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

[t-b-g]

There is no doubt that these carriages are a lot nearer in style to those of some railways than they are to others.

 

Having built some MS&LR 6 wheelers from Quainton Road Models etched bodies, to my eyes the "look" of the 4 wheel body pictured above is very close (remembering that from 1907 the GCR livery would have been teak brown).

 

To me, the roof profile of the GNR carriages, with the very characteristic flat roof and small radius bends at the side would be enough to put me off. There were no GNR carriages that I have ever seen or heard of, with a roof profile anything like that.

 

For railways like the Midland or the MS&LR/GCR, if I hadn't spent ages building kits already, I would certainly see them as a way to get a layout up and running more quickly and the quality of the finish on the liveries looks really nice. As it is, I have a big enough collection of built up kits for Midland, GCR and GNR so I don't need to cut any corners but I can see the attraction for those who either don't like building kits, who prefer to spend their time on other things or who are willing to sacrifice true scale accuracy for an overall impression.

 

As for the Denny GWR/GCR converted clerestories, he once told me that he wished he hadn't bothered but had scratchbuilt proper ones instead! He said that for the work involved, it wouldn't have taken him much longer to make them from scratch and they would have been more accurate.

 

 

 

[GWR-fan]

While I applaud the incredible knowledge that a few of the respondents have made available to us all,  surely the finer details are more suited to a thread on prototype 4/6 wheeler coaches.  Hattons made it emphatically clear that the models being released are GENERIC and as such do not faithfully replicate any particular coach.  They have attempted within the constraints of the tooling to present "believable" liveries at a realistic price.  For the majority of us that is more than enough.  I am not going to reread the roughly 120 pages to date,  but I would place London to a brick that the majority of postings are from but a few who seemingly do not run out of information on the various coach diagrams and specific livery requirements.  In essence this thread could have been but a few pages long as I feel the majority applaud what Hattons has made available.  There are a few who perhaps would want a more prototypically accurate representation and perhaps rather than continually professing the incredible knowledge they possess,  they could better spend their time actually building the accurate representations that they would want Hattons to manufacture instead.   All this incredible research material would be better suited to a thread devoted to the prototype.   This thread is about Hattons releasing generic four and six wheel coaches.

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, Mark Saunders said:

Or the real intellectual “reading and writing “

A real intellectual has at least three Rs.

Not to mention what he talks out of....

[gr.king]

Just to clarify things, I'm not sniping at these carriages simply because they don't match a particular pre-group pattern that I like. In fact, when they were at an early design stage I seriously hoped to be able to make use of them with some modifications, which I considered to be an acceptable "price" to pay for the saving of effort compared to building from a kit or from scratch. Unfortunately, not only did further study of prototypes make me wise to additional discrepancies, but as the generic designs evolved with the "benefit" of suggestions and pestering from some quarters, the generic items drifted even further away from anything that could be made sufficiently "right" within the limits of acceptable amounts of work. They are so remote from my preferences now that I regard them as useless, being toys with no scope for conversion into models. The work involved in any attempt would be a bit like trying to convert a freelance 0-6-0 loco with domed taper boiler and side-window cab into a representation of a Stirling loco with domeless parallel boiler and plain wrap-over cab. Almost as easy to throw it all away and start again.

 

I'm well aware that NBR panelling was three-layer, but if you stand back and view a small-scale carriage from the side it is difficult to tell, and in other respects the shapes of the panels are similar to those on the generics, so with the right kind of roof the resemblence is there, but that's about as close as it gets.

 

My 1996 Compact OED leaves no doubt at all about the one correct pronunciation of clerestory, with just three syllables, and given the etymology of the word that pronunciation is the only one that makes any sense. It is probably just old enough to have been published when its compilers still tended to mainly stick to recognised, proper English words and standards, rather than allowing in all sorts of latter-day urban slang.

Edited April 29, 2021 by gr.king

[MR Chuffer]

57 minutes ago, gr.king said:

My 1996 Compact OED l

And yet, when I first started in this hobby in the 1970s, it was always cler-rest-story I heard in shops and at exhibitions. I was surprised to hear later if pronounced as you say that it applied to ecclesiastical structures. Pretty pointless argument, really. You say tomato, I say tomato, etc... Let's call the whole thing off.

[Compound2632]

4 hours ago, GWR-fan said:

I would place London to a brick that the majority of postings are from but a few who seemingly do not run out of information on the various coach diagrams and specific livery requirements.  In essence this thread could have been but a few pages long as I feel the majority applaud what Hattons has made available.  

 

What you overlook here is the admirable extent to which Hattons have responded to feedback given via this thread.

 

4 hours ago, GWR-fan said:

There are a few who perhaps would want a more prototypically accurate representation and perhaps rather than continually professing the incredible knowledge they possess,  they could better spend their time actually building the accurate representations 

 

Somewhat offensive. There have been one or two who have complained bitterly that Hattons have not chosen to produce models of their specific preferred prototype - they have generally been pointed in the direction of the appropriate kits etc. Most have contributed their knowledge freely with a view to helping Hattons produce realistic models. I do not understand why you should object to this, if Hattons or the site moderators have not. "Generic" does not have to mean "unrealistic". 

 

2 hours ago, gr.king said:

It is probably just old enough to have been published when its compilers still tended to mainly stick to recognised, proper English words and standards, rather than allowing in all sorts of latter-day urban slang.

 

Distinctly offensive towards the lexicographic profession, including my better half. 

Edited April 29, 2021 by Compound2632

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, MR Chuffer said:

And yet, when I first started in this hobby in the 1970s, it was always cler-rest-story I heard in shops and at exhibitions.

Whenever I heard a model/real railway person it was always cler-rest-story, however in all other cases it was always clear-story.

[melmerby]

Just looked in 3 dictionaries from Oxford, Collins & Penguin

All 3 go for clear-story pronuncation and all three also say the typical US spelling is clearstory and one specifically says it is mainly applied to railway carriages there.

Origin C15th Middle English where it meant a clear story!

 

EDIT

Just asked SWMBO who was a draughtswoman in an architects and she said cler-est-ory!

Edited April 29, 2021 by melmerby

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

Just looked in 3 dictionaries from Oxford, Collins & Penguin

All 3 go for clear-story pronuncation

 

One should remember that any dictionary only describes how a word is used and pronounced in a particular context at a particular time. It does not prescribe to anyone how that word should be used or pronounced in other contexts or at other times!

 

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

Whenever I heard a model/real railway person it was always cler-rest-story, however in all other cases it was always clear-story.

 

So, as I suggested, as a technical term in ecclesiastical architecture, "clear-story"; as a technical term in railway carriage architecture, "cler-rest-story". 

 

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

Just asked SWMBO who was a draughtswoman in an architects and she said cler-est-ory!

 

Bang goes that theory!

 

When I put the word in front of Lexi* she immediately pronounced it "cler-rest-try", before looking it up in her pronunciation database, which gives "clear-story". So we may have to make allowances for our spouses' pronunciation being influenced by hearing us maundering on about railway carriages - and we thought they weren't listening?

 

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

the typical US spelling is clearstory and one specifically says it is mainly applied to railway carriages there.

 

Not many medieval cathedrals in North America!

 

Apologies to @GWR-fan, who wanted a nice short on-topic topic - and the Hattons carriages aren't clerestories. But as he's nominally an enthusiast for the Great Western - a noted clerestory line - perhaps he has a view?

 

*Some folk are accused of swallowing the dictionary. I married it.

 

Edited April 29, 2021 by Compound2632
Typo corrected

[Michael Hodgson]

51 minutes ago, melmerby said:

 

All 3 go for clear-story pronuncation and all three also say the typical US spelling is clearstory and one specifically says it is mainly applied to railway carriages there.

 

If that's how the yanks pronounce it, the other version must be the right one!

[Zero Gravitas]

16 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

If that's how the yanks pronounce it, the other version must be the right one!

 

Although there’s good evidence that American English is very close to the way that “English English” was spoken around the time of the Pilgrim Fathers - so it’s probably us who have diverged, not them...

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, Zero Gravitas said:

Although there’s good evidence that American English is very close to the way that “English English” was spoken around the time of the Pilgrim Fathers - so it’s probably us who have diverged, not them...

 

No clerestory carriages at that time. Being Puritans, they would probably have disapproved of such extravagances anyway.

[Oldddudders]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Being Puritans

Of whom our hobby is blessed with not a few.....

[Compound2632]

42 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Of whom our hobby is blessed with not a few.....

 

I don't know. I think a hobby - as an act of self-indulgence - is by definition unpuritanical.

[gr.king]

5 hours ago, melmerby said:

Just looked in 3 dictionaries from Oxford, Collins & Penguin

All 3 go for clear-story pronunciation and all three also say the typical US spelling is clearstory and one specifically says it is mainly applied to railway carriages there.

Origin C15th Middle English where it meant a clear story!

 

Correct and logical. Even if another pronunciation is widespread, that doesn't make the other pronunciation correct, but it does suggest that a lot of people simply don't bother to check what's right and what's wrong.

 

 

[Compound2632]

55 minutes ago, gr.king said:

Correct and logical.

 

... are not characteristics of the English language! (You might be happier communicating in French.)

 

Many on here have a technical background and work or have worked in fields where the correct use of precisely defined terms is essential - as a metrologist I did - which colours our ideas of how language ought to behave. Linguists come to it with a different perspective: language, especially the English language, is in a constant state of flux, as speakers and writers of it find new and occasionally better ways of achieving effective communication. I wince at "train station" but that's the way the language has gone.

Edited April 29, 2021 by Compound2632

[MR Chuffer]

And at the end of the day, a railway carriage with a raised roof section with clear side panes has nothing to do with ecclesiastical matters. As Stephen says, our English language has evolved and continues to, and your obsession with this miniscule, insignificant difference in a pronunciation is becoming quite worrying. We aren't talking to each other, it's on the written page so you say it how you want to in your head and let others say it how they want to which, with this being a railway forum, will likely be opposite to your view.

[Miss Prism]

4 minutes ago, MR Chuffer said:

And at the end of the day, a railway carriage with a raised roof section with clear side panes has nothing to do with ecclesiastical matters.

 

That is precisely where the term derives from. Thought to have been originated by the Egyptians c 3000 B.C.

 

 

 

 

[melmerby]

7 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

 

That is precisely where the term derives from. Thought to have been originated by the Egyptians c 3000 B.C.

 

 

 

 

Like this temple with the raised central section with open sides to let light in:

[melmerby]

5 minutes ago, melmerby said:

 

Mmm. Genesis & Egypt, do I see a connection?

 

Edited April 29, 2021 by melmerby

[GWR-fan]

The English language as stated is a living, ever changing language where pronunciation and spelling have evolved considerably.  Given the puritanical roots of the American "English" language,  it is conceivable that the Americans retained the original pronunciation "clear-story".  In relation to American railway culture I have always seen the word "clerestory" actually spelled as "clear-story".  Typically of Americans they spell how they pronounce their words,  so the original "clerestory" was "corrupted" to "clear-story".  The Americans like to keep it simple.

 

I have always pronounced the word "cler-est-ory" and would cringe every time I heard an American voice pronounce the word "clear-story" (even if they were right).  Given that words in common usage have evolved over the last hundreds of years,  in reality how can we say what is the correct pronunciation at this given moment.  The language continues to evolve.   With literally billions of people using the language in common usage,  variations in pronunciation have evolved to suit the times.  Was a tomato actually a "tom-ar-toe" or really a "tom-ate-oh"?    I highly doubt that there are scholars still alive today from the middle ages who actually pronounced the word clerestory as "clear-story",  so I am prepared to accept both pronunciations, although my preference is for "cler-est-ory",  although in the practical world the pronunciation has little to do with a structure that is a clear storey.

Edited April 30, 2021 by GWR-fan
Added an "e" in the last word as it is a "storey" not a "story" although it may seem that way,

[No Decorum]

Is it time to point out that the Hatton’s coaches are not clerestories?

[The Johnster]

Yes.

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, No Decorum said:

Is it time to point out that the Hatton’s coaches are not clerestories?

 

I had done so...

[Bedders]

10 hours ago, Miss Prism said:

 

That is precisely where the term derives from. Thought to have been originated by the Egyptians c 3000 B.C.

 

I contacted Xerxes the Great about the correct original pronunciation, but he was only interested in debating the merits of P4 vs EM