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DK123GWR

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Everything posted by DK123GWR

  1. 5 car units have three engines (so 0.6 engines per car, 6 on a 10 car unit). 9 car units have 5 engines, which works out at 0.555... engines per car.
  2. Benediction, about the life of Siegfried Sassoon, is on iPlayer at the moment. It has a few bits of black and white footage of railways, as well as a small number of scenes where Sassoon is travelling during WWI. They do seem to have made an effort, and probably couldn't have done much better given the era it's set in - he and his brother leave separately for war on an SECR coach and a GWR Toplight (chocolate and cream, but an older style with lining around the windows). This scene also features a loco pulling the SECR train, but the shot only shows it below the running plate, presumably concealing something innapropriate. Later, as Sassoon leaves Liverpool for Scotland, an LMS coach (Stanier?) is seen in the background. If it is it's too new, but still an awful lot better than the Mk1s that some productions would be happy with.
  3. I think it's an alternative terminus on the ELL/Windrush Line for trains that would normally run to Clapham Junction. It only has a few trains per day and if I recall correctly these are mostly early mornings and late evenings. Is this just to avoid formal closure of the line?
  4. My notifications have been working for the past day or so. I hit 26 (i.e. filled a page) before this happened. Unlike @RobAllen, my previous pages are also working.
  5. And while Waterloo was named after a bridge, I don't think the bridge (which was only 3 decades old at the time) was named independently of political considerations. Edit: Victoria (the queen, via the very new Victoria Street, and during her lifetime) also has a clear political hue. Maybe also Liverpool Street (the Prime Minister, via the admitedly slightly older Liverpool Street road).
  6. The same here, I now have 21 unread notifications. Clicking on the bell, and even trying to go through to the dedicated page, does not change this.
  7. At Nailsea last year, I overheard a conversation between two gentlemen walking past a Croatian layout called Osjusko Stari with thick West Country accents to the effect of: "That there's some foreign stuff." "Crikey." In telling this story before somebody remarked to me that they may well have said the same about the LMS. One place I think would make a good model, and which will be familiar to some British people, is Aguas Calientes in Peru. Look around on Street View and I'm sure you'll see its potential: https://www.google.com/maps/@-13.1551661,-72.5256983,2a,75y,58.25h,79.45t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAg8uy3S9EyNPekfl3JjMiw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu If you are looking up the stream towards the footbridges, the rails leading round the curve on your right hand side lead to this junction at the edge of town: https://www.google.com/maps/@-13.1578695,-72.5235395,2a,75y,341.11h,76.75t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1snC37LWipxdiMI5ugINkZRw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu The other line comes from this terminus, on a higher level than the first picture. https://www.google.com/maps/@-13.1569789,-72.5236113,2a,70.7y,328.67h,85.4t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sx2AZ-MUSCWCoWkUmISafvA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu Another thought would be the railways in the Llobregat valley near Barcelona, with metre, standard, Iberian, and mixed gauge lines running all sorts of passenger and freight trains.
  8. I've tried logging out and also clearing RMweb cookies (while logged out), but exactly the same thing is still happening.
  9. Since the red banner appeared last night saying that the 'Classifieds' section was out of action, my notifications have not loaded. I have a bell in the top corner with a number next to it (gradually increasing, so that bit seems to be working). When I click on the bell, it brings down the box as usual, but the wheel just spins around and never displays the notifications. Clicking on 'View all notifications' takes me to a page with the usual url, but this page does not load and displays the error code 500. All other functionality appears to be working as usual. I am using Chrome on a Windows 11 laptop if this helps.
  10. 4 Triang clerestories (two of each type) for £10.80 including postage: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235408204374 All have been repainted into plain brown, but as I plan to introduce them to a razor saw this makes very little difference to me.
  11. I only have experience with code 100, but all Streamline points should be perfectly reliable if correctly wired. I have never had a derailment on Streamline points of any kind (when the correct route is set!) using modern rolling stock. The only reason for avoidng small radius points is aesthetic, which doesn't apply in the fiddle yard. Set-track points can cause issues, but they are an even smaller radius (and turn through a larger angle). I would focus on getting the best possible length and number of sidings (which usually means using small radius and curved Streamline points). They could be useful for adding a headshunt, or allowing a dead-end extension to a through siding to store and otherwise over-length train. They might be useful if you have multiple lines feeding into the fiddle yard, depending on how easily you want to move stock between them.
  12. I normally only lurk on this thread, but I was about to chip in with a similar point. The problem for the club is that theydon't have enough young members to organise and run the event. But modellers and members are not the same thing. The only closest thing to a model railway club that I am a member of is a model engineering society, but that is entirely because my mum's partner is a long-standing member (and now chair) of the club. Without him, I would still be modelling in 00 and I would still be engaging through RMWeb. I was inspired to start building scenic layouts mostly by Budget Model Railways on YouTube and @TechnicArrow's contributions to RMWeb. I made my first attempts at modifying cheap RTR stock, and looking at plastic kits, because I enjoyed following the Pugbash thread on here. A number of sources online have shown what sort of results can be acheived even with fairly cheap FDM printers, and it was a video by BMR that finally pushed me into taking the (hugely rewarding) leap last year. I follow this thread because I enjoy reading through some of the discussion on technical and historical issues that I'd never have thought about otherwise. Very simply, there are lots of ways for younger modellers starting out to find information, inspiration, and encouragement without being a club member. In much of the rest of our lives, we use the Internet to find out about and share the things we care about. It shouldn't be a surprise that the phenomena is replicated in railway modelling. If anything I would expect the effect to be stronger. I would imagine that railway modelling does have a higher that average proportion of people who, for one reason or another, find social interactions and unfamiliar environments unusually daunting. I probably fit that description. It makes it difficult to go out and join a club where you don't know anyone. On here it's a lot easier to dip your toe in and see how things go, and to just take a break or walk away completely if you need to. If you can get many of the benefits of club membership without having to overcome what could be a rather big psychological hurdle, what are you going to do? In short, the hobby can and will survive, but there is an ongoing shift in the way that we share it with others. That might mean that some exhibitions fall away. So long as there are people involved in the hobby (which there will be) its unlikely they all will.
  13. You will have to ask the poster. If they don't have them it's very unlikely that anyone else will.
  14. While much progress has been made on the layout, there is little to say about it. Baseboard construction, track laying, and wiring, are all using well-established techniques which have been executed and written up far better elsewhere. As a result, I have decided to write a little about rolling stock, and specifically the question of how to choose what to buy and what to build yourself. Everybody's views on this will of course be different, but I will try to set out my approach. The first thing to do is to set out the options. Firstly, I could choose to make something using traditional materials - cardboard, styrene sheet, etc. I often use this for buildings, where you generally want a bespoke item to fit the theme and the space available, but will only want one or two. I started out using the Wordsworth range of kits and cereal boxes - thicker card was obtained by using more layers - and have since moved on to designing some of my own buildings. Model Brick Yard is an invaluable resource for this. The drawback is that I find it difficult to be precise when drawing and cutting (a combination of impatience and poor coordination) so its not as good for small items or fine details. However, this is where 3D printing has a role to play. While I only have a small and fairly basic FDM printer (the Creality Ender-2 Pro) I can design and print things which it would be a huge struggle to produce using traditional techniques. The drawbacks are well documented - the risk of warping on large pieces is a particularly important one, and I am also held back by the fact that my laptop isn't really powerful enough for very large, complex CAD files, such as those needed for brick buildings. The final two options are kits and ready-made items, where the main downsides are price and the need to take whatever is already on offer. The first thing to consider is locomotives. Here the choice is fairly simple. I could not make a model which runs as well or looks as good as a ready to run loco (and even some who are very good kitbuilders say the same), so unless I want to model a niche or fictional prototype, it just doesn't make sense. Everything I actually need is available ready to run (although some locos will need minor modifications) so purely ready-to-run locomotives are the way to go. Coaches are more challenging. The Airfix autocoach is suitable for the era and readily available. A seemingly common train formation on the branch after nationalisation is a B-set with an extra coach to strengthen it. Whether this combination was used in the 1930s is difficult to establish due to a lack of photographs from the period. However, it's an interesting train formation and makes use of the Airfix coaches. More difficult is selecting stock for the longer Paddington services. The 1920s Collett corridor stock provided by Hornby is a good starting point, but 1940s photographs show a real mixture of stock, including occaisional clerestories and Centenaries. Concertinas show up more than once and toplights are very common. Of these, only the Centenaries (Airfix) are available Ready to Run (excluding the various flawed clerestories now made by Hornby), but these were purpose built for the Cornish Riviera and unlikely to have been used elsewhere before the war. Concertinas, even if they were available, are 70ft coaches and so take up much more space than the other options. A Sunshine coach, courtesy of Mainline, is perhaps the best RTR option to mix up the fleet. Toplights seem like the ideal candidate, with 57ft examples available and being quite numerous. However, the only RTR model likely to appear soon is of the unusual Mainline & City set. There are metal kits available, but this is a medium I haven't worked with before and they cost more than I would be willing to risk given my lack of experience building and painting stock. Fortunately, basic drawings are available from The Great Western Archive and this opens up the 3D print/scratchbuild route.
  15. I found this thread after trying to use a Rails 6 function decoder in a 4-TC and being unable to work the interior lights. If I have understood correctly, this cannot operate the interior lights, and I needed the 4+2 version. Is that right?
  16. It also looks just like the one discussed in all of the last three posts.
  17. Devizes is a town in central Wiltshire. Now most famous for Caen Hill locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal, it was formerly served by a Great Western Railway line, which passed through a tunnel under the castle to the east of the station. Initially the terminus of a branch line which began at Holt Junction on the Wilts, Somerset, and Weymouth Railway, Devizes later became a stop on the through route from Paddington to Weymouth when the Berks and Hants Extension Railway was built to link the branch with an existing line from Reading to Hungerford. In 1900, the Stert and Westbury Railway was opened, bypassing Devizes, which was now on a less important single track line from Patney and Chirton to Holt Junction. The layout represents the goods yard to the northeast of Devizes station in the late 1930s. The main objective was to create a layout where there were plenty of interesting possibilities for shunting, but which also allowed a wide variety of trains to be run on the main line to provide a more relaxed option. The line from Holt Junction (the curve on the left) splits into three. The northernmost is the Up platform, the middle the Down, and the southernmost is bi-directional (I may swap the latter two if experienc shows that this makes the layout nicer to operate). In the Fiddle Yard, the plan is to use the uppermost through line as the running line, with the rest as storage sidings. In 1938, a bridge elsewhere on the line was upgraded, and Red engines were now permitted to run via Devizes. Local freight services (worked from Holt Junction and Westbury) often used 57xx locomotives from Westbury. Local passenger services were autotrains, likely hauled by 5400 class panniers. Longer distance freight trains were hauled by moguls, and long-distance passenger services seem to have moved over from Manors to Halls, Saints, Stars, and Castles during this period.
  18. My first useable design, although there are many details that could be added (particularly to the underframe) and I realise I haven't got the proportions quite right. I wanted to make my own GWR open wagons as I felt I could do it more cheaply than buying RTR stock. Using Dapol wheels bought from Hattons at 85p/axle and 25g (roughly) of PLA at £21.99/kg gives a cost per wagon of under £2.50 - at that price you'll have a fairly limited choice of fairly low-quality models, so why not make your own? Some filing will be needed as the fit of most parts is designed to be tight. The construction of the model should be obvious once you have it in front of you, though a brief guide is provided on Thingiverse. Watch out as the couplings and brake gear may foul the axles if not placed carefully. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6352317/files
  19. I can't (quickly) find any data to support or reject the assumption, but I'm sceptical (unless you're talking about children travelling with families - where the high marginal cost of rail travel on some journeys carries greater weight). Teenagers and those in their early 20s though are more climate concious, more left wing, and less able to afford car ownership than our immediate predecessors (a newly qualified cousin of mine can't get insurance for less than £10,000/year). That said, when on trains or at stations (even Didcot) most people (and this is true of all ages) are staring at screens. I think that rationalisation is a big issue - of both rolling stock and operating practices. My current understanding is that for a model based on the Devizes branch in 1938/9, I can have (at least) Manors, Moguls, Halls, Castles, 57xx, 54xx, 28xx, and quite a few other locos could be justified occaisionally. I have local, regional, and express passenger services with local and long-distance freight. There is plenty of opportunity for shunting - different at each station. And this is on a single track line where the largest station has three platforms. How big would your prototype need to be to get anything like that diversity on the modern railway? The best I can think of is a cut-down Oxford, with at most one through line between the platforms (or model the future layout with three through platforms and no freight lines), a single bay for Chiltern services, and simplified sidings. But that would still likely end up as big as a model inspired by steam-era Trowbridge, which would offer everything the Devizes branch does and more. I love the look of the modern GWR and much of the freight that runs alongside it (EWS livery is still a common sight near Oxford) but I would still need a lot more space to build a modern layout as interesting as Wiltshire in the 1930s. And to attack an important premise of the argument for producing more current stock, if I want to see the modern GWR, I can go for a walk. How often do you think a 43xx comes past my house with a long train of four-wheeled wagons? When do you think I last got to see a Bulldog running? Replicating things I've seen in real life is appealing, but no more so than creating things I never could.
  20. I'm hoping to review these at the library this evening, and I'm trying to get access to a few books which might contain some useful information. Unfortunately, the coach formations book is one of the few they don't have a copy of. Incidentally, the only website I can find claiming to have this book in stock was last updated in 2006. Since it doesn't appear in National Library of Wales searches either, I would be willing to go out on a limb and say that the British Library is the only (non-specialist?) library in the country to have a copy (I'm assuming it does because it legally has to, but can't check because of the recent cyber attack).
  21. The September 1931 Service Time Table, on the other hand, says: "HEAVY ENGINES BETWEEN PATNEY AND HOLT JUNCTION VIA DEVIZES. The following types of engine are prohibited from running over the section named:-" And then lists: Saints, Stars, Castles, Halls, Kings, 83xx, Cities, Counties, Badmintons (etc.), 47xx, County Tanks, 31xx, 2-8-0 tank engines, 56xx, 66xx, 1101 class, and absorbed Red engines of the 0-6-0T and 0-6-2T classes. The sole exception is for Halls, Castles, and 47xx locos, which can run onto the line with freight trains at Patney to allow other trains to pass. It lists loads for partly fitted and accelerated goods trains only for the category including the 43xx and 4001-4045 (all other routes have loads for engines up to 47xx and Castles). A September 1938 upgrade seems reasonable though, even if the Manors didn't leave as soon as Red engines were permitted. Between February and April 1939, four new Granges were allocated to OOC and Westbury, at around the same time the four Manors seem to have left. Could it have been a case of keeping the Manors on until there was something suitable to replace them? _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ It has been suggested that I revisit Priddle and Hyde by a modeller who does recall Manors being mentioned, giving a very similar list to the ones I had inferred might have worked on the line based on shed allocations.
  22. According to the index, three articles by Bill Crosbie-Hill on his wartime experiences. Probably worth looking at anyway, but I'm not sure they'll answer my question about the larger 1930s passenger trains unless something's mentioned in passing.
  23. I have read the main book on this branch, Priddle and Hyde's 'GWR to Devizes', as well as a smaller volume by Nigel Bray. The line was upgraded to Red RA, as I understand it, in 1939 when a bridge was strengthened. There are many photos in the books on the line taken from this point onwards, showing Halls and Castles on the long-distance passenger services (London/Reading to Trowbridge/Bristol). What would these have been hauled by prior to the upgrade? There are no photos from this period. I have observed in J.W.P. Rowledge (and this website, which duplicates much of the relevant information) that when built in January 1938 - January 1939 (before the upgrade), 7802 and 7808 were allocated to OOC, and 7809 and 7814 to Westbury. By nationalisation (the next data point for both sources) all had moved away, to Aberystwyth, Oswestry, and Bristol Bath Road (joining two Manors already in Bristol). The OOC locos both moved away in April-May 1939. This site suggests that it's not clear what OOC would need a Manor for, and I am inclined to agree - except that maybe, as the largest locos permitted, they would have been useful on the Devizes trains worked by Castles from just a few months later. I am not sure which month the bridge was upgraded, but by this point the threat of war (stated in Priddle and Hyde as the reason for the upgrade) would surely have been clear. On this basis, it would seem plausible that they had a brief stint on trains via Devizes, but that is the strongest claim I can make. Can anyone contribute evidence for or against this hypothesis? Furthermore, what would have been used before the Manors? (Or before the Red engines, if the Manors at these sheds were used for something else?) Again, there are no photos, or even textual references, that I have been able to find. The obvious answer would seem to be a 43xx - also a group D engine with Blue RA, and it seems many were allocated at different times to sheds where they might have been used on these trains, including Reading, OOC, and Westbury (though scanning the 1931 timetable, it appears more likely that the locos came from Reading/OOC than Bristol/Westbury. Any thoughts (including reasoned guesswork) would be much appreciated.
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