Annie's Virtual Pre-Grouping, Grouping and BR Layouts & Workbench

[Caley Jim]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

What you need is a 100 aker wood all around it, with Heffalump traps, etc.  Occasional traffic might include a van of honey jars...

Nah!  What you need is a deep dark wood with signs saying 'Beware of the Gruffalo and the Big Bad Mouse!'

 

Jim

[Annie]

Breaking News From Lightmoor  Press!

[Edwardian]

32 minutes ago, Annie said:

Yes I was much taken by that great Victorian edifice of a factory and I decided almost immediately that it was going to become the Bluebell Cocoa Works.  One school I attended when I was 12 was right next door to a brewery.  Even now many decades later I cannot abide that particular brand of beer.

 

Well trees do enter into the disguise, but such tricks as slightly raising the level of the landscape around the loop help a lot too.  This is the layout's western loop and at footplate level it's very much out of sight.  I still have yet to remove the two portal tracks as they are no longer needed.

Hm, - hunny honey.  Bee hives were sometimes transported by rail and there were all manner of regulations about how to go about that.  I'm sure that Mr Stephen Lea of this parish would know how it was done.  But honey would be very much a possible produce item for at least one of the farms at this western end of the layout.

 

 

 

Like it.

 

Hundred Acre Wood? Gruffalo?

 

Could we be going in this direction?

 

[Annie]

Oh it would be so delightful to model such a delightful and whimsical railway.  I've been able to locate a second hand copy of 'The Forest of Boland Light Railway' for research purposes in the neighbouring nation of Oz at an affordable price which wasn't an easy thing to do since some vendors were asking utterly frightful prices for this interesting little book.

 

 

 

[Edwardian]

A trestle bridge worthy of the West Norfolk there!

[MikeOxon]

7 hours ago, Annie said:

North eastern loops and sidings in place on the new layout board I fitted into place earlier today.  Still very much WIP at the moment, but my aim is to scenic the new board so it becomes a semi-hidden loop that's disguised by the landscape.  I first tried this out with the western loop sidings and I was surprised at how effective it was,

 

 

Is that spur at the top for sea-dumping of unwanted trains?  Not very 'green'

[MikeOxon]

On 16/09/2021 at 10:49, Annie said:

Yes in my slightly fuzzy brained way that is exactly what I meant.  My sentence structure wasn't the best, but I think you can take it as read that the day I can't pick out an Armstrong Goods from a Dean Goods is the day I'll have myself handed into the rest home.......

It looks like an Armstrong as rebuilt by Dean to me.

[Annie]

26 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

It looks like an Armstrong as rebuilt by Dean to me.

But Armstrong did if first so it's still an Armstrong Goods even if it has been fiddled with.

 

33 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

Is that spur at the top for sea-dumping of unwanted trains?  Not very 'green'

No it's not!

 

[Compound2632]

42 minutes ago, Annie said:

But Armstrong did if first so it's still an Armstrong Goods even if it has been fiddled with.

 

Examples could be multiplied but I draw the line at the description of the Midland's 483 Class superheated 4-4-0s being described as "Johnson" - heaven help us, Wikipedia, an unusually ill-informed article. 

 

 

[Annie]

12 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

- heaven help us, Wikipedia, an unusually ill-informed article. 

The writer more than likely calls Railway Stations 'train stations' as well.

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, Annie said:

The writer more than likely calls Railway Stations 'train stations' as well.

 

Train stationery available here.

[Annie]

Dean did see about the building of the very last and perhaps the best of the Broad Gauge Rovers, - 'Tornado', - so I am willing to be forgiving about his Armstrong rebuilds, but Deeley's rebuilds of Johnston's beautiful Victorian engines was a crime.

 

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Annie said:

Deeley's rebuilds of Johnston's beautiful Victorian engines was a crime.

 

They're not even Deeley's rebuilds - they date from well after his departure, though the wear the distinctive plain, rather angular 20th-century look he introduced and that remained the LMS look right through to the Patriots. In Deeley's day many Johnson engines were given large round-topped boilers - H boilers in the Midland alphabetic code - a process begun in Johnson's last year or two I think. Johnson was moving to larger boilers anyway - the first Belpaires of 1899 were just the 60 Class 4-4-0s with a bigger boiler.

 

But the 483 Class has nothing to do with Johnson or Deeley. They were brand new engines - "rebuilt" only in the sense of "renewed" or more straightforwardly, "replaced".

[Jake The Rat]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

Oh it would be so delightful to model such a delightful and whimsical railway.  I've been able to locate a second hand copy of 'The Forest of Boland Light Railway' for research purposes in the neighbouring nation of Oz at an affordable price which wasn't an easy thing to do since some vendors were asking utterly frightful prices for this interesting little book.

 

 

 

 

It has been done:

The Medal-winning Forest of Boland Railway  http://www.countrysidemodels.co.uk/gallery_boland/fobmain.htm

 

 

 

[Annie]

14 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

They're not even Deeley's rebuilds - they date from well after his departure, though the wear the distinctive plain, rather angular 20th-century look he introduced and that remained the LMS look right through to the Patriots. In Deeley's day many Johnson engines were given large round-topped boilers - H boilers in the Midland alphabetic code - a process begun in Johnson's last year or two I think. Johnson was moving to larger boilers anyway - the first Belpaires of 1899 were just the 60 Class 4-4-0s with a bigger boiler.

 

But the 483 Class has nothing to do with Johnson or Deeley. They were brand new engines - "rebuilt" only in the sense of "renewed" or more straightforwardly, "replaced".

I stand corrected then and I apologise.  As you might well have guessed I'm not the best when it comes to Midland Railway history and locomotive development.

 

7 minutes ago, Jake The Rat said:

It has been done:

The Medal-winning Forest of Boland Railway  http://www.countrysidemodels.co.uk/gallery_boland/fobmain.htm

Oh that's brilliant, thanks for posting the link Jake.

[Compound2632]

36 minutes ago, Annie said:

I stand corrected then and I apologise.  As you might well have guessed I'm not the best when it comes to Midland Railway history and locomotive development.

 

There was something else I was supposed to be looking up and reporting back to you on but I'm afraid I've forgotten what it was or which topic it was in.

Edited September 17, 2021 by Compound2632

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

They're not even Deeley's rebuilds - they date from well after his departure, though the wear the distinctive plain, rather angular 20th-century look he introduced and that remained the LMS look right through to the Patriots. In Deeley's day many Johnson engines were given large round-topped boilers - H boilers in the Midland alphabetic code - a process begun in Johnson's last year or two I think. Johnson was moving to larger boilers anyway - the first Belpaires of 1899 were just the 60 Class 4-4-0s with a bigger boiler.

 

But the 483 Class has nothing to do with Johnson or Deeley. They were brand new engines - "rebuilt" only in the sense of "renewed" or more straightforwardly, "replaced".

 

I had thought that it was Deeley who had visited such disfiguring hate upon the faces of Johnson locomotives?

 

That's what I think of when I think of Deeley vandalism - it still afflicts the Johnson 'Spinner' at York - and perhaps Annie had this in mind?

 

 

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, Edwardian said:

I had thought that it was Deeley who had visited such disfiguring hate upon the faces of Johnson locomotives?

 

Upon their faces, yes.

 

As to the rebuilding of the Johnson 4-4-0s with the round-topped H boiler, the first order for this was issued on 4 November 1903 - Jonson retired on 31 December that year. The H boiler had first seen use on ten standard goods 0-6-0s ordered on 22 January 1902.

[Annie]

We could always discuss a completely non controversial subject like when the GWR stopped painting their goods wagons red.

 

Where I got up to with the new north eastern loop and sidings before I untidily fell asleep.

 

 

[Annie]

And further progress.  Even though I really like doing scenic work it makes me tired and I have to sleep.

Having got the loop itself done as well as the trackwork finally finished off I'll be moving over to the sort sidings next to do their scenic work and place a few sheds and warehouses & etc.  After that it will be finishing off the fields and I've also decided that I want to build up a small village along the road that's running across the new layout board.

 

[Edwardian]

Excellent work, Annie.  it really does seem to be coming together well.

 

That wood, I love, but it now seems to me to be crying out for an addition ...

 

 

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

Excellent work, Annie.  it really does seem to be coming together well.

 

That wood, I love, but it now seems to me to be crying out for an addition ...

Thanks James.  Now there's a thought.  Under all those trees there is a mounded piece of higher ground and back in the day some lord or another would have been bound to want to put a tower on the top of it.  I shall have a dig about and see what I can find in the way of a suitable tower model.

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

Thanks James.  Now there's a thought.  Under all those trees there is a mounded piece of higher ground and back in the day some lord or another would have been bound to want to put a tower on the top of it.  I shall have a dig about and see what I can find in the way of a suitable tower model.

 

The Faringdon Tower also has Tolkien inspirational/Elven tower associations, so that recommends the idea further, in my humble view .... 

[Adam88]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

 

The Faringdon Tower also has Tolkien inspirational/Elven tower associations, so that recommends the idea further, in my humble view .... 

 

It was also noted for the warning sign cautioning people who used it to commit suicide that they would be doing so entirely at their own risk.

[Edwardian]

Well, before the tees grew up there was something rather Cerin Amroth about the trees at the top, and, perhaps the tower suggests the King's house that had stood there in earlier ages, or the great tree that housed Celeborn and Galadriel at Caras Galadhon?