Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

There are,indeed, terminals on the sides, labelled at the front:

[Guy Rixon]

OK, so possibly it was the old Triang controllers that had the three sets of sockets at the back. On this one, it looks like the side sockets are the ones for connecting to auxiliary controllers. That's much less easy to mix up and a distinct improvement. 

 

I distinctly remember connecting the track to the uncontrolled DC output and shrieking in panic when the loco ran out of control. I was five at the time.

[Regularity]

Back to rolling stock and 6 wheeled coaches:

https://highlandmiscellany.com/2018/02/20/sliding-axles/

[Compound2632]

There are,indeed, terminals on the sides, labelled at the front:

 

There were add-on controller units that plugged into the uncontrolled 12V DC by means of brass pins and then had a further uncontrolled 12V DC output so you could line them up - I think I had a couple of the add-on units. These days I've advanced to the sophistication of the Bachmann train set controllers!

[Donw]

When doing wiring on exchanges I learnt to leave a small loop on each joint of course you were expected to get each loop the same size the cables were laced together and the wires coming out of the cable would be laced up as the fanned out to keep them neat and tidy. Going into an exchange some years later I was amazed to see they no longer laced all the cables up instead there was a metal grid across the top of the equipment racks and the wires were haphazzedly laid across. Makes sense really because although the small loops were handy in case you needed to remake a connection. I cannot remember ever unlacing a cable when there were changes usually it would have disturbed others so it was cut and a new one ran in. Which also meant you could leave things running on the old equipment while wiring up the new simplifying changeover.

     Great use was made in telephony of having equipment or external cables terminated on the blocks of tags. Connections between them were made by jumper wires which gave great flexiblility. So the wire from you house would go to a tag block in one of those green roadside cabinets. It would then be jumpered across to a tag connected to a cable wire going the the exchange. At the exchange the wire in the cable would be jumpered to the equipment. So should you move and wish to keep your number one of the jumpers could be changed (these days of course it can often just be a software change). 

I find it worth while using terminal blocks to provide some of the same flexibility in layout wiring. These days I recommend bringing wires out to terminal strips which avoids trying to sort out problems underneath a layout.

 

Don

[St Enodoc]

A thought about the old H&M Duette: from memory, it has several sets of terminals at the back and not all are good for connecting to the track.

 

On each side there should be a pair of terminals labeled "controlled DC" or similar. These are the ones that drive the trains in response to the settings of the control-knob settings. Each pair of terminals relates to the controller on that side of the unit and the two pairs should not be connected together.

 

There are also, IIRC, two pairs of terminals in the centre, one labeled "uncontrolled DC" and one "uncontrolled AC". Neither of these should be connected to the track: both were intended for feeding other kinds of controller that lacked the ability to consume mains electricity. The uncontrolled DC terminals give a constant ~12V and the others I think give alternating current at ~16V. The constant 12V will, of course, make the trains go very fast and ignore the control knobs. The AC output would wreck the motors fairly quickly. Neither of these outputs are likely to be of use at CA.

 

(This is ovosuction 101 for mature students, of course. I write this only to dispel doubt for beginners in electrics.)

 

You have Amazed Me; I wasn't aware of any of this.

 

I'll go and have a look ...

Have another look at item 3 in my post #8068.

[Les le Breton]

Hi Edwardian, you have my deepest sympathy for your current predicament, I have populated that daunting place myself, as you may have noticed on my own RMweb posts. The way I approached it was as follows:-

• I used the Any Rail program to get a clear picture of the track. Your layout is more prototypical than my own but, to understand what the wiring needs you don’t have to map the track accurately, but show all of the turnouts and the track they connect, rather like a signal box’s mimic diagram.
• The simplified but accurate map should be saved and then transposed into a j.peg, I use a screen shot to achieve this, there are probably more technical ways, but it works for me.
• The j.peg created can then be opened with a painting program, I use paint net but there are others to use.
• What you have now is a canvas to add details onto the diagram.
• Decide which colour cables are to be used only for the track, (Brown and Blue in my case).
• Use the colours of your painting program for the straight track first, I tell myself in this process, that the brown track is nearest the back-scene and the blue is nearest the front of the layout.
• Use a colour to clearly mark track which requires insulation, (I use yellow), starting with the track joint which is at the opposite end of the turnout to the toe, (the end where the frog lives).
• You now need to determine, in a DC analogue layout, where you want your locomotives to be stationary when another loco is moving. Treat each length of track where you want to hold a loco in place, like a hand-brake, (Quoting the blessed Iain Rice,) with insulation of the rails at both ends. [it would be a good idea to only isolate the tracks of one colour only; i.e. only isolate the brown lengths of the hand-braking straight track, this means your isolation switches need only a simple switch.]
• Having dealt with the straight track, and track insulation, inspect the turnouts and colour the rails with a colour which continues naturally from the toe of each turnout.
• Now you are in a position to see where your cables need to be and more importantly what colour they should be, because now you have a colour coded plan, each cable must be connected to a rail of the same colour you have prepared.

I hope the above recipe helps. I have discovered that the process of drawing with paint net helped me to make sense of the wiring.

Good luck with it all.

 

       “The caption as it turned out was ‘Let the train take the strain’ It appeared that Mr. Worde and his wife were very impressed with the toilet facilities.”

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

[Les le Breton]

Hi Edwardian,

        I’ve just followed my recipe and come up with a diagram which might help.

 

 

        Happy electrifying.

 

Edited::  Try and find my accidental miss of a critical insulation!

Edited February 21, 2018 by Les le Breton

[corneliuslundie]

On the more satisfying discussion topic of traffic offering at CA, one question which came into my mind when I was failing to sleep last night was when we started importing large amounts of grain and how that would have been distributed. A bit I do know is that early in the 20th century Spillers had enough traffic in flour and was fed up enough with the charges being made by the railway that they bought a batch of Iron Minks. They soon found that it was not worth it and sold them to the GWR, who in turn sold a batch on to the Rhymney Railway (hence my interest). But in addition, the Barry Railway had a large number of Iron Minks (and the Rhymney had quite a lot) both as far as I am aware to serve traffic emanating from grain warehouses or mills at Cardiff and Barry Docks. Now it may be that grain was also imported elsewhere. A clue is often a large grain warehouse or mill at the docks. And I mean large. So I think that by the time of CA flour might well have been delivered from a convenient port in Iron Minks or equivalent.

Now my rough calculation is that a town of 1000 would use about a ton a week for bread (very, very rough but the right order of magnitude). I don't know the population of CA but you can work out roughly howw much trraffic there would have been. Probably the occasional van once a fortnight or so, unless I have musjudged th size of the town.

Then there is meat. While some would have been produced locally, what types would not have been? That would have come by rail from Smithfield, I suspect. Probably not so much volume as flour as meat was expensive.

And fish the same, though probably from the local port rather than from Billingsgate.

All these traffics are unusual in requiring vans rather than opens, and specialised vans at that (you don't mix fish and other traffic!).

I don't think it was common to use north Norfolk to fatten up store cattle, but it is worth investigating, in which case live beasts could have come from Wales, the West Country etc.

And where did the grain, hops etc come from for the local brewery? If there was no maltings they would have come in by rail from somewhere such as Snape.

It is these commodities which would have provided much of the inward traffic rather than specialist stuff.

And of course what is grown locally needs to be shipped out: sugar beet was a common East Anglian crop but I don't know it that extended to north Norfolk. Mustard has been mentioned previously in jest, but it may well have been grown locally ans shipped to Colmans' factory. I am not sure if it would have needed vans or whether a tarpaulin would have done.

By the way does the railway company have a contract with the Post Office to carry the mail?

At this period a foreign wagon would normally be returned empty as fast as possible to avoid demurrage charges.

Enough as a starting point.

Jonathan

[Compound2632]

They soon found that it was not worth it 

 

... they were not legally entitled to do so.

[Edwardian]

... they were not legally entitled to do so.

 

Yes, we know a case about that don't we boys and girls?

[Guy Rixon]

Would the shipped-in meat have come all the way from London? My gut feeling is that meat not slaughtered locally to CA would come mainly from within the county unless there was an economical case for shipping it long distance. That would mean either that it was much cheaper than local meat - I'm thinking of Irish beef and New Zealand lamb, but the latter may not have been imported in 1905 - or not available locally in quantity - e.g. game from Scottish estates.

 

Irish meat could get to CA via London, because the LNWR ran trains of refrigerator vans from Liverpool to (I think) their Maiden Lane goods-station. How it gets from their to CA probably depends on the size of the order. A whole van-load might have been sent through (although the LNWR would want their specialised van back really promptly). A smaller order might indeed have passed through a wholesale market, although one should consider that case that it was traded at the Metropolitan Cattle Market (in Copenhagen Fields) and never went to Smithfield.

 

Other railways - and interesting refrigerator vans - are available. For meat from Liverpool, pick any of the CCL participants, I guess. The GNR had some particularly tasty vans, with clerestories.

 

I don't know if chilled meat was ever shipped in ordinary vans. Game certainly did travel unrefrigerated as parcels.

[Nearholmer]

I’d be amazed if much if any meat would be imported to CA. A very small slaughter house would be much more likely I think, plus the usual bit of chicken and rabbit pulling by individuals. Even quite tiny places had slaughter houses.

 

The big bulk of imported meat, dead and live, was for urban areas, I think.

 

More like the situation that I saw when we went to Tunisia, where meat was off the hoof and on the slab within an hour, the “slaughter house” being a well-drained yard behind the shop. Cafes had an even more immediate system, whereby a sheep was slaughtered on the porch, left to bleed out, then cooked for lunch on a barbie! No flies on the Tunisians.

[Edwardian]

On the more satisfying discussion topic of traffic offering at CA, one question which came into my mind when I was failing to sleep last night was when we started importing large amounts of grain and how that would have been distributed. A bit I do know is that early in the 20th century Spillers had enough traffic in flour and was fed up enough with the charges being made by the railway that they bought a batch of Iron Minks. They soon found that it was not worth it and sold them to the GWR, who in turn sold a batch on to the Rhymney Railway (hence my interest). But in addition, the Barry Railway had a large number of Iron Minks (and the Rhymney had quite a lot) both as far as I am aware to serve traffic emanating from grain warehouses or mills at Cardiff and Barry Docks. Now it may be that grain was also imported elsewhere. A clue is often a large grain warehouse or mill at the docks. And I mean large. So I think that by the time of CA flour might well have been delivered from a convenient port in Iron Minks or equivalent.

Now my rough calculation is that a town of 1000 would use about a ton a week for bread (very, very rough but the right order of magnitude). I don't know the population of CA but you can work out roughly howw much trraffic there would have been. Probably the occasional van once a fortnight or so, unless I have musjudged th size of the town.

Then there is meat. While some would have been produced locally, what types would not have been? That would have come by rail from Smithfield, I suspect. Probably not so much volume as flour as meat was expensive.

And fish the same, though probably from the local port rather than from Billingsgate.

All these traffics are unusual in requiring vans rather than opens, and specialised vans at that (you don't mix fish and other traffic!).

I don't think it was common to use north Norfolk to fatten up store cattle, but it is worth investigating, in which case live beasts could have come from Wales, the West Country etc.

And where did the grain, hops etc come from for the local brewery? If there was no maltings they would have come in by rail from somewhere such as Snape.

It is these commodities which would have provided much of the inward traffic rather than specialist stuff.

And of course what is grown locally needs to be shipped out: sugar beet was a common East Anglian crop but I don't know it that extended to north Norfolk. Mustard has been mentioned previously in jest, but it may well have been grown locally ans shipped to Colmans' factory. I am not sure if it would have needed vans or whether a tarpaulin would have done.

By the way does the railway company have a contract with the Post Office to carry the mail?

At this period a foreign wagon would normally be returned empty as fast as possible to avoid demurrage charges.

Enough as a starting point.

Jonathan

 

Thank you for that, Jonathan.  It fits in nicely with recent discussions with Andy G concerning livestock traffic, and this sort of discussion will help to plan the wagon fleet, as well as timetabling.

 

To pick up on some of the matters variously considered:

 

Matters are so arranged that all traffic incoming from the harbours at Bishop's Lynn and Wolringham, and all incoming traffic via GER and M&GNJR lines, comes into CA first, regardless of eventual destination.  Actually, some goods traffic from the M&GN can be marshalled at Massingham Magna.

 

All traffic for Achingham, a more substantial town than CA, must start from CA.  Achingham has, inter alia, a market, livestock market, maltings, egg depot, and gasworks.

 

CA has a brewery and an agricultural engineers/foundry. The yard will cater for local coal, lime and feed merchants.

 

Wolfringham is a minor port, but coal is landed there.

 

Bishop's Lynn is a major inland port and will have a lot of incoming trade, including Baltic timber. The port is served by the GE-WN Joint Tramway, and traverses a fruit growing district.

 

Local produce will be largely agricultural, plus agricultural machinery, and will include crops and livestock, milled flour, brewing and malting traffic etc.  It will not include sugar beet, as the widespread cultivation of the crop in eastern England dates from Government supported schemes between the wars.

 

Livestock markets are located at two towns on the WN, Achingham and Birchoverham Market. Any Scottish cattle for fattening could not feasibly arrive via rail bedcause of the length of journey in unfitted Scots cattle wagons, so is assumed to come via sea.

 

More distinctive local produce includes lavender, for Huntley & Palmers "Sandringham Norfolk Lavender Biscuits", which for certain complex legal reasons has to be made at a satellite factory located in Norfolk and served by the WNR, and mustard seed to Coleman's Carrow Works in  Norwich.

 

The (very much) not to scale schematic below should help.

[Nearholmer]

Well, that gives one more clear incoming traffic: iron and steel in whatever form local ironworks took it. And hops, unless they were grown locally. Two incoming traffics: iron and hops. Nobody expects the RENFE good inspectors!

 

And, for the reference of anyone who isn’t watching their son at footy practice: it b****y cold outside this evening.

Edited February 21, 2018 by Nearholmer

[corneliuslundie]

I am surprised at the comment that Spillers could not use their own vehicles, as it is no different from salt wagons and many vans which were owned by private companies, to say nothing of the vast numbers of coal wagons. Indeed, in its early days the Taff Vale company had a fight with a local mine owner who according to the company's Act of Parliament had a right to run his own locomotives on the line - as happened on the coal lines in the north east in early days. The TVR only managed to stop him by claiming that it would be too dangerous on the single line - and buying his locomotive from him.

Another possible traffic I have remembered is rabbits. There is a lovely bit in a GWR WTT from around this time of goods trains which had to have connections held for the rabbit traffic. There is also a reference to certain trains running only in the sausage season, but I'll leave you to work that one out.

I had forgotten that sugar beet is a "modern" crop.

And my wife thinks I underestimated flour use so make that two vans a week for 1000 population, though I agree that a good part of the flour could well have come from local sources. However, at this period that was changing fast.

I'll look up when they invented refrigerated ships, because that made a big dent in the market for home produced meat and I think it was around that time. As was said, though it would have affected urban areas more than rural ones, at least initially.

And how did oranges travel? They have been a popular fruit in the UK for many years, but apart from a few orangeries I would not have thought many were grown here.

I have a feeling that one of the reasons for the depression in farming at that time was the big increase in imported food. The same as fabrics from countries such as India destroyed out home industries.

Jonathan

Jonathan

[Nearholmer]

Interupting this interesting discussion of goods traffic for a minute: would it be acceptable if I was to mention topiary?

 

This postcard print of the Platelayers and Allied Trades Topiary Tournament was found tucked into a copy of the Wapping Liar, left behind on a train at Paltry Circus.

 

Pencilled on the back, in handwriting so small that is quite difficult to make out, it says: ‘Maudie, missing you something terrible, but we are having a splendid time at Castle Acing. We expect to win again this year, but the WNR boys are doing a line of pyramids in baggesens gold, which will give us stiff competion if they cut tightly. Love to the children, all thirteen of the little dears. Your ever sweet Ernest’. The address is somewhere in Poplar, but it’s all smudged by the postmark, date 31st May 1905.

[Clearwater]

On the subject of wiring, for my second go at wiring, I'd brought one of these based on a recommendation I'd seen on here (from Mallard60022 if I recall):

 

https://www.dccconcepts.com/product/high-quality-power-bus-strippers/

 

Made stripping wire, particularly where you want a bare patch in the middle of a wire for example to attach dropper wires, much easier and quicker with less swearing than using a knife to pare away the insulating casing.

 

David

[Edwardian]

On the subject of wiring, for my second go at wiring, I'd brought one of these based on a recommendation I'd seen on here (from Mallard60022 if I recall):

 

https://www.dccconcepts.com/product/high-quality-power-bus-strippers/

 

Made stripping wire, particularly where you want a bare patch in the middle of a wire for example to attach dropper wires, much easier and quicker with less swearing than using a knife to pare away the insulating casing.

 

David

 

That sounds good (looks frightening), but I haven't that kind of budget for a wire stripper.

 

Suggestions, please, for ways of joining wires (as this seems to be necessary).

[Edwardian]

I’d be amazed if much if any meat would be imported to CA. A very small slaughter house would be much more likely I think, plus the usual bit of chicken and rabbit pulling by individuals. Even quite tiny places had slaughter houses.

 

The big bulk of imported meat, dead and live, was for urban areas, I think.

 

More like the situation that I saw when we went to Tunisia, where meat was off the hoof and on the slab within an hour, the “slaughter house” being a well-drained yard behind the shop. Cafes had an even more immediate system, whereby a sheep was slaughtered on the porch, left to bleed out, then cooked for lunch on a barbie! No flies on the Tunisians.

 

 Based upon the village where I grew up, I would expect the butcher to do his own slaughtering.  My father had a certain macabre fascination in sitting on the wall of the butcher's back yard and watching the process conducted in the open.

[Les le Breton]

That sounds good (looks frightening), but I haven't that kind of budget for a wire stripper.

 

Suggestions, please, for ways of joining wires (as this seems to be necessary).

Greetings Edwardian, IMHO stripping mid wire is a pain and adds a chore of insulating a lot of soldered joints. I use tag boards for connecting wire and it is easier to differentiate the different coloured wires. There are plenty of emporiums selling these tag boards.

 

 

They are relatively cheap and useful for tagging other than track wiring; signal controls, level crossings, lighting come to mind. Be sure to use different coloured cables for different classes of use. Another tip is to attach the boards well to your baseboard before diving into the soldering.

 

Happy modelling one and all.

[uax6]

And don't put them underneath the boards... Its so much easier to solder vertically on the board edge than it is to be upside down under the board.

 

Also if you 'loom' your wires into bunches, and run them with markers at each end and keep a record of where they are going it will keep thing easy to trace. For my Exchanges and cable runs around the house I have a card index box file, with cards for each connection, jumper and when any work was done on the selectors. Cheap and easy to do.... (Its an improvement on having to get the tone set out each time I was jumpering up something new! I should have known better, I was an installer for heavens sake and I did records of all new installs, but never quite got round to it at home!)

 

I would extol the virtues of looming with lacing twine, but I fear that is a step too far here...

 

Andy G

[TheQ]

There were maltings in almost  every town  in Norfolk, Kings Lynn's is now a snooker club and Swaffham's is a care Home, I can't find a reference to one in Castle Acre / Rising.

 

These two links give the trades of people in 1883 in Castle Rising / Acre, I doubt there will have been much change by 1903.

http://apling.freeservers.com/Villages/CastleAcre.htm William Bitten, Miller and baker Died 1891

http://apling.freeservers.com/Villages/CastleRising.htm noticably there were Millers powered by water and steam in Castle Rising.

 

A big crop in the west of the county today is potatos as well as grains..

Edited February 22, 2018 by TheQ

[St Enodoc]

Kings Lynn's is now a snooker club and Swaffham's is a care Home

Mis-spent youth and mis-spent old age?

[TheQ]

I’d be amazed if much if any meat would be imported to CA. A very small slaughter house would be much more likely I think, plus the usual bit of chicken and rabbit pulling by individuals. Even quite tiny places had slaughter houses.

 

The big bulk of imported meat, dead and live, was for urban areas, I think.

 

More like the situation that I saw when we went to Tunisia, where meat was off the hoof and on the slab within an hour, the “slaughter house” being a well-drained yard behind the shop. Cafes had an even more immediate system, whereby a sheep was slaughtered on the porch, left to bleed out, then cooked for lunch on a barbie! No flies on the Tunisians.

This was still case in the Hebridies when I first went there 1971, now I belive the cattle and sheep have to be shipped to the mainland for slaughter.