The Johnster

If I understand what happened correctly, and I'm not sure I do from the information reported at the time, the train had been running with the rear portion's brakes disconnected and isolated after having had dragging brakes earlier. Had the proper procedure been followed, a brake continuity test would have established that the brakes were not operating at all and did not leak on on the rear portion, which suggests to me that the brake was isolated throughout that portion not just on one wagon. It looks as if the brake pipes were disconnected at the front of the trailing portion and the cocks closed, in which case the set would run free but the brakes would begin to leak on after a while The story become plausible once the train clears Shap summit and begins to be braked on the falling gradient towards Carlisle. The unbraked portion will now buffer up against the braked train, and in this set of circumstances a screw coupling that is stiff, dirty, and inadequately greased can easily lift out of the hook on the adjoining set. By this time the brakes are starting to leak on on the rear portion, slowing it, but the weight does not allow it to come to a stand or even a low speed as it approaches the junction. Thus, as the train arrives at Upperby Bridge Junction, it is in two portions, the front under control but the rear a runaway that is going to hit the front hard when it catches up at Citadel, where it is to stop for relief. The crew on the loco have no idea anything is wrong at this point. The rear portion is therefore diverted by some very smart work by Mr.Taylor, and comes to grief relatively harmlessly on the avoiding lines, though it leaves a terrible mess. The guard has definitely let the side down badly, and I do not know if any action was taken against him; it probably should have been, and against the driver if he was not certain that the brake continuity test had been properly carried out. On the WCML there is pressure to get going and clear the line, but I would have done a continuity test and satisfied myself that the brakes applied and released properly on both bogies of the rear flat, irrespective of what anyone had told me to do, signalman, driver, yard foreman, who cares, this is my job not yours, ferk off and do yours, I'll let the train go without me if I have to but I'm doing this brake test, and we'll see who gets a Form 1 for not obeying procedure. The roots of the incident are in the earlier brake dragging problem, and as the media were more interested at the time with the damage and the hero signalman (fair enough) I never quite understood what had gone wrong. Was the train put into a loop for attention; if so there is even less excuse! But there have been other incidents of air-braked trains running away with isolated brakes, some years ago with a Royal Mail train coming down Filton Bank and more recently a Caledonian Sleeper, split at Carstairs and the rear Edinburgh portion running away, apparently because an air pipe cock had been accidentally closed during the operation, possibly by a swinging coupling. If the continuity test is performed properly every time it should be performed this will not happen as any discrepancy in the procedure will be shown up. which is why the continuity test should always be performed whenever the train brake pipe has been parted for whatever reason and irrespective of a) how well you know the brake to be performing or b) how many times you've done it before and got away with it. It is one of the few bits of proper railway work left to drivers, guards, and shunters, and should be taken a pride in, though I can see how pressure to get moving in the case of late running may be a problem. On a 70s FLT, the brake continuity test involves the guard or train preparer walking back along the length of the train, a fair schlep with 20 FLT flats, checking that the hoses (there are two, red train brake and yellow reservoir) are coupled and that the pipr cocks are opened between all the vehicles and that the hoses are on their hooks and the pipe cocks closed on the rear of the train. You then open the red train brake pipe cock, and check that the brakes are applied to the rear flats' bogies, by kicking them and seeing that they are solidly on the wheel. If your driver is worth his salt, he has noticed the train brake valve drop to zero and acknowledged this by a tip on the rear horn. You then close the train brake cock, and signal to the driver to blow the brakes off (pumping handsignal), and while he is doing this you confirm that the bogie brakes have released, by kicking them and seeing that they are hanging loose, dude.

One of my f*ckups in the 70s was shunting a Freightliner out at the old Pengam yard in Cardiff. The headshunt, up the bank alongside the Tidal branch, could take a loco and 3 sets, 15 flats, but one would sometimes pull out of the yard with 4 sets on as the yard wanted to move the trailing set up to 'this' end. Doing such a move one day, on a 47, driver hadn't changed ends (we didn't, much, in those days) and I'm in the 2man's seat with the window down relaying the shunter's handsignals (shunter is under the road bridge and I can see him well enough), so the loco is effectively running backwards in terms of the cab it was being driven from. Slight bump as we came to a stand and I noticed we were quite close to the 15-wagon indicator postion light. I had a pretty good idea what I'd done, and got off the loco driver's side to confirm my suspicions; we'd pushed the stop back far enough to isolate the other end bogie on it's own private bit of railway with a gap of clear trackbed between the bogies. My fault and I felt duly guilty, but of course the driver had to take the blame for not changing ends; he never heard anything more about it but I have no idea how the thing was covered up! But it was end of sports for several hours while the Per.Way. sent a flatbed lorry out with a couple of blokes, some sleepers, chairs, and some rail to rescue the isolated bogie. I was so fixated on the shunters' handsignals that I forgot to look where I was going. Embarrassing, and a lesson learned. With a train stopped across the yard throat, there was quite a bit of knock-on effect to FLT services from Cardiff for the rest of that day, especially the Swansea traffic.

We're on to the roof now, splinted inside with my favourite free useful thing, Wetherspoons coffee stirrers, for rigidity, the join Milliputed and sanded down, and a coat of grey paint applied. The interior painting is done, a deliberately rough job, with thinned brown paint very effective on the real wood coffee-stirrer benches, and the next jobs are overall weathering, then glazing, some miners and a guard, and then the glazing can be done and the roof glued on. This will be done by my usual method of lightly glueing with poundshop superglue, which will hold it in place well enough but can be easily levered off with a small screwdriver, cleaned up, and replaced. Bodgery, but it works well enough. The Stafford Road bogies should be to hand by that time; if not, then I'll modify the Triang B1s with coffee-stirrer footboards as ersatz Dean 8'6", which I've done in the past. You cut out the tiebar and cut reliefs for the axleboxes in a peice of coffee-stirrer cut in half lengthways and glue it on just below the axlebox split relief. It's reasonably effective at a distance, but close up the shape of the side plates, axleboxes, and the end plates give it away a bit. At that point, if all has gone well, the coach can go into service. Dirty windows will hide the crudity of my compartment details, but the cab ones will be clean so I have to pay a bit more attention in there... Need to investigate Modelu for miners; they would not be wearing helmets until they'd booked on duty and collected the helmet, lamp, and battery. The procedure was to collect your brass number tag when you signed on, then your numbered lamp & battery and the helmet, then you handed your tag to the cageman at the top of the shaft before you went down, and collected it when you came back up; it was his (not inconsiderable) responsibility to keep it on it's correct hook in the meantime. In the event of something going wrong down there (and the number of ways a mine could seriously spoil your day was worrying, only trawlers were more dangerous), this was the method by which the number and identity of the men underground to be looked for was determined at the surface. So I need miners, but it is possible that simply general purpose not-very-clean workmen in overalls with jackets on will suffice. All smoking ciggies; it was prohited on duty and there was little point in worrying about what it was doing to your lungs in that job; the pneumoconiosis/silicosis usually got you before the fags had a chance. Got my maternal grandfather in 1934 at the age of 38, he'd been underground since he was 14. Grandmother passed 4 months later, 'heart failure' being what the doctor put on the death certificate, medispeak for broken heart, with 9 kids she just gave up, there was nothing physically wrong with. The price of coal, never forget. A colliery had a good number of men that never went down the shaft; the locomen and shunters of course, but the screen and washery operators (who were just as at risk from the dust as those underground), storemen, fitters, electricians, winding-engine stokers, and clerical staff (most importantly the weighbridge clerk). Office clerical staff worked 9-5, what a way to make a livin', but everybody else worked shifts and some of them would use the workman's train. For this reason the trains usually had a specified 'clean' compartment.

If it is as described it will suit your purposes perfectly, but you may want to runumber it. Not difficult as Bachmann's GW numberplates are printed, so all you need to do is acquire new numberplates with the correct number and glue them over the printed plate. Etched brass plates are available but sometimes the entire class is not covered, or there is the alternative of bespoke printed 'relief transfer' types, which are very good and available with red or black backgrounds (red backgrounds were used for a while in the early 50s, and might possibly have survived into your period) The obvious railway for you to model is the Cambrian, with TTBOMK every steam and diesel loco used in your period available in correct liveries as recent, high quality RTR, plus several of the dmus. The Cambrian section had several stations where interchange with narrow-gauge systems was possible and actually crossed the Welsh Highland on the level. An alternative could be the GW Wrexham-Barmouth Jc line (this was the standard gauge line that ran through Bala) and included the Blaenau Ffestiniog branch, the advantage of this being the use of pannier tanks and 58xx. You've got space to make a compressed stab at Barmouth, very interesting operationally and scenically with the station almost on the beach and buildings clinging to the cliff behind it, but perhaps a bit ambitious for a first project.

TTBOMK the WR's borrowed Stanier Pacifics worked West of England expresses, and there are triangles at Old Oak and Laira so turning them was a minor inconvenience as opposed to a problem. For A3s, the obvious solution is the Birmingham Direct main line in the High Wycombe area where it was joint with the Great Central. There was a Leicester-Swindon parcels in the 50s that was worked throughout by a V2, which I always think of as a pocket A3.

I had a Graham Farish 2-rail 94xx back in the 80s; very poor runner and didn't like Peco turnouts as it turned out (sorry), but v. cheap in those days. Fettled it as best I could but the thing had no hope really and I stuck with my Lima, not the world's most controllable engine but better than the GF. What one would be like 40 years later I dread to think.

Exactly. During my time as a Canton guard in the 70s I don't think I saw any underframes other than the 6-wheel GW design, our milk train being the Whitland-Kensington. One of my link jobs was to deliver the empties and pick up loadeds from Marshfield, between Cardiff and Newport. A Hymek job, initially this meant propelling the loaded tanks back to Cardiff from Marshfield, which was fun, but later, 1972 IIRC, the trailing xover at Marshfield was taken out and we took the tanks to Newport to run around before running them back to Cardiff to be attached to the up milk in the evening. Marshfield was accessed by a ground frame, which I liked, a chance to exercise my frustrated inner signalman... I was the guard on the xover removal train, which involved taking the Radyr PAD 35ton Smith-Rodley (think Airfix kit with a solid 8-wheel underframe, self-propelled) and some Grampus out to the site, shutting the loco down and putting the handbrake on, and getting locked in to the Port'o'Call pub while the boys got on with it. We finished up in there about 2am, and all climbed aboard my van which had a good stove fire going, and 'rested our eyes' until the Workabust turned up at about 6 o'clock with our relief. Hell, but somebody had to do it, and on Sunday overtime rates as well; shame to take the money, really, not that I ever gave any of it back... The dairy was a few hundred yards up the road and the milk was brought down in road tankers to be loaded on to the Miltas. They stank, btw; the glass-lined insides might have been spotlessly steam-cleaned but the outsides were covered in stale milkspill, and I have always avoided modelling them because of the association. But I agree; the old Lima model was good in it's day but is showing it's age now and doesn't cut the mustard any more.

Interesting idea, I suppose it would be possible on a loco but harder in a dmu where there is less space under the floor. Another solution might be an inflatable driver that the air is sucked out of when you inflate the driver at the other end and vice versa (sorry, that's given me the mental picture of the auto-pilot in Airplane, which still has me in stitches every time I see it). This would be useful on Cwmdimbath for auto-working, if I ever go in for DCC, which I intend to when I win the lottery. Now, somebody is probably going to be along soon with all sorts of dodgy inflatable activities for passengers. You are all very bad people for thinking this.

Don't forget that the current Bala Lake Railway is a relative newcomer built on the trackbed of a former standard gauge line. It did not exist in narrow gauge form in the fifties and not in any form after closure in 1963.

It will; the more research and thinking you do now the better your layout will be and the less money you will spend on things you only thought you wanted. Collieries and narrow-gauge are a seductive mix but not particularly common on (or in) the ground. Many South Wales collieries had narrow gauge tramway systemd and some had low-profile battery locos to work underground, but anything beyond hand, horse, or cable traction was rare at the surface. A narrow gauge railway in the sense of the Ffestiniog, Talyllyn, Corris, Glyn Valley &c is usually connected with a slate quarry, and the geology of Wales does not allow slate quarries and collieries to exist close to each other. Those sort of railways were/are overwhelmingly associated with transhipment and passenger transfer at stations on the Cambrian line, and to a lesser extent the LNWR. Collieries did not use the sort of small steam engines used by Slate quarries. However, in case nobody else has, I will now introduce you to Rule 1, The Supreme Rule that all other rules are subservient to and to which reference is always made in any case of doubt. Rule 1 states 'It's my train set and I'll run what I like'. It is a complex matter, but we all respect it; complex becuase it is a tricksy thing, like all freedoms. Overuse/abuse will let your layout devolve into a train set, and we don't like trainsets masquerading as model railways because it erodes the seriousness with which we take ourselves. A train set should be honest and upfront about what it is, and respected for what it is, which is not a model railway. The boundary between a train set and a model railway is never clearly defined, but we all know what we mean by it and all of us have different parameters for said boundary. With great freedom comes great responsibility.

Just as well, I still need them for now so that I can hear The Squeeze telling me I'm an idiot again. A bloke I used to know used to dig vast quantities of horribleness out of his ears, which he would then study closely and sniff. I was reminded of him on a visit to Lincoln Cathederal, splendid edifice, which as a beeswax candle that has been buring continuously for 900 years or something; they keep adding lumps to it. It's big, about 6' diameter and very vaguely spherical, and has a not very pleasant aroma... These rock faces are off eBay, painted plaster, but mine need to be painted more dark reddish-brown to represent the local geology, Pennant Sandstone, the upper extent of the Carboniferous Series before you go into the Permian. Going down, after the Pennant is the Coal Measures, coal seams interspersed with mudstones which is what you'd expect from the remains of coastal mangrove swamp, the 'Farewell Rock', renamed the Marros Group in South Wales, the Millstone Grit, and the Carboniferous Limetones, before the series enters the Devonian Old Red Sandstone. The Old Red Sandstone is named thus because it's Old, Red, and, well you get the idea; actually not, it is Old to distinguish it from the New Red Sandstone which is part of the Permian formation in the UK, not sure you could describe anything Permian as 'new' unless you're a geologist...

Did a bit more work on this yesterday evening, first undercoats of brown paint and Milliput filling at the join of the two coach ends and the corners to the cabs, also the holes for the tabs that fix the roof. I am going to 'splint' the two roof sections together for structural rigidity before attacking the join with more Milliput. I'm having to make some assumptions about internal decor here, but the floors are going to be grey and the plain wooden bench seats brown. The compartment divider walls would be pretty dirty and I think I'll go for grey, except for the guard's compartment, for which brown lower panels and cream upper panels seem right. I need to make up a brake setter and a vacuum gauge before the roof goes on and the thing is sealed forever, as well as finding a guard. I'm going to paint the inside of the roof white; this will be apparent through the clerestory windows. Clear or opaque glass for these? Will order the Stafford Road bogies next payday. I'm starting to feel as if I'm approaching the end game for this project, which is turning out reasonably well, but there are significant matters that have had to be guesstimations, such is the way of things when you are modelling an obscure version of a low-status prototype altered late in it's existence and not brilliantly well recorded. Internal paint scheme is based on what I think might be probable based on general WR practice of the period. I might try a stunt I pulled with my Roxey Clifton Downs auto-trailer, cream painted replacement droplight frames from local stock (as shown on period photos of this coach, W 3338, the last one in service). Miners' coaches had a rough life and broken droplights must have occurred; they don't appear on any of the Glyncorrwg photos I'm familiar with, but this is a Rule 1 coach based on the Glyncorrwg train. so I have a degree of liberty with this sort of detail. The explanation is that the morning miners' is the first train up the valley in the morning and the box is not open yet, so there is no means of the loco running around. It therefore has to propel the coach up the branch from Blackmill, and haul it back down. It doesn't actually need to come up tof the terminus at all and actually isn't booked to, as it can drop the men off at the pit platform and run straight back down the valley once the lamps have been changed over*, but it often has a few locomen or guards who have signed off at Tondu during the night and are using it to travel home, plus one of the signalmen uses it when he is on mornings, so the usual practice is to run up to the terminus unofficially. Cwmdimbath at 05.50 is a good way away from officialdom, who of course know all about the practice but turn a blind eye in the interests of a quiet life! The train runs 'normally' on it's visits later in the day. *For now. Exploratory work is in progress 900 feet below the surface on a new seam of very high quality low sulphur steam/domestic coal with an exceptional calorific value, which will mean extra traffic if it can be sold at a good enough price. This would mean a night shift, and possibly a need for the box to be open on nights as well. A Rule 1 departure for the Tondu network, where nothing moved between the last passenger in each valley until the first next day, but some pits did work nights and carried out shunting operations to keep the loaders supplied with empties and to weigh them ready for despatch in the morning. It would mean a late evening delivery of empties and a light engine and van in the morning to take away the loadeds, all of which would increase the cost of the operation, but the men are keen to increase their earnings. Cyclops, the colliery's 4-coupled DH Bagnall, would be well suited to this work; it has a headlight.

I would contend that 6x4 solid baseboard is not a good use of any space. The idea is usually that they can be mounted on a table top and put away when not being used, but they are heavy and awkward things that are physically hard work to move, especially when one side of them is covered by delicate models and scenery. They are a spectacularly awkward shape for a realistic layout; most real railways are long and thin...

Which I was told on my guards' induction course was dangerous, unless the flies are tied together for safety.🤫

My apologies for my incorrect radius information regarding Peco Streamline turnout radii.

Except that wheel profiles, flangeways, and coupling incompatibility made all that not quite as simple as it should have been…

5524 sweeps in with an auto from Bridgend, passing the box and 5633 on the goods loop, just run around the van, which as soon as the auto clears into the platform it will move over to the exchange loop ready to place it on the rear of the loaded coal wagons; it will then run around the train ready for the 6 miles to Ogmore Jc yard, which will take the best part of an hour. It is 13.10. The lump of what looks like earwax is a rock face waiting to be painted in an experimental position. This too shall pass.

Difficult to imagine now, but back in the day only enthusiasts were much interested in speeds in mph, and the writing of C J Allen, O.S. Nock, and others in Locomotive Running & Performance articles in Railway Magazine. Loco crew had time allowances to run through sections with different classes of train, fob watches to time themselves, and extra time allowed for heavier loads or smaller engines. Trains ran to time, not at a speed, and, as has been said, very few loco were fitted with speedometers which were in any case less accurate than the watches until diesel days. Consider Joe Duddington's wonderful self-written voiceover for Pathe about Mallard's famous record run' (the loco was not fitted with a speedo but did have a Flaman speed recorder, which was not for the drivers' use at the time and of only passing interest to them), what he said was 'then, well, they tell me the blokes in the dynamometer car 'eld their breath, 126 mph! That were faster than any steam engine had gone before...', because only the dynamometer car had a calibrated speedometer. Listening to this still makes my hairs on my neck stand on end, it's the mother lode, even it it wasn't on the GW... To take another speed record, City of Truro's, the speed only came to light because of quarter-milepost stopwatch observations by Flewellyn, the Inspector on the footplate, Charles Rous-Martin, a railway journalist in the leading mail van, and the Post Office inspector, whose job it was to time the train accurately in connection with the penalty clauses for late running in the Mails contract. All three highly experienced train-timers confirmed the time between the quarter-mile posts and their notes back each other up; it is unlikely that Clemens, the driver had any idea how fast he was going in mph, nor much interest in it. He'd have known he was picking them up a bit, but not much more than that in detail. The timings show a less than scupulous attitdued to PROS, especially on the sea wall and through Exeter. 100mph has a cachet to it but is in reality only a number, not of itself particularly interesting. His braking for the platelayers was absolutely the correct thing to do; these men would not have been used to trains bearing down on them at that sort of speed (sorry, to those sorts of timings) and he wasn't in the business of killing anyone just to beat the LSWR!

Let us hope so, it is a very good idea that would make properties more affordable to first-time buyers, I believe they do this in Germany as well. You want to try the same thing with a South Walian accent; the gogs hate us much more than the English, have done for 1,500 years at least. Actually, my experience of Gogland xenophobia is that it exists in inexplicable pockets; Bettws y Coed is much friendlier than Llanwrst despite them being either side of a bridge. In Barmouth you can't take it personally because they hate everybody, even themselves... It's parochialism as much as anything else, and a sense of the culture being eroded that may have some basis in fact. It is also a reluctance to blame locals for selling to incomers at inflated prices, cashing in and getting out.

Hmm. Not so sure; I think the issue arose in the post-war period when someone from the chattering classes commented in a letter to the 'Thunderer' on the ancient appearance of the carriage pilots at Paddington, referring to 8750s with large Victorian-looking domes. The M7s at Waterloo or the J69s at Liverpool St seem not to have attracted such approbation, but never mind... The result was that 'modern-looking' 15xx were drafted in despite not being suitable for the work; they were fundamentally intended as heavy dock shunters. The regions' sensitivity to criticism is also shown in the use of the new 94xx panniers on these jobs, again not the original intention which was to replace the remaining pre-grouping South Wales 0-6-2Ts. The 15xx (and the 16xx for that matter) were introduced under BR, and the last 8750s were not built until 1950. Some of these late-build engines had very short working lives even by the standards of the day, less than four years in some cases, scrapped before their first overhaul. It is econonically debatable that they should have been built at all, but this requires the 20/20 vision of hindsight; the railway world changed unrecognisably and unforeseeably between 1948 and 1958, and again, though perhaps a little more predictably, between '58 and '68.

I had a loft layout in my teens, loft conversion by Buffalo Bill Enterprises PLC aka my dad. it eventually tore itself to pieces because of the temperature range; sub-zero F (it felt like sub-zero Kelvin) in winter, oven in summer. You cannot spend too much on insulation or proper ventilation and I would seriously reccommend a professional conversion. Have a think about what you want from your layout. This could be one or a combination or all of several things; do you like building scenery and buildings, do you like watching the trains go round, do you like shunting and realistic operation, do you want fast long expresses or will two-coach branch line trains suffice? There is a trade-off in attic layouts between comfort, an important consideration if you are going to be spending a lot of time operating or watching trains go round, and space. Most layouts are built at around table or desk level, which is reasonably comfortable for operating and viewing purposes, but in a loft, because of the tapering roof, you get more space the lower you build your baseboards, but your back will pay for it. I personally would not reccommend a train set to start with; you will very quickly become tired of the limited possibilities for operating and the enforced shortness of the tailchasing trains. Expanding it with the Hornby trackmats and the plan book will lead to you building unrealistic and sometimes unfeasible track plans; these things are designed to sell track. Also, it limits you to setrack curves and track geometry, with is unrealistic in appearance. I'll come back to curvature in a minute. My view is that it is better to start with baseboards no more than two feet wide, that you can reach across easily, and which can be built around the outside of the available area. It sounds like you could build a single baseboard area of about 10x4 feet, but you would need access all around this as 4 feet is too far to reach across. Don't forget that when you reach across a layout, you are reaching over the top of delicate models that are easily damaged. Adopt a track standard before you start and keep to it. For a 50s/60s layout the best is probably Peco code 75, available in chaired or clipped appearance, but it is a little delicate and you might be better off with Code 100 to begin with. Problem is that Code 100 is not available in chaired form. These are flexible track systems and curves can be laid to any radius you want; your models will run better on larger radius curves which also look more realistic. Curves are very much a compromise, and a 4' radius, fairly large in modelling terms, would, if scaled up to full size, carry a severe speed restriction. Radius 1 setrack, 15inches, would not be used on a main line railway, even in sidings, but may be found in factory or dockland systems. Peco points, turnouts, are available in fixed radii, small 2', medium 30", and large 36". There are basic types of layout that can be summarised as follows:- .'Roundy roundy', continuous run circuits with a station/yard and scenery on one side and a hidden fiddle yard on the other. A fiddle yard is a set of hidden sidings or loops which can be regarded as 'off stage', where you fiddle with the trains, taking them off and putting them on the track. A train leaves the fiddle yard, runs through the station stopping if you want it to, then re-enters the fy, then another one repeats the performance. Versatile, as you can run the trains continuously if you want to, and shunt the yard while a train is circulating. Good if you want express trains or a passing loop station on a single track main line. .BLT, branch line terminus. Fy to terminus, all trains have to be reversed, usually by running the loco around to the other end, before they leave for the 'junction', the fy. Good if you like shunting and complex movements, and has the advantage that it needs less space (or, conversely, has more room for scenery) than the roundy roundy. .Industrial/docks/harbour/colliery/quarry/cement works. Similar to the BLT, but much more focussed on shunting, the thing for you if you like tight curvarture and industrial buildings with small engines. Can be achieved in a very limited space, or as big as you like. In this case I actually recommend setrack, as flexi does not like being forced into the curvature required. .Shunting problem. Modelling combined with a mathematical/logic problem; the idea is that a randomly formed train has to be shunted out into a specific formation or wagons delivered to specific positions in the minimum possible number of movements according to the rules. Absolutely absorbing and a superb diversion from real life, hence very relaxing. All shunting operation contain an element of this of course. The classic is the deceptively simple 3-siding 'Inglenook', with sidings of 3, 4, and 5 wagons capacity respectively and a headshunt capable of taking the loco and 3 wagons; there are something like 150.000 possible combinations apparently. The time to adopt digital (DCC) control is before you start buying locomotives, as it rapidly becomes expensive to convert if you don't. This to some extent precludes you buying older secondhand locos, even some from the noughties of this century, as retrofitting DCC to them is not always easy. In fact I would advise a newbie to stay away from eBay anyway until you have developed the knowledge to distinguish older models from current ones, loco drives from tender drives, &c. A very rough guide would be that, if it has an NEM style coupling, it'll probably be ok... RTR models deze daze are very good indeed, to scale, well detailed, and good runners, but there are some dogs out there to avoid. Don't buy 7-plank or 16ton minerals from Hornby or Dapol (or any make secondhand) as the wheelbase is an incorrect generic 10' where it should be 9'; the body panels are stretched to fit so you can't replace the underframe with the correct one. The 2721 pannier in the train set is another dog, hopelessly out of scale; it is no longer in the catalogue but still turns up in trainsets sometimes. Hornby's Railroad 0-4-0s, Dapol's cattle wagons and Fruit D, Bachmann's LMS vans and cattle wagon inherited from older companies, and many others are out of scale and therefore irredeemble; avoid. Especially avoid 2h Mainline locos. These were well scaled and good models in their day, but sadly the components for the split-chassis pickup mechanisms are poorly designed and of poor quality; any in running condition will fail fairly shortly. And, welcome to the Insanity hobby, good luck and let us know how you are getting on. Plenty knowledgeable folk here to answer your questions and suggest things. Above all, have fun with it!

Great if you're into retro, but otherwise I'd hang on a bit; I believe Dapol intend to release an 81xx in due course.

Panniers were derived, some rebuilt, from saddle tanks, which came in three sizes, innovatively and imaginatively described as small (850, 16xx; 4'1" drivers, uncoloured R.A.), medium (2021, 54/64/74xx; 4'7" drivers except 54xx 5'2", yellow R.A.), and large (Buffalo, 1854/2721, 57xx; 4'7" drivers, blue R.A., later yellow 57xx). The large saddles and panniers are therefore generally too heavy for branch work and were originally concieved as heavy freight engines. Then there were the 94xx, red R.A. and should be nowhere near a branch line... I am hoping that someone will eventually produce an 1854 or 2721 to current standards as I want one for Cwmdimbath, but the groudswell of wishlisting opinion seems to favour the 2021 and, while hopeful that Accura might turn up with one based on their 57xx mech, I am therefore a bit of a wilderness crying in a voice. Won't shut me up, though; I've been fairly successful with wishlisting (44xx, diagram N auto-trailer). Back to overtly pretty little GW side tank engine porn, both 517s and Metros were used on auto work in South Wales, and could be seen side by side; I have seen photos of both classes on the Llantrisant-Cowbridge auto*. They were the ideal candidates for auto work in the 20s, when the SRMs were being rebuilt into trailers, as they were write-offs from the bean-counters' viewpoint and there were plenty available. This gave them another three decades of use, and when the supply of good ones ran out the 48xx class was developed from the 517s to carry on the breed. The 54xx was similarly developed from the 2021. The new engines naturally tended to be put to the heavier auto work, which was on suburban branches and main-line routes, so the 'typical' rural bucolic grass-chewing bumkin branch tended to retain 517s or Metros for some time. Certainly they were in the majority for such jobs in the inter-war years and some lasted into early BR days. *Cowbridge bucked the trend, the daily pickup being a 57xx job. It would make a superb layout for anyone seriously into auto-trailers, as a large variety of diagrams were used. Flying Banana railcars also appeared.

A problem that affects all parallel-boilered GW locos with Belpaire fireboxes. It is difficult in the absence of dated photographs of good provenance to be certain of the top-feed/no-top-feed status of any such loco at any given time. This is because, when a loco is taken into works for overhaul, it is ready for return to traffic in about 3 weeks, but the boiler overhaul takes 5. So, the next suitable boiler from the pool is put on the loco irrespective of it’s top-feed status and the original boiler is put into the pool when it’s overhaul is complete. Hence boilers get swapped between locos at every overhaul whether or not top-feeds are fitted to them in order to release the loco to revenue-earning traffic and free up the workshop bay for the next patient. 517s and 48xx were built before top-feeds became standard, but top-feeds became more common on both classes over time as more of them were placed in the pool. But even in the 60s, some previously t/f fitted engines received back-feed boilers from the pool at overhauls. Boilers are pressure containment vessels (no sh*t, Sherlock) and are of necessity very well built; cared for and maintained properly they will last for many years and some from locos that spent 30 years in salt air at Woodhams are still structurally sound, though of course work to the back plates, front plates, tube joints, and firebox wrapper water jackets is needed before they can be hydraulically tested. From our pov, it would be nice to have a record if which boilers were carried by which locomotives at given dates, and the top-feed/back-feed status of said boilers, but TTBOMK no such record exists! It is reasonable to assume that an RTR product gets this right for the livery modelled, but if one wishes to change the model’s number, we are back to photographic evidence. My view is that, unless you are certain, it is better to go for a backfeed version. Should better information come to light at a later date, it is easier to add retrofit top-feeds and the associated plumbing than to remove it and have to make good the damage.

It soft against my skin like the shadow on the wall come and lay down by my side till the early morning light All I’m taking is your time help me make it through the…