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Great Southern Railway (Fictitious) - Signalling the changes...


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They might improve with some use.  I can predict they would have been packed in their box without seeing the light of day for a very long time.

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They are rather gorgeous, aren't they? I'm going to take them apart in the next few days and give them a really gentle tweak, see if I can get the bells ringing nicely. The clappers go well enough, so I wonder if the bell retaining nut might want adjusting. 

 

Last night, I availed myself of a friend with a car to move the J71 to the Hacklab. A lot of impressed hacklabbers have poked at it and given useful advice. It appears that the cab and tanks have been assembled from tinplate, soldered together with ordinary 60/40 solder. Unfortunately, some of the tinplate is rusting through the plating, especially at some of the failing solder joints.

 

Some more painting has taken place too, although the weather here has been so hot that the paint was drying on the brush! I had to regularly add thinners just to be able to get a smooth coat of enamel paint on, and I'm used to working with acrylics. Most disconcerting. 

 

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Honestly, the neds (local slang, roughly equivalent to chavs etc) around here will nick the wheels off anything!

 

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The J71 is currently up on bricks, as it's the easiest way to access bits of it for cleaning and to spot the missing parts...

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That's enough deconstruction for today, I think. We've managed to get the cylinder block out, emptied it of the stones rattling around inside it (apparently the pet birds belonging to the loco's owner used to drop ballast down the chimney!) and hooked it up to an air compressor. A little bit of manual wiggling of the valves and both pistons move smoothly by themselves under pressure. Interesting...

Also, a friend with more knowledge of live steam than me had a look at the boiler. He says it looks like a pressure vessel, riveted together, lagged (with wood, under the boiler cladding) and a big, chunky copper firebox. Curious, given the cab has been assembled with 60/40 solder, and the tanks have no bottoms, so wouldn't hold any water. There are threaded fittings which look as though they would take plumbing from the cylinders, and a threaded fitting on the backhead below the regulator handle. I didn't think the handle was attached to anything, but it can be pulled on and springs back into place. Turning it normally is smooth and free.

Curiouser and curiouser!

 

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Whoops... I popped into the local model shop this afternoon to pick up some more Plastic Weld, as I've finally run out. I made the terrible mistake of looking in the second-hand cabinet. 

 

£100 for a DCC sound-fitted C class in simplified Wainwright livery? Given the £10 gift voucher I received for my birthday and the fact that the chip and speaker have already been sold for £50, that brings the effective cost of the loco down to £40. Not too bad. Granted, it's unboxed and missing the vac pipes and a handrail knob, but those are all easy fixes, and she runs nicely... 

 

Ooops. 

 

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Probably a good thing I've been listing some of my other stock on eBay... 

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26 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

The fully-lined one is about to be re-released

 

Ooh, if only I had any savings! Trying to find a house has really messed up my finances.

 

On an entirely unrelated note, how long can a human survive without food?

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2 minutes ago, TurboSnail said:

 

Ooh, if only I had any savings! Trying to find a house has really messed up my finances.

 

On an entirely unrelated note, how long can a human survive without food?

 

It was on the Bachmann stand at York this April.  Guy Rixon and I observing ...

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Well, while I'm unemployed, I might as well make the most of my free time... I dug out an old kit that I'd been intending to build for a while - a Wills Saxby & Farmer signal box. Being (I believe?) an 1880s design, it suits my idea of Linton being resignalled circa 1890-2 (just after the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 mandated lock, block and brake) quite well. I'll need to build up the running signals to resemble Saxby & Farmer products, to go with the 'box, but I feel it makes sense for a small railway company to call in a signalling contractor rather than design and manufacture their own.

 

Having mostly seen these kits built in green and cream, it does look a little odd in GSR blue and cream, but I'm sure it'll bed in nicely with the blue rolling stock and other buildings once they come to fruition. It has been a long time since I've built anything for the layout, and this signal box will hopefully eventually have lighting (albeit quite dim, given the 'box would most likely have had a single paraffin lamp hanging from the ceiling, possibly with a candle for filling out the train register?), so a full interior is being provided, from the Ratio range. Some parts of this kit have been discarded as too modern (the anglepoise lamp on the desk, for example!).

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The front wall has not yet been attached, to allow easy access to the interior, and I'm pondering a few touches to make the 'box more homely. I can't get away with a wireless, or anything electronic. What would a signalman do with his spare time in the Edwardian period?

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2 hours ago, Skinnylinny said:

What would a signalman do with his spare time in the Edwardian period?

Some of them tended a small allotment adjacent to the box, or worked on the flower beds on the platform.  You could have a few potted plants around, both inside and around the box.

 

Jim

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In some of the more rural locations all sorts of things went on to fill the time between trains. The Dahlia beds tended by the Baynards signalman were notorious, and I've also heard of signalmen acting as barbers and bicycle repairmen! As Jim says, allotmenting was very common (we've actually got a small allotment behind Alresford box, I'll try to get a photo next time I'm there...)

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I was going to mention the Alresford plot. I recall Adrian Vaughan mentioning that one of the Challow signalmen did barbering. And Baynards' Dahlias were legendary!!!

 

Don't mention Bicycle Repairmen... ;)

 

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