Malcolm 0-6-0

Some years ago I spent two and half weeks in hospital and worked through Daniel Deronda and a collections of Dickens' shorter works. I don't know what I found more depressing, my ailment or Daniel Deronda.

The popularity of the monthly and weekly journals that were thriving in the middle of the 19th century meant a constant need for content. And the works we see as novels by writers like Dickens, Trollope etc. were originally all written as instalments and paid for by the word. The authors were expected to produce sufficient text to fill a set number of pages each week or month. Unlike today where best selling authors seem to work on a yearly schedule the 19th century best selling author more or less had his nose to the grindstone all the time. Only after the journal series was complete was the work then produced as a standalone novel. It certainly has left a legacy of many fine novels, but also a lot that weren't and which have disappeared. Trollope was a writing machine but there are a number of his novels (and I'm a Trollope fan) that are best left unread. The Last Chronicle of Barset while neatly tying off a lot of loose ends is nearly ruined by an extraneous sub plot involving an artist and a model who by the standards of the day should have known better which leads the reader off on a tangent which has little to do with the main plot concerning the Rev. Josiah Crawley and the mysterious cheque he is accused of stealing and cashing. But in the days before film, radio and TV people who did read expected value for their money so the thicker the book the better the value. But back to the railways. The interesting thing is the way the paintings are set in that we see the actions using the artist's trick of removing the compartment wall rather than from a window or door perspective. While in the painting posted above that young Jackie Fisher has the apprehensive look of someone who may have decided that perhaps a job as a clerk might be preferable to becoming a sailor and naval hero.

I've been in some railway stations that have nearly had that effect on me.

And the young Naval officer has just given his email address to the young lady's father. The father has just consented that the young officer (sterling chap) be her Facebook friend. Aaaah young love in the 19th century, and a first class carriage with free WiFi to boot. Note the well disguised smart phone. But that alternative world aside. I wonder also if authors like Dickens and Trollope lacked the descriptive language to properly convey the power of the railways. Certainly both seem to invoke that power as almost stormy and uncontrollable (the famous Punch? cartoon of the railway monster devouring the suburbs) but their language is rooted in the formative world of their youth when coaches and sail driven boats represented speedy transport. Our descriptive powers are coloured by our general exposure to cars, aircraft and other fast comfortable means of travel and so much of what we receive from the literature of our times is already subliminally imposed by our experience. The father of Biler in Dombey and Son is presented as a soot stained coach driver not as an engine driver for an example of the power of subliminal language. Dickens' contemporaries would recognise him but we (or perhaps only I) look for more in the description. It is presumptive I think to write this off to a divide between intellectuals and artisans and their class differences. By the 1850s the growth of wealth from artisan based activities like the railways had long produced a new class of wealthy and politically powerful people who had moved into the ruling classes. And concomitantly it had raised those below them in the working force to the higher levels of respectable trades people. It just seems to me that the descriptive language of the chroniclers of this transformation had lagged. In this case the artists were being led by the artisans.

I had quite forgotten Ferdinand Lopez and his dramatic denouement (The Prime Minister is an interesting novel in its quite candid depiction of the true meaning of the class system), probably because my focus when I read it is on the relationship between Palliser, the reluctant Prime Minister, and his wife rather than the Wharton family. Yes you are correct in your interpretation of the railways then as being something that acquires a quick familiarity just as the internet has for our times. It becomes part of the accepted background to life. I suppose when matter transference becomes our principal means of transport it also will slide into the background.

Ever since I discovered Trollope and Barsetshire many years ago I have been fascinated by the depictions of the C of E clergy. Of course we see clergy in other Trollope novels but the Barsetshire Chronicles especially the first two volumes and the last are where they are the star characters. In the last who can forget how Mrs Proudie (no advocate of Sunday trains she) is finally bought undone by Rev. Josiah Crawley one of the truly eccentric clergy in this series. I suspect that given his reluctance to even accept a proffered ride on a farmer's cart due to matters of principle, he also would oppose Sunday trains. But overall I am surprised at the rather small occurrence of railway references in the works of Trollope and Dickens (Dombey and Son excepted). Although the adventures of the village ladies in Gaskell's Cranford offer a rather delightful description of how they adjust to a derailment. Dickens was a passenger in the Staplehurst crash and Dombey and Son reflects the clear effects this had on Dickens where the railway references are used for dramatic effect, in fact almost melodramatic. Trollope also scatters some through his works - in The Way we Live Now we see the use of railway mania and pie in the sky rail schemes as a central part of the complex plot but overall the railways are rather mute. I wonder if this is because like in all literature of the period the mechanics of life are very much secondary to the interaction of the characters, coupled with the authors being at a distance from their means of transport in real life. Trollope was an avid hunter and his descriptions of hunting and riding are quite detailed, and appear in many of his novels, but on the broader scale both he and Dickens would be driven rather than be driving in the modern sense. Plus much of Dickens' work is set just before the great rail expansion which means that the characters are using stage coaches and are passengers. The discomforts are described where the plot requires or for dramatic effect (e.g. the coach accident in Martin Chuzzlewit) but overall apart from Sam Weller's father (The Pickwick Papers) the role of the coach driver is quite peripheral. My apologies for the aside.

I've used a light spray of white lacquer. The type I used was Tamiya in a rattle can applied to the inside.

But as this is, in theory at least, a discussion concerning railway modelling I suggest that for authenticity's sake you will need to use fishbelly rail rather than bull head. The primitive Methodists were very strict about the old ways.

But then there are the Tarmacadamians who have taken personal humility to such religious perfection so that now people just walk all over them.

Does that mean that Southern Baptists are unable to build reliably safe viaducts?

Those are very well done - the weathering and rust look very realistic.

That metal capping is a good idea, I must remember that. Lovely piece of modelling overall.

I presume the one at the front is being pursued by the chaps in the rear engine because it has clearly gone off for an unmanned jaunt.

Actually that image of a dachshund isn't a fake - it was film of Prince Schnitzel-Leghummpen-Hapsburg XXXVIX featured in the now rarely seen BBC documentary of 1967 titled Inbreeding in the Hapsburg Family 1173 - 1920. The clip is part of historic footage of the Prince reviewing the 15th South Bavarian Hundenpanzers of whom he was Colonel-in-Chief. His quite inadvertent resemblance to a dachshund caused the Hapsburg dynasty to finally accept that many centuries of intermarriage between first cousins had created a problem. Efforts to prolong the dynasty also led to complaints from the RSPCA and the Dachshund Breeding Society. I am happy to report that Prince Schnitzel-Leghummpen-Hapsburg XXXVIX later found a role as Rin-Tin-TIn's sidekick in Hollywood. But I digress.....

Oh I knew that, it's a fairly common pic of old Kaiser Bill - the moustache was the giveaway. I was referring to the earlier pic of the young lady being helped to find a train by those three chaps. One of whom sported a bowler.

It may well be that the gentleman in the bowler hat is actually a gamekeeper who has gone feral, as this quote from wikipedia might suggest - "The bowler hat is said to have been designed during 1849 by the London hat-makers Thomas and William Bowler to fulfill an order placed by the company of hatters James Lock & Co. of St James's,[4] which had been commissioned by a customer to design a close-fitting, low-crowned hat to protect gamekeepers from low-hanging branches while on horseback at Holkham Hall, the estate of Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (seventh creation) in Norfolk. The keepers had previously worn top hats, which were knocked off easily and damaged.[4] The identity of the customer is less certain, with many suggesting it was William Coke.[5] However research performed by a younger relation of the 1st Earl casts doubt on this story, and it is now believed that the bowler was invented for Edward Coke, the younger brother of Thomas Coke, 2nd Earl of Leicester.[3] When Edward Coke arrived in London on 17 December 1849 to collect his hat he reportedly placed it on the floor and stamped hard on it twice to test its strength; the hat withstood this test and Coke paid 12 shillings for it.[6]" But then again he might just be a nasty loutish layabout seeking to while away the idle hours between paid employment opportunities.

Yes that's a good idea - usually I use Krystal Klear.

For very thin material I'd use scissors. However the biggest problem I have with flush fitting is what adhesive to use so that it doesn't get on the exterior or interior surfaces.

Hmmm ...... Viking surfs? Was that a method of beaching their long ships.