The Johnster

Ever played rugby at Penygraig?

Oh, yes, I'm sure that it was the Shakespearean connection that led to the loco namings. Gaunt's speech is rarely quoted in full, and is in fact a damning prophecy of the future of the country under Richard II:- '.. .This England, this nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings feared by their breed and famous for their birth, Renowned for their deeds as far from home for christian service and true chivalry as is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son. This land of dear, dear, souls, this dear, dear land, dear for her reputation through the world is now leased out - I die pronouncing it - like to a tenement or pelting farm. England, bound in with the triumphant sea, whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame, with inky blots and rotten parchment bonds. That England that was wont to conquer others hath made a shameful conquest of itself'. Thus died time-honoured Gaunt, at least according to Stratford Bill; hardly the tone of most sceptered isle quotes! No good quoting half the speech, let's have the whole thing... Gaunt never forgives the king for ending his regency, and by this time, has lost his son Henry Bolingbroke to the king's banishment from the realm. Bolingbroke is no hero either, and has Richard II murdered, or at least taken into his custody at Wakefield Castle after which he was pronounced dead, having never been seen again amongst the living.

Depends which side you're on, but I tend in general not to be on that of the Normans. Owain Glyndwr; national hero and the inspiration for modern Welsh institutions, and resistor of a murderous usurper, or a treacherous and treasonous rebel leader who destroyed more than half of his own country for no gain (both are valid viewpoints). I was a little unprepared for the sudden release of my inner Welsh nationalist a few years ago prompted by the English flags on display all around the village of Tintagel. Tintagel has an anglicised name in the Cornish language, Kernoweck, and Arthur, if he existed, was a saxon's worst possible nightmare, a Romano-British chieftain capable of effectively uniting opposition to them. Welsh legends do not have him as a king, never mind the 'true king of all Britain', though there was a High King of the Isles at one time; he is described as Dux Bellorum, war leader. Tintagel is a travesty.

No, they had to look good at close range. These were not the inflatables and wood/canvas D-day decoys, intended to mislead aerial reconniscance, but to be visible to 5th columnists on the ground, close to. They were often parked close to perimeter fences for this reason. And, as I can testify, they looked the part; ailerons and rudders were separate parts that moved a little in the breeze for example. And they were ballasted down so that they wouldn't blow away in gales, as of course tying them down would have given the game away, so if the weight was towards the front, they might well have been functional as gliders, not that anyone ever tried it I suppose.

Brown Windsor featured on the menus of cafes in the 50s and 60s as well. The naming of Britannias was carried out to be appropriate to the regions they were allocated to, and the initial batch included Britannia, arguably a figure based on Boudicca, and Boudicea, the Roman spelling of Boudicca, both appropriate to the territory of the Iceni. The WR batch, with different tenders, were named for famous broad gauge GW engines in an attempt to persuade the region and it's drivers to accept them. Swindon had lobbied for more Castles, but Marylebone had put their foot down with a firm hand, an action repeated with the 3MT tanks instead of 5101s, 4MT 4-6-0s instead of Manors, and 9Fs instead of more 28xx. The first of these, Iron Duke, was allox Old Oak Common at the exact time that problems with William Shakespeare, the 'Golden Arrow' engine, at Stewart's Lane coinciding with a lack of serviceable Merchant Navies gave Old Oak a chance to offer Iron Duke on loan; Stewart's Lane practically bit their hand off, and Old Oak contrived to forget that their loco was on loan and never asked for it back. GW, 1, Marylebone, 0. There was no chance of the WR fobbing 70015 off on anyone else, though, and the WR batch were duly delivered, allox Old Oak, Laira, and Canton. Old Oak and Laira were not happy with their new engines, and considered them vastly inferior to Castles, but Canton had a lot of uphill slogging work that a 2-cylinder loco with a free-steaming boiler and 6'2" wheels was very capable of, and liked them. A few years later, at a meeting of divisional Loco Dept, GMs, the Newport manager stated that he would be happy to take on the whole allocation of 14 engines at Canton and the locos were transferred forthwith. Iron Duke remained at Stewart's Lane as understudy to William Shakespeare; TTBOMK nobody commented on the use of a loco named for the victor of Waterloo on the principal Paris-London service of the day... Canton got Kings in 1960, and the WR's Brits were all xfer LMR at that time. On the subject of names, they do have political significance on occasion. There is a story concerning Eamon DeValera, the Irish Teaichoc (not sure I've spelt that right) returning from a meeting at Downing Street on the 'Irish Mail' from Euston. There was a photo-opportunity with him and his party with the smiling loco crew and the stationmaster in his top hat at Euston, with the group placed in front of the loco's nameplate; Ulster Rifleman! No doubt unintentional, but a tad insensitive all the same... at least it wasn't 70013!

They'd have probably glided fairly well, though...

Good call, Corbs. I have a Hornby but it has never run particularly well and I don't find it to be a life-enhancing experience; it is very much a 'design clever' period model. TTBOMK these were used wherever there was fish traffic, and I can certainly remember them on the Milford Haven-Paddington Goods fish train. I will find one very hard to resist, as there is a food processing factory at Glynogwr on the Cwmdimbath branch and the trains come up to the terminus to run around. Might be fun to swap the Hornby body around occasionally.

Nowt wrong with a model of a loco in currently preserved condition so long as it is clearly stated to be a model of a loco in currently preserved condition and not one of a loco in service condition. An example is the Bachmann 'as preserved' 9400, offered as an alternative choice to the other versions, which are tooled for the original batch with a cover between the frames concealing the cylinder tops and the BR 'production' locos without this cover, so that the cylinder tops look like a pair of barmaids wibblywobblies under the smokebox.

The Spitfire I referred to earlier being an example. They were pretty realistic.

Possibly explained by the normally rostered engine being out of action for a boiler washout and no spare being on hand in steam at Boelyn Road. Not unusual to borrow a loco from a neighbouring shed in these circumstances. I alway find the J50 to be a particularly sensible design, especially the hopper bunker version, good forward visibility, good access to the motion, and good tractive weight distribution from the tanks, not the prettiest but perhaps the ultimate development of the classic British 6-coupled tank engine.

Took me a few seconds; wonky penalty area!

There were diversionary fires lit on Caerphilly mountain in an attempt to persuade the bombers to drop there instead of Cardiff, with some success as there are bomb craters up there. This is a bit of a confused history, though, as there are similar pits close by from (illegal) coal cropping during the General Strike and the 30s Depression; the seams outcrop at the surface here, but the coal is of insufficient quality for commercial development. Similar cropping pits can be seen on Mynydd Rudry, a mile and a half or so away to the northeast. I suspect that such diversionary measures were of limited use where the targets were close to the coast or on big rivers, which reflect moonlight very effectively. Though on a family camping holiday in Germany in '66 I spoke to the driver of the Kriegslok that was acting as station pilot at Bonn (I had little interest in following the 'rents to Bach' house museum), and he had been a gunner on the big 3-night Swansea raid in February 1941. He stated that the intention was to hit the docks and Danygraig yards, but that the blackout was too effective for accurate aiming, with the tragic result that much of the town centre was destroyed and many civilians killed. They were about half a mile off-target; of course, once the fires were burning, the following waves hit the same area in the belief that it was the proper target. Another story regarding these raids was one I heard a few years later from a Landore driver while I was working on the railway during the 70s. He was from the St Thomas area at the foot of Kilvey Hill, and told me of the local pervert, who on the evening of the first of the raids had followed a young couple who had taken an evening walk up the hill, for the usual purpose that young people take walks up hills in this part of the world, he'd promised to show her the lights of Swansea, bit cold in February for that sort of thing, but anyway, raincoat Ronnie follows them and hides in the gorse to watch the action, and comes across an equally furtive character with a torch, signalling in the Heinkels now visibly and audibly approaching off the Bristol Channel. El Pervo and the now alerted couple ran back down to inform the St.Thomas residents, who promptly formed a lynching party and bludgeoned the fifth columnist to death. This was of course murder, but the local constable wrote it up as an air raid casualty and no more was said; I doubt if any Swansea jury would have convicted! I reckon quite a bit of this sort of thing must have gone on, mostly not talked about much.

No, indeed; don't forget that at the time of his death a large stone was placed over his grave, and it was said that this was to ensure that the b*gger stayed down where he was put; nobody wanted him back! When the monarchy was restored, one of Charles II's first actions was to have him dug up and his decaying corpse publicly put on trial for treason and regicide. The slant of my school history lessons was that he was instrumental in the development of our modern constitutional monarchy and parliamernary democracy, which is arguably true but I would argue that this was never his intention; that was to overthrow the monarchy permanently in the interests of preventing it become aligned to the cause of Catholicism, at a time when the definition of a good British subject was his allegience to and support of the Protestant cause.

He also banned them from the professions, and made them wear identifying Star of David badges, which were also painted on their homes and businesses. Sound familiar?

My personal view is that the statue of Oliver Cromwell outside parliament is a travesty; he is after all famous for dissolving parliaments with the aid of groups of armed men... He was certainly no saint, there being very little in the way of the promised parliamentary democracy when he was in charge, and being guilty of what were even at the time considered heinous war crimes against Irish civilians. He was so bad that the country chucked the opportunity of democratic rule and invited the Stuarts back, and that bunch were a series of arrogant, deluded, and vainglorious spenders of public money dedicated to the principle of Divine Right of Kings. One can see why the royals don't have much time for him; my view is that nobody else should either. But the same can be said of many of those who have had locos named after them; among the Kings, I would point out Henry 1 (off at a gallop to secure the treasury at Winchester before Rufus had hit the ground, highly suspect), Richard 1 (another parliament square densizen, spent 28 days of his entire life in England, and bankrupted the country in order to bankroll his Crusader adventures and his ransom), John (dealt a bad hand by Richard but hardly on the side of the angels, murdered Arthur of Brittany and reneged on Magna Carta at the first opportunity, as did most of the Plantagenet and Tudor monarchs following him), Edward 1 (I'm Welsh, so I'm biased, but he made a mess of Scotland as well, and expelled the Jews along with murdering hundreds of them because they'd lent money to his enemy Llewelyn ap Gruffudd, and to himself for the Scottish wars so that he didn't have to pay them back; one of Cromwell's more liberal decisions was to allow them back), or any of the Stuarts. Bloody Mary speaks for herself, but Elizabeth 1 was another psychotic tyrant and religious maniac, overfond of the block and a close pen pal of her contemporary psychopath and son-murderer Ivan Grosny; they practically invented the secret police state between them. Richard II was probably murdered on the orders of the usurper Henry IV, and either Richard III (crookback Dick) or Henry VII had the princes in the tower, only kids, terminated with extreme prejudice. John of Gaunt was a self-serving and highly corrupt regent who provoked the peasant's revolt and led the cabal of barons that profited from Magna Carta, Robin Hood was an outlaw, and Dick Turpin was a murderous highwayman. The Black Prince was little more than a brigand thug, running a vicious campaign of rapine and slaughter in France, largely for personal profit, and from an English perspective 'Owen Glendower' was a traitorous rebel. Rob Roy McGregor was a cattle thief, and Henry Hotspur as a rebel traitor as well as an accomplished reaver. Winston Churchill (again, I'm biased, family from Tonypandy) was a superb war leader, but racist, somewhat right wing, a drunk, and prone to excusing treason from the Master of Sempell (shoulda been shot like the treacherous traitorous dog he was) because they were mates. David Lloyd George had a penchant for wives other than his own. We might as well have had a loco called Hugh Despenser... Incidentally, not all the Britannias named for people were named for British people; Flying Dutchman certainly wasn't and the Iron Duke was Irish.

Indeed, but that would need disassembly of them, and I'm not risking it; it works fine now so I'm going to leave well alone; I have history with pickups! It would look a bit chunky as well.

Everything is now on hold until next payday (next Wednesday) as my old soldering iron, needed to properly re-wire the pickup side of the chassis, has died on me. So I've re-assembled the bodyshell to the chassis in order to minimise the chance of losing bits. Patience, padawan, patience...

We did much the same thing, partly as deception tactics aimed at German aerial reconnaisance during the D-Day build-up when we wanted them to think we were going to attack the Pas de Calais instead of Normandy. Fake tanks and vehicles were assembled at sites in the south-east of England, made of canvas on wooden frames or even inflatables, effective in aerial photography but they would never have fooled anyone on the ground. I have seen a full-size replica plywood Spitfire that would have fooled anyone but an expert, though, and I doubt your average run-of-the-mill fifth columnist would have spotted the ruse even if it were parked next to the airfield perimeter fence; I found the thing completely convincing, and the only thing that might have aroused suspicion was the lack of soot staining around the engine exhausts.

One of the three creepycrawlies that The Squeeze actually likes, the others being chiggypigs and butterflies. I agree but like spiders as well, if only for keeping the flies down, and bumblebees, magificicent beasts, oh, and dragonflies. I kept crickets for a while because I like the summery noise, and found they were rather fun, fond of playing 'king of the castle' and knocking each other off high places in their tank. Kept them on the bathroom windowsill for something to watch while I was entrhoned on the porcelain...

But these people make profit for their employers, so they actually generate cash by selling whatever publication/meeja outlet they work for, satisfying the demand for such material amongst people whose lives are dull and who like to live vicariously as if they were rich, famous, and glamorous. Profit is generated by means of satisfying an illusory created demand, the basis of successful marketing. Isn't capitalism wonderful? Are model railway magazines that much different? Are we any better than those obsessed with 'celebs'?

Bought back last November from the Bay of e, and a nice little runner for a week or so. Then it stopped, there was a bit of smoke, and a dead short; I thought I’d burned the motor out! The loco was a bit of a lightweight with not much haulage and I’d been adding ballast over the driving wheels and reckoned I’d overdone it and fouled the motor. Mea culpa, bit miffed with myself, put it aside until I was in a better mood. Anyway, I’ve been having a look at it the last two evenings, after buying some cheap can motors, one of which was to experimentally replace the original, which I think is an Anchoridge. The previous owner had made a tidy job of the chassis, which I suspect is a Comet but could be a Perseverance. Wheels & gears are Romford/Markits with proper 56xx balance weights, and the loco has rather nice turned sprung buffers. A brass motor cradle with a fold-up gearbox presumably came with the chassis kit. First hob was to check that the can motor would fit in the Mainline bodyshell, which it did nicely, then I started dismantling things to fit the new motor and isolate the short; I would have to make a new cradle for the can, with some sort of adjustment for meshing as the fold-up gearbox could not be used with it. Rods removed from the rear drivers (driven axle) and the grub slackened off on the drive cog, a wheelnut removed, wheel and a axle withdrawn from frame, which freed the old motor. Before removing the worm and binning it, I tested it; it ran perfectly! Ok, rethink. Best to re-install the original motor & gearbox, the can motor will no doubt come in handy for something else one day. Now all I had to do was find the short, and this took a couple of hours of headscratching before it was located, a pickup strip fouling on brake rodding. It’s a live chassis return pickup with the strip, stiff wire soldered to copperclad chassis cross-members, one end of one of which had detached itself and given the strip sufficient vertical movement to contact the brake rodding. So now I’ve got a working loco again! I’ll do a bit of working up of the ML bodyshell before it goes into service; I’ve already put real coal in the bunker and glazed the spectacle plate windows; it needs lamp irons, renumbering to a suitable Tondu candidate, a backhead, crew, and I think I can improve on the smokebox dart. Buffers are already done and I painted the faces black earlier, and for service on Cwmdimbath I’ll need NEM mounts. The Romford/Markits wheels need centre bosses to hide the split-head axle nuts and the axle ends. Livery is undecided at this stage, currently BR unicycling lion unlined black, which is fine but I don’t like the rather glossy ML finish. Proper copper-capped chimney and brass safety-valve cover would be nice as well. I love a story with a happy ending!

Bought back last November from the Bay of e, and a nice little runner for a week or so. Then it stopped, there was a bit of smoke, and a dead short; I thought I’d burned the motor out! The loco was a bit of a lightweight with not much haulage and I’d been adding ballast over the driving wheels and reckoned I’d overdone it and fouled the motor. Mea culpa, bit miffed with myself, put it aside until I was in a better mood. Anyway, I’ve been having a look at it the last two evenings, after buying some cheap can motors, one of which was to experimentally replace the original, which I think is an Anchoridge. The previous owner had made a tidy job of the chassis, which I suspect is a Comet but could be a Perseverance. Wheels & gears are Romford/Markits with proper 56xx balance weights, and the loco has rather nice turned sprung buffers. A brass motor cradle with a fold-up gearbox presumably came with the chassis kit. First hob was to check that the can motor would fit in the Mainline bodyshell, which it did nicely, then I started dismantling things to fit the new motor and isolate the short; I would have to make a new cradle for the can, with some sort of adjustment for meshing as the fold-up gearbox could not be used with it. Rods removed from the rear drivers (driven axle) and the grub slackened off on the drive cog, a wheelnut removed, wheel and a axle withdrawn from frame, which freed the old motor. Before removing the worm and binning it, I tested it; it ran perfectly! Ok, rethink. Best to re-install the original motor & gearbox, the can motor will no doubt come in handy for something else one day. Now all I had to do was find the short, and this took a couple of hours of headscratching before it was located, a pickup strip fouling on brake rodding. It’s a live chassis return pickup with the strip, stiff wire soldered to copperclad chassis cross-members, one end of one of which had detached itself and given the strip sufficient vertical movement to contact the brake rodding. So now I’ve got a working loco again! I’ll do a bit of working up of the ML bodyshell before it goes into service; I’ve already put real coal in the bunker and glazed the spectacle plate windows; it needs lamp irons, renumbering to a suitable Tondu candidate, a backhead, crew, and I think I can improve on the smokebox dart. Buffers are already done and I painted the faces black earlier, and for service on Cwmdimbath I’ll need NEM mounts. The Romford/Markits wheels need centre bosses to hide the split-head axle nuts and the axle ends. Livery is undecided at this stage, currently BR unicycling lion unlined black, which is fine but I don’t like the rather glossy ML finish. Proper copper-capped chimney and brass safety-valve cover would be nice as well. I love a story with a happy ending!

I think the Country Code is a pretty good philosophy to live by. If you apply 'keep to the path, close the gate, dispose of your rubbish, and keep your dogs on a lead' to most situations in society, you won't go far wrong...

Charlie Marston's Salvage Yard illustrates why most scrappies cut locos as quickly as they could after they arrived; you had to cut and dispose to make room for the next delivery (despite the belief in certain quarters that rapid destruction of the locos was required as part of the tendering conditions with BR). This was certainly the practice at the Newport (Mon) yards, Cashmore's and Buttigieg's. The difference at Dai Woodham's was that he had the use of the 'field', for which he paid a rent to the BTDB, and could store locos, which he did because the steady flow of wagons were easier and more profitable to cut than locos. So he kept the locos back as what he called a 'banker', a reserve of work for his 'boys' against any period when the wagons dried up. It was fortuitous coincidence that this co-incided with the start of the preservation movement, which required a supply of locos in reasonable condition to work on. Barry locos rapidly developed a veneer of surface rust from the sea air and South Wales damp, but were in pretty good structural condition when most were purchased for preservation. Boilers were usually sound, being contructed very solidly as pressure containment vessels. Restorations were pretty heroic efforts, though, usually carried out by small numbers of people in spare time, fairly often in the open in appalling conditions with inadequate tools and funding. A BR workshop could probably have got most of them in main line running condition in a few weeks!

I like the idea of natural weathering on layouts. Scenic colours that fade over time blend better, wood which bleaches and ages naturally, that sort of thing. Wood needs to be left outside for long enough for it to bleach but the problem with this is that it is difficult to keep the stuff from being blown away in the next gale or pinched by nesting birdies, but worth the effort as it is very diffiuclt to get the correct 'look' by painting. For a while I used loose coal at my colliery and as wagon loads, which eventually proved to be too messy for a domestic environment and I now have card wagon fillers with coal glued to the tops, but it was a very useful way of weathering the buildings and the wagons.