Strand and its trains

[Guy Rixon]

Plan A for the track at Strand was to use functional chairs on plastic sleepers, except for the inset track in the lower yard which can be done with rails soldered directly to copper-clad sleepers or bases. Recent events at Castle Aching, and the supply situation for track parts, suggest that I might be better off with ply sleepers and rails soldered to rivets, which I can get from S4 Society stores. This leaves the question of cosmetic chairs. Apart from the Masokits ones, which are for copper-clad sleepers, does anybody sell these any more?  

[Orion]

Masokits chairs aren't really suitable for cosmetic purposes. They are full chairs, including the base to solder the rail onto. They come in two halves, but a lot of trimming would need to be done to each half chair to get them to fit around rivets. It would be a real pain to do.

[Guy Rixon]

Thanks Orion, that's useful information. I could, I suppose, build everything with copperclad sleepers and Masokits chairs, but it doesn't sound very tweakable. The attraction of the riveted track is that it can be mended if found out of alignment.

 

I think I shall investigate cosmetic half-chairs produced by printing.

[Orion]

Thanks Orion, that's useful information. I could, I suppose, build everything with copperclad sleepers and Masokits chairs, but it doesn't sound very tweakable. The attraction of the riveted track is that it can be mended if found out of alignment.

 

I think I shall investigate cosmetic half-chairs produced by printing.

Masokits chairs can be tweaked relatively easily with a soldering iron. In combination with copper clad sleepers they make bombproof track that won't move at all once it is laid properly. Such a pain to fold up the chairs though!

[DIW]

... Recent events at Castle Aching ....

 

I'm still months behind reading up on the Castle Aching narrative. I just started on January 2018 this week.....

[Edwardian]

 

 

I think I shall investigate cosmetic half-chairs produced by printing.

 

Interesting!

 

 

I'm still months behind reading up on the Castle Aching narrative. I just started on January 2018 this week.....

 

You have my profound sympathy! 

[wagonman]

Thanks Orion, that's useful information. I could, I suppose, build everything with copperclad sleepers and Masokits chairs, but it doesn't sound very tweakable. The attraction of the riveted track is that it can be mended if found out of alignment.

 

I think I shall investigate cosmetic half-chairs produced by printing.

 

 

The C&L/Exactoscale functional chairs do have a rivet shaped hole in the base – it should be fairly simple to cut them in half and slip them round the rivets – I'd have thought (not actually having done it, of course).

[Jol Wilkinson]

The C&L/Exactoscale functional chairs do have a rivet shaped hole in the base – it should be fairly simple to cut them in half and slip them round the rivets – I'd have thought (not actually having done it, of course).

 

Unfortunately the hole tends be a bit on the small side and you also have to get the rivet holes dead centre under the rail when you punch it out (it may not be a problem with pre-punched sleepers)

[Guy Rixon]

Some significant progress with the track plan. I have been struggling for ages with how to arrange the North throat to allow all the necessary moves while staying within a reasonable length and accommodating the bank just outside the station. It's really hard to fit in the connections for both the goods and the passenger movements. Realistically, if I haven't cracked it by now it's not happening.

 

The solution is to move the access to the carriage and exchange sidings into the next section north of the station, and hence off the end of the layout. It's a really short section and the home signals covering the entrance to the sidings will be on the end of the layout; there's still a visible indication that movements northward are to sidings and not on up the main line.

 

Strand now has three signal boxes. Strand A box is at the south end, just before the river bridge. B box controls the north throat, is on the layout and controls almost all the points and signals in the modelled area. C box is at the bottom of the bank down from the station and controls entry to the sidings. The next box north is Seven Dials, which is where the Down Relief line starts.

 

Partial signal diagrams follow. I haven't shown all the shunt signals, or all the sidings.

 

 

A box is simple. B box, and its relationship with C box, is a bit complicated. First off, all moves between B and C boxes are running moves, not shunts. Brake vans are required (or vacuum brakes active on fitted stock). Trains moving to sidings from Up Loop, Platform 1 or Platform 2 go by the Up Main. Trains moving from Platform 3 are allowed to make a wrong-road movement (hence the bow-tie signal-arms) and may propel to the sidings. Through coaches arriving in Platform 3 can be added to a train in Platform 2 by backing out onto the Down Main and then coming back under control of the calling-on arms.

 

There's no way to reverse a train from the Up Relief, which is where most of the freights appear on to the Up Main, and this may be a problem. The single slip in the Up Main should possibly become a double slip to allow this. I f that be done, then the wrong-road arrangements on the Down Relief are just a convenience to keep freight shunts clear of the passenger lines.

 

 

C box is a bit sketchy as it's off-stage. Only its home signals appear on the layout, the lead into the sidings being just beyond the scenic break.

 

Seven Dials is a very simple box. The only point of note is that the Down Relief starts here and that there's  a cross-over to allow a banking engine to get behind a freight  that needs help up the bank.

[Compound2632]

Looking interesting. Strand B Box, points 7 and FPL 8 - are these really necessary? It seems to me they introduce and unnecessary facing point (in a slip too). Presumably the object is to give access to the turntable, but this could be done by setting back onto the up loop. Even better might be to keep 7 as a single slip, but trailing from the down main into the up main. With points 11, the slip on the down main, this makes a crossover, obviating the need for crossover 14. The turntable could be accessed directly off this ladder of slips, as at Hawes Junction.

[Guy Rixon]

Looking interesting. Strand B Box, points 7 and FPL 8 - are these really necessary? It seems to me they introduce and unnecessary facing point (in a slip too). Presumably the object is to give access to the turntable, but this could be done by setting back onto the up loop. Even better might be to keep 7 as a single slip, but trailing from the down main into the up main. With points 11, the slip on the down main, this makes a crossover, obviating the need for crossover 14. The turntable could be accessed directly off this ladder of slips, as at Hawes Junction.

 

Hi Stephen, thanks for giving the matter thought. As ever, all the details are trade-offs between number of turnouts and operating efficiency. The fact that the reasons for the extra points is not obvious suggests that the layout might be OK at full size but unconvincing as a model, so I may rework again. However...

 

The facing lead into Platform 1 is there to speed up the handling of through trains and portions. They have to be handled in Platform 1 because there is no other north-bound platform accessible from the south. The SECR train-engine needs to get off the train and out of the way so that a LNWR engine can take forward the through coaches. Then the Strand pilot has to move the rest of the train to the carriage sidings. This needs to be done as quickly as possible to free the layout for other trains, so facing connections help, and were not unknown; there were facing connections to engine spurs at Herne Hill, for example.

 

Access to the Up Main from the Loop is uncertain. What happens if there's a freight sitting in the loop, drawn up to the starting signal when engines have to be changed in Platform 1? Another trailing crossover from the loop to the Up Main would sort this, but (a) there is grade separation between that end of the loop and the Main (which drops at 1 in 50) and (b) the crossover would be in mid section. I've tried to avoid shunt moves local to the station where B box has to get the move accepted by C box.Perhaps a shunt-ahead signal?

 

If the slip in the Up Main becomes a double slip, then crossover 14 is probably redundant. It does allow a train reversing in Platform 2 to depart north while the locos are waltzing in Platform 1, but maybe that's not useful enough to justify the extra P&C work and levers.

 

Where I've definitely gone wrong is down at C box. A couple of pages back Kevin left the door open and the MDR got in, so we have a double junction with a line rising from the infernal regions. I'd completely forgotten this. I'll need to go back to the map and see if this junction needs its own signal box or whether it's close enough to the entrance of the carriage sidings that C box can work it.

 

Also (*palms face*) the slotting. OMG the slotting.  I've just realised that the Up home signal at C box may be within the clearing point for the Up outer home at A box. Any north-bound passenger movement though the station is going to stitch up all three boxes and probably the MDR junction as well.  OK, off to measure things on the map. More later.

[Guy Rixon]

Clearing points: I checked the map. It's tricky but not disastrous.

 

Assume that B box's Up starter is on the north end of Platform 1 which is a couple of yards north of the Strand. Assume that C box's Up home is just on the end of the scenic part of the layout, which is about 5 feet of model beyond the platform end, and therefore just north of Chandos Street. We (I) want B box to be able to accept an Up train without it being offered forward to C box, meaning that A box's outer home has to be at least 440 yards from Chandos Street. This puts the signal on the river bridge, near the north embankment. That's OK: the bridge, which is level, is longer than a train, so anything held at the outer home will be clear of Waterloo Junction and will be restarting on the level.

 

However, IIUC, for A box to accept any up train it has also to be accepted by B box, because B's starters are well within the clearing point of A's home. Also IIUC, this applies to any Up train approaching A box, even if A's homes and distant are on. Therefore, no train can leave Platform 2 going north while something is approaching A box; and conversely, A box cannot accept an Up train while B box has a train going north, until the latter train reaches C box. This could have a huge effect on line capacity, and I suspect that that there must be a "section clear but clearing point occupied" warning-arrangement between Waterloo Junction and A box.

 

I have also established that if Seven Dials box is at the MDR junction, then it's a bit too far up the line to work the points for the carriage sidings, so Strand C box is still needed. Considering clearing points, Strand C will have to get any up train not to the sidings accepted by Seven Dials before accepting it from B box.

 

And the slotting will still be extensive...

[Guy Rixon]

Last week's "completed" model is the start of the Met. Railway goods-train (or rather the end, since the first shall indisputedly be last).

 

It's built from a South Eastern Finecast kit and represents the first of the batch of 12-ton vans built by Cravens in 1896. I've replaced the rigid suspension with Bedfords sprung axleguards and, in an attempt to save weight, replaced the cast roof with one rolled from brass sheet. The brake shoes and hangars in the kit resisted adaptation to P4 (they want to be spaced for 00) so I replaced them with parts from a Mainly Trains fret of GWR fitted-wagon gear. The body colour is Tamiya "Dark Sea Grey", the company initials and van number are by POWsides and the tare weight uses numbers from the HMRS GWR-goods sheet.

 

"Completed" is relative, of course. Yes, the couplings are missing, waiting for me to commit to an auto-coupling system. There are no lamp irons and I should add some if I can find out where they were mounted on this kind of van.

 

Now I "just" need to finish the locomotive and build some revenue wagons for the train.

[Guy Rixon]

Next up, more fruit vans.

 

These are MR vans to D376. That is, they are the short-but-tall vans that followed the numerous short-and-squat D375 vans and were discontinued in favour of the long-and-tall D361/D364 variant. The MR only ever built 6 of D376. C.f. Compound's build of D361/D364 on another thread.

 

The basis is the Slaters kit for the unventilated vans (not the one for the 16'6" fruit-van, which makes the later diagrams), and I am adding louvres; one van side left to do. The louvres are from 0.020" x 0.040" plastic strip which is overscale but more likely to stay straight than 0.010" x 0.040". I find that I can do a louvre panel in about 10 minutes without rushing.

 

In the context of Strand, these MR vans can arrive in a number of ways. They can come from the north in a Metropolitan train, passing from the MR to the Met at Finsbury. They can come from the south as a SECR trip from the sorting sidings at Herne Hill, having been dropped there by a cross-London goods from the MR; they can also come back from Hither Green, but that is slightly less likely at the period of the layout. Finally, they can possibly come from the south as an MR trip, complete with shiny red engine, the train being reversed at Blackfriars goods onto the SER. The latter route would be the service for really high-priority goods and might include passenger fruit-vans, of which I have two (D418) part-built.

[drduncan]

Guy,

Any updates?

Duncan

[Guy Rixon]

Well...

 

I redrafted the signals plan assuming that the leads into the carriage sidings are worked by B box. This is just about feasible if B box is out at the platform ends, and if the points for the sidings are right on the end of the layout. That eliminates C box and makes things simpler, at the expense of coupling the station working with goings on at the Seven Dials junction. I'm still not sure which arrangement is better. I need to work this out before building as it affects the station point-work somewhat.

 

The bodies of MR fruit vans got assembled and the solebars fettled, but the running gear is yet to be built. Slaters have made their usual mess of the fit here and I list some corrections if anybody want to build these van kits (with or without louvres).

 

1. The floor, which fits into slots in the ends, is too long. It needs to be reduced at each end until the ribs on the floor butt against the insides of the ends. That done, the van comes out the right length. The floor can be fitted upside down to give a flat surface on which to mount the new chassis. 

 

2. The floor is probably slightly too wide. I had to reduce it to get the sides to fit properly. The small, unavoidable error in the alignment of sides and ends makes this worse. Shaving down the floor so that it is slightly narrower at the ends is a help.

 

3. The sides don't fit cleanly. The notches at the ends of the crib rail need to be made longer to clear the headstocks. (If the over-length floor is used, then the notches clear the headstocks as moulded, but then the mitres don't work and the van is too long overall.)

 

4. The solebars, as ever, are much too tall. Since the floor height is fixed by the slots in the ends, the solebars have to be reduced by filing.

 

5. The solebars are too long for the corrected length of the van. I filed them down at the ends.

 

6. The solebars are too thick, assuming that the MR was using normal 5" timber here. They are about 1.8mm thick as moulded (measuring the timber and not the simulated ironwork) and need to be 1.6mm.

 

I'm going to use Bill-Bedford etches for the axleguards and brakes, so I cut away the moulded axleguards and V hangers.

 

Model making has halted for the summer due to work problems and the presence of my grandson in the house. He likes trains, but hasn't even noticed the cabinets of models in the living room, possibly because the engines don't have faces. Maybe next year... 

[Guy Rixon]

Having returned from the Utmost West, I did a little more on the MR vans.

 

This is one of the chassis. The axleguards and brakes are Bedford products. Nothing special about that ... but look at what the etched bits are stuck to. That's a printed base-plate that aligns the etches exactly in all three planes. It eliminates 20 minutes of cussing and fretting on every wagon. Getting the brake assembly to fit is still tricky,  but at least the wheels go into the right positions.

 

In other news, it looks like Tamiya "light sea grey" might be a good match for MR wagon grey. It's a bluer/greener grey than most of the paints I've found and much closer to the Precision Paints rendition. More on this when the world dries out enough for safe spraying. 

Edited September 8, 2018 by Guy Rixon

[Compound2632]

In other news, it looks like Tamiya "light sea grey" might be a good match for MR wagon grey. It's a bluer/greener grey than most of the paints I've found and much closer to the Precision Paints rendition. More on this when the world dries out enough for safe spraying. 

 

I have zero confidence in the green sludge Precision pass off as MR wagon grey. Maybe they intend it to be the "smudge" used on repaired wagons after the Great War - using up surplus battleship paint. For MR wagon grey I use precision LMS wagon grey, which looks right to me - the two greys are identical as there was no change in specification at the grouping. Of course, this is only the good colour for freshly painted wagons - they should darken with age - but the chemistry says, become blacker - no blue!

[Guy Rixon]

This is what came out. It's a very light coat of "light sea grey" over a coat of unconvincing, hand-mixed, light grey, which is in turn on Tamiya grey primer.

 

Leaving aside the bad finish (the airbrush had an off moment), the dratted dog-hair that got into the paint while it was drying and the general paucity of the build quality, how far off is this? if the greenish-grey is a post-WWI thing I'll not do it for later models (only two MR wagons to go anyway), but I'm inclined to keep this for the current vans, unless it looks obviously wrong to Those Who Know. It's going to get quite heavily weathered anyway.

[Andy Hayter]

Surely the thing about pre-grouping colours is that nobody knows but everyone has an opinion - or two.

 

Even when colour swatches have been taken by carefully stripping back overpainted layers, there will always be the questions of atmospheric weathering before the next coat was applied, as well as possible chemical interaction with the coat placed above.

[Compound2632]

It looks too blue to me but there's no guarantee I'm seeing the colour you're seeing...

 

It's also a question of context - you say you won't have many Midland wagons so it's as much a question of relative colour - are they lighter grey than your LNWR wagons?

 

Andy Hayter is right that it's mostly opinion but to my mind there is some basis in fact. The composition of the Midland's wagon paint is known: 112 lb of white lead to 4 lb black, along with quantities of oils, turps and "dryers" [G. Dow, Midland Style (HMRS, 1975) p. 131]. The inclusion of various oils suggests maybe a hint of yellow rather than blue but essentially a mixture grey composed of white and black alone. Pace Andy, this was the only paint applied - no varnish or other protective layer; the choice of white lead as the basic pigment was probably because of its hydrophobic property, preventing the woodwork from decay. (The metal components may have been painted black - also as an anti-corrosion measure - before the wagon was assembled.) Then there's the known chemistry: white lead reacting with hydrogen sulphide (present as an atmospheric pollutant from the burning of coal) produces lead sulphide, which is black - resulting in the gradual darkening of the grey with time. Since the six D376 vans were built in 1892, I would imagine they could be quite dark by your date (c. 1905?) although the lettering would still stand out well - the paint used contained oxalic acid, a whitening agent, resistant to chemical weathering.

 

I'm currently building a representative batch of "long" Midland vans - Diagrams 360 - 364 - you're tempting me to have a go at one of these "short" D376 vans, though for "short" vans what I'm patiently waiting for is Bill Bedford's promised "low" vans to D353 and D375 and even the intermediate-height D356, of which there were only 50.

Edited September 8, 2018 by Compound2632

[Guy Rixon]

Stephen, thanks for your input. I do strive to maintain the colour gradation MR < GCR, LNWR < SECR <  GWR. I think I've done it consistently enough to satisfy the principle of least astonishment.

 

My period is summer 1909. There's a chance that vans built in 1892 might be been repainted before then; I don't know the nominal time between repaints for the MR. It would be very convenient if they were shown in their original livery as the later paint-scheme involves numbers on the doors and I don't know the numbers. I think I'll keep the current paint, without body-side lettering, and darken it with oil washes.

[Compound2632]

You have me there. I've no idea what the typical repainting cycle might be. It's unclear when vans started to have their numbers painted on the door but I strongly suspect it was at the same time that they began to be lettered MR in the mid 1890s - for example the ex-works photo of D378 fruit van No. 20639 of 1896 [Midland Wagons plate 198]. Certainly it was standard practice by the time e.g. banana vans were being built in 1905-6. My guess is that vans would have been lettered and numbered quite quickly - without a full repaint. The photographic record is very sparse. The Midland didn't paint numbers on open wagons until 1917; my theory is that vans were more likely to be unloaded at platforms inside goods sheds, where the solebar numberplate would be hard to see.

 

Numbers? So long as you chose a number lower than the total Midland goods stock at the date of building - roughly 100,000 - and that isn't positively known to have been carried by another wagon, you should be OK. On the other hand, a lot of vans were numbered around 30000. 

[Andy Hayter]

The absolute recipe sounds very foolproof but having workied in the plastics industry and produced black materials for the car industry, it is anything but simple.  We had something like 50 shades of black - you would have idntified each as being black in the absence of the others.  But together they were genuinely different shades.

 

So to the simple Midland recipe:

Lead white plus (carbon) black - lead white from which process?  Most start from Gelena - lead sulphide - from a source containg which impurities - silver is common (indeed is sometimes so much as to be economically worth extracting, copper possible as are a whole host of other materials which will impact on the white element.  Carbon black from where?  Gas plants?  Burning of acetylene?  chimney sweeps (possibly not but if so, which coal used - S Wales, S. Yorkshire  and so on.)   

[Compound2632]

The absolute recipe sounds very foolproof but having workied in the plastics industry and produced black materials for the car industry, it is anything but simple.  We had something like 50 shades of black - you would have idntified each as being black in the absence of the others.  But together they were genuinely different shades.

 

So to the simple Midland recipe:

Lead white plus (carbon) black - lead white from which process?  Most start from Gelena - lead sulphide - from a source containg which impurities - silver is common (indeed is sometimes so much as to be economically worth extracting, copper possible as are a whole host of other materials which will impact on the white element.  Carbon black from where?  Gas plants?  Burning of acetylene?  chimney sweeps (possibly not but if so, which coal used - S Wales, S. Yorkshire  and so on.)   

 

Absolutely reasonable questions to which we are unlikely ever to know the answer. However, I stand by my original point that the Precision MR wagon grey is way too far off the spectrum of likelihood.