[GWR 4-plank wagon]

23 minutes ago, magmouse said:

 “South Western Company” is the LSWR? I also assume you have worked through all the minutes for the intervening years, so we know there were no further orders for sheet supporters in between these two?

 

Correct on both counts.  That photo of wagon No. 141 is square on so one can't see whether it has the simple catch or the semi-circular guide.

[GWR 4-plank wagon]

A footnote on Williams' patent sheet supports:

 

Somerset [& Dorset] Joint Committee minutes, TNA RAIL 626/5:

 

5 August 1903

2721      Fitting Goods Wagons with Williams’ Patent Sheet Supports

                              It was agreed that, in carrying out renewals, 50 wagons be fitted with Williams’ patent sheet supports, at an estimated cost of £181.5.0 as recommended by the Officers by their minute No. 5507.

 

This would seem to imply that the sheet support was added to newly-built wagons only. Renewals were probably at the rate of 50 - 60 per year at this time, the rate being based on a nominal 20-year lifetime. Wagons built as renewals were built at Highbridge.

 

Then:

 

2 May 1906

2935      Sheet Supports for Goods Wagons

                              The recommendation of the Officers by minute No. 5865 that fifty additional patent sheet supports for goods wagons be obtained through the South Western Company at an estimated cost of £140, was approved.

 

... which I think suggests these were to be retrofitted to existing wagons, as they came through the works. 

 

This suggests that by 1907-ish, 100 S&DJR high-side wagons, out of about 700, were fitted with the LSWR version of the sheet supporter. There is one official photo of a standard 8-ton wagon so fitted; the wagon is No. 141, built at Highbridge in 1886 and sporting the Midland type 8A axleboxes of that period [DY8581, plate 70 in Colin Maggs' Highbridge in its Heyday].

[A CR pre-diagram furniture van wagon part 1]

These things seem to be all the rage. 

 

All the photos I've seen of furniture vans or containers on wagons show them unsheeted, including on trains, not just in yards. On the other hand, I don't know how many sheeted ones have gone unrecognised for what they were!

[Copenhagen to Penzance by rail]

46 minutes ago, Donw said:

Regarding the SECR bridge at Reading

 

According to the 1914 RCH Junction Diagram, the line under the bridge was GW up to the junction with the line down the south side of the GW embankment but curiously, the line from there to the SE line was LSW:

 

 

[Embedded link].

 

Maybe the LSW had thought it had more to gain from through traffic to the GW than did the SE?

[Copenhagen to Penzance by rail]

8 minutes ago, Nick Holliday said:

I thought this suburban house near me showed a triumph of money over good taste(?) might be of interest. 

 

Perhaps advertising the family business - which might have been supply of ornamental architectural details, or possibly Turkish baths.

[Copenhagen to Penzance by rail]

5 minutes ago, Nick Holliday said:

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 “.

 

Being married to the dictionary I'm alert to these things!

[Copenhagen to Penzance by rail]

23 hours ago, Nick Holliday said:

The usual term when applied to brickwork is polychromatic. 

 

Curious. In the various readily-accessible online articles I've looked at [W...] the term used is polychrome brickwork or polychromy; certainly in relation to Ruskin's advocacy and Butterfield's use of it. For a non-W instance, see:

https://www.keble.ox.ac.uk/about/architecture-gardens/.

[Copenhagen to Penzance by rail]

1 hour ago, Mikkel said:

Also at Reading, a row in a style that seems very widespread in that town, though I can't quite identify period and style:

 

 

Just round the corner is our first house, which being on a side-street is less grand - no attic rooms, bay window to ground floor only, and flat rather than arched porch lintels. As Kit says, late 19th / very early 20th century. Reading's terraced housing is very distinctive through its use of polychrome brickwork - making great use of a grey brick made locally, at Tilehurst. (Though from the place-name, I suppose bricks came second.) 

 

 

[From various Estate Agents' websites. The last one is Lynmouth Road, where we lived.]

 

The same fancy brickwork can be seen in the town centre, if one raises one's gaze above the shop-fronts and the grey brick was used for Waterhouse's Town Hall:

 

 

[Embedded link.]

 

Newbury didn't have the 19th century industrialisation of Reading so much of its architecture is older - as Kit says, likely medieval or 16th/17th century buildings behind 18th century facades. I imagine Farthing to be more like that - unless there's some Farthing biscuit factory we've yet to hear of?

[A London & Birmingham Novelty]

On 11/08/2023 at 12:45, Camperdown said:

Fantastic work.  Maybe you could post a picture of it next to a more modern vehicle (16T mineral, say) for a size comparison?

 

I was happy enough until I saw the thumb!

[Copenhagen to Penzance by rail]

In Small Talk at Wreyland (3 Vols., 1918-21), Cecil Torr recounts a dream in which he was frustrated to discover that the Penzance dining carriage did not run through to Brindisi.

[Copenhagen to Penzance by rail]

I'm an Earley bird now but yes, used to live in the Lynmouth Road, backing onto what was still at the time the SSE site - formerly the power station.

[Copenhagen to Penzance by rail]

I always slow down for the biscuit tunnel on my way to and from Kings Meadow Tesco as it gives straight onto a zebra crossing so I'm fearful a child on a scooter will come hurtling out!

[A Stevens & Sons lever frame , part 1]

Fully mechanical interlocking? Given that electrical switching is needed, to drive the point and signal motors (and control power to track sections?) sticking with electronic interlocking makes sense.

[My Atmospheric Caper - Part 2]

12 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

It seems that Dean showed no enthusiasm for the idea - perhaps he saw it as another potential 'atmospheric railway' type of disaster - and the correspondence fizzled out. 

 

Well, electrifying the railway through the Severn Tunnel is a challenge that has only very recently been met.

[My Atmospheric Caper - Part 1]

1 hour ago, Dunalastair said:

Or a high pressure steam engine over a Newcomen engine?

 

But the limit remains the same - the maximum differential pressure across the piston is one atmosphere - in practice rather less. 

[My Atmospheric Caper - Part 2]

Brunel, as, usual, was a head of his time in attempting to realise what everyone (i.e. the Stephensons) knew, that a major limitation of the railway was the need to generate the motive power on board the train. Even then, it was foreseen that electricity was the ultimate solution (I'm sure I've read a comment by one of the Stephensons to this effect). This was the Age of Michael Faraday!

[My Atmospheric Caper - Part 1]

A really significant problem with the principle of the atmospheric railway is that the force available to move the train is limited to something less than one atmosphere times the surface area of the piston. I've no idea if the technology of the day would have coped any better with a positive pressure system! (Which, in principle, would have the same advantage as that of air brakes over vacuum brakes.)

[CR Diagram 16 pig iron wagons.]

2 minutes ago, Chrisbr said:

Careful, you may get a visit in the middle of the night from the Midland boys..... 🤣

 

That'd be - me?

[CR Diagram 16 pig iron wagons.]

1 hour ago, Mikkel said:

I'm beginning to think that the CR livery is my favourite wagon livery, it seems to suit them all so well!

 

Well, it's Great Western red, isn't it?

[CR Diagram 16 pig iron wagons.]

I'll second that. More please on the pigs!

[GWR N5 Horsebox No 88 (7mm scale, scratchbuilt)]

Superb. The brakes on each wheel work in the same way as bicycle brakes. Early Clayton Midland carriages have a similar arrangement - perhaps this is something Clayton brought with him from Swindon in 1873? I think he'd changed over to the more conventional arrangement of yokes with central pull-rods and suspended tumblers by 1880.

[Caledonian No. 263, a rebuild, part 1]

20 minutes ago, Dave John said:

In theory I should swap them round when the engine goes back or for different trains, but I don't know how I'd do that in practice. Caley coaches do a brass casting for the lamps but they are far too small to do in a magnetic material. 

 

One can get RGB LEDs but whether small enough to fit in a 4 mm scale lamp I don't know (they are really three LEDs in a single package) and unless one could do something very clever one would need two, forward and rear facing. Alternatively, I suppose one could arrange fibre optic leads to the lamps from LEDs mounted inside the body of the engine. I'm not sure how one would set them, though - presumably something bespoke could be done in DCC?

[Caledonian No. 263, a rebuild, part 1]

For once, one that isn't a bash of a Hornby pug!

[‘Rob Roy’ Re-Framed]

The comparison of new and old does emphasis the step-change in modelling technology. My feeling about 3D printing remains that it is not a universal panacea but in many cases is best used as part of a multi-media approach - which is not to criticise what you are doing here for a static model but rather results from my own experiences of working with kits that are wholly or partly 3D printed. With that in mind, and recognising that making the brass splasher valances is a challenge in any medium, I am intrigued to know how thin you have been able to make them and whether there has had to be any compromise on overall width or on width over driving wheel faces?

[1837 Carriage]

To be fair, the Triang clerestory on its original bogies as you have there sits 2 mm high, plus whatever one allows for the difference in flange depth.

 

The 1837 second has the open frames characteristic of the first Worsdell carriages of the L&M but by 1839, the open second has solid solebars. I'm not quite sure when this transition was made on the standard gauge lines but a little later I think - early 1840s.