Fictional T9 Greyhound

[Harveyc]

So I ;love greyhounds but i wanted mine to be little different from the Hornby's no. 729 which I've had for a while now. Doing some research i found a nice pic of no. 338 only problem was the wide splashers and tender.

My tender is a 6 wheel one for transferal to SR eastern and central sections but it is very similar to Eastleigh built 6 wheel tenders to the same design from LSWR years. It is also the same tender as the one the Drummond 700 carries. In my fictional railway setting the T9 is travelling up the Spratt and Winkle, Then M&SWJR to cheltenham or to the racecourse for raceday special. But lets say the turntable at Cheltenham is too short for the 8 wheel tender so it borrows a surplus LSWR 6 wheel tender! There is only one small difference : A small plate which can be easily removed from the Model. The Tender I have painted Urie green but i think it is too light. Any Ideas where i could buy a Coal rail / Basket rod for the tender? Westinghouse Pumps in Progress.

  

 

All photos from https://1920slocomotives.blogspot.com/ - Useful grouping and Pre-grouping SR companies.

[LNWR18901910]

Nice resources and model. Will it be in LSWR-colours?

[mpeffers]

2 hours ago, Harveyc said:

In my fictional railway setting the T9 is travelling up the Spratt and Winkle, Then M&SWJR to cheltenham or to the racecourse for raceday special. But lets say the turntable at Cheltenham is too short for the 8 wheel tender so it borrows a surplus LSWR 6 wheel tender!

 

Had a sudden feeling that I had the literature to be helpful on here for a change but sadly my collection of books on Gloucestershire’s Railways and the MSWJR are somewhat lacking in detail regarding turntable lengths...

 

To start with the good news, in pre-grouping days T9s were no strangers to the MSWJR and Cheltenham’s turntables were pretty short.

 

723 was loaned by the LSWR to the MSWJR for a time in 1915 (although likely not long) and would presumably have worked through to Cheltenham during that time. 115, 119, 280, 284, 287, 707, 710, 714 and 722 were also recorded working through trains over the MSWJR between 1916 and 1918 (I believe ambulance trains, at least some of which went through to Cheltenham). A side-effect of this is that the T9, among other LSWR designs, were route-cleared to Cheltenham - this fact is still recorded in some of the Western Region WTTs, so evidently persisted.

 

As mentioned, I’ve not been able to find any quoted lengths for the turntables at Cheltenham. St. James’ (GWR) was long enough for a Manor (52’ 1.75”) but too short for a Castle (54’ 6.25”), so I’d guess 54’? High St. (MSWJR) I have even less information about, but the same companies’ table at Swindon was apparently 55’. Logic would suggest that Cheltenham could be the same although the logical assumption isn’t always correct. I’m also not sure how long it was there for - the GWR closed the shed in 1935, but the turntable itself was by the carriage sidings which were used into the late 50s (along with Landsdown Rd. station) so it would still have been useful.

 

Bad news is as follows. The short turntables at Cheltenham were an operational inconvenience rather than a limit - engines (including those that would fit on St. James’ turntable) were often noted using the triangle at Lansdown Junction to turn, or ran through to Gloucester to turn at Horton Rd. I’m also not aware that the MSWJR route handled raceday traffic although most references to it that I’ve seen have been for the post-nationalisation era. Depending on the era you’re representing, I suspect LSWR/SR visitors between the the end of the 1890s (by which time, the MSWJR had got their house in order) and 1950s (when Andover Shed was transferred to the Southern Region - 30120, 30707 and 30719 were known to have run on MSWJR metals in the 50s and 60s, although not getting much north of Swindon) were probably rare outside of the two wars. Most of my resource material focuses on the pre-grouping and post-nationalisation eras though.

 

I guess you can take the above whichever way you would like. All the groundwork is there for a plausible excuse for your T9...

Edited July 2, 2020 by mpeffers
291 listed as a ‘T8’ in my MSWJR Vol.2 - gambled on that being a typo for ‘T9’; seems it’s actually a typo for ‘C8’

[LNWR18901910]

I happen to have a Hornby T9 which I gave a Belpaire firebox and a GWR milkchurn safety valve. I intend to make it a Mongrel.

Edited July 3, 2020 by LNWR18901910

[Harveyc]

Motive Power for Andover Junction 

I bought an old picture on ebay mistaking it for a postcard, turns out it was a print from the photographer H.C.Casserly whose name i recognised from various pictorial guides to local routes. I don't know if the picture exists outside of my collection (im sure it does) but here it is for those interested (1927). 

You can see the MSWJR swindonised 4-4-0 and two or possibly more LSWR Locos.

Its a rough photo from my phone but you can see the 6 wheel tenders, the one on the left perhaps an Adam's "0460" Class 

Perhaps the same loco is photographed a year later (1928) at Wherwell station on the Fullerton branch. I'm not an expert on workings around Andover but perhaps some of these locos were running on the MSWJR and Spratt and Winkle.