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The Johnster

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Everything posted by The Johnster

  1. The bodyshell & tender castings are (bar the boiler skirts), but the rest is very much a product of the late 1950s.
  2. Tbh I think I’d rather see resources used on new models that have either not ever been produced in RTR form, or at least not to current standards. The Hawksworth County (and the Churchward 4-4-0) and parallel-boiler Royal Scot fall in to the second category, to which I would add the 2721, 81xx large prairie, and R1. Never produced low-hangers might include the 3150 large prairie, Metro, 517, 2021, Austin 7, B16, and any number of South Wales and Scottish pre-grouping prototypes. The Stanier 8F is a very frequent player in this sort of wishlisting, and a very large class with a wide geographical spread and a common sight right up to the end of steam. There is clearly a reservoir of demand for a new tooling but I am not aware of any particular deficiency with the current Hornby model. No model of this loco has ever captured the character of the prototype as well as the Hornby Dublo, but surely nobody these days would want such a crude tooling; cab full of motor, flangeless drivers, no brakes, stamped motion, lumpen cast detail, boiler skirts….
  3. The above answers are indicative of just how much room a main line junction station needs if modelled to scale; lots! If you can accept compromise in terms of train lengths, curve/turnout radii, and clearance space, you should be able to reduce the length needed considerably, but it will still be a pretty big layout once the fiddle yards are consdidered (you will need four; Exeter, Basingstoke, Westbury, and Eastleigh/Southampton. It will be difficult to compromise on station buildings without losing their recognisable 'Salisburyness' but restricting train lengths will mean that platform lengths can be reduced a bit. A ten coach train with locomotive is about ten feet long in 4mm, and a 40-wagon goods is about 20 feet. As a very rough rule of thumb, for a through station layout, I would suggest dividing the layout's scenically treated length into thirds, with the station occupying the central third and the outer thirds containing the junctions and other pointwork. If you can manage any plain track run before disappearing into the scenic breaks, so much the better, and the curves at the eastern end are pretty sharp anyway. If you're going to model the steam shed, you need to be talking in quarters not thirds. Not sure what goods facilities remained in the late 60s early 70s, not been there since '67. Now you can see why Pete Waterman needs cathederal naves...
  4. If anyone were to copy Cwmdimbath I would be a) highly flattered and b) interested to see somebody else's 'take' on the place. It exists in reality, but never had a mining village or a railway; there was at one time a tramway serving a forge. This probably ceased operations before the main industrialisation of the surrounding valleys, and I doubt there has been much more than the top few fields of the local farm and the forestry to account for human activity for over 150 years up there. The tramway can be walked as far as the ruins of the forge.
  5. In the future when nobody has direct memory of the colours, much like the present when nobody has direct memory of the colours, it is advisable for modellers to consult records of the exact paint mixes used, where they are recorded and the information is available. Our experience of, say, LNWR coach livery or Stroudley 'Improved Engine Green' and many other liveries is informed by museum pieces in museum condition, and lighting. What these colours looked like in service when weathered and faded a bit (we all know that pre-grouping locos and stock was always kept in immaculate condition, but steam railways are dirty places even when they are not located in heavily polluted industrialised areas) is anyone's guess, as nobody is alive who remembers them in daily use (I rather doubt the small number of surviving centenarians from pre-grouping days bothered to take much notice). I agree that colourised colours will make very poor guidance for modellers or anyone else interested in liveries, but no more so than existing paintings of pre-grouping locos and stock. There are some examples extant that are probably pretty reliable; the NRM's collection of NER locos for example were painted at Darlington not long after the NER had ceased to exist, and the J72 pilots and J69/N17 pilots of the 1958 era were painted at Darlington and Stratford by men who may well have worked in the paint shops in pre-grouping days. But by and large copying preserved locos and stock is fraught with all sorts of accuracy issues. We can, I contend, only do our best with whatever information we have, and be prepared to modify our models if better information comes to light, but I still contend that attempting to pin down colours with any degree of accuracy when the only reference material is colour film photographs is a pointless waste of time, and no worse than relying on colourised images.
  6. The difference may be that Pontrilas, St.Devereaux, and Tram Inn stations were still open in 1961, and IIRC the Cardiff-Birminghams were mostly all-stoppers.
  7. I'm sure I remember reading that 45xx were used on Paddington suburban work in the 1920s, though probably not on any Mainline & City services. But Metros, County Tanks, and the inside cylinder praires (39xx?) converted from Dean Goods locos would be the main contenders. The 31xx large prairies, despite being developed into the 61xx which were very much associated with Paddington suburban work, were originally concieved as short-haul main line freight engines, and were uncommon in the London area.
  8. Any discussion on pinpointing an exact colour is going to run and run, mostly in circles. There are just too many variables; perception on the day the photo was taken, ambient light conditions (not just strength but cast and diffusion), reflectivity of the surface, degradation of the image in the camera lens and by the film or light sensitive panel, whatever printing method is used, the paper the image is printed on or the qualities of the monitor screen, ambient lighting in the viewing room, and ambient colour in the viewing room, plus ambient outside light if the room has windows and possible glasses tints. Good luck with all that, gentlemen. Oh, and your eyes see large blocks of colour differently to smaller areas. I work to the principle that of it looks like the colour I remember, that’s good enough; any more is a hiding to nothing, IMHO.
  9. You don’t, you design the layout to fit the space. This is probably not the answer you want to hear, but you can’t fit a quart into a pint pot and, as a general rule, when it comes to laying the track and maintaining clearances, it is better to make the plan a little smaller than the full available space to give you some ‘wobble room’. Even Pete Waterman needs more space!
  10. Running the chassis without the tyres and not replacing the wheel with a plain one also risks derailment on facing points as the groove ‘picks up’ on the blade. This will be particularly evident where the track is not absolutely level and joined absolutely perfectly to the adjoining piece.
  11. Rails of Sheffield’s site has a ‘due in April/May’ section, and the autotrailers are not on it, so we’re gonna have to be patient a little longer. Plenty Hawthorn Leslie saddle tanks, but no diag Ns!
  12. Build whatever you want and call it whatever you want, so long as you get fun out of it. My advice, if you choose to model a prototype that has been already done, or a popular track plan, would be to design and build it yourself from the baseboards up from your own research, taking as little lead as possible from the existing models beyond a general awareness of them, but I do not wish to influence your interpretation of Rule 1. I'd respectfully suggest some general principles, however. Be aware at the planning stage of how far you can reach from the edge of your proposed baseboards, and take consideration of how effectively you can operate it with the operators available; as a lone wolf, I find my busy South Wales BLT enough of a challenge to operate to a timetable to keep it intersting and satisfying, but not too challenging or tiresome. And keep within your budget; I never buy locos or stock I don't really need, and can assure you absolutely that none of us here would ever consider doing such a foolish thing... That last sentence may possibly be mildly facetious.
  13. How ‘bout one of those 16” Barclays at Talywaun? Brutal!
  14. Two double deckers (or, as the kids around here rather delightfully call them, 'upstairs buses'), then...
  15. Of course, I'm not party to the inner workings (nor should I be, in the interests of commercial confidentiality), but AIUI production slots are taken up as they become available in the Chinese factories where the component parts are made. So different production runs of any individual models may well originate from different factories and/or from more than one factory simulaneously before being sent to the assembly plant for, um, assembling, then packed as completed models for shipping to the UK, Margate in the case of Hornby. Hornby will presumably be paying for a set level of QC at the final assembly plant, but have little control over QC at the subcontractor factories. Mazak rot is a particularly difficult one to impose QC on to, because each mix of the alloy will be slightly different and dependent to some extent on the quality of the ingredient metals in the alloy, and then one has to consider that it takes some time to develop in the finished casting. I doubt if the subcontractor foundries are even aware of the issue or what the castings are actually intended for, they just cast them to the dimensions of the CAD data they've been sent. And, again, we are likely to be talking about a number of foundries spread widely in the geographical sense over that huge country. I would assume that there is no contact between Hornby and these foundries, as Hornby will be dealing with an agent in China who arranges all that sort of thing; Hornby's contact with the process will be limited to the agent and possibly the final assembly/packing plant. My guess is that Margate are trying to save costs by skimping on the level of QC at the assembly plants, in order to remain competitive, and if this is indeed the case, I completely agree with you that it is not going to reflect well on them in the longer run and this discussion may be evidence that they are beginning to be called out on the practice by the customers, but they are still in crisis mode and will be no doubt tempted to make such production cost savings in order to keep the wolves from the door, the plan being to keep thier fingers crossed that their situation will improve before the biological waste product hits the rotary ventilation device, and then pay for a better level of QC when they can afford it. Personally (and I really hope I am wrong), I think they are circling the drain and have been for most of this century, and are only surviving on the back of the gigantic amount of goodwill that they have built over the previous century (few companies in any industry can claim such a high level of it), but that they are doomed if they continue in this fashion. As my Pecketts prove, they are capable of manufacturing superb models of high quality, but they need to be consistent in this respect. It is probably impossible to test every loco for running at the assembly plants, beyond the most simple short ciruit testing. A full running test on a test track would probably take several minutes and hold up the line, so will be done to a set percentage of models, the set percentage being whatever level Margate is prepared to pay for. My view is that I would rather pay a higher price for the models and fund a better level of QC, but the trade, who know a lot more about this sort of thing than me, maintains that it is difficult to get UK customers to pay the prices necessary to sustain production of detailed, high performance, models; comparing European and US RTR bears this out. We want a Pullman service for mileage rates, and by and large we get it, but you can see why and how Hornby have costed themselves into a corner that they can't easily get out from as regards QC.
  16. Standard no.1 was the first thing that occurred to me when I saw the photo, and the low mounting does suggest a 28xx but may be misleading. The chimney position is set well back on the drum, and this was a feature of the no.1 boilers. As for local relevance it is likely to have been put there as a generic steam loco part without any reference to association with the area. The handrail section is probably from another loco, as it doesn't match the handrail knobs.
  17. If you can't find any, there's an American product called Frog Snot or something like that. which comes in a tube and you fill the groove in the wheel with it. You can then trim it down with an Exacto so that it doesn't stand proud of the groove and all the wheels sit properly on the railheads. I don't like traction tyres, because they often interfere with the running and deny the possibility of pickup on that wheelset, and I usually suggest replacing the wheel with an ungrooved one despite the loss of haulage, but there is little alternative on this model, on which the tyre wheelset is also the main drive geared set.
  18. The bubble cars helped a bit with the power/weight ratio, but not as much as had been hoped. The 120s with re-instated buffets were drafted in for the Cardiff-Crewe service following the 1970 re-routing of the Cardiff/Bristol-Liverpool/Manchester trains via Gloucester and BNS, and as you say were comfortable as dmus went, but a bit out of their depth on this hilly route. As the 121s were surplus, they were coupled to the 120s and locked out of use. Traincrews travelling home on the route had carriage keys and made themselves at home in the bubble cars, leading to an interesting combinations of seat cushions to make beds, upturned for card tables, and other ad hoc arrangements... The trains were having difficulty keeping time, and as they provided connection for up services on the WCML at Crewe which were themselves prone to delays, were unable to adequately exploit the recovery times built into the WTT. In 1974, Swindon Inter-City 124 sets were tried, and the gear ratios found to be less than ideal for the route. From 1976, Class 25s with mk1s were used, no more buffets, and the loads were gradually reduced from 6 to 5, 4, and finally 3 bogies before satisfactory performance was achieved. In the 80s. Canton got an allocation of Class 33s, which were able to time the trains with four coaches and electrically heat them.
  19. Assuming that the interior of the garage is dry, a degree of cheap insulation can be achieved by lining the walls and ceiling with egg cartons. If card ones are used sealing them with diluted pva might be advisable. Probably best to buy the larger catering cartons, presumably available online or through catering suppliers, or you're gonna have to eat a lot of eggs... I would contend that it is best to provide blackout curtains to any railway space that has windows, in order to be able to control the layout lighting without interference from daylight or street/traffic lighting.
  20. According to my memory of the second-batch 116s as allox Cathays in 1958, which may not be accurate, they were delivered in the lighter 'electric green' green livery with speed whiskers and white cab roofs. Photos of the first batch Canton Gwent valleys sets operating out of Godfrey Road show them in what looks in b/w photos like the same shade of green but without whiskers or white cab roofs. There were previous dmus to be seen at Cardiff General. the pre-modernisation plan Swindon Inter-City 126 sets later sent to Scotland, used on the Cardiff-Birmingham Snow Hill service via Hereford or Cheltenham from 1956. I think, but would not feel safe in stating categorically, that these sets were in the darker bottle-green that was later used with straw lining, but also had neither whiskers nor white cab roofs. The later development of the 116s as regards livery is a little confused, as it was on dmus generally; unlike loco-hauled stock there never seems to have been a universally applied standard livery or even standardly applied regionally variations of it. If I have the chronology right, and I am not claiming that I incontravertably do, the Gwent sets fairly rapidly acquired whiskers and white cab roofs, then sets started appearing in a lighter green shade, possibly initially perhaps the later deliveries. This developed into a lined version, straw lining at waist and cantrail, around 1960, but at around the same time a new livery, the dark bottle-green, appeared. I do not remember this without the straw lining or white cab roofs, and the introduction of these liveries seemed to overlap. From the following year, small yellow warning panels started showing up, as did electrification warning stickers, and could be seen with all the liveries. Between 1961 and 1966 when the unlined blue livery was introduced, the tendency was towards bottle-green with syp, in South Wales at least. The sets tended to stay in formation and liveries were usually consistent within sets, unlike at Tyseley where mix'n'match was the order of the day. Yellow cantrail lines to indicate first class were introduced by agreement with the UIC in, IIRC, 1961 and was retrospectively applied to all the liveries in service at that time. From 1964, in connection the unstaffing of stations and the introduction of conductor guards selling tickets on the trains, gangway connections were provided on South Wales sets, and the saloon dividers were replaced with ones with doorways so that the conductor guards could move around within the sets. First class tickets were withdrawn on the Valleys services at this time and the knowledgeable punters headed for the old first-class saloons in the trailers for more comforable seats; these remained in place until the units were finally withdrawn two decades later. I would hazard a statement that all the Canton 116s were in lined bottle-green with syp by 1964, as were the 121s used on the Bridgend-Treherbert and Penarth-Cadoxton services.
  21. Possibly. But if there is a perceptible quality difference between Hornby and other RTR producers (and my feeling is that there is such a difference), it does not auger well for Hornby’s future among ‘serious’ modellers, and since they are arguably the company that are historically the most rooted in the crude, poorly detailed, and toy-like train set market, they have more to prove with their current RTR models. They don’t seem to be proving it adequately IMHO and Devil’s Advocate John’s experience with his A4s bears my opinion out.
  22. Hornby seem to be a bit lax when it comes to QC, and it does seem that some models are more prone to problems than others. As my layout needs mostly South Wales GW tank engine prototypes, a majority of my locos are Bachmann and are reliable, smooth-running performers, but I have Hornby 42xx and 5101s that have both given repeated trouble with the rear faces of cylinders coming off and piston rods detaching from the cylinders and damaging the slide bars; the 42xx is currently out of service with a broken slide bar bracket because of this. This loco has a history of things falling off it; buffers, couplings &c. Meanwhile, down at the colliery, my Hornby W4 and B2 Pecketts are running perfectly, absolutely delightful models in every respect. QC is done in China and the level of it is what the company pays the Chinese sub-contractor for, and since there is little difference in the overall design of mechs between Bachmann and Hornby but that Bachmanns seem more robust in service while (as a generalisation) costing a little more, it looks as if Bachmann are paying for a higher level of QC than Hornby, but this is an assumption on my part and I have no actual evidence to back it up.
  23. Agreed, but the express passenger, ordinary passenger, and ecs codes would have been in fairly regular use, so all four lights were needed. The original intention was that the tail lamp would be one of the markers as well, and this was to be done with red shades that fitted into semicircular grooves in the bottom of the marker lamp housings, but in the event oil tail lamps on brackets were used. I very much doubt that many of these shades were ever used, but they were still carried in the cabs in the early 70s, in polished wood holders mounted on the front of the control desks. Later, of course, red bulbs were provided inside the marker housings and lit as pairs. A very common mistake on layouts is to show a green-liveried or pre-1980s dmu with twin red rear markers, as they are often fitted with these as part of the DCC features, but the trains should carry oil tail lamps where that is appropriate to the period modelled. This is correct. My memory of the 116s being introduced on the Cardiff Valleys services in 1958 is of the 2-character headcode type, which tallies with Chris Foren's account of the second batch being initially allox Cathays, while examples of the first batch with four marker lights were allox Canton but used out of Newport on the Gwent Valleys services, where a 6-year old Johnster was not aware of them. This explains my error.
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