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Deliberately Old-Fashioned 0 Scale - Chapter 1


Nearholmer
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A picture to prove that, despite me being extra busy with family during the lockdown, trains do still run occasionally.

 

With VE Day behind them, these two Americans are looking forward to becoming plough-shares (in fact, one has already).

 

 

 

 

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Edited by Nearholmer
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13 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

With VE Day behind them, these two Americans are looking forward to becoming plough-shares (in fact, one has already).

I suspect the Kettle is rather glad of it's new ownership, since even for UK service personnel, VE Day wasn't neccesarily going to mean the end of their war - the fight against Japan was looking like being a long & gruelling one, so if the parafin can stayed in US Army ownership, it might well be facing a Far East posting, next!! By the August, of course, things were very different....

 

13 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

despite me being extra busy with family during the lockdown

With you there - it's become quite annoying how the Powers That Be, including the staff of a certain model railway mag and associated forum, think we're all sitting around with b*€€er all to do. :mad: :nono: :banghead:

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1 hour ago, F-UnitMad said:

so if the parafin can stayed in US Army ownership, it might well be facing a Far East posting


Indeed. USATC gathered-up a large proportion of it’s locos, and I presume wagons, and got them ready for Far East deployment. IIRC they prioritised the diesel locos, which were by then well-proven.

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  • 2 weeks later...

That is stunning, and exactly the sort of thing I'd have if I owned a mansion :)

I've always fancied the signaller-training layout in the NRM, the one with BL equipment on the wonderfully ornate dark-wood tables, that's in the archives/stores. Given that area is going to be redeveloped into a kiddies computer room (some twenty years after that became the zeitgiest, good old Science Museum) and the Railway Museum seems to think displaying trains are somehow beneath them now, I'm tempted to offer them a tenner for it. Not sure my family would appreciate me knocking-through downstairs to fit it in though ;)

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If they hide that exhibit in a store, it will be a sad loss. Sure your family can't be persuaded?

 

Last time I went to the NRM, it struck me as a rather uninspiring place for the non-enthusiast, so maybe it does need to "revise its offering". The LT museum at Covent Garden manages to make the history of transport interesting to a very broad audience, so it can be done, even if the result can be a bit nerve-racking for the enthusiast-visitor intent on the finer details of tramcar construction (vast numbers of ten year olds tearing about gathering information and talking at the tops of their voices!).

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A cautionary tale with a happy ending.

 

When I was building the Paltry Circus part of the layout, I used the USA tank as my test loco. At one point I got distracted and managed to send the loco off the end of the layout, which was standing on temporary trestles, hurtling towards the floor. Luckily, it landed on the chair I’d just stood up from, rather than taking the full drop, but the rear of the cab was badly bent, and several more minor points of damage occurred.

 

Well ..... (or similar words) ...... I managed to sort out the worst of the damage to the cab roof there and then, but the cab back sheet was curled over from the base of the windows at a really tight radius, and I couldn’t work out what to do, so it remained like that until yesterday (that is about two and a half years).

 

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Last night, I disassembled the cab from the rest of the loco, an apparently difficult job until I suddenly spotted how it was fitted together, at which point it became simple, and “had a go at it”. Some of it I could do using pieces of wood as press-tools, but in the end most of it I did by working it with my fingers, firmly but gently. The result isn’t perfect, but I now wish I’d taken a ‘before’ photo, because it was very bad, and I’m pretty pleased with the outcome. I still haven’t found a way of fixing the safety valves without wrecking them, so they will probably remain bent forever!

 


 

 

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I sympathize. My Ace M7 took a nose dive onto a concrete floor early last year, bending the footplate and buffer beam. It took me some time to get around to fixing it, and there's still a little curvature to the footplate that I couldn't entirely eliminate.

Gordon

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When my lad was about 5 or 6, we had a "Terminal Velocity onto Concrete" moment....

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The layout of the time had self-isolating points, and no stops at the ends of the boards. Loco was isolated in a siding. Son turns up the controller to full. Tells dad the train isn't moving. Dad changes the point. Loco shoots away in the wrong direction.... :scared:  

As I'd changed the point without checking things properly first, I had to accept most of the blame in the subsequent Enquiry. :fool:

Fortunately it was 'only' an Atlas Plymouth (as opposed to a Heljan Hymek, my other O Scale loco at the time!!), in a bogus livery, and the body was easily replaced - quite possibly by one of you chaps on RMweb!! :sungum:

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Somewhere I have a box which contains the bits of a 14xx. The body was cast resin and broke into pieces on contact with a hard floor.  I suspect most of us have been there at least you have a serviceable vehicle.

 

Don 

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On 20/05/2020 at 11:43, Ben B said:

That is stunning, and exactly the sort of thing I'd have if I owned a mansion :)

I've always fancied the signaller-training layout in the NRM, the one with BL equipment on the wonderfully ornate dark-wood tables, that's in the archives/stores. Given that area is going to be redeveloped into a kiddies computer room (some twenty years after that became the zeitgiest, good old Science Museum) and the Railway Museum seems to think displaying trains are somehow beneath them now, I'm tempted to offer them a tenner for it. Not sure my family would appreciate me knocking-through downstairs to fit it in though ;)


Said layout does in fact get operated for the public (one day a month) when the Museum is open - see https://www.railwaymuseum.org.uk/whats-on/signalling-demo for more details. I made a point of going down to see the operation. In the morning there was a general explanation of block signalling, while in the afternoon they re-enacted the cause of an accident, and explained how it happened in the context of the signalling system. 

I went with my partner, who is a wheelchair user, and we arrived early, in order to guarantee that we'd be able to see the goings-on. One of the volunteers, on hearing we'd come down from Scotland specifically to see the model railway in question, invited us behind the barriers to get a better look. The trains used for operating are not the originals (although there are still some of those on display) but it's a beautiful model throughout! Apologies for the imperfect photos, my hands shake a bit!

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I love the fact they have tiny little flags at each box - of course, it's an important bit of signalling but still!

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Since my toy train set entered its early-BR phase, something has been bugging me: where is it?

 

Birlstone and Paltry Circus are particular places, Sussex/Kent border and inner East London respectively, and they certainly don't fit for the BR trains, which have an ex-LMS bias, so I've decided to follow the age-old tradition and tinker with the railway history of Buckingham, making the town itself a bit bigger than it really was in the 'fifties in the process, and to give Northampton yet another station to go with the three it had.

 

New map of pre-grouping railway services.


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A BR(M) train arrives from Northampton (Derngate) having travelled via Bletchley, while a BR(W) train waits to make the onward connection via the ex-GWR line to Banbury, and onwards to Leamington and Birmingham (Moor Street).


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The BR(E) shuttle departing for Aylesbury (the GC, then the LNER, worked the local trains on the Aylesbury & Buckingham in reality).
 

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The only through train to London is a morning business service to Marylebone, which is no more than two extra coaches added to the shuttle and attached at Aylesbury to a a service from Banbury via the GC route. The reverse happens in the evening.

 

We'll get to Northampton (Derngate) another time (you won't be surprised to learn that it looks a lot like Paltry Circus).

 

This all makes a big difference to my tiny mind!

 

 

 

 

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The BR phase will doubtless end on a whim at some point, and the southern trains will certainly come out again, but until then, I shall adopt the avatar of Misanthropic Midland Maurice, the sort of railway servant who delights in petty rules and goes out of his way to make things difficult for colleagues and customers alike.

 

 

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I simply googled for a picture of a grumpy old man, and chose one that looked (a) suitable, and (b) wasn't a photo of a real person. I think he is statuette of some sort, so presumably a caricature of somebody, or an archetype, who was once well-known.

 

Do tell.

 

Alfred Hitchcock?

 

Or, do you mean who MMM is based on? Several very similar people.

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2 hours ago, Metropolitan H said:

Where has the extra "a" in "Derngate" come from?

 

Good question that, and one to which I do not know the answer. Its gone now.

 

The mythical station of Northampton (Derngate) is an alternative history version of St John's Street station, on a slightly different site, built to serve the Midland line to Bedford, and latterly used also by the infrequent, and incredibly circuitous trains from Buckingham via Bletchley, Newport Pagnell and Olney.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Northroader said:

I fancy he’s the manager of the old Greyfriars bus station at Northampton.

No, he is nothing like the late and lamented David Howard - who used to be the main man at Northampton Corporation Buses, before he went to Eastbourne and later the Isle of Man - where he also had the Steam Railway, the MER and Snaefell as part of his big box of toys! The new lad is definitely too portly.

 

Regards

Chris H

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