Castle Aching

[RedGemAlchemist]

Now it looks like a Peckett.

[Regularity]

50 minutes ago, Annie said:

Yes lowering the body to the correct buffer height has somehow transformed 'Nellie' so at first glance it's not immediately apparent that it is/was the old Triang trainset favourite.

Triang raised the buffer height of everything to clear the tension-lock couplings and the enormous pizza-cutter flanges. Some of their models were otherwise dimensionally quite accurate (above the footplate!) and could be worked on to produce a nice final result. Unfortunately, for a spell the designers decided to address this by making the overall height correct, losing the extra millimetre from the body, with the result that the final product suited neither market - looked too low compared to existing stock, and useless for conversion to scale!

The reason they stopped the X03 (X04 is same motor, but with a worm fitted - or vice versa) is that one of their two armature winding machines broke down irreparably, and they couldn’t afford to invest in a new one. This left them dependent on a single machine, so the hunt was on for a replacement. Initially that was not good, but tender locos and diesels shifted to the ringfield motor ahead of tank locos.

 

Nice, rugged, reliable and smooth motor, but by modern standards rather large. Also the reason for the obvious skirt under the boiler. 
Any chance of you removing it for the next one, Edward Ian?

 

The thought strikes me that this revised body could form the basis for some very nice small tank locos of 2-4-0, 0-4-2 and 0-6-0 wheel arrangement, and slightly stretched with a larger bunker to provide a 2-4-2T... Obviously produced by a rather obscure engineering works vaguely in the area of Castle Aching. Possibly they provided the original fleet?

[Donw]

Very nice. The CWS Jam factory in Reading was known as the Jammo.  People would say ' I've got a job at the Jammo'. My Grandfather got a job as a Foreman there working with a team of ladies. They knew how to do the work much better than him but ladies were not thought to be suitable as foremen. 

Don

[Regularity]

21 minutes ago, Donw said:

ladies were not thought to be suitable as foremen

Well, they would have been forewomen, wouldn’t they?

(Also, maybe it took four men to do the job of one woman?)

Edited January 12, 2020 by Regularity
Typo

[St Enodoc]

3 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Well, they would have been forewomen, wouldn’t they?

(Also, maybe it took four men to do the job of one woman?)

Or four women to do... etc., etc.

[Regularity]

10 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Or four women to do... etc., etc.

You are a braver man than I, matey, to suggest that...

[Annie]

45 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Or four women to do... etc., etc.

Your name has been noted down sir.........

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

You are a braver man than I, matey, to suggest that...

 

58 minutes ago, Annie said:

Your name has been noted down sir.........

Ha ha, jumping to conclusions eh?

 

For all you know I was going to write "Four women to do five men's work".

 

Yeah, right...

[Nearholmer]

Regularity

 

If one was to play ‘theme and variations’ with Nellie, the prototype builder to use for inspiration would be Hawthorn Leslie, as Colonel Stephens did, because Nellie has a very similar outline to their medium-sized tank engines.

 

Remove the smoke box wing plates and Edwardian’s large-wheeled 2-4-0T could easily be mistaken for a peer of say ‘A S Harris’ of the PDSWJ, or ‘Hecate’ of the KESR, and the several others including 0-6-2T.

 

But, that would yield late Victorian locos at the earliest.

 

Kevin

 

This is either two Nellies spliced together, or Hecate with a false nameplate.

 

And this is A S Harris, which looked neater when new (Ben Brooksbank photo licensed for ‘share and share alike’)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 12, 2020 by Nearholmer

[phil_sutters]

21 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

 

Ha ha, jumping to conclusions eh?

 

For all you know I was going to write "Four women to do five men's work".

 

Yeah, right...

In Newhaven Docks in WW1 the ratio was the other way round - 25 women to do 20 men's work. Go to near the bottom of this history board page. There are a series of  boards displaying this information, in a rather more interesting graphic style, at relevant places around the town. https://www.newhaventowncouncil.gov.uk/newhavens-first-world-war/the-poppy-trail/the-port-and-railway/

Edited January 12, 2020 by phil_sutters
Additional info

[Nearholmer]

Just to add a further ‘one and a half Nellie’ here is a photo from a book of an advert from a magazine, so not great quality, showing one of the two locos ordered for the EKLR. They were to be called Gabrielle and Rowena, but the railway was too skint to pay for them, and both went instead to industrial service elsewhere.

 

 

[Edwardian]

8 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Just to add a further ‘one and a half Nellie’ here is a photo from a book of an advert from a magazine, so not great quality, showing one of the two locos ordered for the EKLR. They were to be called Gabrielle and Rowena, but the railway was too skint to pay for them, and both went instead to industrial service elsewhere.

 

 

 

A handsome loco. 1910s or 19-teens?

 

It puts me in mind of the Electrotren 0-6-0 tank chassis. 

 

[Nearholmer]

Exactly.

 

Does it run OK?

 

It might work for the KESR 2-4-0Ts too, by substituting the front wheel-set for a pony-set, and lowering Nellie's boiler, but it depends how the drive-train works.

 

All of these HL locos are on the outer edge of the CA date-line, spanning from the KESR 2-4-0T in 1899, to the EKLR ones cWW1 (A S Harris was 1907 and basically the same, though), and they don't seem to me to fit with the CA ethos either, so I'm not advocating them for CA, merely grabbing and running with the baton the Regularity held-out.

 

I shall cease forthwith to bring too-modern engines forward.

[Tom Burnham]

Gabrielle and Rowena would have been named after granddaughters of Arthur Burr, the over-speculative financier behind Kent Coal Concessions and the East Kent Light Railway.  Their father, Malcolm Burr, was also an interesting character - after Oxford he studied Geology at the Royal School of Mines and became chief geologist of Kent Coal Concessions (and arguably should have known better...)  After military service in WW1, he did some geological consulting, but was mainly able to pursue what he was really interested in, entomology and languages.
Photo of Gabrielle (who later became Britain's first woman flying instructor) and Rowena from The Tatler for 14 Feb 1912 -

[Nearholmer]

I knew that was who the names came from (he apparently named pit shafts and dynamos after them too ...... not may dynamos have names), but never expected to see a picture of the girls.

 

Entomology, or etymology?

Edited January 13, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Exactly.

 

Does it run OK?

 

Yes, it's a modern RTR chassis and very usable. One was glimpsed under WNR No.2 Mark I.  It wasn't the best fit, and involved Tom Turbosnail in quite a few compromises.  As you've seen, unsurprisingly the Peckett 0-6-0 chassis produced by Hornby is a better match for its Fox Walker antecedant.

 

The motor position of the Electrotren chassis means that it will always favour side tank bodies over others. 

 

It is a particularly good match for the  Sharp Stewart Cornwall Minerals Railway 0-6-0Ts, as I've mentioned far too often before.  I've delayed building mine from scratch because I know that a printed body is being worked on, so I'm waiting for that. 

 

There must be other outside cylinder industrial/LR side tanks for which it would be a reasonable match, though typically many such prototypes are a little ahead of my own mid-Edwardian setting.

 

Quote

It might work for the KESR 2-4-0Ts too, by substituting the front wheel-set for a pony-set, and lowering Nellie's boiler, but it depends how the drive-train works.

 

All of these HL locos are on the outer edge of the CA date-line, spanning from the KESR 2-4-0T in 1899, to the EKLR ones cWW1 (A S Harris was 1907 and basically the same, though), and they don't seem to me to fit with the CA ethos either, so I'm not advocating them for CA, merely grabbing and running with the baton the Regularity held-out.

 

All good suggestions.

 

Quote

I shall cease forthwith to bring too-modern engines forward.

 

Please don't.  I just need to place locos and where they might fit.  CA may be limited to 1905, but I'm not, and neither is anyone else here!

 

EDIT: Here is my Electrotren chassis, usefully compared with, to its left, a Bachmann Junior 0-6-0 (the large bare-metal weight can be removed), and, to the right, the trusty Nellie chassis.

 

You can see how low the Electrotren chassis gets you (it's an HO model, after all).

 

Edited January 13, 2020 by Edwardian

[TurboSnail]

I've used this chassis for quite a few loco bodyshells now, including the Hudswell Clarke 1800, an industrial Fox Walker and a freelance Hudswell. For the price, it's very good, if not matching the refinement of Hornby or Bachmann.

[Tom Burnham]

42 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Entomology, or etymology?

Insects - left no stone unturned in search of unusual creepy-crawlies whatever part of the world he was in.  See for example "A Contribution to our Knowledge of the Orthoptera of Macedonia" in the Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society of London for 1923, resulting from field work while he was stationed at Salonika during the war.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

You can see how low the Electrotren chassis gets you (it's an HO model, after all).

 

The X04 motor is almost as large as the entire Electrotren chassis and motor!  Though going by the wheels on the Triang chassis, I'd say there was almost 60 years between it and the Electrotren unit.

[Edwardian]

Yes, Tom has done some great loco bodies for Hardy's Hobbies , using this Electrotren chassis.

 

I note the range of figures and accessories, and I have a suggestion!

 

My recent search for small loco jacks, of the sort often carried on footplates of industrial locos, reveal just one option, from the Broad Gauge Society.  It's a lovely lost wax casting, but, unfortunately, is only supplied in the quantity of just one, combined with GW lamp sockets, at £6.70, which makes it an expensive proposition for a fleet!

 

Could Hardy's consider this as a 3D-print accessory for their locos?

 

They could be printed with the mounting brackets shown clearly on the picture below of 566, as they would invariably be used by modellers on footplates. 

 

 

The WNR could do with some, and I think one would grace Nell Gwyn.  They also tend to feature on one of my favourite classes ... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 13, 2020 by Edwardian

[TurboSnail]

Always the first question to anyone asking if something can be 3D printed - do you have a drawing? I don't know if Hardy's are interested but I could whip up a set for you fairly easily. PM if you want more of a discussion, shame to take up unnecessary pages on this notoriously concise thread!

[Buhar]

Extending the jack discussion against Tom's wishes, these were found on all LYR locos and I'm sure I bought a couple from somewhere (Wizard or Alan Gibson most likely) and if I forked out, the price would have been reasonable.

 

Alan

[Edwardian]

11 minutes ago, Buhar said:

Extending the jack discussion against Tom's wishes, these were found on all LYR locos and I'm sure I bought a couple from somewhere (Wizard or Alan Gibson most likely) and if I forked out, the price would have been reasonable.

 

Alan

 

Thanks, Alan.

 

I suspect that you must have bought These.

 

They are rather different from the GWR ones, so, if I find a drawing, I'll still be interested in Tom taking them one. 

 

It may well be worth ordering a set, however.

[Buhar]

That's the fellas.  Why  am I not surprised the Greasy Wet and Rusty had something altogether different.

 

Alan

[uax6]

May I suggest BMC Damask Red for Nellie? I have one painted like that and it does look very nice.

 

Also how about a bicycle on the footplate ahead of the tank, to help hide the boiler skirt?

 

Andy G