, and Worcester. Cardiff was one of the very few major places the Midland octopus did not have a tentacle.

Can you unpick that statement for me? These models are "generic" in the sense that they are not models of specific prototypes but incorporate typical features. A prototype carriage must of necessity be specific, not generic.

I'm regretting googling that, for any number of reasons, not least that there's two of the bu99ers.

I'm quite taken by the idea of wargaming pigs. The sitting cow really looks to me as if she's in the act of getting up, which is a breach of Rice's first law. They do look interesting...

If such iconoclasm makes one wince one could attack one of the simpler-liveried versions such as the LNER brown or remove from circulation some of the ones where the livery is less appropriate for the panelling style such as the GNR or LNWR vesions!