Castle Aching

[Donw]

Parishioners might find this video interesting dangerously close to being on topic but 50-60 years later. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhRRIrBo3as

 

Don

[Annie]

What an amazingly well made video.  Of course I had to go and wash my eyeballs after seeing the dismals diesels, but otherwise it was very very good.

[Donw]

I am no great fan of Diseasels myself.

 

Don

[Edwardian]

11 hours ago, Donw said:

Parishioners might find this video interesting dangerously close to being on topic but 50-60 years later. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhRRIrBo3as

 

Don

 

A model for model railway videos; really well done.

 

Do we think that one day we might see one of operations at Castle Aching?  Well, the possibility spurs me on!

 

2 hours ago, Donw said:

I am no great fan of Diseasels myself.

 

Don

 

Well, the steam locos made me yearn for DCC, so that I could have 'gimmicky' sound (but, then, I'd want smoke next!)

 

Aside from the expense, the thought of trying to find room for chips, let alone speakers, in the WNR's planned fleet of little odd engines is not to be contemplated.

 

Dieseasels?  Well, I rapidly came to resent the punctuation of the operation by that growly, blary 08.  Adding sound made the locomotive significantly more unpleasantly intrusive and it added a whole new dimension to the pantomime villainy of Awdry's creation. The longer one - Sulzer? - just sounded like an asthmatic  tractor; unpleasant, though hardly menacing.  Then, of a sudden, came the deceptively named "Baby Deltic" which I found awakened a sick fear response as it ran on scene without warning, emitting a sinister and unpleasant noise from a 1950s sci-fi B movie.  That was nothing if not disturbing.

 

Each to his own, however, and the nostalgia cycle is producing many superlative 'modern image' layouts. Did you have to have been there to 'get it'? I'm not sure.  My village gave me a dress circle seat from which to observe the comings and goings on the Midland mainline in the late '70s and early '80s.  Judge for yourselves the effect that had on me and my modelling!

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Nostalgia works in strange ways: just before Christmas, we went for a ‘Santa ride’ on a nearby preserved railway.

When we got there, a GWR small pairie was sizzling away awaiting departure .... interesting, but not very evocative, for me at least.

 

Stroll down platform, and hear the loco ticking over at the other end of the train, the very distinctive sound of a Class 33 (slightly bigger Sulzer than the one in that film). Instant giant wave of nostalgia, because it is the sound that accompanied many nights out in the freezing cold, overseeing engineer’s trains. It genuinely transported me back nearly forty years in an instant.

 

I like the noise of burbling Class 08/09 too, sort of like a slumbering hippopotamus. Again a time transporter.

[webbcompound]

36 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Aside from the expense, the thought of trying to find room for chips, let alone speakers, in the WNR's planned fleet of little odd engines is not to be contemplated.

 

whatever the pros and cons of sound (in a theoretical exercise!) I found that I could fit sound in tiny tank engines because I could use the chips and speakers designed for N guage. the real barrier is cost as the cost of a loco would effectively double, and I have plenty more locos to build instead.

[Owd Bob]

As much i like my diesels, and trying to get the ones i have into a realistic looking filthy '70's style, my collection won't be having any sound adding to them, it's bad enough after just five minutes visiting a model show  hearing the high pitched whistling of the model class 40's and 20's echoing around the halls, and there's no way swmbo would ever put up with it in our home.. Nice pic' of the 40. ...is it a first for this topic?

Edited January 5, 2020 by Owd Bob
spelling

[sem34090]

Perversely, I find the sight and sound of a Bulleid pacific battling a gradient far more nostalgic than anything modern, despite being only just approaching my 18th birthday.

 

I spent far more time on the MHR then than on the big railway, indeed at the moment this is also the case.

[Donw]

I was awakened to the possibility of taking railway modelling seriously in 1962 when diesels were starting to take over an.d seemed far less glamourous than the Steam locos I had known.  It was also associated with Beeching in my mind.  I never minded travelling on the railcar sets as you got a good view of the line but never took any interest in what class they were.

A few years later there seemed to be a lot of engine failures which did enhance their reputation. However move on to the early 80s and I had got more used to them. I would note the oil tank train pulled by two class 20s the sound of which would carry across the fields between Wellington and Salop.  I also remember travelling the S&C in a blizzard on a class 45 pulled special it seemed to have the brute strength required to conquer the hills and the weather.  I sound of the beast as we passed through Blea Moor tunnel would probably defeat most sound decoders. But in general I do not have any great interest in which diesel is up front whereas I always wanted to know what steam loco was pulling us.

Don

 

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Owd Bob said:

As much i like my diesels, and trying to get the ones i have into a realistic looking filthy '70's style, my collection won't be having any sound adding to them, it's bad enough after just five minutes visiting a model show  hearing the high pitched whistling of the model class 40's and 20's echoing around the halls, and there's no way swmbo would ever put up with it in our home.. Nice pic' of the 40. ...is it a first for this topic?

 

Its not the first time Modern Image* has featured in these august pages, I posted an EE Type 4 many centuries of pages ago, but I don't recall the context now.....   The thing with digital sounds is that they're almost always far too loud, you need to consider the scale distance you are from the loco, then think of how loud the beast (steam OR diesel) would be if you were standing that far away in real life!

 

* Perhaps "Modern Image" in a CA context would be a Churchward Saint or Star, in which case a Type 4 would be something dreamed up in an HG Wells dystopia.....

 

[Edwardian]

5 hours ago, Owd Bob said:

 Nice pic' of the 40. ...is it a first for this topic?

 

You see, until you said that, it was just a Big Blue Diesel from my childhood.

 

Now, I know it to be a "Class 40".

 

Alas, ignorance is a delicate bloom; touch it and it withers. 

 

4 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

* Perhaps "Modern Image" in a CA context would be a Churchward Saint or Star, in which case a Type 4 would be something dreamed up in an HG Wells dystopia.....

 

 

Yep; the Churchward Revolution: The limits of Shocking Modernity.

 

Hroth gets it.

[Regularity]

Whilst there is a bit of a problem with the sound reproduction of diesel horns, there are two problems with judging the quality of on-board sound when watching videos such as these.

Firstly, some modellers like to turn up the volume to its maximum. This can result in speaker distortion and sound awful when recorded.

Secondly, the recording will only be as good as the equipment used to capture the sounds, and that’s before you even consider whatever device you are playing back though.

At Spalding last year, (or maybe the year before) I saw Portchullin in diesel mode, and the sound was superb. I don’t think my phone would capture it very well, though, so I didn’t bother.

 

The only way to judge sound is to be there, I think.

[brianusa]

I have very little concept of traction noise as by the time steam had left, I did as well in 1963.   My only experience of horns are the American variety which are certainly more melodic than the UK  toot!

         Brian.

[GRASinBothell]

By 1963 you'd have had five years of listening to Warships, Brian!

 

Gordon

[Edwardian]

19 minutes ago, GRASinBothell said:

By 1963 you'd have had five years of listening to Warships, Brian!

 

Gordon

 

 

Anyhow.  This weekend I should have been building a body for WNR No.1.

 

Instead I tried something that I've been meaning to do for ages; convert a Bachmann Junior 0-6-0 to a 2-4-0.

 

In contrast to the toy-end of the Hornby range, Bachmann's Junior and Thomas locos have beautifully smooth motions and are excellent bash n' bodge fodder.

 

Here is one pretending not to be Thomas:

 

 

One of the drawbacks of the 0-6-0 is that it has relatively large wheels relatively closely spaced, so it does not favour many UK 0-6-0 types. 

 

It struck me that it would better suit the driving wheels of a modest passenger tank, if converted to 0-4-2, or, as here, 2-4-0 configuration (it's driven off the centre axle), and I've been meaning to have a go for a while.

 

It had also struck me that it might be a fun way to adapt the charismatic Triang Nellie.  I had one as a child, still have it, in fact, and I've often wanted to 'pimp' a Nellie.  

 

A Nellie as God and Triang intended it, courtesy of Hattons:

 

 

This is a little off the beaten track, so, if successful, it probably won't be a West Norfolk engine.  The West Norfolk is a freelance line that, as a rule, runs real locomotives. That seems to have emerged as integral to the concept and as an aid to verisimilitude. Thus, with the possible exception of a tram locomotive I'm toying with, the WNR is not really the place for freelance locomotives.

 

Anyhow, it struck me that Nellie might look good as a 2-4-0 and I acquired a beaten up Nellie body from the Bay of Fleas (no, I'm not sacrificing my childhood companion!). The intention is to upgrade but keep as much of the character and appearance of the original body as possible.

 

One thing I dislike is the cab front sheet, which would really look better with round spectacles. Other than that, it is really only necessary to replace the moulded-on hand rails and smokebox dart and to add the usual refinements, e.g. screw link couplings and vac pipes (it's to be a passenger loco in this guise), lamp irons, crew etc.

 

However, this was a beaten-up body and had lost its rear steps and chimney, so here there will have to be differences.  The Dean chimney pictured is temporary, while I mull.  Given the need to replace the rear steps, I thought I might as well go to town and have nice, big curvy ones.

 

The other change is necessitated by the change in wheel arrangement.  I have cut out the cab doors and provided a splasher for the rear driving wheels, rather like a Brighton Terrier or D tank.   

 

Here we see it in primer to identify the sanding and filling necessary, so, early days, but the chassis runs and the body fits it, so, the job's a good 'un.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Compound2632]

What have you done to our Nellie? Given her a new pair of spectacles...

 

The trouble is, she's a bit fat in the boiler and long in the smokebox to be that convincing. Not that any claim coiuld be made for Junior's proportions either, except as that which he isn't - or so they tried to convince some.

 

 

Who? Me? What?

[Annie]

1 hour ago, GRASinBothell said:

By 1963 you'd have had five years of listening to Warships, Brian!

 

Gordon

Perhaps Brian wasn't a very good sailor so he never got to hear any.

 

And James has rather wonderfully beaten me to it with his reply.

Edited January 5, 2020 by Annie
more to say

[Annie]

I built up a 'Nellie' as an 0-6-0 using a Triang TT chassis and some spare Wrenn (?) driving wheels (I don't know what they came off originally).  Mine was painted in early LMS lined black with a generic/made up  Scottish area number on its tank sides.  It looked very nice, - unfortunately someone else thought so too and stole it while I was attending an open day at the model railway club I belonged to at the time.

Edited January 5, 2020 by Annie
can't spell for toffee

[brianusa]

1 hour ago, GRASinBothell said:

By 1963 you'd have had five years of listening to Warships, Brian!

 

Gordon

 

I heard them I suppose but by that time my interest in trains had waned in the usual manner, girls, cars, the necessary job and other distractions.  It wasn't rekindled until Phase 1 was accomplished along with 2, 3, 4 and a house in the US.  Hence I couldn't have told you the difference between a Warship and a Deltic.  Still have problems; I know more of Castles and Kings!

       Brian.

[Edwardian]

10 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

What have you done to our Nellie? Given her a new pair of spectacles...

 

The trouble is, she's a bit fat in the boiler and long in the smokebox to be that convincing. 

 

 

 

She is, and, as you say, her girth is rather generous.  We might think of her as a little loco, but, when you're used to the WNR's petite Victorian engines, she's quite a portly Duchess of Portsmorth or Nell Gwyn of a loco.  There we are, perhaps we should call her Nell Gwyn? 

 

Here she is looking rather buxom compared with WNR No.2.

 

 

It is precisely because of this that I thought that a pimped Nellie would be best conceived of as a passenger locomotive.  i see this loco as a product of the second half of the 1890s and suited to branch or light suburban work.  By 1905, she might well be motor-fitted and paired with a driving trailer. Hmm, freelance autocoach; nice change from more freelance 4-wheelers.

 

  

[Annie]

Yes James, I think a nice driving trailer would suit 'Nell Gwyn' perfectly.  Having been experimenting with driving trailers on my own sprawling little empire I know they can be a lot of fun to have on the timetable.

[uax6]

As you haven't actually started painting her, would it be a good time to cut the smokebox down? Using your chimberly set more to the front of the s/box, cut down the back and remove the remains of the s/box. That little toolbox on the footplate might have to be sacrificed (but could be replaced) and then splice in a bit of plasticard formed to the shape of the boiler.

I think that this little bit of effort would transform her completely..

 

Andy G

[Donw]

Nellie always looked more industrial than light railway to me. Perhaps something to go up and down steep Welsh Valleys or up in the Grimy bits of the North East. Now if there is room over the mechanism to remove say 5mm all round btwen the footplate and the rest of the body that would make a real difference.

 

BTW is this Nelliemania catching. Kevin is giving his a turn on the piano and you turning an ugly ducking into a swan (at least I think I have it the right way round). I best keep away from Jim McGeowan he sells an 0 gauge Nellie kit.

 

Don

[Edwardian]

55 minutes ago, Donw said:

Now if there is room over the mechanism to remove say 5mm all round btwen the footplate and the rest of the body that would make a real difference.

 

 

'Fraid not.  Th boiler has been thinned from the inside and, nevertheless, is sitting on the motor. 

 

1 hour ago, uax6 said:

As you haven't actually started painting her, would it be a good time to cut the smokebox down? Using your chimberly set more to the front of the s/box, cut down the back and remove the remains of the s/box. That little toolbox on the footplate might have to be sacrificed (but could be replaced) and then splice in a bit of plasticard formed to the shape of the boiler.

I think that this little bit of effort would transform her completely..

 

Andy G

 

 

 

Edited January 6, 2020 by Edwardian

[Regularity]

Mr. Joel appears to be singing to a death mask...