Wright writes.....

[grob1234]

21 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

No Alex,

 

Not from what I've seen. It looked like a 'Super A3' (though, obviously, not a Pacific), with a very distinctive sloping front platform.

 

I wonder what its classification would have been, since all the other letters for wheel arrangements had been used up?

 

Anyway, it would have been by some margin the largest and most-powerful express passenger loco ever seen in this country. 

 

Does anyone know? Or have access to a drawing of it, please?

 

Regards,

 

Tony.

 

Basic drawing here.

 

LNER Info.

 

A4 Cab. Massive smokebox. Looks makeable? 

Edited January 17, 2021 by grob1234

[gr.king]

Already on my "to do" list and well overdue for attention. "Grantham" and my career termination have got in the way. I cheated when I did a conjectural streamlined version of the 4-8-2 first, as that did not require re-location of the motor when adapting and extending a Hornby Chinese A1/A3/A4 chassis. The spacious extended A4 body shape fits over the motor without any bother. The undercut below the boiler in the moulding for an A1/A3 (suitably extended) obliges one to move the motor or have it partly visible in an ugly cut-out. 

[SD85]

The proposed but never built loco I'd be interested in having a go at is Maunsell's express Garratt class that was speculatively considered for the Basingstoke-Exeter section of the SR in the 1930s. 4-6-2 + 2-6-4 wheel arrangement. These would have been absolutely huge - 91' in length over the buffers - and would have essentially worked all the express passenger trains on the West of England line with as much freight as possible switched to run at night.

 

There is one outline drawing with measurements somewhere around if anyone wants to link it.

 

I did have a go at making a static display mock up of one of these locomotives using Dapol plastic kits to build the power units but got no further than the main frames, bogie and wheels/motion. Judging from my calculations and the basic measurements the power units would have essentially been the same wheelbase as a King Arthur chassis, but with 6'3" driving wheels instead, and the bogie from the Schools/Nelsons, plus a trailing truck.

 

No names were proposed for the class as the idea never got very far. However, given the attention to detail of the SR's publicity department at the time, and the fact that the locomotives would have been primarily operating in the ancient kingdom of Wessex, it seemed to me that naming them after the famous rulers of that kingdom would have been a fairly straightforward PR move. The doyen of the class in that case would probably be named Alfred The Great, and perhaps the second engine would have been called Athelstan. I would still like to make this loco but I do not have the skill to scratch build a working one.

Edited January 17, 2021 by SD85

[robmcg]

15 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

The tender is spot-on, Tony.

 

It's a streamlined non-corridor type (ex-A4), a type towed by few A3s (including 60046, and FLYING SCOTSMAN itself). Hornby is to be congratulated for getting such details right.

 

The only thing I'd change is the green above the cab roof eaves. The cab roofs were black all over in BR days.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

Thankyou Tony, 

 

I sometimes remember to 'do' the cab roof eaves when editing, but not always, especially years ago when I photographed that model and hadn't had the educational input of this excellent thread.

 

May I ask a question not entirely related to weathering and editing, but about railway photography and photography in general? 

 

I recently bought a couple of books full of photos by Eric Treacy and am astonished by the depth-of-field he achieved back in 1938-52 for 'Eric Treacy's LMS' by Jenkinson and Whitehouse.  I did a lot or photography of real steam back in the 1960s some of it with a 6x6 camera, but would have struggled to obtain the depth-of-field he did in often only average light and with fast-moving trains.

 

Did he use a plate camera or a smaller format film camera I wonder? My father was head of publicity for New Zealand Railways and his office had an entire wall of what I think were 1:24 scale NZ steam engines built from scratch by NZR expert Frank Roberts, many used in exhibitions, as well as many metal cabinets containing hundreds of photos by their staff photographer John le Cren, who achieved great sharpness for some trains using full plate cameras but these were I think posed at low speed, with helpful wind direction.

 

You can see I had some rather highly-skilled people to emulate in both modelling and photography, but remain mystified by the tricks Eric Treacy must have used for such as his LMS photos...   I have looked around the web and not found any description of his cameras and immediately thought 'someone who reads Wright Writes may know'.

 

After all this thread possibly has one of the best-informed collection of readers anywhere.

 

My suspicion is that he used a 6x6 or half-plate camera and tripod and actually moved the camera at the point of shutter release. I'd love to know. I particularly like the descriptions in the LMS book where carriage types are identified, even 13 carriages back from a sharp fast-moving engine!

 

Apologies for going 'off track' again.

Edited January 18, 2021 by robmcg
typos, addition.

[Jesse Sim]

The DS GER General Van is now finished. I have to say this is my new favourite van on my layout. The reasons being; I built it, I painted it, I weathered it and it’s definitely the best brass kit I have ever built. Gave my self a well earn’t pat on the back.  

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Jesse Sim said:

The reasons being; I built it, I painted it, I weathered it and it’s definitely the best brass kit I have ever built.

Three cheers. Does it go? Over points, diamonds, slips? Pulling and pushing? If so then four cheers!

[Jesse Sim]

28 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Three cheers. Does it go? Over points, diamonds, slips? Pulling and pushing? If so then four cheers!

It does all of the above. 

[Chamby]

11 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

No Alex,

 

Not from what I've seen. It looked like a 'Super A3' (though, obviously, not a Pacific), with a very distinctive sloping front platform.

 

I wonder what its classification would have been, since all the other letters for wheel arrangements had been used up?

 

Anyway, it would have been by some margin the largest and most-powerful express passenger loco ever seen in this country. 

 

Does anyone know? Or have access to a drawing of it, please?

 

Regards,

 

Tony.

 

Taking this concept a logical step further, I wonder what Thompson’s rebuild of such a locomotive might have become... a 6-6-2 perhaps?  Or a W2 maybe?   

[LNER4479]

13 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

One 'designed-but-not-built' loco I'd love to see in model form is Gresley's 4-8-2. I believe drawings were prepared for the prototype of this, but the War intervened. 

I wonder, has anyone ever built a model of it?

 

 

'Flying Fox 34F' of this parish had a crack a few years ago:

 

 

(As posted on the Grantham thread 2014-15. Maybe he'll be along in due course to explain himself)

 

 

[jwealleans]

It's been done once or twice with Photoshop as well.

 

 

[Tony Wright]

8 hours ago, robmcg said:

 

Thankyou Tony, 

 

I sometimes remember to 'do' the cab roof eaves when editing, but not always, especially years ago when I photographed that model and hadn't had the educational input of this excellent thread.

 

May I ask a question not entirely related to weathering and editing, but about railway photography and photography in general? 

 

I recently bought a couple of books full of photos by Eric Treacy and am astonished by the depth-of-field he achieved back in 1938-52 for 'Eric Treacy's LMS' by Jenkinson and Whitehouse.  I did a lot or photography of real steam back in the 1960s some of it with a 6x6 camera, but would have struggled to obtain the depth-of-field he did in often only average light and with fast-moving trains.

 

Did he use a plate camera or a smaller format film camera I wonder? My father was head of publicity for New Zealand Railways and his office had an entire wall of what I think were 1:24 scale NZ steam engines built from scratch by NZR expert Frank Roberts, many used in exhibitions, as well as many metal cabinets containing hundreds of photos by their staff photographer John le Cren, who achieved great sharpness for some trains using full plate cameras but these were I think posed at low speed, with helpful wind direction.

 

You can see I had some rather highly-skilled people to emulate in both modelling and photography, but remain mystified by the tricks Eric Treacy must have used for such as his LMS photos...   I have looked around the web and not found any description of his cameras and immediately thought 'someone who reads Wright Writes may know'.

 

After all this thread possibly has one of the best-informed collection of readers anywhere.

 

My suspicion is that he used a 6x6 or half-plate camera and tripod and actually moved the camera at the point of shutter release. I'd love to know. I particularly like the descriptions in the LMS book where carriage types are identified, even 13 carriages back from a sharp fast-moving engine!

 

Apologies for going 'off track' again.

'Off track', Rob?

 

Hardly. 

 

According to one of the bishop's books, he started with a Leica (started with a Leica!), then moved up to a Super Ikonta (6x9cm?) and a Rollieflex (6x6cm?), both fitted with Zeiss lenses. Top-quality kit, indeed. 

 

My own real railway photography began as a kid with a Brownie 127 (a bit poor), then a Voigtlander 'Bessa' folding 120 camera (obtained by an uncle in Berlin in 1945 for a packet of fags and given to me 15 years later). I foolishly then later 'graduated' to 35mm by obtaining a Praktika; foolish? Cheap, but it kept on going wrong. A Pentax K1000 was the best 'budget' (though highly-reliable) camera I ever had, but that, after thousands of exposures, gave up. A Nikon F was then my choice (second-hand), which I still have. That's the camera which went to Vietnam, the photographer was blown up, and the next guy picked it up and carried on taking pictures. Or, it saved a photographer's life by getting in the way of a bullet! My final film camera for real railway photography was a Pentax 6x7. Surely the finest piece of kit (pre-digital) for taking railway pictures? Blessed with all the dynamics of a brick, with a hernia-inducing weight, it gave incredibly good results (many of which have been published - diesel/electric, not steam of course). I had two bodies, a photomic head (plus a normal pentaprism and eye-level viewfinder), and about a dozen lenses. Costing me thousands, second-hand 30 odd years ago, I couldn't give it away in the end! Dick Blenkinsop used one latterly. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Tony Wright]

5 hours ago, Jesse Sim said:

The DS GER General Van is now finished. I have to say this is my new favourite van on my layout. The reasons being; I built it, I painted it, I weathered it and it’s definitely the best brass kit I have ever built. Gave my self a well earn’t pat on the back.  

What a lovely, natural model, Jesse!

 

Well done indeed. Your best yet?

 

Thanks for showing us.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[LNERandBR]

10 minutes ago, jwealleans said:

It's been done once or twice with Photoshop as well.

 

 

 

Have to admit, the front end of the photoshopped one there looks better. Not accurate to that drawing but it looks more 'right' to my eye.

[Tony Wright]

14 minutes ago, jwealleans said:

It's been done once or twice with Photoshop as well.

 

 

Good morning Jonathan,

 

But not with the sloping front footplate?

 

It would have been an incredible-looking machine. Way ahead of its time as well; what, with AWS and a Smith-Stone speedometer......................

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

Edited January 18, 2021 by Tony Wright
to add something

[Tony Wright]

26 minutes ago, LNER4479 said:

'Flying Fox 34F' of this parish had a crack a few years ago:

 

 

(As posted on the Grantham thread 2014-15. Maybe he'll be along in due course to explain himself)

 

 

Good morning Graham,

 

Has it ever run on Grantham at shows? I'd have loved to have seen it, if it did. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[St Enodoc]

13 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

I wonder what its classification would have been, since all the other letters for wheel arrangements had been used up?

AA1?

[Tony Wright]

2 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

AA1?

Or PA1?

[LNER4479]

7 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Good morning Graham,

 

Has it ever run on Grantham at shows? I'd have loved to have seen it, if it did. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

I seem to recall that it was posed on the layout when we were at Grantham with Grantham (Sept 2015) but it required some fettling at that stage so it wasn't run on the layout as such.

[MikeParkin65]

9 hours ago, robmcg said:

 

Thankyou Tony, 

 

I sometimes remember to 'do' the cab roof eaves when editing, but not always, especially years ago when I photographed that model and hadn't had the educational input of this excellent thread.

 

May I ask a question not entirely related to weathering and editing, but about railway photography and photography in general? 

 

I recently bought a couple of books full of photos by Eric Treacy and am astonished by the depth-of-field he achieved back in 1938-52 for 'Eric Treacy's LMS' by Jenkinson and Whitehouse.  I did a lot or photography of real steam back in the 1960s some of it with a 6x6 camera, but would have struggled to obtain the depth-of-field he did in often only average light and with fast-moving trains.

 

Did he use a plate camera or a smaller format film camera I wonder? My father was head of publicity for New Zealand Railways and his office had an entire wall of what I think were 1:24 scale NZ steam engines built from scratch by NZR expert Frank Roberts, many used in exhibitions, as well as many metal cabinets containing hundreds of photos by their staff photographer John le Cren, who achieved great sharpness for some trains using full plate cameras but these were I think posed at low speed, with helpful wind direction.

 

You can see I had some rather highly-skilled people to emulate in both modelling and photography, but remain mystified by the tricks Eric Treacy must have used for such as his LMS photos...   I have looked around the web and not found any description of his cameras and immediately thought 'someone who reads Wright Writes may know'.

 

After all this thread possibly has one of the best-informed collection of readers anywhere.

 

My suspicion is that he used a 6x6 or half-plate camera and tripod and actually moved the camera at the point of shutter release. I'd love to know. I particularly like the descriptions in the LMS book where carriage types are identified, even 13 carriages back from a sharp fast-moving engine!

 

Apologies for going 'off track' again.

Eric Treacy is a cast iron photography 'hero' in my eyes - I look at his work with the same level of awe as the work of some on this very thread! All of his books are available criminally cheaply these days. Those edited by Patrick Whitehouse have more detailed captions (Treacy was apparently not a great note taker but Patrick has fleshed out the captions) and those printed by David & Charles have the best photo reproduction. Some of the heritage railways and loco societies have an ebay presence and sell second hand books and I am buying from these where I can at the moment to try and give at least a little bit back. Good sellers I have dealt with recently include 'Steamcider' (the 7812 Erlestoke Manor fund) and Wensleydale Railway - both with large and regularly updating stock.

[gr.king]

I think "Bridge Man" Flying Fox was having bother with vibration in his Gresley 4-8-2 drive train, having re-located the motor aft and created a rigid (and chunky) extension of the motor armature shaft to reach the gear housing in the extended chassis. I would have been looking at using a flexible extension, had I got that far. My previous comments about motor re-location all assumed, by the way, that anybody using the Hornby chassis would leave the bogie, cylinders and valve gear alone, inserting any extension piece to the rear of the existing 6 coupled wheels. Moving the bogie, cylinders and valvegear mountings forward, plus switching the coupled wheel sets around to move the con rods and return cranks onto the original first coupled axle, keeping the drive gear on the original axle, would solve the motor location problem if all of the bearings, axle-ends, wheel centres and crankpins are ( or could be made to be) compatible and interchangeable. 

I realise of course that the Pacific coupled wheel base is a little longer than the amount shown on drawings of the proposed 4-8-2, but those drawings were not necessarily final. The 4-8-2 design had obviously been "squeezed" to make it fit existing tutntables, with very little cab space due to firebox intrusion. Would it have been built like that, or would a case for larger turntables have been pressed upon the civil engineer?

I think Jim Kirkman also had a version of the 4-8-2 in his cabinet, although I don't know if it was a runner. I haven't heard from him for a long time.

Edited January 18, 2021 by gr.king

[Jesse Sim]

1 hour ago, Tony Wright said:

What a lovely, natural model, Jesse!

 

Well done indeed. Your best yet?

 

Thanks for showing us.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

Many thanks my good sir, Hopefully the next ones much betterer.

 

Might have a crack at one of the GNR twins I have here. 

[john new]

49 minutes ago, MikeParkin65 said:

Eric Treacy is a cast iron photography 'hero' in my eyes - I look at his work with the same level of awe as the work of some on this very thread! All of his books are available criminally cheaply these days. Those edited by Patrick Whitehouse have more detailed captions (Treacy was apparently not a great note taker but Patrick has fleshed out the captions) and those printed by David & Charles have the best photo reproduction. Some of the heritage railways and loco societies have an ebay presence and sell second hand books and I am buying from these where I can at the moment to try and give at least a little bit back. Good sellers I have dealt with recently include 'Steamcider' (the 7812 Erlestoke Manor fund) and Wensleydale Railway - both with large and regularly updating stock.

Having fairly recently reviewed one of the modern reprints of a Treacy book for the SLS Journal go for a second hand one as recommended. Print quality of the photos in it was a disappointingly mediocre  3 from 5 stars at best.

[john new]

47 minutes ago, gr.king said:

I think "Bridge Man" Flying Fox was having bother with vibration in his Gresley 4-8-2 drive train, having re-located the motor aft and created a rigid (and chunky) extension of the motor armature shaft to reach the gear housing in the extended chassis. I would have been looking at using a flexible extension, had I got that far. My previous comments about motor re-location all assumed, by the way, that anybody using the Hornby chassis would leave the bogie, cylinders and valve gear alone, inserting any extension piece to the rear of the existing 6 coupled wheels. Moving the bogie, cylinders and valvegear mountings forward, plus switching the coupled wheel sets around to move the con rods and return cranks onto the original first coupled axle, keeping the drive gear on the original axle, would solve the motor location problem if all of the bearings, axle-ends, wheel centres and crankpins are ( or could be made to be) compatible and interchangeable. 

I realise of course that the Pacific coupled wheel base is a little longer than the amount shown on drawings of the proposed 4-8-2, but those drawings were not necessarily final. The 4-8-2 design had obviously been "squeezed" to make it fit existing tutntables, with very little cab space due to firebox intrusion. Would it have been built like that, or would a case for larger turntables have been pressed upon the civil engineer?

I think Jim Kirkman also had a version of the 4-8-2 in his cabinet, although I don't know if it was a runner. I haven't heard from him for a long time.

Perhaps the extra civil engineering cost requirement in order to run it, if built, was a reason for not progressing the idea further. Overall cost outweighed any advantages. The LNER had learnt that lesson with the P1, no point being able to haul a massive coal train if operationally it was then too long to slot in around and between the other services.

[gr.king]

26 minutes ago, john new said:

Perhaps the extra civil engineering cost requirement in order to run it, if built, was a reason for not progressing the idea further. Overall cost outweighed any advantages. The LNER had learnt that lesson with the P1, no point being able to haul a massive coal train if operationally it was then too long to slot in around and between the other services.

 

That may be the case. I'm sure it is far too late now for us to ever find out.

 

Although these have probably been seen on here before, to save readers having to search I've found a couple of images of the streamlined 4-8-2. One shows that it was relatively easy to put a brass channel chassis extension under the rear of the motor mount, once the relatively light parts of the chassis casting originally supporting the Cartazzi unit had been cut away - far easier than changing everything to accommodate an extension at the front. As can be seen, the fairly fat motor no longer sits in the firebox area of the extended body, hence the problem with a non-streamlined body. The second picture shows the completed loco, before a change to the "finescale" valve gear. Obviously, I started the conversion from a  "budget" Railroad model, so as to have least to lose if I failed to get a decent result...

 

Yes, it does go round curves, and I think Jonathan Wealleans did once just manage to turn it on OO Grantham's turntable.

Edited January 18, 2021 by gr.king
Spelling mistake!

[LNER4479]

14 minutes ago, gr.king said:

Yes, it does go round curves, and I think Jonathan Wealleans did once just manage to turn it on OO Grantham's turntable.

 

Like this, you mean?