Castle Aching

[Martin S-C]

There can't be very much wrong with a town that had two railway stations, one of which was Great Western!

 

That looks like a splendid house and an exhibition worth visiting.  I don't suppose I shall manage it, however!

Oxford. Three railway stations, two of them Great Western and one LNWR. And a better class of passenger. And a canal. The best of all possible worlds.

[Les le Breton]

Crikey, taken to hospital with a heart attack on page 621 and the parish publication has moved its records to page 640 after surgery and home.

 

As for me, except for my heart attack, I feel as young as I ever did.

Robert Benchley  (1889 – 1945)

The worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades.

Demetri Martin(1973 – )

[Edwardian]

Crikey, taken to hospital with a heart attack on page 621 and the parish publication has moved its records to page 640 after surgery and home.

 

As for me, except for my heart attack, I feel as young as I ever did.

Robert Benchley  (1889 – 1945)

The worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades.

Demetri Martin(1973 – )

 

Crikey, Les, that is some news.  I hope the topic in no way contributed (none of us can remember as far back as page 621).

 

I hope they took good care of you. My sincerest wishes for a full recovery.

 

Best wishes and glad to see you back.

[corneliuslundie]

"Wolverhampton wouldn’t be the Ultima Thule for the MR, but thanks to help from the GWR, somewhere way, way beyond.. "

Yes, Swansea in fact - just a short hop from the West Midlands via Hereford, the HHB and the N&B.

Jonathan

 

PS Hereford did pretty well for stations for a town of its size and Brecon managed three for a while. Swansea? I have lost count, and do you include the Mumbles Railway terminal?

[Nearholmer]

Best wishes Les. its something I guess we all live in trepidation of as years advance.

 

I've seen a fair few pictures of "stuff" being transhipped at Barnstaple Town, but it looks to have come from the vans of SG passenger trains, onto the passenger platform.

 

What the "stuff" is, I can't guess, but big wicker baskets, like laundry baskets, can be seen in several pictures. Apart from laundry, what might they be used for? Game in bulk is one possibility, but so many baskets ....... was there a massive traffic in rabbits or pheasants?

Edited January 20, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

The Ilfracombe Goods arrived from Rails this morning; the usual excellent service.  Like the box!

 

Very pleased with the model.

 

To cut a long story short, however, I think I have acquired a tender for the Barnstaple Town project and a locomotive for Castle Aching (yay!).

 

Nick Holliday was right about the use of a proprietary chassis.  Unfortunately the scale chassis (which I measured some years ago and recall is dimensionally correct as well as closer to the prototype in its details) is not a fit for the body because the splashers have been positioned to match the proprietary chassis, so will not fit the dimensionally correct chassis.

 

This might be regarded as a nuisance, as the body is a very good match for 0394 in the condition I want. That said, it is also a perfectly good match for the freelance version for CA.  The only necessary change for a CA small BP is pairing it with the original BP 4-wheel tender.

 

I only need/want one Ilfracombe Goods for the Barnstaple Town project.  I already had the loco chassis for it and expected to have to build the body and tender. , I knew that in buying the Rails one, I'd be committing to a second BP for CA (again, yay!).  In sum, I have to build one body and one tender either way, so the combination is not really important!   I believe the Colonel Stephens Society has some 7mm drawings, IIRC, which I shall attempt to purchase, and NeilHB has kindly offered an article.

 

The dome and chimneys will be issues, so I may seek to have these 3D printed. 

 

So, as soon as I can build a BP 4-wheel tender, we can have a WNR loco running at last. There is really no issue sticking with the proprietary chassis, given the variety of wheel diameters and wheel bases seen with these BPs.

 

Finally, out of interest I have compared it for size with the Hornby J15 (to be back-dated to Y14), as they will both run on CA.

[uax6]

What chassis is that? Is it Dublo? Its not the standard tri-ang jobbie, and that looks like a Romford motor.

I think it would look better with the tyre edges blacked, and the sleeving on the pick-ups changed to black heat shink, rather than that orange braided stuff. You could even file the rods down to make them a bit thinner...

 

Not a bad looking loco, would look nice in a dark colour with full lining though....

 

Good buy there Sir.

 

Andy G

Edited January 19, 2019 by uax6

[Regularity]

What the "stuff" is, I can't guess, but big wicker baskets, like laundry baskets, can be seen in several pictures. Apart from laundry, what might they be used for? Game in bulk is one possibility, but so many baskets ....... was their a massive traffic in rabbits or pheasants?

In “The Country Railway” David Thomas makes the observation that the GWR ran a rabbit special - “the only one in the country” - at a time during the year, due to the sheer volume of traffic. Whilst that was on the “other” railway in Barnstaple, it lends support to that supposition.

[Hroth]

The Ilfracombe Goods arrived from Rails this morning; the usual excellent service.  Like the box!

 

Very pleased with the model.

 

To cut a long story short, however, I think I have acquired a tender for the Barnstaple Town project and a locomotive for Castle Aching (yay!).

 

Nick Holliday was right about the use of a proprietary chassis.  Unfortunately the scale chassis (which I measured some years ago and recall is dimensionally correct as well as closer to the prototype in its details) is not a fit for the body because the splashers have been positioned to match the proprietary chassis, so will not fit the dimensionally correct chassis.

 

This might be regarded as a nuisance, as the body is a very good match for 0394 in the condition I want. That said, it is also a perfectly good match for the freelance version for CA.  The only necessary change for a CA small BP is pairing it with the original BP 4-wheel tender.

 

I only need/want one Ilfracombe Goods for the Barnstaple Town project.  I already had the loco chassis for it and expected to have to build the body and tender. , I knew that in buying the Rails one, I'd be committing to a second BP for CA (again, yay!).  In sum, I have to build one body and one tender either way, so the combination is not really important!   I believe the Colonel Stephens Society has some 7mm drawings, IIRC, which I shall attempt to purchase, and NeilHB has kindly offered an article.

 

The dome and chimneys will be issues, so I may seek to have these 3D printed. 

 

So, as soon as I can build a BP 4-wheel tender, we can have a WNR loco running at last. There is really no issue sticking with the proprietary chassis, given the variety of wheel diameters and wheel bases seen with these BPs.

 

Finally, out of interest I have compared it for size with the Hornby J15 (to be back-dated to Y14), as they will both run on CA.

 

Its a far nicer box than the ones Hattons put their boxless locos in!

 

A nice little loco too, well done in getting it.

[Edwardian]

What chassis is that? Is it Dublo? Its not the standard tri-ang jobbie, and that looks like a Romford motor.

I think it would look better with the tyre edges blacked, and the sleeving on the pick-ups changed to black heat shink, rather than that orange braided stuff. You could even file the rods down to make them a bit thinner...

 

Not a bad looking loco, would look nice in a dark colour with full lining though....

 

Good buy there Sir.

 

Andy G

 

Standard WN livery, I would imagine.

 

Thoughts so far:

 

Body:

 

- Dark green borders edge black-red, with mid-green panels.  The two separated by black-red-black lining with incurves to corners.  A distance line in pale yellow on the mid-green. 

 

- Boiler bands pale yellow-black-red-black-pale yellow

 

- Domes polished brass

 

Frames:

 

- Dark red lined yellow

 

I would be commissioning transfers!!

 

Something of an impression can be gained from this picture of a loco in a similar livery:

Edited January 19, 2019 by Edwardian

[Hroth]

Oxford. Three railway stations, two of them Great Western and one LNWR. And a better class of passenger. And a canal. The best of all possible worlds.

 

The only problem with the canal in Oxford is that the final few hundred yards of the cut that terminates at the A4144 (not far from the site of the former LNWR station) is an unusable festering appendix filled with so-called "houseboats".  Its virtually impossible to visit Oxford by canal nowadays.  The last time I went there by boat was on a giant circular tour down the Grand Union to Brentford and up the Thames to Oxford.  We stayed on the Thames whilst visiting the town and then joined the canal on our way back to civilisation, passing through Birmingham on the Main Line and down the Wolverhampton 21 to Aldersley Junction with the Staffs and Worcs, before turning left onto the Shroppie at Autherley....

[Hroth]

Standard WN livery, I would imagine.

 

Thoughts so far:

 

Body:

 

- Dark green borders edge black-red, with mid-green panels.  The two separated by black-red-black lining with incurves to corners.  A distance line in pale yellow on the mid-green. 

 

- Boiler bands pale yellow-black-red-black-pale yellow

 

- Domes polished brass

 

Frames:

 

- Dark red lined yellow

 

I would be commissioning transfers!!

 

Something of an impression can be gained from this picture of a loco in a similar livery:

 

Very nice!

 

So you will be lining the wheels too? 

[Compound2632]

"Wolverhampton wouldn’t be the Ultima Thule for the MR, but thanks to help from the GWR, somewhere way, way beyond.. "

Yes, Swansea in fact - just a short hop from the West Midlands via Hereford, the HHB and the N&B.

Jonathan

 

PS Hereford did pretty well for stations for a town of its size and Brecon managed three for a while. Swansea? I have lost count, and do you include the Mumbles Railway terminal?

 

By West Midlands I meant the industrial conurbation, rather than the western Midland counties in general. The Midland's true Ultima Thule was not Swansea, nor Great Yarmouth, nor Bournemouth, nor yet Mallaig - served by a through carriage from St Pancras during the Mallaig Extension's first summer season (a D508 48ft square-light clerestory lavatory brake composite) - but Killybegs, on Donegal Bay. 

 

The Midland had a canny way of extending its sphere of influence through joint lines - it was a partner in more than any other pre-Grouping company - its easternmost and westernmost limits being achieved via joint lines with the two Great Northern Railways!

 

If you're out in the sticks of North Devon and want a narrow-gauge locomotive, it'll come on a Midland wagon. 

[Edwardian]

Very nice!

 

So you will be lining the wheels too? 

 

Well, I'd need to try!

[Hroth]

By West Midlands I meant the industrial conurbation, rather than the western Midland counties in general. The Midland's true Ultima Thule was not Swansea, nor Great Yarmouth, nor Bournemouth, nor yet Mallaig - served by a through carriage from St Pancras during the Mallaig Extension's first summer season (a D508 48ft square-light clerestory lavatory brake composite) - but Killybegs, on Donegal Bay. 

 

The Midland had a canny way of extending its sphere of influence through joint lines - it was a partner in more than any other pre-Grouping company - its easternmost and westernmost limits being achieved via joint lines with the two Great Northern Railways!

 

If you're out in the sticks of North Devon and want a narrow-gauge locomotive, it'll come on a Midland wagon. 

 

Thus giving rise to its nickname, "The Insidious Railway".....

 

(In Discworld terms, its chairman might be Foul Ole Ron )

[Jim15B]

Best wishes Les. its something I guess we all live in trepidation of as years advance.

 

I've seen a fair few pictures of "stuff" being transhipped at Barnstaple Town, but it looks to have come from the vans of SG passenger trains, onto the passenger platform.

 

What the "stuff" is, I can't guess, but big wicker baskets, like laundry baskets, can be seen in several pictures. Apart from laundry, what might they be used for? Game in bulk is one possibility, but so many baskets ....... was their a massive traffic in rabbits or pheasants?

Baskets were commonly used for textiles, so maybe gloves or lace in Barnstaple. The baskets in the attached image contain corsets from the factory in Desborough (still a going concern but not making many corsets now). The steam lorry is a Midland Railway owned Thorneycroft.

[Tom Burnham]

Much as it pains me as a fan of Bugs Bunny, both the South Western and the Great Western had a very considerable traffic in rabbits from the West Country, particularly to northern England.  The Railway Magazine for April 1906 had an article (p.297-302) describing the traffic in considerable detail (and including a photo of a LSWR pair-horse van of the type used to convey hampers of rabbits from Waterloo to the termini of the northern lines.  The photo attached is one of the illustrations from the article.

[Jim15B]

Combining the two theories in Barnstaple, maybe rabbit fur for gloves.

[Martin S-C]

Or corsets for overweight rabbits?

[Tom Burnham]

Thinking about suitable carriages for the secondary services of the West Norfolk Railway, while looking out the above I came across a reference to the Colne Valley & Halstead Railway (Rly Mag Dec 1906, p.565).  The correspondent had noted old carriages in use on the line 3 years previously, but on returning with a view to photographing them, he found they had been withdrawn.  Two of the bodies had been sold - see photo below.  "They had two doors on each side, and seats all round the coach - not transverse.  The builders were Messrs. Wright and Sons, Saltley Works, Birmingham, who state that these carriages were probably built in 1859, but that it was not then the practice to prepare drawings, but that they were chalked out on the shop wall, thus, of course, leaving no record - a curious side light on old-world methods.  The carriages were 18 ft. 6 in.long."

 

[Regularity]

Much as it pains me as a fan of Bugs Bunny

[corneliuslundie]

I remember reading in a GWR WTT appendix - Ok i know the GWR didn't call them that - about keeping connections between goods trains for urgent rabbit traffic in South Wales circa the CA period. I think the conies ended up in the West Midlands. But they did not only run in the sausage season, being all year round as far as I could tell. And they were not dedicated trains.

Jonathan

PS How about similar traffic from CA to larger conurbations?

[Compound2632]

Thinking about suitable carriages for the secondary services of the West Norfolk Railway, while looking out the above I came across a reference to the Colne Valley & Halstead Railway (Rly Mag Dec 1906, p.565).  The correspondent had noted old carriages in use on the line 3 years previously, but on returning with a view to photographing them, he found they had been withdrawn.  Two of the bodies had been sold - see photo below.  "They had two doors on each side, and seats all round the coach - not transverse.  The builders were Messrs. Wright and Sons, Saltley Works, Birmingham, who state that these carriages were probably built in 1859, but that it was not then the practice to prepare drawings, but that they were chalked out on the shop wall, thus, of course, leaving no record - a curious side light on old-world methods.  The carriages were 18 ft. 6 in.long."

 

Oh to have been a railway modeller in 1906 - one could do one's research straight from the horse's mouth - the Metropolitan Railway Carriage & Wagon Co. in this case.

Edited January 19, 2019 by Compound2632

[webbcompound]

All this talk of rabbit trains, I'm surprised there hasn't been an intervention from a certain member of the Parish Council

[Nearholmer]

There's more of that sort of thing available, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, etc, but not all tin is created equal, and even I draw the line somewhere (exactly where varies a bit from day-to-day).

 

Just popped to the model shop to buy a tinlet of paint, and saw the r-t-r 009 loco in full-L&B livery for the first time.

 

I'm not surprised that our host is seduced by it.

 

I might be myself if my varifocals could cope with 1:76 scale, which they can't.

 

And, re Rabbits: I heard a programme on the radio yesterday that described how Thetford Forest was a major rabbit producing area until it was forested, which the programme said was after WW1, although I know for certain that it had stands of hardwood before then, because they were logged by the Canadians during WW1. Anyway, from where I am, Thetford Forest is the start of West Norfolk, so I support the idea of CA being a warren-zone. The Erstwhiles probably own most of the warrens, of course.

Edited January 19, 2019 by Nearholmer