“WASHBOURNE”

[Edwardian]

10 hours ago, Donw said:

 

If you need an office for solicitors on a layout can I suggest Shenanigins & Malarky  would be a good name. Sound Irish to me anyway.

 

 

[Northroader]

I feel a need to tread carefully on names, Don, and not to be too “Oirish”, although there is a very strong temptation. This leads on to what to call the line when I’m doing an Irish prototype, as “Washbourne” doesn’t sound at all right. So back to 13th July, 1999, and you would have found me and Kath heading west along the cliff tops on the South West Coast path above Watergate Bay, with Newquay off in the distance in front. There was a lot of activity on the beach which attracted our attention.

Getting closer, there was an highly animated film crew, lights, cameras, action! and a crowd of actors and extras all in Edwardian costumes, straw boaters, blazers, long pastel coloured dresses (not on the same person, before anyone jumps in!) horses, with and without carriages, strings of bunting fluttering in the breeze, and a banner proclaiming “Ballycombe Beach Races” Bingo! I’ve got my  layout name! Watergate Hotel was fully booked up by NBC, with a dozen big trailers and generator vans, cables and so on. I never did see the finished product, a two part TV thing called “The Magical Legend of the Leprachauns”, which I fear must have tried very hard to be Oirish.

This part of the story obviously drew on the Laytown Races, a unique meeting on the beach a bit to the north of Dublin, which is genuinely ☘️ Irish.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

I feel a need to tread carefully on names, Don, and not to be too “Oirish”, although there is a very strong temptation.

 

Indeed. Naming is always tricky, even for English modellers in in England. A good invented name evokes a sense of place without being a caricature. Castle Rackrent came dangerously close but is saved by its allusion to Maria Edgeworth's novel.

Edited April 25, 2021 by Compound2632

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

Watergate Hotel was fully booked up by NBC,

 

Not the Watergate Hotel (nudge nudge) 

 

Did ye meet a fella boi the name of Nixon?

[St Enodoc]

56 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Indeed. Naming is always tricky, even for English modellers in in England. A good invented name evokes a sense of place without being a caricature. Castle Rackrent came dangerously close but is saved by its allusion to Maria Edgeworth's novel.

...which is precisely where it came from.

[Compound2632]

23 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

...which is precisely where it came from.

 

Yes, that's what I meant. Apologies if it wasn't obvious. My current layout has a station named Mansfield Woodhouse* (not the real station so named) with the line then running through the Peak District via Lambton. So no prizes for working out which of Maria Edgeworth's fellow novelists I've been reading.

 

*Presumed closed in the late 1960s but reopened in the 1980s as Mansfield Parkway.

[St Enodoc]

6 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Yes, that's what I meant. Apologies if it wasn't obvious. My current layout has a station named Mansfield Woodhouse* (not the real station so named) with the line then running through the Peak District via Lambton. So no prizes for working out which of Maria Edgeworth's fellow novelists I've been reading.

 

*Presumed closed in the late 1960s but reopened in the 1980s as Mansfield Parkway.

A bit of literary camouflage is often a good way to choose station names. One of mine will be Polperran, a name coined by Agatha Christie in one of her novels, which won't be a million miles from the real Perranporth in Cornwall.

 

Speaking of Mansfield, some 50 years ago our school model railway had a station called Mansfield (Southwell Road).

[Donw]

I accept one shouldn't be offensive but  at least one Lawyer seemed amused by it. Unless of course he has had difficult dealings with Irish Lawyers.

Seeing as we have bought plants from Ballyrobert in Ballyclare, Ballycombe sounds reasonable but is combe used in Ireland?  The ones that seem wrong to me are the jokey Welsh ones where a bit of Welsh that sounds like an English word attached to more English is used.  Probably because I am used to Welsh placenames.

Don

[F-UnitMad]

2 hours ago, Northroader said:

 

The way the camera has caught that horse in the far left of the picture, seems to give some clue as to why it's last in the race!!!

[Northroader]

I did a search and there doesn’t seem to be anywhere in Ireland with the name, Don, so you’re probably right. Oh well, it’s got “Bally” in front, so that will help it along.

Jordan, I suppose that horse is “putting its best foot forward”

[Caley Jim]

Surely the classic Welsh place name for a layout was Llareggub, borrowed from Dylan Thomas! 

 

Jim

[Regularity]

A friend called his layout “Mansfield Park”, after the novel set in/around Northampton. And had to explain in the layout description that it was nowhere near Mansfield...

[Northroader]

I suppose the same could happen with “Sheffield Park”, “Berwick”, or “Leeds Castle”; should we stick to “Ayton”, ”Beebury”, ”Ceeville”?

Edited April 25, 2021 by Northroader

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

”Ceeville”

 

To P4 standards, 21.88 mm gauge?

[Northroader]

You can count on my support.

[F-UnitMad]

On 25/04/2021 at 14:00, Northroader said:

Jordan, I suppose that horse is “putting its best foot forward”

Maybe it's name is "John Cleese"...??

[Edwardian]

The through terminus?

 

How about Cavan? A through double-terminus.

 

The Irish prototype has so much going for it anyway, and Irish pre-Grouping railways have in spades everything I love in a subject; only the relative impracticality of the gauge for the novice modeller is an obstacle for me.

 

Cavan is a very attractive station, albeit in an implausibly compact way, with the MGWR signal box improbably sandwiched stately mid-century 'L' shaped station building and the goods shed with its wonderful porthole windows.

 

 

I have no idea if the rest of the site is as compact, I believe there was a loco shed and a turntable. I wonder if anyone knows of a pre-Grouping map or scale track plan, I'd love to see it. 

 

[Northroader]

 

 

as you can see, it is quite a simple setout for two companies meeting up, the MGWR having the bare minimum close to the station, (not far off an inglenook plus engine shed) and the GNRI having a little yard of its own to the north, although the MGWR would have venture up there to do a run round, and yet you’ve still got two engine sheds. (Did they say “you can use our runround if we can use your turntable?”) It’s very distinctive how the main platform line has been split with permanent buffer stops, and a cute little gangplank slipped in. The station building was designed by an architect whose stock in hand was county poor law institutions (workhouses) So Cavan is a well chosen prototype, sir. The other consideration is if you used the plan for two favourite British companies?

I don’t think you should be diffident about modelling Irish Railways using OO/EM rather than trying to get the gauge spot on, although the examples I’ve linked recently do carry it off very well when they do. I’m using plain O gauge mainly because that way I’ve got one layout for British and Irish rather than two. If you have a browse on this site, both the “layouts” section, and the “workbench” section, you’ll find there’s plenty of good modellers doing very creditable work doing just that, although sadly pregroup is fairly rare.

https://irishrailwaymodeller.com/

Edited May 1, 2021 by Northroader

[Northroader]

 

Now here’s a historic document, the note for my first loco kit, despatched by Ciaran McGowan himself. I found it a very good introduction, in particular giving a strong model, and the minimal detail helping both cost and construction time. Of course, as soon as it came I got stuck in, without waiting for things like wheels and motor I then ordered from Slaters to arrive, so I did the superstructure first. Wrong! Always get the chassis running before fitting the superstructure to it. Doing it the way I did meant I had to redo the front splashers once I had completed the chassis. So we’ll look at it the proper way round. 

The chassis is formed of two 1/16” brass strips, held apart by four machined spacers. These have to be staggered to keep the frames parallel, and their placing is critical. Usually I place the two outer ones high to form attachment points for the superstructure, here I’ve added some angle as they’re rather low. Then I normally put the motor on the middle axle, but with this the placing of the spacer meant it went on the rear axle, with a bracket cobbled up to retain the motor. There are brass bushes for the axles to run in. You’ll see that there is no compensation, and I’ve found that if all the wheels touch down on a glass sheet, finescale wheel flanges are sufficiently deep to cover for small track laying error tolerance. S7 flanges are shallower, and need compensation. 

I had some of Slaters pickups which I drilled holes for and fitted, I’ve seen comment that they cause too much drag, but I’m quite happy about this. They consist of a plastic top hat, with a plunger inside, a spring above this, and a tail from the plunger passing through the crown of the top hat. A tag for the wire from the pickup is sandwiched by two nuts on the tail, which is threaded. I put the pickups through the frame but couldn’t access them, so in the end soldered the wire straight to the tail. Wrong! the proper way is to tin the tag, assemble the pickup, then put the tag on the tail and screw the nuts up good and tight. It’s quite possible to put the whole assembly in from the outside of the frames, leading by hooking the tag through the hole. The other thing to watch is not to linger with the soldering iron near the tail, the heat will flow down the tail and start melting the plunger and spring into the top hat. The coupling rods are steel strip with pilot holes jig drilled, and it was necessary to file the strip to profile. You may spot that I’ve had to fit extra large washers, because I had to drill the holes for the axle bushes oversize before I got free running. My fitting techniques have improved since then. The other thing to watch is that the axle bushes are wider than the coupling rods, this is deliberate, sideways movement of the wheelsets is necessary on curves.

 

On to the superstructure, which was tinplate stampings with preformed brass boiler, tinplate turned out to be a joy to solder, and the boiler just needed to have the seam soldered up, once I’d got a cutaway for the motor. You may spot there’s no backhead , which doesn’t show too badly with an enclosed cab. There were castings for the smokebox door, chimney, dome, safety valve bonnet, I had to get Slaters buffers, and dodge up sandboxes and a whistle, fit angles to the cab roof, also some handrail knobs and brass rod. The missing detail which could cause criticism, I suppose, is brakegear? and I did manage to undercut the dome when I fitted it.

 

Then paint up, primer and Humbrol emerald green paint. Boiler bands were HMRS LNER transfers, and the rest done by  bowpen. MGWR features are the Y shaped smokebox door hinge bars, parallel chimney with bell mouth, the safety valve bonnet, cutout brass numbers, (passenger engines had them on the splasher, and the rest on the sandbox,) vertical tubes placed each side cabsheet (just guessing this was a handy place for a single line trainstaff?) and a peculiarity,  the vacuum train pipe at the leading end followed the curve of the smokebox, rather than the usual swanneck on the buffer beam.

Edited May 1, 2021 by Northroader

[St Enodoc]

11 hours ago, Northroader said:

 

 

as you can see, it is quite a simple setout for two companies meeting up, the MGWR having the bare minimum close to the station, (not far off an inglenook plus engine shed) and the GNRI having a little yard of its own to the north, although the MGWR would have venture up there to do a run round, and yet you’ve still got two engine sheds. (Did they say “you can use our runround if we can use your turntable?”) It’s very distinctive how the main platform line has been split with permanent buffer stops, and a cute little gangplank slipped in. The station building was designed by an architect whose stock in hand was county poor law institutions (workhouses) So Cavan is a well chosen prototype, sir. The other consideration is if you used the plan for two favourite British companies?

I don’t think you should be diffident about modelling Irish Railways using OO/EM rather than trying to get the gauge spot on, although the examples I’ve linked recently do carry it off very well when they do. I’m using plain O gauge mainly because that way I’ve got one layout for British and Irish rather than two. If you have a browse on this site, both the “layouts” section, and the “workbench” section, you’ll find there’s plenty of good modellers doing very creditable work doing just that, although sadly pregroup is fairly rare.

https://irishrailwaymodeller.com/

Although it would have been set in  a different country, this puts me in mind of one of my Might-But-Probably-Never-Will projects, "The Road to the Isles", with the North British (West Highland) running in to Kinloch Rannoch from Rannoch itself and the Highland from Killiecrankie. There would have been two separate stations connected via a common goods siding. The scheme was inspired by my old friend the late Dave Walker, over 40 years ago. The idea isn't copyrighted so if anyone wants to have a go I'd love to see the result!

[F-UnitMad]

11 hours ago, Northroader said:

 

 

Now here’s a historic document

Isn't it just??!! A hand-written note, rubber stamp Company letterhead, mention of a cheque... how quaint!!   

I was almost expecting the price to be in £:s:d .....

Edited May 2, 2021 by F-UnitMad

[Annie]

13 hours ago, Northroader said:

On to the superstructure, which was tinplate stampings with preformed brass boiler, tinplate turned out to be a joy to solder,

A loco kit stamped out from tinplate, - how wonderfully delightful.  Tinplate is a lovely material to work with.  I used to ask if the catering sized coffee cans from the canteen at work could be saved for me which gave me a just about inexhaustible supply of modelling material for loco building.

 

Your little green MGWR  tank engine is a delight to see and a bonny wee thing Mr Northroader.

[Edwardian]

14 hours ago, Northroader said:

 

Now here’s a historic document, the note for my first loco kit, despatched by Ciaran McGowan himself. I found it a very good introduction, in particular giving a strong model, and the minimal detail helping both cost and construction time. Of course, as soon as it came I got stuck in, without waiting for things like wheels and motor I then ordered from Slaters to arrive, so I did the superstructure first. Wrong! Always get the chassis running before fitting the superstructure to it. Doing it the way I did meant I had to redo the front splashers once I had completed the chassis. So we’ll look at it the proper way round. 

The chassis is formed of two 1/16” brass strips, held apart by four machined spacers. These have to be staggered to keep the frames parallel, and their placing is critical. Usually I place the two outer ones high to form attachment points for the superstructure, here I’ve added some angle as they’re rather low. Then I normally put the motor on the middle axle, but with this the placing of the spacer meant it went on the rear axle, with a bracket cobbled up to retain the motor. There are brass bushes for the axles to run in. You’ll see that there is no compensation, and I’ve found that if all the wheels touch down on a glass sheet, finescale wheel flanges are sufficiently deep to cover for small track laying error tolerance. S7 flanges are shallower, and need compensation. 

I had some of Slaters pickups which I drilled holes for and fitted, I’ve seen comment that they cause too much drag, but I’m quite happy about this. They consist of a plastic top hat, with a plunger inside, a spring above this, and a tail from the plunger passing through the crown of the top hat. A tag for the wire from the pickup is sandwiched by two nuts on the tail, which is threaded. I put the pickups through the frame but couldn’t access them, so in the end soldered the wire straight to the tail. Wrong! the proper way is to tin the tag, assemble the pickup, then put the tag on the tail and screw the nuts up good and tight. It’s quite possible to put the whole assembly in from the outside of the frames, leading by hooking the tag through the hole. The other thing to watch is not to linger with the soldering iron near the tail, the heat will flow down the tail and start melting the plunger and spring into the top hat. The coupling rods are steel strip with pilot holes jig drilled, and it was necessary to file the strip to profile. You may spot that I’ve had to fit extra large washers, because I had to drill the holes for the axle bushes oversize before I got free running. My fitting techniques have improved since then. The other thing to watch is that the axle bushes are wider than the coupling rods, this is deliberate, sideways movement of the wheelsets is necessary on curves.

 

On to the superstructure, which was tinplate stampings with preformed brass boiler, tinplate turned out to be a joy to solder, and the boiler just needed to have the seam soldered up, once I’d got a cutaway for the motor. You may spot there’s no backhead , which doesn’t show too badly with an enclosed cab. There were castings for the smokebox door, chimney, dome, safety valve bonnet, I had to get Slaters buffers, and dodge up sandboxes and a whistle, fit angles to the cab roof, also some handrail knobs and brass rod. The missing detail which could cause criticism, I suppose, is brakegear? and I did manage to undercut the dome when I fitted it.

 

Then paint up, primer and Humbrol emerald green paint. Boiler bands were HMRS LNER transfers, and the rest done by  bowpen. MGWR features are the Y shaped smokebox door hinge bars, parallel chimney with bell mouth, the safety valve bonnet, cutout brass numbers, (passenger engines had them on the splasher, and the rest on the sandbox,) vertical tubes placed each side cabsheet (just guessing this was a handy place for a single line trainstaff?) and a peculiarity,  the vacuum train pipe at the leading end followed the curve of the smokebox, rather than the usual swanneck on the buffer beam.

 

That is charm itself.  The lowness of the tanks/bunker and the tallness of the chimney make it a very charismatic design.  Is it an E class tank?

 

Beautiful model.  That alone would make me want to model a MGWR branch line. 

[Caley Jim]

13 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

 There would have been two separate stations connected via a common goods siding. 

You don't have to have 'might have beens'.  There was Morningside (Lanarkshire):

CR station to the south, NBR to the north.

Dolphinton :

CR to the west, NB to the east

And Peebles :

 

CR to the south west, NB at the north east.  The embankment across St Ninian's Haugh is still there as a footpath.

 

Jim

Edited May 2, 2021 by Caley Jim
Edited to add link.

[Northroader]

Thank you, James. Yes, it is an E class, for which I did the intro a page or two ago before I got into wagons. I haven’t seen a model of one in green, which is a pity, they tend to appear in the GSR/CIE charcoal grey, but agreed, they do look just right for a pregroup branch line.