Castle Aching

[Northroader]

My uncle had been in the Royal Navy from the 1920s, ending up on the China station going up the Yangste on a gunboat. The conditions ensured that he was evacuated home mid 30s with TB, and entered a sanatorium, Shirlett, set in pine woodlands in South Shropshire. It was just before the widespread introduction of Streptomycin, and as you say, treatment revolved around fresh air. They were in wooden huts with the windows wide open all year round, so that drinking water by the beds froze in winter. Somehow he pulled through, mainly with the help of my future aunt, who was a nurse at the place, one of the Much Wenlock Evans’s.

Turning to Withernsea, I like the old four wheeler coach parked in one of the shots, as well as the 2-4-0. The NER had a reputation for over signalling, what about a full size stop signal to permit exit off the turntable on to the runaround loop?

Edited December 2, 2020 by Northroader

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

My uncle had been in the Royal Navy from the 1920s, ending up on the China station going up the Yangste on a gunboat. The conditions ensured that he was evacuated home mid 30s with TB, and entered a sanatorium, Shirlett, set in pine woodlands in South Shropshire. It was just before the widespread introduction of Streptomycin, and as you say, treatment revolved around fresh air. They were in wooden huts with the windows wide open all year round, so that drinking water by the beds froze in winter. Somehow he pulled through, mainly with the help of my future aunt, who was a nurse at the place, one of the Much Wenlock Evans’s.

 

I note that in the Holt area Bramblewood Sanatorium had opened in 1901, followed by High kelling in 1903.  With three TB sanatoria opening on the north Norfolk coast in the period 1899-1903, I'd say there was scope for another in the CA world.  

 

This open hut things seems to have been pretty widespread.  Those below, which I think were at High Kelling (compare the building in the background with the view previously posted), are enlivened by an interesting caption ....

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

Turning to Withernsea, I like the old four wheeler coach parked in one of the shots, as well as the 2-4-0. The NER had a reputation for over signalling, what about a full size stop signal to permit exit off the turntable on to the runaround loop?

 

Nice Fletcher 2-4-0 from the looks of things, and the coach, which I note is labelled for the permanent way department, is rather like this one. 

 

[Donw]

3 hours ago, Northroader said:

My uncle had been in the Royal Navy from the 1920s, ending up on the China station going up the Yangste on a gunboat. The conditions ensured that he was evacuated home mid 30s with TB, and entered a sanatorium, Shirlett, set in pine woodlands in South Shropshire. It was just before the widespread introduction of Streptomycin, and as you say, treatment revolved around fresh air. They were in wooden huts with the windows wide open all year round, so that drinking water by the beds froze in winter. Somehow he pulled through, mainly with the help of my future aunt, who was a nurse at the place, one of the Much Wenlock Evans’s.

Turning to Withernsea, I like the old four wheeler coach parked in one of the shots, as well as the 2-4-0. The NER had a reputation for over signalling, what about a full size stop signal to permit exit off the turntable on to the runaround loop?

 

I did hear quite a lot about the place when we were living on the Wenlock Edge and met someone who had been there as a patient. Mind you life for everyone was a lot tougher then. 

 

Don

[CKPR]

As one who is officially convalescing from a mild heart attack, I must confess that I had something rather more warm and comfortable in mind when I raised the topic of rail-served sea side convalescent homes...

Edited December 3, 2020 by CKPR

[Nearholmer]

I'm pretty sure those TB-recovery-sheds were fitted on turntables, so that they could be rotated to catch the sun (or, in the case of Norfolk in winter, the stiff onshore breeze).

 

If fitted to a mechanism something like an orrery, they would make a fascinating animated scene on a layout, each revolving slightly out of phase and frequency with the next, as their individual inhabitants adjusted things to suit their tastes.

 

Hasn't something like this been done with a field of model sunflowers?

 

 

Edited December 3, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Annie]

I found your notes and photos on Withernsea interesting James, but I'm afraid I was much amused by the almost Pythonesque tale of the steadily shortening pier due to altercations with shipping. 

 

And yes that coach caught my attention too.

[Edwardian]

3 hours ago, Annie said:

I found your notes and photos on Withernsea interesting James, but I'm afraid I was much amused by the almost Pythonesque tale of the steadily shortening pier due to altercations with shipping. 

 

And yes that coach caught my attention too.

 

Yes, it was hilarious discovering that as I clicked through a succession of images of the ever shortening pier.  It turned out to have been a really bad place to put a pier and became pretty much a ship-magnet.

 

 

Short of "They said I were mad to build a pier out in t'shipping lane, but I did! And a ship knocked it over. So, I built another one, and a ship knocked that one over too.  So then I built another and it burnt down and fell over, but, then, then, I built THIS one!"

 

I did briefly consider whether I should condemn the Birchoverham pier to the same fate, but, I reflected, one day I might want to model a good old Victorian pier.

 

Ravenscar Pier, Shildon, 2016

[Annie]

Oh yes you must have a pier James, they are awfully good fun.  I really must get back to finishing the final detailing on the pier at Hopewood on Sea.

[Edwardian]

24 minutes ago, Annie said:

Oh yes you must have a pier James, they are awfully good fun.  I really must get back to finishing the final detailing on the pier at Hopewood on Sea.

 

Well, some useful drawings of Withernsea pier are reproduced online, so I've snurgled them away .....

 

[Nearholmer]

Notice the screw pile?

 

The hidden secret that holds the key to the seaside pier is the screw pile, allowing a very rigid structure to be created quickly and cheaply - industrialised fun, on a par with those city-centre pubs with huge engraved/etched glass windows.

 

Southend Pier is another one that has been rammed by more boats than its had hot dinners, while Brighton West Pier was actually hit by an aeroplane, which must be unique.

 

 

Edited December 3, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Canal Digger]

If you want to know more about piers go to (Clevedon just happens to be my nearest so keen to promote it )

https://piers.org.uk/pier/clevedon/

[sem34090]

Lockdown in England is over!

[Nearholmer]

Don't tell us: that picture is you dressed-up again, isn't it?

[Nearholmer]

I should have mentioned this chap in my ramble about screw piles 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Mitchell_(engineer)

 

And, seems I was wrong about Brighton West Pier being the only one to be hit by a 'plane. Felixstowe 1920, with railway 

 

 

 

Edited December 3, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Canal Digger said:

If you want to know more about piers go to (Clevedon just happens to be my nearest so keen to promote it )

https://piers.org.uk/pier/clevedon/

 

Very elegant indeed. 

 

[Northroader]

Try not to copy the next one down from Clevedon, Birnbeck:

 

 

http://www.birnbeckregenerationtrust.org.uk/project.html

[Edwardian]

Briefly and temporarily departing from piers, here's another rabbit hole: Early traction engines, ploughing engines etc.

 

For my purposes I mean engines dating from c.1870s-1890s.  This is a vital question inasmuch as I hope ultimately to have an agricultural engineers on the layout and, of course, some rail-borne machinery.

 

lf you start to interrogate most of the kits that have been available over the years, they tend to be of relatively late prototypes, say Great War to 1930s.  Look at the majority of preserved engines and you find the same.

 

Based on my almost total lack of knowledge of the subject, I have persuaded myself of the theory that traction engines tended to look pretty similar over the course of their development, but probably got bigger.

 

That, anyway, was my excuse to buy a rather mucked-up Dublo Dinky for not very much.  The seller also had a steam roller, so I bagged that too.

 

I have never owned any of these, but recall the Dublo Dinky range as the mainstay of many layouts featured in my Father's old RMs.   There's a certain displaced or indirect nostalgia here as a result.  

 

It strikes me that this traction engine is not a bad model and has much character, and I wondered if, as it is not over-large, it might pass for a late Victorian example?

 

  

[Nearholmer]

Are you sure they're Dublo Dinky? Listing here: http://img.chem.ucl.ac.uk/dublo/oodinky.htm

 

I vaguely recall Matchbox making a traction engine, and a road roller, although my foggy recollection is that the latter was a diesel, rather than steam one. Worth a ferret through "Models of Yesteryear" sites?

 

EDIT: Yes, both fairly early matchbox MoY.

 

 

Edited December 3, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

16 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Are you sure they're Dublo Dinky? Listing here: http://img.chem.ucl.ac.uk/dublo/oodinky.htm

 

I vaguely recall Matchbox making a traction engine, and a road roller, although my foggy recollection is that the latter was a diesel, rather than steam one. Worth a ferret through "Models of Yesteryear" sites?

 

EDIT: Yes, both fairly early matchbox MoY.

 

 

 

Thanks, both sold as "Dublo Dinky", but the brand is rather immaterial, save that I now know the right brand to search under. 

 

EDIT:

 

It appears to be the Matchbox Y1, billed as a 1925 Allchin engine.  One description said it was 1:80 scale, which fits with the sense of it as slightly under-scale for a post-Great War engine.  Of course, that claim that it is 1:80 might not be right. Another description claims it's 1:100 (TT/3mm).  In any case, I'm hoping the size favours an earlier prototype.   

 

Edited December 3, 2020 by Edwardian

[ChrisN]

22 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Briefly and temporarily departing from piers, here's another rabbit hole: Early traction engines, ploughing engines etc.

 

For my purposes I mean engines dating from c.1870s-1890s.  This is a vital question inasmuch as I hope ultimately to have an agricultural engineers on the layout and, of course, some rail-borne machinery.

 

lf you start to interrogate most of the kits that have been available over the years, they tend to be of relatively late prototypes, say Great War to 1930s.  Look at the majority of preserved engines and you find the same.

 

Based on my almost total lack of knowledge of the subject, I have persuaded myself of the theory that traction engines tended to look pretty similar over the course of their development, but probably got bigger.

 

That, anyway, was my excuse to buy a rather mucked-up Dublo Dinky for not very much.  The seller also had a steam roller, so I bagged that too.

 

I have never owned any of these, but recall the Dublo Dinky range as the mainstay of many layouts featured in my Father's old RMs.   There's a certain displaced or indirect nostalgia here as a result.  

 

It strikes me that this traction engine is not a bad model and has much character, and I wondered if, as it is not over-large, it might pass for a late Victorian example?

 

  

 

I love traction engines.  I have a small book, somewhere, which I have just looked for and failed to locate, of traction engine pictures.  There were a couple of pictures of Victorian engines with some, I think about the turn of the century.  They differed very little from the later ones.

[Edwardian]

See also Aveling & Porter - Grace's Guide

 

Plenty of late Victorian examples illustrated (there's even a mini-version of 1904 in the range!)

 

Measurements, I need measurements!

[Edwardian]

5 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

- industrialised fun, on a par with those city-centre pubs with huge engraved/etched glass windows.

 

 

 

 

 

AKA Gin Palaces, a term still employed (with implied disapproval) by my family.

 

I think they're fun, many of them represented the demotic end to the cascading down of the 'Queen Anne' revival architectural style, of which I am inordinately fond.

 

The one I used to drink at from time to time was the Princess Louise, the Gents Loo is a Thing of Wonder.

 

EDIT: Looking for a more 'Queen Anne'* example, I recalled that I had also patronised this fine Liverpool establishment:

 

 

* One of the great things about Queen Anne revival is that it's all over the place, and some of it not very like Queen Anne period at all. It's also the style, transplanted to the colonies and clap-boarded, of the classic American haunted house.

Edited December 3, 2020 by Edwardian

[Nearholmer]

I’ve had breakfast in that pub!

 

when I had a couple of projects on the go in Liverpool, the local engineer would meet me from the first train in the morning and we’d go to breakfast to talk the job over before going to site. He knew several pubs and hotels with OTT interiors that served a decent breakfast. His hobby was as a research assistant to J I C Boyd, writer of detailed histories of every narrow gauge railway you can think of, so we had plenty to gas about besides work!

[Adam88]

43 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Thanks, both sold as "Dublo Dinky", but the brand is rather immaterial, save that I now know the right brand to search under. 

 

EDIT:

 

It appears to be the Matchbox Y1, billed as a 1925 Allchin engine.  One description said it was 1:80 scale, which fits with the sense of it as slightly under-scale for a post-Great War engine.  Of course, that claim that it is 1:80 might not be right. Another description claims it's 1:100 (TT/3mm).  In any case, I'm hoping the size favours an earlier prototype.   

 

 

As a teenager I wanted to buy one of these but by then they had gone out of production and were being sold at ridiculous prices to collectors.  Shortly after I was hiking in the Pyrenees with a rucksack and tent and I came across a shop with a whole shelf-full at a price equivalent to their last UK retail price (three and something - less purchase tax).  Matchbox had obviously not been selling too well there so I bought a dozen, IIRC nine Allchins and three Aveling & Porter steam rollers, and sold them all when I got home at collectors' prices.  That recouped at least half the cost of the holiday but I've never made any money out of anything like that since.

 

[ChrisN]

54 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

See also Aveling & Porter - Grace's Guide

 

Plenty of late Victorian examples illustrated (there's even a mini-version of 1904 in the range!)

 

Measurements, I need measurements!

 

You could try assuming that the men on the engines are 5' 6" and scaling the drawings from that.  The big wheels will be to the nearest foot I would assume.

 

If you Google 'traction engine diagrams' you get a number of picturesof diagrams, some might be useful.

 

There is also this.  If you scroll to the bottom there is a download of a plan for a model traction engine, which can be scaled.

 

Hope this helps.