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Compound2632

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Everything posted by Compound2632

  1. Driving into London yesterday, i was reminded that the signs giving notice of restricted access to more polluting vehicles are in Old French: lez ulez.
  2. It's finding original sources for the source and composition of the pigment that seems troublesome. Take crimson lake, with apologies: the story usually trotted out of that it is made from the cochineal beetle, which may have been true in Renaissance artists' studios, but I can't help feeling that there cannot have been enough beetles to go round by the later 19th century. The daughter of friends of ours has become an historical pigment chemist; I'd really like to get an in-depth chat with her, but she's currently based in Cologne.
  3. Post truth has more to do with signalling, fencing, etc., surely? Or possibly TPOs?
  4. The unvarnished truth... ... which will not be the truth, since the effect of varnish is critical!
  5. I've been really enjoying the photos of Kirkby Malham (and some of Canal Road, I think) that Chris has been posting on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/210601504352903/?hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen&multi_permalinks=696826429063739
  6. Was it not Henry Booth, Secretary of the L&M, who devised the first primitive screw coupling precisely to eliminate that effect?
  7. True, I'd forgotten that. My purchases from Branchlines are at exhibitions but I have the luxury of three finescale exhibitions per year within easy reach, I think he's usually at at least two of them.
  8. The procedure is to send an SAE for their catalogue leaflets (or a subset, supposing for example that you know you don't want Midland carriage kits) and then place your order by post on the basis of that. All very twentieth-century but hey, this is historical modelling, isn't it?
  9. Try snail mail? Or the dog'n'bone?
  10. A little convoluted? P4 uses exact scale gauge; assuming railheads of scale width, the standard or minimum six-foot is 24.0 mm. EM is 0.63 mm under exact scale gauge, so the six-foot would be 24.63 mm. 00 is 2.33 mm under exact scale gauge, so the six-foot would be 26.33 mm. For places where the prototype had a larger six-foot way all these are just increased proportionately, e.g. between a running line and siding, where the minimum was a ten-foot way, the distance between outer faces of the railhead is increased by a scale 4 ft, so in 00 is 42.33 mm. But far easier to work with track centres, which can be conveniently measured as the distance between the inner faces of the left-hand rail of each track, or the outer faces of the right-hand rail, etc.
  11. I've done with highsided wagons for the Journal. The next articles will be on timber wagons and then cattle wagons; then I will gird up my loins to tackle covered goods wagons, DV. With the exception of the two late lots, Lots 632 (1905) and Lot 919 (1917), all 8-ton highside goods and coal wagons to Drgs. 550 and 790, i.e. D299 and D351, along with related types using the same design of underframe, were built with brakes on one side only, with short brake lever. On the single evidence of Plate 112 in Midland Wagons, some late survivors were fitted with a second set of brakes and in this instance, the short lever was used - maybe recycling material from a scrapped wagon. But I think this was rather exceptional and am fairly sure the vast majority were withdrawn with the breakgear they were built with, with no additions or substitutions. Lot 919 conformed to the standard practice of the time they were built with independent brakes on both sides, with long lever. Lot 632 would probably also have been built with both side brakes but with short lever. The situation is rather more complicated for lowside wagons, D305; for these see my article in Midland Railway Society Journal No. 79 (Summer 2022).
  12. Some progress with the clerestory 6-wheelers - body of the D491 third assembled: The cardboard box doesn't make such a good background for brass models! Various things I thought would be fiddly, such as lining the toplights and droplights up with the windows, weren't as tricky as I'd feared - working from the rear, they can be aligned by dead reckoning. With this one, I didn't have to worry about which end the steps go; for the D515 luggage composite, I have to remember that they're at the end nearest the luggage compartment. I do still have to remember which way round it goes on the underframe, though - step end nearest the vacuum cylinder; plain end nearest the gas cylinders. (I've not yet fitted the gas control rod at the far end, there's pipework behind it that goes onto the roof.)
  13. Pairs of tandem points - not unusual in goods yards. With the angle the access line makes to the goods shed lines, laying in a curve of not-to-tight radius inevitably results in the overlap seen here. The Midland way of doing this was to use genuine three-way points, as here at Toton (Chilwell Sidings), looking at the fans to the left and right, rather than the central lines: [Embedded link to MRS 88-2015-0648, DY9219.]
  14. By "track centres" @St Enodoc understands, as do I, the distance between track centre-lines on double track - for instance, for a prototype minimum 6-ft way of 6 ft, the prototype track centres of 11' 2" is 44.7 mm in 4 mm scale, irrespective of the track gauge. Deviating from the scale prototype dimension will result in clearance problems for platform faces, overbridges, and other structures, if built to scale.
  15. Yes, that's a Midland cattle wagon. With 8A axleboxes, wooden brake blocks and long brake lever, it looks like one of the large ones to Drg. 101, built either by Gloucester in 1875 or lots 30, 45, and possibly 63. I don't think it is a D379 meat van; agreeing with you about the ends, also the doors look as if they might be plain panelled, though with louvres in the sides either side of the doors. Other Midland passenger-style vans with end louvres have them arranged per the meat van. also, the width and position of the louvres suggests six end panels rather than five.
  16. With you there! Wasn't closed to the road the default position of level crossing gates from the earliest times until the triumph of the infernal combustion engine? Isn't that a piece of entirely prototypical operation? The real thing had spare gates ready to hand to cover such incidents...
  17. These ballast brakes were built with grease axleboxes and spoked wheels but this one has gained LMS oil axleboxes and solid wheels, as has the one in Midland Wagons Vol. 2 Plate 384, presumably taken post-war. Comparing these two photographs, I should think the writing on the right-hand end of the body side is the allocation - the one in Plate 384 is branded Walsall. Its number, or at least the number on the solebar plate, is unlikely to be higher than 1,663, being the maximum number of brake vans the Midland had. I think I've worked out numbering for brake vans built as additions to stock (rather than as replacements of old vans): ballast brakes of lot 250, M1186 - M1191; 6 of lot 272, M1272 - M1277 (M1272 and M1276 known from photos); and 6 of lot 473, M1528 - M1533.
  18. But this is an issue with ordinary pointwork too, as the gauge affects the distance between crossing and switch. Thus any formation of pointwork in 00 takes up less space than the same formation in EM or P4, which is something to be borne in mind if trying to model a real location in 00 - the narrow gauge is an aid to compression.
  19. Way back soon after the crane was announced, I did start bashing a Midland match wagon from Slaters parts etc. However, the geometry of the jib rest looked more challenging every time I looked at the drawing and so, with Oxford having gone quiet on the crane, I'm afraid I let progress slip!
  20. No. 31 of the Midland's second batch of four, purchased in 1899, was allocated to Bristol. As far as I'm aware, the LSWR didn't have any cranes of this type, so presumably it's the Bristol crane in the photo. Although assigned to the Locomotive Department, they were quite often made use of by the Engineers' Department, so a loan to the Joint seems by no means improbable.
  21. If, when it comes to it, you don't want the match truck, I'm interested!
  22. Is there a date and location for this photo? It has a post-Great War feel to my mind, so the common user agreements were in force, although that wouldn't apply to a specialised wagon such as the CR meat van, which would still be subject to the foreign wagon home rules; unless, of course, the date is post-grouping - i.e. after 1 July 1923, as far as the CR was concerned.
  23. We had this article upthread, in the context of discussion of "pill box" wagon conversions - LNWR, GCR, GWR, and Midland opens given gable roofs with lifting hatches, but we didn't at that point discuss wagons built directly for the WD. It's also been discussed in the context of various Rapido wagons produced in WD livery. It seems to be the most widely-cited source for the subject bu I do wonder what primary sources survive - maybe lurking in boxes at the National Archives? https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C6189863
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