'Genesis' 4 & 6 wheel coaches in OO Gauge - New Announcement

[Dunsignalling]

20 minutes ago, uax6 said:

 

Interesting photo. They are a mix of 5 and 6 compartment types (could the 5 compartments be ex 2nds or even be 1sts?) The vehicle closest has two rows of large torpedos, so I would say that it was a smoking vehicle, but it only has one cable or pipe on the roof. The brake one (or is it 1.5?) compartment rear vehicle shows the same single pipe and two rows of torpedos too.  The others have a single row of torpedos and two pipes.

As to the pipe/cable I'm not sure what it actually is, the logical answer is that it is for electric lighting, but there is a lot of lamps in those coaches, would thirds really have been given two lamps? Maybe they are 10/15W ones, 10 W in the firsts give 100W load, so will need a decent battery and dynamo and a long run to keep them lit, the 3rds have 120W load, again quite a large amount.

I know there were various systems about, but are we seeing something that could still be some sort of gas lighting in use on these?

 

Andy G

Quite possibly.

 

The Barry Railway seems to have been late in abandoning gas lighting, even on bogie coaches (which would have presumably been prioritised for conversion to electric lighting anyway). The WR Hemyock branch used some well into the 1950s because the line speed was insufficient to keep the batteries charged on electrically lit stock, and the ex-Barry coaches were the least ancient gas-lit stock available.  

 

John

[Miss Prism]

34 minutes ago, uax6 said:

I know there were various systems about, but are we seeing something that could still be some sort of gas lighting in use on these?

 

Quite possibly.

 

[Compound2632]

The North Staffordshire Railway was the largest pre-Grouping company to have all its carriages lit by electricity by the grouping - never having used gas. Most NSR stock was 4 or 6-wheeled, being used for local services; with the NSR main line being essentially a series of loops off the LNWR main line, longer distance trains were formed of LNWR stock. The superbly-restored 4-wheelers at Foxfield date from the 1870s; later carriages had LNWR-style panelling, I believe.

 

Generally, there seems to be little evidence for conversion to electric lighting for carriages inherited by the grouping companies - one can understand that it would hardly be a priority when carriages of this type were being steadily withdrawn and there was plenty of newer bogie stock still gas-lit. But that's an inference from the data available to me - any other instance of electrically-lit 4 and 6-wheelers? If the NSR was the largest all-electric line, which were the others?

 

 

[Wickham Green]

1 hour ago, Dunsignalling said:

Quite possibly.

 

The Barry Railway seems to have been late in abandoning gas lighting, even on bogie coaches (which would have presumably been prioritised for conversion to electric lighting anyway). The WR Hemyock branch used some well into the 1950s because the line speed was insufficient to keep the batteries charged on electrically lit stock, and the ex-Barry coaches were the least ancient gas-lit stock available.  

 

John

Not exactly : according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia ( ahem ) "they were converted from electric to gas lighting" ......... which beggars the question 'Why WERE those particular coaches chosen for conversion ?'.

[phil_sutters]

Excuse me, but has anyone checked whether their porters have the correct number of buttons on their waistcoats? What breed of cattle are appropriate for your rural branch line? Be pleased with what ever is on offer, it is so much more than when I was modelling railways in the 1960s. It is only a hobby - enjoy it!

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, Wickham Green said:

Not exactly : according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia ( ahem ) "they were converted from electric to gas lighting" ......... which beggars the question 'Why WERE those particular coaches chosen for conversion ?'.

 

The Wikipedia article states that this conversion was done on 1950. Perhaps the ex-Barry coaches were the last around that had originally been gas lit, and hence were easiest to re-convert to gas. I can imagine that cutting holes for gas lights in the roofs of a Collett-era B-set might be a bit of a faff!

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

Excuse me, but has anyone checked whether their porters have the correct number of buttons on their waistcoats? What breed of cattle are appropriate for your rural branch line? Be pleased with what ever is on offer, it is so much more than when I was modelling railways in the 1960s. It is only a hobby - enjoy it!

 

My input on this topic has been all about observation. For myself, much of the enjoyment of railway modelling lies in the observation, understanding, and reproduction of the detail; I appreciate that may not be the case for everyone. As Dante has the Dominican St Thomas Aquinas say, to understand something is to come to love it; and the Franciscan St Bonaventure, to love something is to come to understand it. [Paradiso XI & XII].

 

Take porter's buttons for example. There are folk who go so far as to make collecting those their hobby. There are plenty of official photos of staff  modelling uniforms, so no excuse for getting the buttons wrong! Midland passenger and goods porters:

 

 

NRM DY 2585, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.

 

Another of the infinite variety of byways railway modelling takes one down is researching period livestock - I've certainly seen topics on the subject here. At ExpoEM this year I saw the delightful little Cambrian Railways layout Llawryglyn which featured a dragon - not any off-the-shelf dragon but just the right sort: small, Welsh, red and heraldic.

 

 

Edited October 30, 2019 by Compound2632
Dante reference added.

[truffy]

The porter on the right looks suspiciously Gallic!

Edited October 30, 2019 by truffy
'Gallic', not 'gallic'!

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, truffy said:

The porter on the right looks suspiciously gallic!

 

A little-known aspect of the Entente Cordiale was an exchange scheme for railway workers. He's on secondment from the PLM.

[Dunsignalling]

That big droopy walrus moustache is so pre-grouping....

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

That big droopy walrus moustache is so pre-grouping....

 

It seems entirely in character that the goods porter should look to be a cheerful fellow* whereas the passenger porter**...

 

*has just placed his pre-order for Hattons Genesis carriages?

**... models in P4?

 

Sorry, OT, but we're enjoying ourselves.

Edited October 30, 2019 by Compound2632

[JohnR]

12 hours ago, Mark Saunders said:

 

I will keep telling you it is a retrograde step as I have bought too many models that have compromises made on them and years later discovered they were such and would like to prevent this happening to future generations!

 

If you keep accepting second best then it will be the norm.

 

It might be better than what is available but why not get something correct first time, especially since they have made the effort so far on other models.

 

Just wait till they discover the axles are not 26mm?

 

With a little more effort accurate rtr can be produced and consign iffy to history!

 

How can I turn up every two days and not offer anything new, when there is nothing else to add but no one can say what is correct when if it is made up.

 

Mark Saunders

 

 

 

This would only make sense if there had been no improvement in accuracy over the years. If we were still at the point of Hornby offering a "generic" tin plate 0-4-0 and calling it every loco under the sun, you would be right. 

 

But we havnt - we've seen continual improvement in accuracy for many decades now. And arguably we wouldnt have had that if the first engines were not accurate. 

 

 

 

[Richard Lee]

58 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

Excuse me, but has anyone checked whether their porters have the correct number of buttons on their waistcoats? What breed of cattle are appropriate for your rural branch line? Be pleased with what ever is on offer, it is so much more than when I was modelling railways in the 1960s. It is only a hobby - enjoy it!

I use the Dexters from Langley for my 1930s SR branch line.  I hope that they will still be okay for when I run my SECR liveried Hornby Terrier with the set of Hattons 4 and 6 wheelers that I have pre-ordered.

[woodenhead]

12 hours ago, Mark Saunders said:

 

I will keep telling you it is a retrograde step as I have bought too many models that have compromises made on them and years later discovered they were such and would like to prevent this happening to future generations!

 

If you keep accepting second best then it will be the norm.

 

It might be better than what is available but why not get something correct first time, especially since they have made the effort so far on other models.

 

Just wait till they discover the axles are not 26mm?

 

With a little more effort accurate rtr can be produced and consign iffy to history!

 

How can I turn up every two days and not offer anything new, when there is nothing else to add but no one can say what is correct when if it is made up.

 

Mark Saunders

 

 

The definition of madness is keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting the result to be different.

 

This thread is about generic 4 & 6 wheelers being offered by Hattons, it isn't going to change and Hattons are suddenly going to go, "you know what, Mark is right, lets do some extremely accurate LNWR stock from September 1898 and watch it fly off the shelves"

 

Why keep coming back here every two days, you're only going to be upset each time as the majority of us are still happy with the progression of these models via the input of several knowledgeable people.

 

There are plenty of routes to accurate pre-grouping stock, this thread is not going to be one of those.

[Edwardian]

Re the Barry coaches, if those pipes on the roofs are not gas pipes, there is a further mystery, perhaps. Yet, I agree those look like torpedo vents.  Gas lighting would, I should have thought, require lamp tops; it is the absence of lamp tops that suggests electricity. Do we know the vintage of the photograph?

 

I am dismayed to see naysayers still intent upon arguing against the very concept of the Hattons release.  Surely if it's not for you, ignore it?  I am also surprised at an unwillingness, or, perhaps, inability, to grasp the concept of prototypicality in relation to a freelance design.  I guess for some that just does not compute, but there is, for me at least, a vast difference between the old Hornby 4-wheeler and what Hattons are doing; the latter has realism and utility, while the former just adds to the piles of plastic we need somehow to recycle.   

 

The effort that Compound, and others who clearly understand something of prototype practice, have put in to allow Hattons to refine its design to something realistically protoypical is to be commended, as is Hattons for taking this initiative and for inviting contributions from the floor. It's been great to hear from all those interested in the project. I remain quite inspired by this development!

[MarkSG]

59 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

What breed of cattle are appropriate for your rural branch line? 

 

You jest, of course. But, actually, one of the things that tends to bug me a bit on otherwise rivet-perfect layouts is a tendency towards generic non-railway items by the lineside. Cows are a very good example - although black and white Friesians were not unknown in the 1930s and 1950s, they are hugely more common on layouts set in those periods than they were in real life at the time. To me, as someone who is from a rural area and fairly knowledgeable about agricultural history, that's an easily noticeable error. But to most people, it doesn't matter in the slightest. To them, cows are cows, and so long as the cows are the right scale and in the right place, that's good enough.

 

On the other hand, while I do know a fair amount about cows, I'm not really all that knowledgeable about pre-grouping rolling stock. A layout set in a rural backwater with brown cows in the cattle pen and a train consisting of a tank engine and a rake of Hatton's "Genesis" carriages will look fine to me. I'm sure some purists will grate their teeth over it. But that is not really my problem, any more than my dislike of black and white cows on historical layouts is theirs.

[Edwardian]

15 minutes ago, MarkSG said:

 

You jest, of course. But, actually, one of the things that tends to bug me a bit on otherwise rivet-perfect layouts is a tendency towards generic non-railway items by the lineside. Cows are a very good example - although black and white Friesians were not unknown in the 1930s and 1950s, they are hugely more common on layouts set in those periods than they were in real life at the time. To me, as someone who is from a rural area and fairly knowledgeable about agricultural history, that's an easily noticeable error. But to most people, it doesn't matter in the slightest. To them, cows are cows, and so long as the cows are the right scale and in the right place, that's good enough.

 

On the other hand, while I do know a fair amount about cows, I'm not really all that knowledgeable about pre-grouping rolling stock. A layout set in a rural backwater with brown cows in the cattle pen and a train consisting of a tank engine and a rake of Hatton's "Genesis" carriages will look fine to me. I'm sure some purists will grate their teeth over it. But that is not really my problem, any more than my dislike of black and white cows on historical layouts is theirs.

 

I have to say, the combination of prototype cow and prototypical coach is one that also appeals to the Directors of the West Norfolk Railway! 

[MarkSG]

10 hours ago, Craigw said:

Do you have any proof that "correct  first time" would not be financially viable?

 

Well, Hatton's clearly think that it isn't, and they're the ones who've done the calculations based on actual knowledge of the costs and projected sales figures involved. The fact that nobody else has considered accurate pre-grouping rolling stock viable either is also pretty strong evidence.

 

But it is pretty obvious, I would have thought, that "correct first time" can only be correct for one particular company, and possibly even for one particular company at one particular time. So the question is, which company's coaches do you make, and how many of them do you think will sell? And what do you do about the inevitable complaints from all the people whose favourite company hasn't been picked? Look at all the arguments over, for example, the Bachmann crane, and the volume of moaning from people disappointed that their preferred variant hasn't been produced.  

 

RTR is never going to please all of the people all of the time. There are far too many different prototypes for that, and far too many different opinions on how those prototypes should be modelled. But, from a manufacturer's perspective, all that's necessary is that it pleases enough people to turn a profit.

 

I think the Hatton's coaches will be profitable, and if that does stimulate enough interest in pre-grouping to make it worthwhile for a manufacturer to consider producing something more accurate for the period, then it will be a good thing all round. On the other hand, taking a risk on accurate models that then don't sell in big enough quantities to justify the investment would have the opposite effect, of scaring off manufacturers from touching the era again. If I was a pre-grouping modeller, I'd welcome these coaches as being the sort of thing that would benefit my interests, even if I didn't actually buy any myself.

[Wickham Green]

32 minutes ago, Richard Lee said:

I use the Dexters from Langley for my 1930s SR branch line.  I hope that they will still be okay for when I run my SECR liveried Hornby Terrier with the set of Hattons 4 and 6 wheelers that I have pre-ordered.

Are you implying that Hattons have put all this effort into producing accurate generic coaching stock - and you're going to use them as CATTLE TRUCKS ??!?

[melmerby]

8 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

I have to say, the combination of prototype cow and prototypical coach is one that also appeals to the Directors of the West Norfolk Railway! 

Of course if you go back a 100+ years or so (the period of these Hattons coaches) farm animals also had much more regional variation.

Each area/County had it's own breeds which could vary hugely in appearance from those in another part of the country.

Even though this still applies most places now use "standardised" animals for whatever the farm is producing, be it beef, milk, wool, lamb etc.

hence the domination of breeds such as Holstein-Freisians for milk.

Edited October 30, 2019 by melmerby

[Nick Holliday]

2 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Quite possibly.

 

The Barry Railway seems to have been late in abandoning gas lighting, even on bogie coaches (which would have presumably been prioritised for conversion to electric lighting anyway). The WR Hemyock branch used some well into the 1950s because the line speed was insufficient to keep the batteries charged on electrically lit stock, and the ex-Barry coaches were the least ancient gas-lit stock available.  

 

John

 

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

The Wikipedia article states that this conversion was done on 1950. Perhaps the ex-Barry coaches were the last around that had originally been gas lit, and hence were easiest to re-convert to gas. I can imagine that cutting holes for gas lights in the roofs of a Collett-era B-set might be a bit of a faff!

Looking at Mountford's collection of drawings, it may be significant that he has indicated a dynamo on every item of coaching stock, which suggests that electricity was the principal source of lighting, at last in the twentieth century. There are photos of two six-wheelers which were built in 1895 which clearly show that they were initially OIL lit, not gas, at this relatively late date, so, although Mountford unfortunately doesn't mention anything, it would seem that the Barry clung to the older system before changing straight to electricity, missing out the gas lit phase. Photos of later date clearly show the battery boxes. Mountford's list of diagrams doesn't show any travelling gas tanks, which might have been required to service gas lit stock. The Great North of Scotland was another line that followed the same path, with their changeover starting in 1896.

[Compound2632]

35 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

lets do some extremely accurate LNWR stock from September 1898

 

For that (exactly so) one has the Ratio kits!

[Mark Saunders]

As a parting contribution to this topic.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-the-best-douglas-adams-quote/douglas-adams-on-the-invention-of-the-wheel-from-the-restaurant/

 

Mark Saunders

 

[Edwardian]

I do think that anyone expecting an RTR suite of company-specific pre-Grouping coaches is not living in the real world. 

 

The Bachmann Birdcages are a relatively late example, that had a life under BR.  Even so, stocks have needed some discounting to shift.

 

The market may, probably will, mature to make older prototypes more viable, but we are not there yet.  The Stirling Single and the Terriers have provided fairly big arguments for companion coaches, but nothing has appeared yet, though I suppose possibly someone may. If manufacturers have not, thus far, been emboldened even to tackle Stroudley 4-wheelers or GN 6 wheelers, anything else is just pie in the sky.

 

For the foreseeable future, you either get the Hattons generic stock, or you get nowt. Even if there are one or two exceptions, like those mentioned above, you'll see nothing like the coverage in company-specific tooling that Hattons is offering in livery options for the generic stock. 

 

Injection moulded product takes upfront costs of tens of thousands of pounds and ties up your money for 2-3 years before you, hope, you can sell enough to ammortise the tooling costs and get into profit. Given how many tools/slides even a uniform set of company-specific coaches is going to require, that is just not going to be considered viable or an acceptable commercial risk. Any case where it is considered worth the risk - and don't hold your breath - is likely to prove the rare exception. 

 

Given this reality, railing against a generic product in favour of a specific one is, quite apart from anything else, an exercise in utter futility. 

 

 

Edited October 30, 2019 by Edwardian
grammar

[woodenhead]

I think the one thing we need to be thankful for with Rails, Hattons, Kernow and others - there was always an argument that manufacturers outside of Hornby/Bachmann wouldn't offer more than locos because that is what sold.

 

The fact that we are now seeing ever more general items being built means we have probably more chance of esoteric coaches and wagons appearing than ever before.  Whilst this thread might be looking at a unique approach to mass market pre-grouping coaches I have no doubt there will be some truly accurate rtr pre-grouping coaches and wagons coming in the future as confidence and spread of interest develops.