Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

You do realise, I'm sure, just how outrageously scandalous those ladies were at Longchamps in May 1908 - no corsets, skirts split to the knee (how else do you suppose they're striding out with such confidence?) - discussed here.

 

 

Yes, I proffered them not as the last word in propriety-through-conservative-dress, but as an alternative to the modern hardy max-flesh-on-display of a girls' night out in Newcastle or Sunderland.

 

I certainly found the Longchamps Three more attractive (quite fancy the one on the left, actually)

 

 

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

 

 

So it works - it's perfectly caught his character. 

 

I'm going to assume that was a reference to Sir Topham Hatt's character. I may be wrong, but I'm definitely going to assume that.

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

Yes, I proffered them not as the last word in propriety-through-conservative-dress, but as an alternative to the modern hardy max-flesh-on-display of a girls' night out in Newcastle or Sunderland.

 

I certainly found the Longchamps Three more attractive (quite fancy the one on the left, actually)

I really must agree with you James.  The modern tendency for young women to go about showing a considerable amount of bare skin does them no favours.  It is entirely possible to be elegantly dressed and show no more skin than what can be seen on the face and hands.

[Regularity]

Some people look great whatever they wear - whether that be a lot or a little - but the rest of us mere mortals have to learn how best to dress to look good.

That applies to both sexes, all genders, and all orientations.

[Edwardian]

21 minutes ago, Regularity said:

That applies to both sexes, all genders, and all orientations.

 

Though, Simon, you do generally look better facing east.

[Hroth]

Just had a nice day out at Lyme Park, with a nattily dressed "Mr Darcy" wandering about...

 

Mr Darcy and friends walk along the courtyard colonnade at Lyme Park.

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by Hroth
Added photo

[Hroth]

9 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I’m really not sure I could carry a dress like that with my waist.

 

Its ok to carry it, you don't have to wear it!

 

 

8 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Personally, I was going more for the Fat Controller look.

 

 

As one ages, its difficult not to aspire to Fat Controllerhood.  What one needs is expertly tailored apparel that doesn't emphasise the bulges.

 

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

I certainly found the Longchamps Three more attractive (quite fancy the one on the left, actually)

 

 

She looks like a woman of considerable speed.   Hmmmmmm....

 

[alastairq]

Hmmmmm...Grandma?

[monkeysarefun]

5 hours ago, Edwardian said:

certainly found the Longchamps Three more attractive (quite fancy the one on the left, actually

Jeez she'd be about 130.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

Jeez she'd be about 130.

 

No, he fancies her in 1905 - when she was three years younger than in the photo. She does have a rather knowing smile though. Which could just be induced by lack of undergarments.

[figworthy]

21 hours ago, Donw said:

I believe ladies have a thicker layer of body fat than men. However I suggest you do not mention that to your wife when you are feeling the cold and she isn't.

 

Don

 

Many years, I was sailing in the depths of winter.  Being a wimp, I was wearing a dry suit.  My crew was one of the ladies from the club, who was wearing a wetsuit.  I asked her if she would be warm enough, to which she replied that she would be fine as she had her personal layer of blubber.

 

Adrian 

[Regularity]

4 hours ago, alastairq said:

Hmmmmm...Grandma?

Am I alone in thinking of Duckman at this venture?

[Compound2632]

Was it here or somewhere else that we were pondering the shocking appearance of G.J. Churchward's first ten-wheelers? I'm now thinking of him as the Jeanne Margaine-Lacroix of British locomotive design.

 

I'm afraid I've still not been able to find the name and address of the mannequin James fancies.

Edited August 28, 2021 by Compound2632

[Hroth]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Was it here or somewhere else that we were pondering the shocking appearance of G.J. Churchward's first ten-wheelers?

 

I think that gets pondered in all sorts of places in RMweb. There's been some mention in the Imaginary Locomotives forum, and of how Churchward might have horrified Edwardian opinion by even further adoption of American principles with regard to retention of the Broad gauge and locomotives to the pattern of a Pennsylvania K-4.

 

Well, I did say it was in "Imaginary Locomotives"...

 

[Hroth]

On 27/08/2021 at 23:26, Donw said:

I believe ladies have a thicker layer of body fat than men. However I suggest you do not mention that to your wife when you are feeling the cold and she isn't.

 

Don

 

On 28/08/2021 at 07:10, Nearholmer said:

They are also, on average, smaller than men, giving a higher surface area to volume ratio, which causes greater loss of heat, which is probably of greater significance unless the body fat becomes ….,, er ..,,,,,,,significant.

 

On 28/08/2021 at 07:25, Donw said:

With a complex body shape that may not be true longer arms and legs on a man may actually increase the ratio of surface area. It also depends on where the fat is held. I probably should have stated a thicker layer of fat just under the skin on women.

 

Don

 

12 hours ago, figworthy said:

 

Many years, I was sailing in the depths of winter.  Being a wimp, I was wearing a dry suit.  My crew was one of the ladies from the club, who was wearing a wetsuit.  I asked her if she would be warm enough, to which she replied that she would be fine as she had her personal layer of blubber.

 

Adrian 

 

Yes.  A dangerous subject to broach with ladies about.  Just stick to "Yes, your bum looks good in that" and you should be safe...

 

But, sticking my neck out, I've heard that the reason for the extra body fat is purely biological, it provides a readily available buffer of energy for the body to access during pregnancy. No need to "eat for two", its the P Plan diet!

 

 

 

[Regularity]

34 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Just stick to "Yes, your bum looks good in that" and you should be safe...

A colleague once remarked, “No, that dress doesn’t make your bum big: it’s the cakes that do that.” Although when challenged about this, he admitted to having wanted to say it, but self-preservation had intervened…

[Compound2632]

Try: "It wasn't your bum I was looking at"...

 

[I accept no liability for any consequential reputational or physical damage incurred.]

Edited August 29, 2021 by Compound2632

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Try: "It wasn't your bum I was looking at"...

 

[I accept no liability for any consequential reputational or physical damage incurred.]

Or try, “No, I wasn’t looking at her bum. And even if I was, it was because I was puzzled by something so badly shaped in this instance.”

The precise amount of damage (reputational or physical) will depend on the strength of your relationship with your partner, her tolerance… … and how quickly you can get out of range.

[Compound2632]

27 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Or try, “No, I wasn’t looking at her bum.

 

Ah, you've interpreted my remark otherwise than as intended, as is your prerogative. I was not suggesting that the remark be made with reference to the posterior of another female but rather with reference to an alternative part of the spouse's anatomy.

[Regularity]

4 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Ah, you've interpreted my remark otherwise than as intended, as is your prerogative. I was not suggesting that the remark be made with reference to the posterior of another female but rather with reference to an alternative part of the spouse's anatomy.

I wasn’t interpreting your remark, so much as quoting a mistake I made 36 years ago…

[Edwardian]

Work in progress ....

 

 

 

I'm really making an effort to break the back of the goods stock with the revenue earning stock of the WNR, excluding livestock and minerals for the present, tackled en masse. It helps that I am basing the WNR stock on a line of relatively cheap and simple/quick to build kits (Cambrian Models' Gloucester Railway Carriage & Wagon Co. designs). One of my few wise decisions, I feel!

 

There will be detailing to do, but, so far, front to rear:

• Pair of single bolsters from cut-down Gloucester frames; 2-plank drop-sides (Cambrian Rys bodies on 15' Gloucester frames);
• Gloucester 1-plank, with work commenced on a second;
• 4-planks, using scratch-built bodies on 15' Gloucester frames.  The first of the WN's "high capacity" designs. This is a deliberate parallel of GE development, from un-diagrammed 4-planks to Dia.16 5-planks;
• 2 rows of Gloucester 5-planks - the most prevalent WN design and representing its equivalent of the GE Diagram 16.  I have decided that Aching Constable will stick to wooden underframes, unlike the GE under Holden's direction;
• The first of the WNR's new "high-sided" opens, using a Gloucester 6 1/2 plank kit. These, I feel are probably built from, say, 1903-4, and I have a feeling that part-way through the first Lot the WN's wagon livery might change. 
• Covered wagons. These are all to be based on 16' Gloucester underframes.  To the left, the newer design, which is, of course, the old Triang tooling.  The older outside frame ones to the right are being adapted from Linny's 'condensed milk' van.

Linny, once upon a time, cut 5 of these for me. Reckoning that one would, indeed, become a condensed milk van for the WN, I thought to modify the others as WN covered wagons, having assessed that this would actually prove less of a faff than modifying the Triang-Hornby H&B van bodies. The door bracing gives them another nice nod to Holden and the GE wagons.  

 

Linny's condensed milk van, a WN version will appear before too long:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Regularity]

25 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

condensed milk van

Please clarify: a milk van which has been shortened, or a van for condensed milk?

[Edwardian]

24 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Please clarify: a milk van which has been shortened, or a van for condensed milk?

 

The situation is best clarified in the context of the butter van.

[Nearholmer]

Gee! Or, should I say ghee! The jokes get worse.

 

I think I named the condensed milk van, and the ambiguity was intentional. 
 

Here are mine, which have spent the entire pandemic resting. Maybe when it’s truly over, I’ll celebrate by finishing them.

 

 

[Regularity]

30 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Gee! Or, should I say ghee! The jokes get worse.

Not worse, just more cheesy…

[Edwardian]

34 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Gee! Or, should I say ghee! The jokes get worse.

 

I think I named the condensed milk van, and the ambiguity was intentional. 
 

Here are mine, which have spent the entire pandemic resting. Maybe when it’s truly over, I’ll celebrate by finishing them.

 

 

 

Yes, indeed, Kevin, I think you did coin the nomenclature.

 

Linny, as I recall, had the GWR 4 and 6-wheel siphons in mind, and, IIRC, there was a similar vehicle of the North Western Region that Daisy the Diesel Railcar disliked to pull that they might also have had in mind. Linny's design was, IIRC, even shorter than the GW 4-wheel variety of the 1870s, hence condensed, which, of course, is droll in the context of a milk wagon. 

 

Could there be a wagon conveying condensed milk on CA?  Well, yes. As I understand it, the years 1866-1899 were something of a condensed milk boom in Europe and for Britain and her Empire. It is conceivable, though not particularly likely, that a condensing factory could exist on the WN network; I'm not sure Norfolk was an especially likely location.

 

Condensed milk, by its nature, was not a perishable good, and would not need a slatted van fitted for passenger trains; rather, it would surely form part of general merchandise traffic. Milk incoming to a condensing plant, of course, would be perishable. 

 

Anyway, it seemed to me that the WN could happily have a milk van and that it could adopt the slatted type beloved of the GWR; if the GW could have 'brown vehicles', the WN should have its 'green vehicles'!

 

Because, IIRC, there was GW inspiration for Linny's design, it has very Swindonesque diagonal door braces.  This commended the design for adaptation to a covered general merchandise wagon. As I say, I think that feature, found also on the GE's Holden outside frame vans, adds to the impression of the WN looking over its shoulder at GE wagon practice as it evolves its own. 

 

And, of course, what sensible modeller could resist the prospect of cross X-bracing on an o/s frame covered wagon?