Wright writes.....

[Tony Wright]

4 hours ago, thegreenhowards said:

Tony,

 

Your pictures suggest that the roofs are either black or very dirty, however I think there is a hint of green on some - particularly 60107 above. These photos are colour and therefore presumably early '60s or very late '50s? I seems to me that it's quite possible that they were painted green in the early to mid '50s and that clean ones - like those on the Lizzie, would show some evidence of that green.

 

I think I'll cover my options and paint No.13 black, but leave No.9 green and weather it lightly.

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Andy

 

 

Good evening Andy,

 

I think you're looking at it with the 'eye' of faith'. 

 

Does anyone have irrefutable photographic proof as to that roof colour, please? 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Tony Wright]

3 hours ago, grahame said:

 

I've some (photos of Fencehouses, that is), although they're not very good. Here's a few of them:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Superlative modelling!

 

Thanks for showing us Grahame.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Tony Wright]

2 hours ago, Headstock said:

 

Evening Greenoid,

 

I'll PM you after diner with the Whistle drawings.

 

One colour black / dirty roofs on ex LNER Pacific's, would have been the norm out on the road. Only ex works running in turns show such a clean roof, if it had not been painted over all black The amount of weathering applied to your A4 loco, I don't see how the cab roof stayed so clean, it must have been wearing a nice greenie hat.

 

 

 

What a wonderful picture Andrew,

 

Thanks for showing us. 

 

It also shows an interesting livery variant, unique to only three A4s as far as I know; that of lining the firebox cladding band. It was obviously a local thing (unless Darlington applied it), and the other two were 60019 and 60024 (were there others?). It was at the end of their lives. 

 

Another livery oddity is how the parabolic curved lining at the front goes right into the valance, not running along it to the first cladding band. 60019 also had this (and did 60024?). 

 

Other points of note? 60034 is towing a streamlined non-corridor tender, something she had in exchange with FLYING SCOTSMAN in 1963, losing her 1928-style corridor tender, complete with lowered rear. 60024 also lost her corridor tender (getting 60034's in the process?), but only for the last few weeks of her life. 

 

I think your picture is pretty conclusive in that, whatever the works' painting schemes might have been with regard to the colour of the cab roof above the eaves, in practice (after a week or so of work) they'd be all-over black.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Tony Wright]

4 hours ago, Headstock said:

 

Good evening Tony,

 

did BR paint the eves on ex LNER Pacific's body colour? The answer is yes, at least on some locomotives. It was a bit of a pointless exercise, as the area was obliterated by dirt within days and nobody bothered to clean that area. The LNER had found the same thing before the war and seem to have discontinued the practice.

 

60129 

 

 

60103.

 

 

 

On the other hand, 60501 looks to be in plain black. 

 

 

 

 

 

Many thanks Andrew,

 

Interestingly, the blue paint on 60129's roof extends to above the rainstrip.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[LNER4479]

15 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Interestingly, the blue paint on 60129's roof extends to above the rainstrip.

 

It all goes to show: never trust official drawings

 

Edited January 31, 2021 by LNER4479

[Chuffer Davies]

On 31/01/2021 at 10:31, Tony Wright said:

Why not show us all how you arrange your phosphor bronze pick-ups, please? A picture (or pictures) is (are) worth a thousand words.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

Hi Tony/Baz,

As I have previously mentioned on this thread I am not a great lover of pickups.  My normal approach to tender engines is to use the American system where the tender chassis is live to the offside rail, and the locomotive chassis is live to the nearside.  I build my tank engines with split frame current collection.  On that basis I rarely feel the need to add additional pickups.  

 

In the interests of showing a completely different but equally effective solution to installing pickups I have deviated from my norm and have installed some on my current project (just this afternoon) in order to illustrate an alternate (and my preferred) approach.  I should start by saying that the pick up material I use is Phosphor Bronze strip.  I have yet to have any of those I have installed either fail or squeak, not that I have installed that many over the years. 

 

I am not a metallurgist but it is my understanding that for any given cross section P/Bronze is more springy than N/Silver.  I was also advised (I can't remember by whom) that to reduce wear and arcing the pickups should not be made of the same material as the wheel's rim.  This could be false advice but I have always adhered to it none the less.

 

The following pictures illustrate the 'back scratcher' pick ups that I have installed on this chassis.  The pickups are soldered to small pieces of Copperclad sleeper strip epoxied to the back of the frames.  Care must be taken to get the top radius of the bend just right.  Too tight and the pickups will touch the frames, too large and the top of the pickup will be beyond the rear of the wheel's rim, but otherwise they are straight forward to fit.  Once the wheels have been installed the pickups are near invisible, even before the chassis is installed in the loco. 

 

As I said at the start, this is a work in progress and I have yet to fully clean away all the flux and excess solder so these pictures are very much 'warts and all'.

 

Front View:How they are attached:

The completed installation:

Underside to illustrate the electrically isolated drawbar:

And with its lid on:

 

Having added these pickups this model now collects current from the 5 nearside wheels of the loco, the two offside driving wheels and the three offside tender wheels.  The tender's current is transferred to the loco through the draw bar and so there are no flying leads between the loco and the tender.

 

Regards,

 

Frank

Edited March 31, 2022 by Chuffer Davies
Re-instating Pictures

[Headstock]

3 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

What a wonderful picture Andrew,

 

Thanks for showing us. 

 

It also shows an interesting livery variant, unique to only three A4s as far as I know; that of lining the firebox cladding band. It was obviously a local thing (unless Darlington applied it), and the other two were 60019 and 60024 (were there others?). It was at the end of their lives. 

 

Another livery oddity is how the parabolic curved lining at the front goes right into the valance, not running along it to the first cladding band. 60019 also had this (and did 60024?). 

 

Other points of note? 60034 is towing a streamlined non-corridor tender, something she had in exchange with FLYING SCOTSMAN in 1963, losing her 1928-style corridor tender, complete with lowered rear. 60024 also lost her corridor tender (getting 60034's in the process?), but only for the last few weeks of her life. 

 

I think your picture is pretty conclusive in that, whatever the works' painting schemes might have been with regard to the colour of the cab roof above the eaves, in practice (after a week or so of work) they'd be all-over black.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

Good evening Tony,

 

I thought you might appreciate the firebox cladding band. I always paint/weather the roofs of my Pacific's to the same sooty black colour, why? You can look at hundreds upon hundreds of photographs and that's what the look like. Even photographs of engines four days out of works, if they had any body coloured roof area, it's has gone under a layer of grime. I have two photographs of A4's on the road with green roof edges, they are brand spanking new,  just off the plant and obviously on a running in turns. Copy the real railway and you can't go far wrong.

 

3 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

Many thanks Andrew,

 

Interestingly, the blue paint on 60129's roof extends to above the rainstrip.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

I have another photo of an A1, it is a black and white print but the division between the blue paint and the black is clear, I will dig it out and check to see if it is the same. In the meantime here's Silver link done in the same fashion, notice how the band matches with the tender.

 

 

Silver Link is starting to get dirty eaves here.

 

 

All gone black!

 

 

2 hours ago, LNER4479 said:

It all goes to show: never trust official drawings

 

 

Good evening Graham,

 

I don't think that all cab roofs on all engines were painted with body colour eaves. The problem is, you can't really tell unless it's an ex works shot.

Edited February 1, 2021 by Headstock
add letters, keyboard battery change time.

[Ian Smith]

In illustrating various magnificent N/2mmFS layout photos, I hope that Tony will forgive my posting a few of my own first humble effort in 2mmFS...

 

Unfortunately, it probably doesn't sit too well here as it's both GWR and pre-grouping.  However, in my defence it's all my own work, locos scratch built, coaches built from etched kits (some designed by myself) and painted in the c1906 livery.

 

 

 

 

 

For info, the scenic section is about 6'0" x 1'6".  Oh, and it's Brunel's baulk road too. 

 

Ian

[Northmoor]

Tony,

 

Recently (so probably about 20 pages back!) there was some debate about the relative quality of model railway mags; "Are they worse than they used to be?".  It was pointed out that the number of layout/advice pages were little different to 25+ years ago, but also that the amount of text has fallen very sharply, compensated for with far more and larger pictures.

 

I'm just sorting through some of my RM and BRM back numbers, desperately trying to reduce the weight in my loft.  One or two late 90s RMs were interesting; I found one four page layout article where I think the text made up about three full pages.  There is no way an article like that would appear now.

 

Another thing: the letters to BRM! 

Some of them responding to reviews or articles you and other members of BRM staff had written were really quite personally insulting.

The endless why-doesn't-someone-make-an-XYZ-because-I-want-one letters.....

A letter trashing "Stoke Summit" because there was a break in operation when they saw it at an exhibition, although it was apparently so boring the viewers were four deep....

Wow, there are some absolute <word removed to protect the innocent> with far too much time on their hands. 

 

Nice though to find some earlier articles by contributors I now know through RMWeb.

 

Rob

 

Edited January 31, 2021 by Northmoor
typo

[t-b-g]

17 minutes ago, Ian Smith said:

In illustrating various magnificent N/2mmFS layout photos, I hope that Tony will forgive my posting a few of my own first humble effort in 2mmFS...

 

Unfortunately, it probably doesn't sit too well here as it's both GWR and pre-grouping.  However, in my defence it's all my own work, locos scratch built, coaches built from etched kits (some designed by myself) and painted in the c1906 livery.

 

 

 

 

 

For info, the scenic section is about 6'0" x 1'6".  Oh, and it's Brunel's baulk road too. 

 

Ian

 

Just add that you have no pacifics running 12 coach trains at 100mph and it is a fictitious location and you should really get both barrels!

 

I think it is only the fact that it is a superb layout full of very nice modelling that might just save you!

[Headstock]

1 hour ago, Tony Wright said:

Many thanks Andrew,

 

Interestingly, the blue paint on 60129's roof extends to above the rainstrip.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

57 minutes ago, LNER4479 said:

It all goes to show: never trust official drawings

 

 

A quick postscript.

 

The print I mentioned is also to be found in Yeadon's, vol 3, page 72. 60154 is shown coming off the plant after a heavy repair, the division between blue and black paint on the roof is very clear, it lines up with top of the tender in the same manner as shown by Silver link and above the rainstrip as in 60129.

 

Edited January 31, 2021 by Headstock
clarify a point

[Ian Smith]

6 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

Just add that you have no pacifics running 12 coach trains at 100mph and it is a fictitious location and you should really get both barrels!

 

I think it is only the fact that it is a superb layout full of very nice modelling that might just save you!

Tony, I'm quite happy to be shot down in flames, at the end of the day it's my toy train set and as such I don't worry myself too much (or at all) if others don't like it.  I get enjoyment and satisfaction from my hobby which to me is what it's all about.  On a brighter note, it has been visited by Tim Watson's beautiful P2 "Mons Meg" when exhibited at Stevenage a couple of years ago 

Ian

[Headstock]

20 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

 

Just add that you have no pacifics running 12 coach trains at 100mph and it is a fictitious location and you should really get both barrels!

 

I think it is only the fact that it is a superb layout full of very nice modelling that might just save you!

 

Your so right, darn I hadn't noticed. I'm going to take my applause back and give it both barrels. Where's the fire button?

[CF MRC]

14 minutes ago, Ian Smith said:

Tony, I'm quite happy to be shot down in flames, at the end of the day it's my toy train set and as such I don't worry myself too much (or at all) if others don't like it.  I get enjoyment and satisfaction from my hobby which to me is what it's all about.  On a brighter note, it has been visited by Tim Watson's beautiful P2 "Mons Meg" when exhibited at Stevenage a couple of years ago 

Ian

Here she is, Ian, straightening out your funny track. 

Tim

[t-b-g]

8 minutes ago, Ian Smith said:

Tony, I'm quite happy to be shot down in flames, at the end of the day it's my toy train set and as such I don't worry myself too much (or at all) if others don't like it.  I get enjoyment and satisfaction from my hobby which to me is what it's all about.  On a brighter note, it has been visited by Tim Watson's beautiful P2 "Mons Meg" when exhibited at Stevenage a couple of years ago 

Ian

 

It is a truly lovely layout and building something that gives you, as the builder, pleasure is the best reason of all. I tend to work like that. I build what I would like to see myself and if anybody else likes it, that is a nice bonus. It is a little known fact that I have a big soft spot for early GWR locos and stock. My first ever loco kit was a Ks Dean Goods. I lived near the closed station at Calne when I was young and although the track had gone the station buildings were still there and we used to enjoy exploring them. I learned that the Dean Goods used to run there and I wanted one. I only changed to the GCR because everybody was doing GWR and I fell in love with Buckingham in the old magazines.

[Ian Smith]

6 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

It is a truly lovely layout and building something that gives you, as the builder, pleasure is the best reason of all. I tend to work like that. I build what I would like to see myself and if anybody else likes it, that is a nice bonus. It is a little known fact that I have a big soft spot for early GWR locos and stock. My first ever loco kit was a Ks Dean Goods. I lived near the closed station at Calne when I was young and although the track had gone the station buildings were still there and we used to enjoy exploring them. I learned that the Dean Goods used to run there and I wanted one. I only changed to the GCR because everybody was doing GWR and I fell in love with Buckingham in the old magazines.

Tony, I too love the Dean Goods, and added one to my stud last year as my "lockdown loco".  Started in March and complete by Summer.  She features in a couple of the photos I posted.

 

Buckingham has always been one of my favourite layouts, I too fell under its spell in the 1970's.  I have many of the articles Peter Denny wrote about it from the Railway Modeller (and other magazines) - I tended to keep just the pages that interested me and the Buckingham lines feature predominantly in those retained.  Even now I regularly read those old back numbers (and the Wild Swan books) for inspiration!

Ian

[jrg1]

12 hours ago, Headstock said:

 

Morning Greenie,

 

Re roof colour, it's something that Tony keeps pointing out to you and you keep ignoring, . I don't have a dogma in the fight, I just find it funny. I assumed that you know better and with a bit of prompting, you might provide some interesting evidence.

 

I almost forgot, I have a set of drawings from the Department of Railways, New South Wales, for the Whistle fitted to 60012 if you are interested? I think they are similar.

So have I.

[St Enodoc]

14 hours ago, LNER4479 said:

 

 

Phew! I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that as it was (is?) otherwise a fantastic layout, fulling deserving of the accolades on here.

 

I think it's a bit harsh (John) to say that it spoiled the illusion totally. For me it 'jarred a bit', but it was easy enough to simply ignore the left hand end and concentrate on the amazing recreation of the gorge of the Wye valley. Absolutely the best use of 2mm scale and impractical to do in 4mm as you wouldn't be able to get at the centre to either model or view it.

 

I saw it at several shows and 'stayed to the death' at its final show (Manchester - obviously - can't remember the year) to see the 'last' train run.

Well, it did! All that superb work and effort on a layout that, in railway terms, was completely implausible. Shame.

[Northmoor]

5 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Well, it did! All that superb work and effort on a layout that, in railway terms, was completely implausible. Shame.

It didn't bother me, but I can respect the view of those that it does.

 

Although the Midland Main Line clearly didn't, aren't there several secondary main lines or through routes that change from double to single track sections?  The Highland ML, Cambrian (Gobowen-Newtown) and Central Wales line (Knighton-Craven Arms) are three I can think of.  Plus, what about seemingly everyone's old favourite, the S&D?

[Chamby]

13 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

It didn't bother me, but I can respect the view of those that it does.

 

Although the Midland Main Line clearly didn't, aren't there several secondary main lines or through routes that change from double to single track sections?  The Highland ML, Cambrian (Gobowen-Newtown) and Central Wales line (Knighton-Craven Arms) are three I can think of.  Plus, what about seemingly everyone's old favourite, the S&D?

 

And of course the Great Western west of Plymouth.   The Royal Albert Bridge and other sections on the line to Penzance, seeing long trains hauled by top link locomotives.

[Tony Wright]

9 hours ago, Chuffer Davies said:

Hi Tony/Baz,

As I have previously mentioned on this thread I am not a great lover of pickups.  My normal approach to tender engines is to use the American system where the tender chassis is live to the offside rail, and the locomotive chassis is live to the nearside.  I build my tank engines with split frame current collection.  On that basis I rarely feel the need to add additional pickups.  

 

In the interests of showing a completely different but equally effective solution to installing pickups I have deviated from my norm and have installed some on my current project (just this afternoon) in order to illustrate an alternate (and my preferred) approach.  I should start by saying that the pick up material I use is Phosphor Bronze strip.  I have yet to have any of those I have installed either fail or squeak, not that I have installed that many over the years. 

 

I am not a metallurgist but it is my understanding that for any given cross section P/Bronze is more springy than N/Silver.  I was also advised (I can't remember by whom) that to reduce wear and arcing the pickups should not be made of the same material as the wheel's rim.  This could be false advice but I have always adhered to it none the less.

 

The following pictures illustrate the 'back scratcher' pick ups that I have installed on this chassis.  The pickups are soldered to small pieces of Copperclad sleeper strip epoxied to the back of the frames.  Care must be taken to get the top radius of the bend just right.  Too tight and the pickups will touch the frames, too large and the top of the pickup will be beyond the rear of the wheel's rim, but otherwise they are straight forward to fit.  Once the wheels have been installed the pickups are near invisible, even before the chassis is installed in the loco. 

 

As I said at the start, this is a work in progress and I have yet to fully clean away all the flux and excess solder so these pictures are very much 'warts and all'.

 

Front View:How they are attached:

The completed installation:

Underside to illustrate the electrically isolated drawbar:

And with its lid on:

 

Having added these pickups this model now collects current from the 5 nearside wheels of the loco, the two offside driving wheels and the three offside tender wheels.  The tender's current is transferred to the loco through the draw bar and so there are no flying leads between the loco and the tender.

 

Regards,

 

Frank

A very neat solution, Frank,

 

Thanks for showing us. 

 

It looks to better-engineered than my system, though you use strip for the pick-ups, not wire as I do. 

 

I don't think I have anything inherently against phosphor bronze (other than my dislike of RTR pick-ups), but I've always got on better with nickel silver. 

 

Tony Geary always used phosphor bronze for his pick-ups, and a characteristic of his wonderful work in OO was the 'Geary squeak', now, I'm afraid, eradicated from the ones he's built which I'm lucky enough to now own. They now have NS wipers.......................

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[bbishop]

I', sorry if this horrifies Mr Wright, but I built one loco with plunger pick ups and phosphor bronze strip.  I used the strip instead of those stupid little springs that I could get to work properly.  Actually an LSWR  G6 in 7mm, before I went all teutonic.  Bill

[Tony Wright]

10 hours ago, Ian Smith said:

In illustrating various magnificent N/2mmFS layout photos, I hope that Tony will forgive my posting a few of my own first humble effort in 2mmFS...

 

Unfortunately, it probably doesn't sit too well here as it's both GWR and pre-grouping.  However, in my defence it's all my own work, locos scratch built, coaches built from etched kits (some designed by myself) and painted in the c1906 livery.

 

 

 

 

 

For info, the scenic section is about 6'0" x 1'6".  Oh, and it's Brunel's baulk road too. 

 

Ian

What is there to forgive, Ian?

 

It's wonderful.

 

Thanks ever so much for posting.

 

I didn't have the chance to take any pictures (at Stevenage?). Perhaps in the future?

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Tony Wright]

10 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Tony,

 

Recently (so probably about 20 pages back!) there was some debate about the relative quality of model railway mags; "Are they worse than they used to be?".  It was pointed out that the number of layout/advice pages were little different to 25+ years ago, but also that the amount of text has fallen very sharply, compensated for with far more and larger pictures.

 

I'm just sorting through some of my RM and BRM back numbers, desperately trying to reduce the weight in my loft.  One or two late 90s RMs were interesting; I found one four page layout article where I think the text made up about three full pages.  There is no way an article like that would appear now.

 

Another thing: the letters to BRM! 

Some of them responding to reviews or articles you and other members of BRM staff had written were really quite personally insulting.

The endless why-doesn't-someone-make-an-XYZ-because-I-want-one letters.....

A letter trashing "Stoke Summit" because there was a break in operation when they saw it at an exhibition, although it was apparently so boring the viewers were four deep....

Wow, there are some absolute <word removed to protect the innocent> with far too much time on their hands. 

 

Nice though to find some earlier articles by contributors I now know through RMWeb.

 

Rob

 

Good morning Rob,

 

Ah yes, I remember some of the letters.

 

Would it surprise you that I never met any of the sternest critics face-to-face? It wasn't for the want of trying either. 

 

I recall one particularly vituperative letter from a reader who lived in Glasgow. I assumed he was Scottish, because I'd had the temerity to mention something about Scottish railways in an article, and had probably got a fact wrong. Now, if journalists make mistakes, they should be pointed out, but there surely is a protocol of how to do this. 

 

Anyway, I was at the (excellent) Glasgow show a month or two later with BRM's stand, so I sent him a complimentary ticket. I enclosed a note asking him to please come and see me and show me what I'd got wrong, and, if possible write a piece for the mag explaining the point(s). Did he appear? One guess. If he did use the ticket, he never made his presence known to me. 

 

One other Scotsman (am I a particularly annoying Sassenach?) considered his idea of Hell to be stuck with me forever in a non-corridor compartment, having to listen to my 'inane bile'! 

 

Regarding Stoke Summit, and a 'lull in operations', at one Grantham Show the point mechanism changing the Up fast to the Up slow failed completely - at mid-afternoon on the Saturday, when the place was packed. In an ideal world, I'd have split the boards and put the one with the point on on its side and fixed the problem with ease. To make matters worse, the sun was streaming in, so I was faced with worst of both worlds; blinding light on top, and Stygian gloom beneath the layout drapes.

 

I instructed the operating team to keep things moving on the Down (which they did, bless 'em) while I fixed the mechanism, trying to communicate with someone looking from above as to how the point was set. Ever tried soldering uphill? 

 

After about 20 minutes of bad language, sweat and belligerence, I emerged from the gloom, with the point now working properly, only to be asked by a punter if we were 'working to rule'! I won't repeat my response on here.................

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

[t-b-g]

9 hours ago, CF MRC said:

Here she is, Ian, straightening out your funny track. 

Tim

 

I have book about the life and times of Bawtry station, written by a former railway employee.

 

He recounts the tale of the original "Cock o' the North" working a local train as a trial/running in turn when brand new, coming to grief while shunting a horse box in Bawtry goods yard. The ancient sleepers in the goods yard track gave way under it!

 

So the scenario illustrated above does have some slight basis in fact!