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

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

Cold mornings here with 30+ degree temperatures in the later half of the afternoon.  A fair bit of rain which I like because it keeps the temperatures down.  The weather here is just plain nuts really with it being a dice roll as to whether it's going to be hot or cold.

 

 

Well on Wednesday it was like today only a degree cooler, then yesterday was perfect - about 25c, sunny and a light breeze. Then today .................................. more 

 

In Melbourne the northerly winds we get drag the heat out of the inland towards us and average temps in inland Australia - that's most of the continent are up around 48c. That's what's causing the conditions we have today.

 

The good news is that it looks like settling down to 25c averages after the change hits around 9.00 tonight for the next week. Fortunately Christmas Day won't be a stinker.

[Hroth]

10 hours ago, MikeOxon said:

It needs a source of music - perhaps a wind-up gramophone with a huge horn on the grass by the band-stand?

 

Just what I was thinking.  Or perhaps a key in the side of the bandstand to wind it all up.....

 

 

[DonB]

5 hours ago, Annie said:

I tried to find one Mike, but not a sign of one anywhere.  Perhaps if I plead politely at the creator group I belong to somebody might make me one.

 

I immediately thought of Fred Astaire's "lovely day to be caught in the rain" but your bright blue sky would seem to preclude that tune.

[Annie]

Just a few snaps.

 

This is the station at Oakmarket with its large goods yard for handling mineral traffic.  Snap courtesy of Sparrowcam.

 

E&GR Hicks 0-6-0 leaving Oakmarket for Eastlingwold.  I hadn't noticed that dip in the track near the water tank before, - something else to add to the 'To-Do' list.

 

It's just dawned on me that I have three Hicks 0-6-0 tender engines on the line and none of them have numbers.  Another little job for me to do.  Most of the re-liveried blue E&GR engines are carrying GER style number plates (except for the Beyer Peacocks which just have buffer beam numbers), but the Hicks goods engines are still wearing their old E&GR green livery so would they have a GER number plate, or whatever it was in the way of a plate that the E&GR was using before?  Or would they have names and no number plates?  A little voice in my head is telling me to give them names, - so I think I'll have a look at doing that.

 

I solved the problem of finding an overgrown track model on the tramways by installing a 'rails only' track model and I'm happy with that.  The updated overgrown track model looked like it was made of plastic so I went back to the old one, but it was still doing its random disappearing in patches trick so I had to find another solution.  The new track is based around a lightweight flatbottomed rail so I thought that would be a good choice for the tramways.  It's slightly rusty with a muted brightness to the running surfaces of the rails so ideal for the job I thought.

Edited December 20, 2019 by Annie
can't spell for toffee

[Regularity]

4 hours ago, Annie said:

can't spell for toffee

I buy mine in a shop.

[Annie]

Chasing the horizon on the Windweather Tramway.

 

It's been good this past week with catching up with the oh so many outstanding jobs on my GER & etc layout.  I finally completed the bypass line from the Hopewood Tramway to Great Marsh which allows livestock and agricultural products to be carried to the tramway without having to run through Windweather station and over the harbour swing bridge.  The line has only been a short siding with a buffer stop at the end for the past year so it was good to get it completed so I can run goods trains from Great Marsh without having to disrupt other traffic through Windweather station.

Another job I was able to attend to was finally getting the 2-2-2 tank engines to stop and fill their water tanks while running their automatic schedules on the Windweather Loop Line.  Chasing the horizon is thirsty work and it's taken several attempts to get them to stop at a water tank and actually have full water tanks when they carry on with the passenger service.

Overall the automatic scheduling is working well as evidenced by my seemingly standard testing method of falling asleep and waking up hours later to find that everything is still running as it should.  Because I drive all the goods trains and trip workings myself as well as do all the necessary shunting I need to have the passenger trains behaving themselves and running like they are supposed to so I can work my goods trains in between them without causing havoc.  Fortunately with all the work I've done on getting the signals properly placed on the layout means that any havoc I cause is fairly minor and can generally be quickly sorted out.

[Annie]

Wasn't having such a good day today so I did my usual thing and re-textured something.

The B&FER has only one coach to its name and that is a 1870's 4 wheel brake third that I did in varnished wood some time ago and I had such a difficult time texturing it I vowed to never do another one.  For such a small coach it had sooooo many texture pieces and mesh bits that all fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle.  I'd done plenty of plain repaints on these 1870's coaches before, but going for a varnished wood finish took the game to a whole new level!

So what to do?  The Hopewood Tramway has its own coaches; The Windweather Tramway never had any, but later on borrowed some from the Hopewood Tramway until the GER gave them some 6 wheelers.  The Eastlingwold & Great Mulling has its very nice varnished teak 6 wheelers ( and some brown painted 4 wheelers as well), but the B&FER had nothing.

 

 

So ratting around I came up with some very old 6 wheel coaches from TS2004 days.  The texturing wasn't very good and everything was a bit too bright and shiny, but I thought I could do something with them.  I think they are supposed to be Highland Railway coaches.  The body mesh is very much simplified with no door vents or opening doors and there's no panelling detail above the waistline, but re-texturing in a plain serviceable brown and generally tidying up what little texture detailing there was made for an improvement.  I knocked all the shininess settings back to something sensible and found some better seat cover textures in my texture library and that made things much better too.

They aren't perfect by any means, but they will do.  I'm going to give them the backstory that they were 'economical' coach purchases made when the B&FER was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy which will help to explain their overall plain appearance.

 

 

The maker of these coaches tried to use the same basic coach model as a luggage van and a brake third by labelling the doors 'Guard' and 'Luggage', but I don't think I need to tell you that they aren't very convincing.  The first class coach was just the same as the thirds except for having 'FIRST' on the doors, but at least it now has posh seats to help along the illusion.

 

 

[Hroth]

On 21/12/2019 at 00:06, Regularity said:

I buy mine in a shop.

 Toffee is quite easy to make, though I prefer making fudge.  At least that doesn't pull your fillings out when you eat it...

[Annie]

I had a think about the luggage van coaches from the old set of TS2004 coaches and decided that doing a quick conversion of a coach into a luggage van just might be the kind of thing a cash strapped railway company might do.  The original coach had four empty luggage compartments with nothing in them, - one longer one made from two compartments and three luggage compartments simply achieved by taking the seats out of the passenger compartment.  So I found a suitable luggage model to attach inside the longer compartment as well as one of the three standard compartments so the van looks like it is being useful.

I had to make sure that what I chose would be able to be fitted through a standard sized coach doorway as there were various models I could have used, but some of them looked too wide. 

I bet that the B&FER porters mutter lots of unseemly things under their breath though when it comes to loading and unloading this luggage van.  I've only done one example since I would imagine it wouldn't have taken long to find out it wasn't such a good idea.

 

 

 

While I was in the mood for doing texturing things I converted my generic 'litho' series teak 6 wheel luggage van with guards compartment into a milk traffic van by removing the guard's compartment.  I've been needing milk vans on the layout for a while now so they certainly will be useful.

 

 

 

And taking it one step further along I made a luggage van version with no guards compartment by leaving off the 'milk traffic' lettering.  The original 6 wheel van with a guard's compartment is used a fair bit on my GER & etc layout, so having a van model without a guard's compartment means that I can have several vans in a train without the absurdity of them all having guard's compartments. 

 

 

 

[Annie]

Inspirational picture for today.

 

[sem34090]

Erm...

If he keeps going like that into Windsor he'll be smashing into the buffers!!! As for platform 13...

 

And what are those coaches?

[Metropolitan H]

Also the only "City" 4-4-0 to look like the one pictured in terms of livery and fittings etc. is 3440 "City of Truro" - as running circa 1960 - so presumably the coaches are supposed to represent the slightly seecond-hand GWR vehicles used on the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton services circa 1960?

 

Regards

Chris H

[corneliuslundie]

The only thing I can think of, and i do not really know what they looked like, is the set bought from the L&SWR and then destroyed in a fire. They certainly do not shout GWR to me.

Windsor CT, USA, or Windsor NSW, or is it really the New Zealand one? Perhaps, on a state visit.

Jonathan

[Annie]

I think the artist had one of these.  And I wondered about those coaches too and the state of build 'City of Truro' was got up in.  But that aside it's not too horrible a picture and nobody has mentioned the 100mph thing yet.

 

[sem34090]

Dare I mention Saints and A3s?

 

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

I think the artist had one of these.  And I wondered about those coaches too and the state of build 'City of Truro' was got up in.  But that aside it's not too horrible a picture and nobody has mentioned the 100mph thing yet.

 

 

An odd illustration - probably designed for a pictureskew "Days Of Yore" style jigsaw puzzle.

 

Anyhow, mentioning City of Truro and 100 mph in the same breath is the railway equivalent of Godwins Law.  Its best to steer well clear!  

 

Of course, I think that the only reason the Flying Moneypit was forced to such extremes was that the LNER had their collective noses put out of joint by the assertions at the British Empire Exhibition and the following trials, where Collets Castles wiped the floor with the Gresley Pacifics. Once some of the faults were ironed out, the LNER top brass had to fling the poor thing down their bank, towing a dynamometer car and hoping for a 100 mph+ speed.

 

The sad thing is that they felt they had to best the reported record of a 1900s Churchward 4-4-0.

 

 

[Hroth]

2 hours ago, sem34090 said:

And what are those coaches?

 

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

The only thing I can think of, and i do not really know what they looked like, is the set bought from the L&SWR and then destroyed in a fire. They certainly do not shout GWR to me.

 

They look remarkably like the GWR coaches that Hornby sell under the Railroad branding.

 

I can imagining the artist posing several such coaches behind a Kitmaster/Airfix/Dapol plastic model of CoT on a length of flexitrack to get the proportions and perspective correct...

[Annie]

I might as well go for gold and throw another 'jigsaw' painting into the ring.

 

[sem34090]

To my extremely untrained eye that one looks rather more plausible, and reminds me of the area where the GWR runs alongside the Kennet and Avon Canal. The locos look to be alright, and the coaches seem to be roughly in line with GWR practice, though the roof profile and rain strips perhaps less so.

 

The church, however, appears to be from the Superquick kit!

 

These seem to be a jigsaw puzzle favourite:

Edited December 23, 2019 by sem34090

[Hroth]

Very pretty, but a good solid Hmmmm.....

 

Can only be the Kennet and Avon canal, Hungerford?  But wildly too close!  The end of that lockbeam is virtually overhanging the ballast shoulder! And the footbridge, far too narrow, looks like its scraping the roof of that carriage. But back to the canal, even with red headlamps, the K&A wasn't a functioning waterway, though the second engine also has a Collett tender so it must be post 1924.....

 

And when was Great (crest) Western applicable?

 

Just another thought - we're on the flatlands (more or less) of the old GWR mainline from London to Bristol so why is an apparent Saint piloting an apparent Castle?  The castle looks perfectly healthy and the load not onerous.

 

Then again, the producers and consumers of chocolate box tops and jigsaw puzzles aren't interested in historical veracity, so "pretty" will do!

 

Edited December 23, 2019 by Hroth
a Thought!

[corneliuslundie]

And it is "pretty", no doubt about that.

But how do you actually get to the railway side of the lock to open the gates, and when you are there how do you avoid slipping into the cut?

Anyway, here is the GWR's approach. Note the tender side.

Jonathan

Edited December 24, 2019 by corneliuslundie

[Northroader]

It’s on the Reading Westbury Taunton route at Great Bedwyn, the train looks quite hefty, possibly the Summer Riviera. The canal as still functioning in the twenties, so the picture is more credible than the Windsor one.

[Annie]

A couple of snaps taken at Moxbury station.  That station over roof was a right puzzle to put together, but I'm very pleased that I persisted with it.

 

 

[Annie]

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

And it is "pretty", no doubt about that.

But how do you actually get to the railway side of the lock to open the gates, and when you are there how do you avoid slipping into the cut?

Anyway, here is the GWR's approach. Note the tender side.

Jonathan

My own abuse of the goodwill of the GWR.  A de Glehn compound in Cornwall hauling SG converted Broad Gauge coaches.  My excuse is that I was testing a new install of TS2019 and these were the only GWR models I could find.  

 

[Metropolitan H]

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

It’s on the Reading Westbury Taunton route at Great Bedwyn, the train looks quite hefty, possibly the Summer Riviera. The canal as still functioning in the twenties, so the picture is more credible than the Windsor one.

Yes, but! Although it is sort of recognisable as "Bedwyn Church Lock" on the K&A, there are a number of distinct oddities with the surroundings and buildings:

- The brick built house with slate roof, behind the Saint class loco, does not (and never has) exist - you should be seeing pasture up to the roadhedge line.

- There is not and never has been a foot bridge over the railway at that point. There was an accomodation / footpath crossing from the north side of the canal bridge.

- The canal bridge is / always has been a stone built arch bridge which is right next to the bottom gates of the lock (which also answers sem34090's question - also the canal and railway are not quite so adjacent).

- Bedwyn Church has a tower without spire / steeple. The tower is also above the crossing (?) between the nave and choir towards the east end of the church - not at the west end as shown! The orientation of the church is also slightly "Off"!

 

I want going to rise to the bait as it is still a recognisable scene, but the follow-up comments got me going.

 

There are some very pleasent pubs in Great Bedwyn to be enjoyed with the walk west along the canal to Crofton pumps which should be a "Must visit" place for us all. I think a day out in the spring is called for - it is at least two years since our last visit.

 

Regards and Happy Christmas

Chris H

Edited December 24, 2019 by Metropolitan H
spelling