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2 hours ago, robertcwp said:

I thought that the Blue Pullman engines were made by MAN in Germany, and they were also 1,000 hp rather than 1,100 hp as on most of the NBL locos. They worked better as a result.

Yes indeed - derating engines does do that. The thermal stresses at Max Continuous Rating (MCR) can be very large; just 'taking the top off the power' can make a tremendous difference to reliability. Sometimes, as I know from personal experience, sales teams override the advice of the Technical Department and sell their product too hard. In the example I was involved with, and after having to go to the High Court to personally give evidence (as the Chief Engineer on board when the lead ship's Main Engine, only 4 months old, suffered major cracking issues with the cylinder heads), the builders ended up having to pay for 3 months "off hire" and complete new (rival company) engines to be installed, for both the ships involved.

 

Mark

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4 hours ago, LMS29 said:

Tony,

 

I agree with Mark. I have a Cotswold kit of the L and Y 2-4-× T and the box and it looks familiar. Cannot do detailed check at the moment as they are packed away.

 

Tom D

I think the clear sign its Cotswold would be if it has a solid brass milled chassis block. A tell tale of Cotswold design and a generally good feature in my view. I have the ex GC LNER F1 and a second hand LYR 2-4-2T.

Andrew

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30 minutes ago, Bulwell Hall said:

 

 

With the talk of HMS Hood I couldn't resist adding this which was sent to me recently by a friend.  It doesn't add anything to the discussion on the shade of grey used to paint the 'Hush Hush' but what a wonderful image!

 

406123802_HMSHood.png

What a wonderful picture. Thanks for posting.

Andrew

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1 hour ago, Dave John said:

Agreed Barry O . The Caley painted structural metalwork battleship grey. Ah , but it wisnae wan o' yer battleships it wis one of oors ..... 

 

Long ago I took a scalpel to the supporting columns and ballustrade at what was Partick Central. Gently scraping through layers of paint as a historic scotland paint expert had taught me to do.   I was seeking  Caledonian battleship grey .  I even have a reference sample if it is ever needed. 

 

1190791293_Benstcolumn.jpeg.228b862e1ed678d8d209e4a1adfb9a00.jpeg

 

 

 

 

But when it comes to making a model you really don't want to kill the detail . So in the end I reckon halfords grey primer with a wash of burnt umber is as close as I'll ever get . 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow, those Caledonian 15'' gun barrels were quite ornate. Thank goodness for Halfords grey primmer eh, who would have thought it? Hobbyists everywhere can happily respray their Hornby Hush Hush  into  authentic battleship grey. I here tell it is also a perfect match for wagon grey, elephant grey and even Earl grey.

 

Anybody interested in real living Naval grey paint, before, alongside and after Hood and Hush Hush may find the link below of great interest.

 

https://www.nmrn.org.uk/news-events/nmrn-blog/revealed-true-colours-world-war-one-how-discovery-board-hms-caroline-helping

 

 

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5 hours ago, Headstock said:

 

Wow, those Caledonian 15'' gun barrels were quite ornate. Thank goodness for Halfords grey primmer eh, who would have thought it? Hobbyists everywhere can happily respray their Hornby Hush Hush  into  authentic battleship grey. I here tell it is also a perfect match for wagon grey, elephant grey and even Earl grey.

 

Anybody interested in real living Naval grey paint, before, alongside and after Hood and Hush Hush may find the link below of great interest.

 

https://www.nmrn.org.uk/news-events/nmrn-blog/revealed-true-colours-world-war-one-how-discovery-board-hms-caroline-helping

 

 

Over the years, it has become abundantly clear to me that, for any assortment of railway models finished in grey to be representative of reality, the shade should wander about all over the place...

 

John

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34 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

Over the years, it has become abundantly clear to me that, for any assortment of railway models finished in grey to be representative of reality, the shade should wander about all over the place...

 

John

 

Bearing in mind paint was mixed by hand then I'd say the above is spot on - there were no computer controlled paint mixing machines that measured every ingredient to the nth degree.

Even today, manufacturers such as Dulux warn against starting a new tin of paint mid-job/mid-wall etc. as there can be slight shade variations - and they do use computer controlled equipment.

 

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7 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Bearing in mind paint was mixed by hand then I'd say the above is spot on - there were no computer controlled paint mixing machines that measured every ingredient to the nth degree.

Even today, manufacturers such as Dulux warn against starting a new tin of paint mid-job/mid-wall etc. as there can be slight shade variations - and they do use computer controlled equipment.

 

And, when presented with a small amount of any of the ingredients left in the bottom of the tin/drum/barrel, there'd have been a natural tendency to chuck it into the mix rather than let it go to waste.

 

Especially so if the container had to be cleaned out for re-use...

 

John

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1 hour ago, Dunsignalling said:

Over the years, it has become abundantly clear to me that, for any assortment of railway models finished in grey to be representative of reality, the shade should wander about all over the place...

 

John

 

Good morning John,

 

 That is exactly what I'm saying and it is just as applicable to warships. To reiterate what I said, you would run out of fingers and toes trying to count the numbers of supposed battleship greys that ships were painted. Associating the Hush Hush with battleship grey is meaningless, which battleship grey? 

 

The Hush Hush was a single locomotive, I doubt if the shade  wandered about too much. In contrast, the shade that HMS Hood was painted varied quite a lot over its career, just look at the paint layers discovered on HMS Caroline. The scheme that Hood carried when it was sunk was discontinued from 1942, it would have been unfamiliar to anybody who saw a battleship in the post war period. 

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8 hours ago, Headstock said:

 

I'm not convinced on the fatally flawed angle either. If the curator of the Battlship New Jersey museum and memorial, believes that USS New Jersey could have been destroyed in similar circumstances, you have to except that the hit that sunk Hood was the luckiest shot in Naval history.


Should that not be the Arizona rather than the New Jersey… 

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10 hours ago, thegreenhowards said:

Dapol produce a very fine model of a Class 21/ D61xx. It was released just before Covid so pretty recent. Here is mine running on Gresley Jn. I’m not sure if this is prototypically accurate as I can only find one picture of the real things running on the GN  - and that was on a railtour!

 

2711936E-F3AB-44E5-9B19-7AC264FBF44A.jpeg.f9a4ca3e897e4d12432dd9cdad360964.jpeg

Thanks Andy,

 

I believe the first batch were initially allocated to the south end of the GN, for suburban work, replacing the N2s. However, such was their unreliability, that they were 'dumped' at Hornsey (Clive Mortimer will know far more about this than I do) with an edict that they should be placed 'out of sight' of the travelling public; presumably in sidings behind other vehicles? 

 

I never saw one, but into the '60s, the same thing happened to the 'Baby Deltics', where almost the whole class were to be found on a remote siding at Stratford (why didn't I take a picture?). 

 

Your model looks very (nicely) well-weathered, but that coupling...................! Wouldn't a discreet wire loop suffice?

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

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I have in my collection a number of pics of class 21 (none of which I can put on here due to copyright). As my interest is centred on Cambridge, I have concentrated mainly on there, but also covering W.Anglia & GN to KGX. They certainly worked to CBG, and I have quite a few underlined in my 'abc'.

 

Stewart

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22 minutes ago, Headstock said:

 

No.

 

My bad, I'd not seen the New Jersey Museum referred to as a memorial before but I see from their website that it is.

 

With regards to battleship colours, to this day there are endless arguments as to which colour the USS Arizona was painted when she sank at Pearl Harbor.

Edited by johndon
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Regarding Hush Hush...

 

After a lengthy discussion, we have arrived at the conclusion that ‘Battleship Grey’ is a general moniker for a range of shades rather than a specific colour.

 

Also, the specific grey used on Hush Hush was a mix of black and white pigment pastes.

 

This discussion could be a long one...  I assume that pantones were not yet in use at the time?

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1 hour ago, Headstock said:

 

Good morning John,

 

 That is exactly what I'm saying and it is just as applicable to warships. To reiterate what I said, you would run out of fingers and toes trying to count the numbers of supposed battleship greys that ships were painted. Associating the Hush Hush with battleship grey is meaningless, which battleship grey? 

 

The Hush Hush was a single locomotive, I doubt if the shade  wandered about too much. In contrast, the shade that HMS Hood was painted varied quite a lot over its career, just look at the paint layers discovered on HMS Caroline. The scheme that Hood carried when it was sunk was discontinued from 1942, it would have been unfamiliar to anybody who saw a battleship in the post war period. 

Absolutely. Given 10000's relatively short career in its original form, I doubt it got repainted more than a couple of times, at most.

 

From a modelling standpoint, at this remove, if agreement cannot be reached as to whether the buffer beams were painted grey or red, (or both at different times), establishing the exact shade of grey it carried (and when) will be akin to herding unicorns. Colour photography was still in its infancy at the time, and I wouldn't wholly trust even a Kodachrome original ninety years on, even if one existed. Kodachrome was only introduced two years before 10000 was rebuilt! 

 

No idea if it's "right" but I think the dark shade applied to the first of Tony's photo sequence looks most appropriate for a large imposing locomotive. The lighter ones rather smack of "Photographic" grey to me.

 

John

 

 

Edited by Dunsignalling
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23 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Thanks Andy,

 

I believe the first batch were initially allocated to the south end of the GN, for suburban work, replacing the N2s. However, such was their unreliability, that they were 'dumped' at Hornsey (Clive Mortimer will know far more about this than I do) with an edict that they should be placed 'out of sight' of the travelling public; presumably in sidings behind other vehicles? 

 

I never saw one, but into the '60s, the same thing happened to the 'Baby Deltics', where almost the whole class were to be found on a remote siding at Stratford (why didn't I take a picture?). 

 

Your model looks very (nicely) well-weathered, but that coupling...................! Wouldn't a discreet wire loop suffice?

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

Tony,

 

The first ten, D6100-6109 were allocated to Hornsey (which is my justification for having one) and the next ten to somewhere on the GE. They didn’t last long before being dumped and then banished to Scotland. Thanks to Stewart Ingram for confirmation that they did actually work some service trains.

 

As for the coupling, you’re quite right. I think the other end has been done but it had just run round the quad art set so showing off the ‘ugly’ end. That’s the problem with diesels - they can work either way!

 

Andy

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9 hours ago, Erichill16 said:

According to Modern Railways Pictorial, Profile :10 The Blue Pullmans, the engines are NBL/MAN L12V18/21BS which are the same as those fitted to the pilot scheme D61XX. This may be a typo but I don’t have any further books on the Blue Pullmans.

Hugh Dady describes MAN ‘as the ‘Daddy’ of Diesel engine companies’ He doesn’t describe the NBL prime mover department. The  illegitimate son?

Looking at my Platform 5 book of German railways MAN supplied very few Diesel engines for main line locomotives, the V160 family were mainly powered by MTU.

Robert

Robert

MRPP will have just trotted out the official information from when the Blue Pullmans were introduced. BR probably did not want to admit that the engines were made in Germany, but for the Blue Pullmans they were. All NBL had was a licence to produce the same design in the UK, albeit they did not do it very well it seems. NBL also had a licence from Voith for making hydraulic transmissions.

 

Similar issues applied regarding Maybach engines used in other diesel hydraulics, which were made under licence by Bristol-Siddeley as importing engines from Germany was not politically acceptable at the time.

 

It's interesting how the various brands have evolved in the ensuing decades. I believe MAN (Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg) now owns Paxman.  The Maybach brand went elsewhere but they were I believe made by MTU (Motoren- und Turbinen-Union) whose engines went into lots of HSTs in place of Paxman ones. MTU is I believe now owned by Rolls-Royce.

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Just briefly, following the mention of paint colour and left-overs:

 

“And, when presented with a small amount of any of the ingredients left in the bottom of the tin/drum/barrel, there'd have been a natural tendency to chuck it into the mix rather than let it go to waste.  Especially so if the container had to be cleaned out for re-use...”

 

 

I'm told by someone who worked at Acton that the 'reddish' roof colour that sometimes [not always] appeared on newly-overhauled Met locos and Underground stock during the 1950s and 1960s as an alternative to grey was not a single 'colour'.   It was created by pouring all the unused contents of tins from a week's work in the Paint Shop into a spare drum and using this to complete the painting.  Maybe the goal was to minimise waste.  The dominant colour of the Paint Shop's work at the time was ’Railway Red’ but various proportions of other colours – Maroon, Metro Brown, Cerulean Blue, a couple of greys, White and Black were included.  Very soon in service, with weathering and tunnel dust and under ‘sky light’ it turned a greyish, darkish colour.

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9 minutes ago, thegreenhowards said:

That’s the problem with diesels - they can work either way!

 

 

That's not a problem. It's a distinct advantage and benefit.

;-)

 

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It's clear that an interest in railways and an interest in warships often go together.

 

The 'battleship grey' debate can never be resolved. However, I think the debate the Hood can be resolved, at least to some extent in my opinion.

 

Though subjective, Hood was the finest looking capital ship ever built in my view. Her lines and proportions were perfect. Despite her looks, she was 'fatally-flawed'. The battlecruiser concept only works if the maxim 'faster than anything stronger and stronger than anything faster' is applied. This was proven at both The Falklands and at Jutland in WW1, but at the two extremes. 

 

Though it could be argued that Bismark's shell was 'lucky' in penetrating the aft 15" magazines of Hood (though there is evidence it was 8" shells from the Prinz Eugen which caused initial severe damage), such a shell would have not caused the Prince of Wales to blow up (nor the New Jersey). 

 

I must have read just about everything regarding the 1941 Denmark Strait engagement, and most accounts conclude that...........

 

Holland (who was in charge of the British ships) made just about mistake possible during the engagement. He should never have led with the Hood (indeed, Tovey - the Home Fleet's commander - had thought of suggesting leading with the Prince of Wales, knowing of the battlecruiser's vulnerability). By his angle of attack he restricted his guns to four 15" and six 14" barrels (instead of a potential 18 heavy guns). The German squadron was able to bear its full eight 15" and eight 8" guns. Hood never fired at the Bismark, again Holland's mistake. He fired at the Prinz Eugen (the German ships had changed order during the night to deter the tracking cruisers). He should have ordered 'independent action', something realised by Tovey just days later when King George the Fifth and Rodney pulverised the German capital ship to destruction. Why the two British shadowing cruisers took no part in the action is open to debate as well, and Holland's leaving astern his destroyers in the race to intercept Bismark is also open to question. The German ships' positions were known and a slower speed to intercept by the two British heavyweights would have meant the destroyers not being left behind (their torpedoes in an engagement would have been very useful). But, the main fact is that the venerable (and vulnerable) Hood was not designed to engage a battleship. Lucky shot or not, there was almost an inevitability about her blowing up; just as her smaller, and older, siblings had done so at Jutland.  

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20 minutes ago, Chamby said:

 

After a lengthy discussion, we have arrived at the conclusion that ‘Battleship Grey’ is a general moniker for a range of shades rather than a specific colour.

 

 

Indeed so - the same argument can rage for, inter alia, the correct grey for Midland Railway open wagons & vans...

 

Mark

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23 minutes ago, Chamby said:

Regarding Hush Hush...

 

After a lengthy discussion, we have arrived at the conclusion that ‘Battleship Grey’ is a general moniker for a range of shades rather than a specific colour.

 

Also, the specific grey used on Hush Hush was a mix of black and white pigment pastes.

 

This discussion could be a long one...  I assume that pantones were not yet in use at the time?

 

Good morning Phil,

 

exactly, I would add to that, the shade of grey used on the Hush Hush is quite well understood. There is little value in comparing it to anything else that might be grey such as a Battleship or an Elephant. The Bufferbeam was never red on Hush Hush, neither was the hull below the water line on HMS Hood, at the time of her sinking. You will see both inaccurately painted red on many models.

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17 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

It's clear that an interest in railways and an interest in warships often go together.

 

Though subjective, Hood was the finest looking capital ship ever built in my view. Her lines and proportions were perfect.

 

Couldn't agree more about her looks.  As for a interest in both, this is in my 'to do' pile (along with the USS Iowa and Hornet in the same scale), Bachmann MK1 to give an idea of scale...

 

IMG_2947.jpeg.08799d5b667e0036521260d25556f04a.jpeg

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Since the thread has strayed onto Hood on the Royal Navy, I think this video will be of great interest to some. The video looks into all possible theories about how and why the mighty Hood sank, and since the author is both a Naval historian and Naval engineer, I think is very creditable. Well worth a watch IMO

 

 

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28 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

It's clear that an interest in railways and an interest in warships often go together.

 

The 'battleship grey' debate can never be resolved. However, I think the debate the Hood can be resolved, at least to some extent in my opinion.

 

Though subjective, Hood was the finest looking capital ship ever built in my view. Her lines and proportions were perfect. Despite her looks, she was 'fatally-flawed'. The battlecruiser concept only works if the maxim 'faster than anything stronger and stronger than anything faster' is applied. This was proven at both The Falklands and at Jutland in WW1, but at the two extremes. 

 

Though it could be argued that Bismark's shell was 'lucky' in penetrating the aft 15" magazines of Hood (though there is evidence it was 8" shells from the Prinz Eugen which caused initial severe damage), such a shell would have not caused the Prince of Wales to blow up (nor the New Jersey). 

 

I must have read just about everything regarding the 1941 Denmark Strait engagement, and most accounts conclude that...........

 

Holland (who was in charge of the British ships) made just about mistake possible during the engagement. He should never have led with the Hood (indeed, Tovey - the Home Fleet's commander - had thought of suggesting leading with the Prince of Wales, knowing of the battlecruiser's vulnerability). By his angle of attack he restricted his guns to four 15" and six 14" barrels (instead of a potential 18 heavy guns). The German squadron was able to bear its full eight 15" and eight 8" guns. Hood never fired at the Bismark, again Holland's mistake. He fired at the Prinz Eugen (the German ships had changed order during the night to deter the tracking cruisers). He should have ordered 'independent action', something realised by Tovey just days later when King George the Fifth and Rodney pulverised the German capital ship to destruction. Why the two British shadowing cruisers took no part in the action is open to debate as well, and Holland's leaving astern his destroyers in the race to intercept Bismark is also open to question. The German ships' positions were known and a slower speed to intercept by the two British heavyweights would have meant the destroyers not being left behind (their torpedoes in an engagement would have been very useful). But, the main fact is that the venerable (and vulnerable) Hood was not designed to engage a battleship. Lucky shot or not, there was almost an inevitability about her blowing up; just as her smaller, and older, siblings had done so at Jutland.  

 

Good morning Tony,

 

Hood was not a Battlecruiser in reality, just in name, she was no more fatally flawed than any Warship, non of which are unsinkable.

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