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Blog Comments posted by Compound2632
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I like your adjustments to the brake gear - I shall have to go and look more carefully at my 4 mm models! I agree with you about the spurious floor bolt-heads, The side knees were bolted to the middle bearers and the floorboards shaped to clear them. The wagon as modelled has no bottom doors - which gets you out of making a representation of the release catch on the underside of the solebar - but I'm going to look the prototype up!
I am confident that as your are striving for the very highest standards you will be open to some observations and will take them in the constructive spirit in which they are intended. The interior ironwork of Gloucester wagons of this type has been much mulled over in 4 mm scale. I became so unhappy with my interpretation that I filled the wagons with coal loads! I think @Andy Vincent has got it right with his 3D-printed bodies, available from Brassmasters.
I have to part company with DJ Parkin on several points regarding the interior diagonals. These, I believe, serve a more significant structural function than just bracing the side sheeting - witness the fact that they are bolted to the solebar at the bottom end.
At the door end, the diagonal, I am convinced, extends to overlap the end knee, so that it is bracing that component which, since it supports the hinge bar, is subject to considerable longitudinal forces when the wagon is end-tipped.
The diagonal at the fixed end is a strap-bolt; it projects through the corner plate and carries a large nut on a big angled-profile washer. This is the most significant feature missing from the Slater's Gloucester kits, in 4 mm and 7 mm scale:
[Embedded link to Warwickshire Railways mrs1081.]
Gloucester wagons are over-represented, largely because of data bias in our knowledge of PO wagons of this period - the Gloucester photograph archive is large and relatively accessible. What I have come to realise, certainly for c. 1902, is that they're also generally rather modern - the wagons I've modelled turn out to be no more than five years old or so. (Setting aside those that date from 1903-5!) Even only modelling wagons to the 1887 RCH specification distorts the scene - such wagons were no more than 15 years old by 1902, 21 years by 1908; one needs a good proportion of old dumb-buffer wagons!
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A grey Glasgow day! The pig iron wagons flanking the special wagon are, I suppose, per regulations for working special wagons?
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Drummond was wasted when he took that second-rate job down south, where he only had responsibility for locomotive design.
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7 hours ago, magmouse said:
You can subscribe to the blog, not just individual posts, which should give you notifications of new posts?
I think I'm now doing that. Thanks.
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I'm having the greatest difficulty reconciling myself to this newfangled grey livery for Great Western wagons - it just doesn't look right.
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Sorry, only just found this. (That, I find, is the trouble with a blog vs. a continuous topic.) Splendid wagon and interesting discussion. I need to up my work rate to make sure I consistently get to the wagons I have in mind before you big boys get there!
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Henson's patent covered goods wagon was discussed recently on my wagon-building topic in the context of early midland covered wagons:
Interesting to see the Great Western getting in on the act.
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1 hour ago, Western Star said:
The five involved in this crazy escapade are Chris Brown, Ian Haynes, myself, my son and Tony Overton... yes Stephen, I do mean to say that one of us likes D299, D305 and D351.
Come now, Midland wagons - who could resist? No need to make excuses!
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3 minutes ago, magmouse said:
Is there somewhere where we can see the work of your S7 group? It would be great to have a look.
Yes please!
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Ah but you have to consider also all those virtual wagons, sitting in your unbuilt kit piles...
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For wagons, the formula is N + X, where N is the current number and X is indeterminate, unpredictable, and large.
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34 minutes ago, magmouse said:
I have on my list LNWR and SER vans to bring bottled beer from Burton on Trent and Canterbury - they are a thirsty lot in Netherport.
Don't overlook Burton casks in D299s. (You have, I can see, been reading the Sheffield Park article again.)
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5 minutes ago, magmouse said:
1. For a pre-grouping layout, you shouldn’t have too many
Which begs the question how many wagons is too many!
6 minutes ago, magmouse said:2. Where is the fun in that?
Have you seen the one with working sliding door that @Tricky has built?
Then there's poseable roof hatches, of the sliding and rolling varieties...
The possibilities in the senior scale are numerous!
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11 minutes ago, Mikkel said:
But sometimes I may want an empty wagon, or a different load. You know, like on the railway 🙂
There's a lot to be said for modelling vans...
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3 minutes ago, Mikkel said:
But then came the roping, so that was that.
The wagon and the load are one.
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7 hours ago, magmouse said:
Thanks - yes, this one is definitely not a ‘shake the box’’ kit, at least if you want it to represent a diagram N13 accurately. It would be close to a later type (N20, N21? I don’t have the books to hand) though the doors were wider on those, I think.
I suppose that the same applies to the 4 mm scale kit?
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I like the method for increasing the width.
There are vertical rows (columns?) of rivets on the ends that don't get a mention... Also the triangular fillets on the corners of the top angle.
Coal is, or can be, shiny - especially, I think, as hewn out of the seam, and of one of the harder varieties. This should be Welsh steam coal - I don't know how hard that was.
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Find a quiet corner to sit cross-legged in and repeat until your eyes glaze over:
"The wagon and its load are one."
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For a moment there, I thought it was going to be individual bricks all the way down!
(I see Juweela do them in 1:72 too...)
But why bother with the wagon floor if there's going to be a former supporting the top layer of bricks?
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Delighted to see this wagon rolling by in the rotating gallery in the RH column of the page. Better than adverts for funeral plans!
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35 minutes ago, magmouse said:
Then there are the wagons themselves, which are very uneven in terms of the height of the bottom of the solebars and the curb rails. They are all similarly loaded, so it can’t just be the deflection of the springs under load.
We see a variety of wagons, of different ages. The wagon second from the right is a timber-framed 2-plank wagon of 1870s vintage; I think the one fourth from the right may be timber-framed too. So it's unsurprising that they're sitting at different heights - ages of bearing springs, etc. (Though bearing springs will have been replaced several times in the life of a wagon.)
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23 minutes ago, Mikkel said:
IIRC you saw some of the photos in a Reading exhibition once.
Yes, back in 2016 - I contacted the curator of the exhibition (it was at Reading Museum) who put me on to where he had been alerted to the photos, GW Journal.
30 minutes ago, Mikkel said:Britain from Above has several good shots from later years of each yard, but those showing both yards are from a distance and grainy. Here is one, dated 1920. King's Meadow yard in the foreground, Vastern Rd yard in the background.
There are some more good aerial photos from 1948 in this document:
https://images.reading.gov.uk/2021/06/5.13-Heritage-Statement.pdf
which discusses the history of the ornamental gateway / lodge to the old electricity works and whether or not it should be preserved as part of the residential redevelopment of the site (spoiler alert - no). This area is of interest to me because from 1996 to 2002 we lived at 2 Lynmouth Road, backing onto what was then the SSE site.
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1 hour ago, Mikkel said:
King's Meadow photos.
Vastern Road yard. There are no hay/straw loads in the otherwise equally nice panoramic view of the Kings Meadow yard, almost certainly taken from the same vantage-point - the water tower next to the bridge carrying the main line over Vastern Road.
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1 hour ago, magmouse said:
For GWR at least, yes - the roping is different, as per the Appendix to the rule book. Three ropes across for straw, and two ropes plus diagonals for hay. By BR days, this has changed, possibly with the move to machine made bales.
Ah yes, of course, I now recall that we discussed this. But I also meant, in terms of the appearance of the material?
Private owner wagon 'United'
in Netherport - GWR 1908 7mm (mostly wagons for now!)
A blog by magmouse in RMweb Blogs
Posted · Edited by Compound2632
Do both; as the bringer of bad news (courtesy of Turton's Fourth Collection, p. 141) I am weeping.
United Anthracite Collieries Ltd. went into liquidation in 1893, its assets being purchased by the neighbouring Gwaun-cae-Gurwen Colliery Co. (There was no connection with the 1920s firm of the same name.)
Wagon No. 1409 was one of a batch of 50 hired from Gloucester in December 1891 - the Gloucester official photo has the date March 1892. As a hired wagon, it will undoubtedly have gone back to Gloucester when United failed; the firm had also bought 50 wagons from Gloucester and was defaulting on payment for those as well as on the hire fees; the Gloucester Co. had unwisely accepted United shares in lieu of cash.
The number 1409 is typically spurious. United had 18 wagons of 1870s vintage from its previous incarnation as the Hendreforgan Colliery Co.; Turton records 129 wagons hired from Gloucester over the period 1888 - 1891, excluding the ones mentioned above, but some of the hire periods were as short as three months. It's possible that 1,100-odd wagons were hired from other firms but from the story of the company's precarious finances, and the size of the wagon fleets of other Swansea Vale collieries, that seems unlikely.
As a final twist of the knife, the dimension board in the Gloucester official photo of No. 1409 records that the internal length was 16' 0", i.e. 16' 6" over headstocks - unusually long for the period - and it looks it from the distance between spring shoes and headstocks. At least it didn't have bottom doors.
Sorry about all this. You have to remember that at the time Slater's first produced these kits, a lot of this information wasn't available. How easy is it to remove the lettering?