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Towards pre-Grouping carriages in 4mm – the D508 appreciation thread


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On 01/09/2020 at 00:09, Compound2632 said:

Most wine bottles are around 3” in diameter. This bottle is a uniform 2½” diameter over 7⅛”, making it ideal for forming 8 ft radius Plastikard carriage roofs for carriages up to 45 ft long, such as were worn by Midland Railway arc-roof bogie carriages built in the period 1878 – 1889.

Interesting. I'm taking note of that for future. 

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40 minutes ago, AVS1998 said:

 

These are gorgeous, I'd love to know what services they ran on? Highly doubtful they'd run south of London, of course, but one hopes. The artwork implies quite a generous compartment size?

 

Compartment sizes on the arc-roofed carriages were standardised in the late 1870s at 7'3" between partitions for first and 6'0" for third (with the exception of those 40 ft thirds with 6'6" compartments). There was some variation of up to about ½" to fit - for example, the D490 and D502 43 ft thirds and third brakes had 5'11¾" compartments - with 1¼" thick partitions and 3⅛" ends it all adds up. But for many carriages there was a luggage compartment to take up the odd fractions of an inch! On those D552 12-wheelers, the lavatories were 3'6" between partitions; rather more cramped than the lavatories converted from passenger compartments. When Clayton went over to clerestory carriages, not only did the width go up from 8'0" to 8'6", giving a bit more elbow room, but the firsts went up to 7'9" and the thirds to 6'6". When David Bain took over in 1903, sizes shrank a little to 7'4" for first and 6'4" for third, at least for side corridor carriages.

 

Both those designs of 12-wheeler, D507 and D522, were in the front rank expresses mixed in with the new clerestory carriages until the general adoption of corridor carriages from c. 1905 onwards. They're often seen in London-Manchester expresses. I don't know whether they would have worked south of the river but certainly arc-roof carriages did until the Metropolitan gauge clerestories were built in 1907-1911. 

 

There were certainly 45 ft composites worked through between Kentish Town and Herne Hill, exactly where they came from and went to beyond those stations I'm not sure; it may just have been a connecting shuttle service:

 

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Idling away, I came upon the I think moribund LMS Review website where a photo of a D516 31 ft 6-wheel centre-luggage composite in departmental use at Dumfries in 1966 is posted as a "mystery photograph". The photographer, D.A. McNaught, noted that it was built in 1885. Peter Tatlow identified it, posting a photograph of an MSJS example, together with the diagram, bout taken, I think, from Lacy & Dow. 

 

While it's tempting to draw the inference that this carriage is one of the 25 Kilmarnock-built MSJS carriages, 9 of which went to the G&SWR when they were replaced on Anglo-Scottish expresses by the clerestory corridor carriages of 1899/1900, the build date of 1885 clearly implies that it is a Derby-built Midland carriage, one of the 100 built to Lot 111, ordered in March 1884. The second batch of 100, Lot 141, was ordered towards the end of November 1884, so it seems unlikely that any were complete before the end of that year. The Kilmarnock-built MSJS carriages were ordered in April 1882 so were almost certainly all in traffic by 1883. (At the same time, Cowlairs built 10 of the 31 ft 5-compartment thirds, Midland diagram D493, for the MSJS.)

 

This raises a little mystery: why, having built nothing but bogie carriages for main-line use from the late 1870s, was there this sudden reversion to 6-wheelers, and for the prestige Anglo-Scottish expresses at that? The Kilmarnock composites were the first of their type; the Cowlairs thirds only the second batch of that type, the first being built at Derby for use in close-coupled local sets. 

 

These 6-wheel luggage composites are very well known and perhaps many people's idea of a pre-clerestory Midland carriage, thanks in no small part to the superbly-restored example at the NRM:

 

1024px-Midland_Railway_6-wheel_carriage.

 

Wikimedia Commons / James E. Petts / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0).

 

There's another being restored by the Vintage Carriages Trust at Ingrow, after many years spent sporting GN&SR livery.

 

But in my view, splendid as they are, they're not as typical or as representative of the Midland's carriage stock of the 1880s and 1890s as the arc-roofed bogie carriages. Alas, not one survives - though at Foxfield there is the body of a D490 43 ft 7-compartment third and exactly the right underframe for it, complete with original bogies, under the "Bass" carriage...

 

 

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Why the reversion to six-wheel carriages is indeed a puzzle. Prejudice and partisanship leads me to blame the parsimonious North British.  I should know this, but when did the M&SJS split into M&NB and M&GSW? 

 

Do you have notes of the distribution of actual carriages when they where displaced from the Anglo-Scottish workings, all I know is that they were shared out according to the proportions of ownership and I'd assumed that where they were built mattered little when they were re-allocated.

 

Alan

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42 minutes ago, Buhar said:

Why the reversion to six-wheel carriages is indeed a puzzle. Prejudice and partisanship leads me to blame the parsimonious North British.  

 

I wonder if money was at the root of it. The GSWR and NBR were having to pay their one-third share of the cost of the joint stock; it may have been felt unsatisfactory that they were having to pay cash whereas the Midland was to a large extent paying in kind by building stock in its own works. In which case, I wonder if Kilmarnock and Cowlairs were not equipped to build bogie carriages? One would have thought that if that was the issue, Deby could have supplied the bogies.

 

42 minutes ago, Buhar said:

Why the reversion to six-wheel carriages is indeed a puzzle. Prejudice and partisanship leads me to blame the parsimonious North British.  I should know this, but when did the M&SJS split into M&NB and M&GSW? 

 

Do you have notes of the distribution of actual carriages when they where displaced from the Anglo-Scottish workings, all I know is that they were shared out according to the proportions of ownership and I'd assumed that where they were built mattered little when they were re-allocated.

 

The M&GSW and M&NB stock was the new clerestory corridor carriages, firstly on the afternoon trains in August 1899, then the morning and other trains, done by some time in 1900. The division of shares was a bit more equitable: two-thirds to the Midland and one-third to the other partner in each case. The M&NB stock included some sleeping carriages but the sleeper services to Glasgow and Stranraer always used Midland vehicles. As far as I can work out, there was no transfer of MSJS vehicles to the new joint stocks; presumably they remained separately accounted for. There was also the MSWJS, created for the dining carriages of 1896, which only ran in the Glasgow trains; those carriages were transferred to the M&GSW joint stock.

 

Lacy & Dow give the distribution of the MSJS carriages, which was as nearly as possible one-third of each type to each company, without sawing any up! The GSWR got 29 carriages, renumbered as follows:

  • 3 x 54 ft composite 107-109
  • 6 x 40 ft composite 110-115
  • 9 x 31 ft composite 116-124
  • 4 x 31 ft third 619-622
  • 7 x 25 ft brake nos. not known

The NBR got four of the 54 ft 12-wheelers but only eleven 6-wheelers. The Midland's share of the 12-wheelers seems to have been the three converted to dining carriages; these remained in the Scotch services for some years. The Midland also snaffled eight of the 40 ft bogie composites, against six to the other two companies. I haven't done the sums but the division may have been arranged to give each partner the same number of first and third class compartments.

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On 01/09/2020 at 00:09, Compound2632 said:

Turning to composites, two designs were produced in August 1877, both described in the Drawing Register as “Composite Carriage (40ft Bogie Carriage) 1st, 2nd, 3rd + Luggage Compt” – two and a half years after the Midland had abolished second class!

 

The first design, to drawing 331, had three first class compartments flanked by a pair of thirds, with a 5’2½”-long luggage compartment at one end. Three batches were built, 30 to Lot 17 and 10 each to Lots 50 and 58. In 1895, 40 of them had one first class compartment downgraded to third; it’s not stated which but my guess would be the one furthest from the luggage end, as being over the bogie so giving the least smooth ride. Ralph Lacy couldn’t find an official photo to illustrate them but this is my interpretation:

705153791_MRD-40ftcompositeLot17.png.65e6fc3cf7ea06b793bfe9903cd45312.png

 

 

I think I've found one of these elusive vehicles in a train photo at Elstree c. 1899, Midland Railway Study Centre Item No. 60594. Although the web image is only a thumbnail, looking at the second carriage, the third compartment is widely-spaced from the compartments either side, suggesting three firsts in a row. I also think those are Pullman bogies. 

 

EDIT: I had a hunch I'd seen this photo before - I've tracked it down to R.J. Essery and D. Jenkinson, An Illustrated Review of Midland Locomotives Vol. 2 (Wild Swan, 1988) Plate 49, where it's dated c. 1904. It can't be c. 1899 as the leading D530 brake has the small guard's lookouts introduced in 1902 and the locomotive wears its lamp irons in the post-1 February 1903 positions. This clearer reproduction of the photo confirms my identification, I believe. The carriage is seen from the same side as my sketch. An oddity is that the ventilator is on the RH door of the luggage compartment, which is anomalous.

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I have been asking for advice on the best way to get a good square cut for cut'n'shutting:

Advice upon which I will be acting. Meanwhile, my carriage-building has taken an interesting twist in a different direction, thanks to Dave @chris p bacon's very kind offer to prepare some carriage side "kits" using his Silhouette. Having extolled the importance of Midland bogie carriages, I've actually gone for a 6-wheeler, largely because it's a particularly challenging one to cut'n'shut from Slaters sides, being a 30 ft 4-compartment all first to D262, 91 of which were built in 1883-4 for use in short-buffer (close coupled) suburban sets, along with short buffer thirds and third brakes. The latter were short-buffer versions of the D493 and D504 31 ft carriages represented by the Slaters kits. The first is wanted to make up one of the five-coach Birmingham, Walsall and Wolverhampton sets, formed BT/T/F/T/BT.  The Midland Railway Study Centre has both a copy of the drawing, Drg. 547, and the official photo, MRSC Item 64340 - see also R.E. Lacy & G. Dow, Midland Railway Carriages Vol. 2 (Wild Swan, 1986) Figs. 340 and 341.

 

For the Silhouette, I prepared drawings in CorelDraw, output as PDF for the cutter. I've followed the classic David Jenkinson method, with a main body side layer in 0.020" plasticard, a droplight layer in 0.010", and a beading layer, which Dave cut in both 0.010" and 0.005", along with bolection pieces in the same thicknesses. The aim is to produce sides that are a good match for the Slaters sides, rather than reproducing scale thicknesses exactly. The Silhouette wasn't set to cut right through any of these thicknesses, making the sheets of plasticard more robust for sending through the post.

 

Here's the main side piece, with a start being made on opening out the windows, using the Jenkinson method of cutting a cross and folding back each triangle so that the plasticard snaps off on the score line. If I'd thought ahead, I would have got the Silhouette to mark out the cross lines!

 

403121988_MidlandD262firstmainlayer.JPG.5df43c7195dd5943ac0e9f3c48886293.JPG

 

I'm not too fussed at this stage about the rough edges on the quarter-lights but the door window openings need to be neat.

 

Next the beading layer. I started with the 0.005" thick sheet, concerned that it would break up, but in fact it is fairly straightforward to push the pieces out. I've left the quarter-lights blank, which gives greater rigidity to the resulting doily:

 

1936126833_MidlandD262firstbeadinglayer.JPG.35137cb7b70c7d52b7acf3a9ceaf8a67.JPG

 

Both pieces are marked out within a bounding rectangle. For the beading layer, this gives extra strength, but the main aim is to use this to align the beading and main side layers. The only thing to remember is that the scored side of the main layer is the inside, so that once the beading is stuck on, it's still visible when I come to cut the completed side to size. (It's an advantage here to have chosen a symmetrical design of carriage!)

 

1464753829_MidlandD262firstmainandbeadinglayers.JPG.e30b8b5b4d21f84a1fdcbaa9f6e19931.JPG

 

Here are these two layers welded together with d-limonene, with a start made on cutting through the quarter-light openings from the rear side:

 

97412218_MidlandD262firstbeadinglayerfixed.JPG.abc3b02be0c7b82f00fa34bd2b50dbcb.JPG

 

The next installment should see @richbrummitt's dessert wine bottle pressed into service.

 

 

Edited by Compound2632
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Stephen,
Would there be any advantage in shaping the curve on the sides first and them adhereing the beading section to help hold the shape?
Or there is not enough strength in the beading section to actually do that?
I am thinking along the lines of how you laminate, say pieces of ply to form a curve that will hold, if that makes sense!
 

Khris

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5 hours ago, kandc_au said:

Would there be any advantage in shaping the curve on the sides first and them adhereing the beading section to help hold the shape?
Or there is not enough strength in the beading section to actually do that?
I am thinking along the lines of how you laminate, say pieces of ply to form a curve that will hold, if that makes sense!

 

Well, it's all experimental at this stage. The only beading on the curved section is at the ends. I'll be using the hot water method to set the curve. Thinking about it, it might be an advantage to trim the ends to shape before doing this, so that the double layer doesn't offer additional resistance. Apart from the beading at the ends, at the moment, I'm thinking that the 0.020" side will be the only layer below the waist - the droplight layer only extends from the bottom of the waist panel to the top of the eves panel. But if that seems to flimsy, I could laminate a thicker layer of pre-curved plasticard behind the tumblehome. 

 

It seemed easiest to fix the beading on to the main side while in the flat, to get the alignment right. Even so, I'm not happy with the alignment - this first side may well turn out to be a sacrificial test piece.

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I've been hitting the bottle:

 

417106719_MidlandD262firsttumblehomeformingtaped.JPG.cce60b4dd976a433516fbd04420fec5b.JPG

 

Into the hot bath, or pie dish:

 

1768191469_MidlandD262firsttumblehomeformingimmersion.JPG.d08435a5a074e4f451d3add408bbddf1.JPG

 

Dried out, and on with the bolection panels - 0.005" plasticard again:

 

1314325797_MidlandD262firstbolectionsfixed.JPG.69c1dafadb7b2c57c9ba3909ed87e37d.JPG

 

With a start made on cutting through from behind. The tidying up won't start until the droplight layer is fitted. This photo shows why I'm thinking this first attempt won't make the final cut - the door window openings go right up to the beading - i.e. the beading is fixed a whisker too low down on the side. Nevertheless I think I'll take it all the way to test all the finishing-off - door ventilators, hinges, etc.

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Bolections cut through from the rear and the 0.010"-thick droplight layer added:

 

1437916348_MidlandD262firstdroplightlayerfixed.JPG.c8baad6f976dff7c28bf5a488d58188d.JPG

 

On the two RH compartments, the bolection has been trimmed back at 45° by careful skrawking, with the round needle-file for tidying up the corners. The slight downwards mis-alignment of the beading layer is evident again, with the bolections being too wide at the bottom and disintegratingly thin at the top. Living and learning, in the hope that practice will make, if not perfect, at least better.

 

An advantage of starting out with an all-first is that there are fewer sets of windows than for an all-third!

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I think it's great, it's a prototype, a real world 3d design sketch, proving the theory and improving the practice. Basically, the man who never made a mistake, never made anything. If we had the means to cut plastic card that well and more importantly that quickly on a DIY basis thirty years ago, I would have one hell of a fleet of pre grouping coaches by now.

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1 minute ago, MrWolf said:

If we had the means to cut plastic card that well and more importantly that quickly on a DIY basis thirty years ago, I would have one hell of a fleet of pre grouping coaches by now.

 

I couldn't agree more. Although the Silhouette turns out to have its limitations in actually cutting through plasticard, its real value lies in the accuracy of marking-out and scoring lines. I hope you've noticed the little blip in the beading on the right-hand side of the door, for the door lock.

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I have, it would be one thing filing that to shape for one door, but reproducing it accurately and consistently on many doors would be near impossible.

There would be a distinct possibility of filling the swear jar though

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1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Although the Silhouette turns out to have its limitations

It does, but there are others on here who have got so much more than me out of it.

 

I think I paid about £130 which isn't a small amount of money but I reckon it's money well spent. One thing I use it for is test building, I've found it invaluable for checking whether an etch sheet will go together easily or not.

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Stephen,

Well at least I have caught up on one of your threads.  I shall follow with interest.  

 

I was going to use cut and shut with the Triang Clerestorys to make GWR through coaches until I was given diagrams of GWR coaches, when I decided to use the cutter.  My method is different from yours as I use all 10 thou and everything is cut through.  Andy G ( @uax6 ),  whose method I follow, and who cut some coaches for me before I had my own cutter sent the cut sides through the post between thick card.  One advantage was that when gluing them together I could line up the ends so that made the placement easier.  I also found that is was just possible to move them a fraction as I was going along and even when they were just stuck down.  They are not all 100% perfect but close enough especially as the difference between window sizes is a fraction of a millimetre.  There are images on my thread and I will get back to the coaches again in the New Year, but do not hold your breath.

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I've been rather quiet on the carriage front - on modelling generally - but that doesn't mean I've not been thinking about carriages. One thing I have been doing is reading up on West Coast Joint Stock and East Coast Joint Stock in the 19th century, as background for a series of articles on the composition of Midland Scotch Expresses I've been mulling over for the Midland Railway Society Journal. I've a moderately complete library on LNWR carriages, including R.M. Casserley and P.A. Millard, A Register of West Coast Joint Stock (HMRS, 1980), which is one of the few carriage books to go right back to the days when LNWR carriages were built at Saltley, at what subsequently became the home of Joseph Wright's Metropolitan Railway Carriage & Wagon Company.

 

However, I'd run into my studied ignorance of anything to do with Denison's upstart Lincolnshire potato railway - as far as I'm concerned, the Great Northern Railway was a particularly admirable Irish line, tragically brought down by politics, though North Americans and Australians may have other, equally admirable, lines in view. To learn about the East Coast Joint Stock, I've had to bite the bullet and buy a second hand book about (mostly) Doncaster-built carriages:

 

1063410092_HooleECJSbook.JPG.dd3023e673c439af861018e48c0ade70.JPG

 

[K. Hoole, An Illustrated History of East Coast Joint Stock (OPC, 1993)] 

 

Hopefully @chris p bacon will approve and therefore forgive me for not making any further progress with the Silhouette sides!

 

I rationalise this Doncaster aberation with the thoughts that:

  • The ownership of the ECJS was divided up according to the Kings Cross - Waverley route mileage of each of the partners, so although the Great Northern had the largest share, it did not have an absolute majority, and could be held in check by those very fine lines the North Eastern and the North British. (I believe the Caledonian, as successor to the Scottish North Eastern Railway, which built the Perth-Aberdeen line, was a "sleeping partner", but I'll let that pass.)
  • The author was the doyen of North Eastern enthusiasts and has chiefly chosen illustrations of East Coast expresses hauled by North Eastern engines, on the specious grounds that since all Doncaster carriages look alike, one can't tell if a train behind one of those strange-looking Stirling*, Ivatt, or G-----y machines is a Scotch express or merely some internal service.

*There is something not quite right about Patrick Stirling's engines to my prejudiced eyes. Which is odd, since I find the engines his brother James built for the G&SWR and the South Eastern, and those his son Matthew built for the Hull & Barnsley, quite handsome.

 

For those in the UK, here's a selection of Great Northern Victoriana:

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-railway-traffic-1898-online

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-queensbury-tunnel-1898-online

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-railway-traffic-1900-online

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-great-northern-railway-works-at-doncaster-1901-1900-online

 

By the bye, I should make it clear that I have no intention of modelling any GNER or even ECJS vehicles...

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3 minutes ago, chris p bacon said:

You can easily go off some people........:D

 

When one has to put up with all the sizist remarks about the Midland, one has to keep one's end up somehow!

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Stephen @Compound2632,


Your comments about the railway which ran north from KX do let the side down, please continue to educate us readers and avoid the style of comment which belongs elsewhere in the media.

 

Recent posts here and in the D299 world have been rather good and very informative, in many cases deserving of a round of applause (the demise of the groan is much regretted as that "reaction" might be appropriate to the previous message).

 

regards, Graham

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I'm sorry that offence has been taken and thereby to have given offence. Here's a nice photo of a Great Northern train from the Disused Stations website:

 

image.png.4e636d3b4136048ea99dfe9dc54a9014.png 

 

I suppose the engine has been got at by Ivatt, what with that dome. The leading carriage is a bogie brake - third or composite? But the rest look to be those characteristically long 6-wheelers that Patrick Stirling favoured, in the interest of keeping the loads down for his singles. They are said to have been rough riding at speed, which I think is inevitable with a long 6-wheeler. The longest ECJS 6-wheelers were some corridor or semi-corridor carriages built in 1893, that were 37'6" over the body; the Great Western was putting carriages just a foot longer on bogies.

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1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

I'm sorry that offence has been taken and thereby to have given offence. Here's a nice photo of a Great Northern train from the Disused Stations website:

image.png.2d09d54ff8fda7052b84c962c6f7b94c.png

 

I suppose the engine has been got at by Ivatt, what with that dome. The leading carriage is a bogie brake - third or composite? But the rest look to be those characteristically long 6-wheelers that Patrick Stirling favoured, in the interest of keeping the loads down for his singles. They are said to have been rough riding at speed, which I think is inevitable with a long 6-wheeler. The longest ECJS 6-wheelers were some corridor or semi-corridor carriages built in 1893, that were 37'6" over the body; the Great Western was putting carriages just a foot longer on bogies.

I don’t think Patrick Stirling liked falderals like domes or bogies.

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