Wright writes.....

[great central]

^^^

What an utterly bizarre post in my opinion, unless I've missed the point. The absolute horror of that crash is used to reinforce personal likes and dislikes, giving little thought to all those affected by it.

It happened the year before I was born and has had no effect on me personally but working on the railway I still feel some empathy with those who have been involved in such events.

 

[Headstock]

27 minutes ago, great central said:

^^^

What an utterly bizarre post in my opinion, unless I've missed the point. The absolute horror of that crash is used to reinforce personal likes and dislikes, giving little thought to all those affected by it.

It happened the year before I was born and has had no effect on me personally but working on the railway I still feel some empathy with those who have been involved in such events.

 

 

I think you have missed the point by a country mile.

[Lemmy282]

1 hour ago, great central said:

^^^

What an utterly bizarre post in my opinion, unless I've missed the point. The absolute horror of that crash is used to reinforce personal likes and dislikes, giving little thought to all those affected by it.

It happened the year before I was born and has had no effect on me personally but working on the railway I still feel some empathy with those who have been involved in such events.

 

Absolutely agree! I must have missed the point as well, as Headstock started this discussion by disliking Mk1's on aesthetic grounds, I don't quite see what that has to do with what happened in a disaster like Harrow.

Rail crashes are not nice places to be, however they occur and whatever the stock involved, I know, I was in one that made the national news several years ago. Had it not been for the strength and design of the modern stock, it could have been much worse. Sometimes function has to take preference over form.

[Bernard Lamb]

Andrew,

If you are going to post graphic details of an accident could you please post in the appropriate section of the forum or at least head your post with a warning. I was only 9 at the time so have little memory of the facts. I do have memories of the people in our road talking about it as several of the menfolk worked in London and commuted by train. Several school friends had parents who were directly involved. These were real people that I knew and I do remember the uncertainty as to them being alive or dead. If you want to wallow in such a manner on such a topic then please  spare a thought that it still affects people who were directly or indirectly involved. There is no need for such language in this type of forum. I would have posted yesterday but the forum was down. Due to your insensitivity I felt sick all day.

Bernard

[t-b-g]

2 hours ago, Steven B said:

 

None of which mattered to 99.9% of the fare paying public who just wanted to enjoy nice new coaches rather than the 20+ year old pre-nationalisation types they would still be forced to ride on secondary services for years to come.

 

Did folk grumble about the Thompson's replacing Gresley Stock? Ditto Collett vs Hawksworth?

 

Steven B

 

 

What other people think has never bothered me in choosing what I model. I just do my own thing. Always have, always will. If it diverges away from the mainstream, then so much the better.

 

I haven't heard any of my 4mm passengers complaining about having to travel in old MS&LR or GNR 6 wheelers. They seem happy enough.

 

 

[Headstock]

1 hour ago, Lemmy282 said:

Absolutely agree! I must have missed the point as well, as Headstock started this discussion by disliking Mk1's on aesthetic grounds, I don't quite see what that has to do with what happened in a disaster like Harrow.

Rail crashes are not nice places to be, however they occur and whatever the stock involved, I know, I was in one that made the national news several years ago. Had it not been for the strength and design of the modern stock, it could have been much worse. Sometimes function has to take preference over form.

 

21 minutes ago, Bernard Lamb said:

Andrew,

If you are going to post graphic details of an accident could you please post in the appropriate section of the forum or at least head your post with a warning. I was only 9 at the time so have little memory of the facts. I do have memories of the people in our road talking about it as several of the menfolk worked in London and commuted by train. Several school friends had parents who were directly involved. These were real people that I knew and I do remember the uncertainty as to them being alive or dead. If you want to wallow in such a manner on such a topic then please  spare a thought that it still affects people who were directly or indirectly involved. There is no need for such language in this type of forum. I would have posted yesterday but the forum was down. Due to your insensitivity I felt sick all day.

Bernard

 

Good afternoon chaps,

 

have you read the entire conversation or just the one post? Why is it expectable for Tony to bring up the Harrow accident to support his argument about MK.1s in a conversation about aesthetics. Yet it is not acceptable for me to reply? He referenced the MK.1s with this quote.''I'm sure those who were travelling in the few Mk.1 carriages in the northbound train involved in the Harrow disaster of nearly 70 years ago were glad that's what they were in''.

 

I don't think anybody in any of the carriages directly wrecked in the Harrow and Wealdstone accident, would be glad about what carriage they were in. My post simply points this out and why. Taken from my post.

 

''Whatever the pros and cons of MK.1s vs older carriages, non of them would be a place were I would wish to be, sometimes survivability in a disaster is down to pot luck rather than design. Unbelievably, some passengers escaped the with only light injuries, from the crowded wreckage of the local train hit by the Perth express. This was despite the fact that the rear four carriages, were telescoped to approximately the length of a signal carriage''.

 

For Lemmy 282 and other,

The nuclear flask film used in a post as evidence of the strength of the MK. 1. I is disingenuous, as it makes no mention of the fact that The MK.1s are all running on buckeye couplings. If running on screw couplings, as they were at Harrow, the result would be very different, with carriage flung all over the place. 

 

Anybody without an agenda of there own, would appreciate this is not a criticism of the MK.1, rather a criticism of the policy of running express trains on screw couplings in the twentieth century. When a system like the buckeye had been available and in use in this country for decades. I am critical of designing a carriage like a MK.1 to run on buckeyes and then intermingling them with weaker carriages using screw couplings, this was criminal. The report agrees, recommending that buckeye equipped carriages, when used with screw coupling carriages, should be marshaled together with buckeyes deployed to protect the head of a train. Alternatively, make up trains of MK.1s, don't randomly mix them in with non buckeye equipped designs.

 

Finally, I am critical of Tony's use of The Harrow and Wealdstone accident in this debate as my primary dislike of MK.1s is aesthetic and viral. However, I do have a right to reply.

Edited October 1, 2021 by Headstock

[TrevorP1]

Whatever the rights and wrongs on the Mk1 discussion, mention of Harrow always brings to mind a work colleague of some years back, actually two when I think about it. Both of these people didn't know each other then but years later ended up working for the same firm as me in Hampshire. My apologies to those who have heard this before...

 

If my pal Brian had got out of bed in time he would have been somewhere under the wreckage on the platform. Being a teenager, he'd had a late night and overslept. This meant he had to go to work on the bus instead of the train. Of course he was late. Before he got to work, word had spread about the awful carnage at Harrow of which he had no idea. On his arrival, instead of being greeted by an angry foreman, folk rushed up to him, shook his hand and greeted him like a long lost friend... Even the foreman was pleased that Brian was late that day.

 

The other chap  - another apprentice - worked for an engineering company in Harrow. After the crash word went round the town for cutting equipment to help extricate the dead and injured. Doug was sent with some colleagues and cutting gear to the station. On arrival, when the men realised what had happened, Doug was firmly told "Stay in the van!" These people had been through the blitz and knew what they were about to see.

 

 

[Tony Wright]

As the originator of the comments regarding the Harrow disaster, may I please apologise to any I might have offended? It was certainly not my intention to do so.

 

From the images I've seen of the disaster, the all-steel carriages seemed to have survived better, hence my point about the Mk.1s. Clearly, nobody wanted to be in any of the vehicles, and I phrased my comments poorly. 

[Tony Wright]

Yesterday, I had a visit from some splendid EM modellers.

 

They brought some very interesting things........... Obviously, not all EM.

 

 

Japanese brass, I think.

 

 

As was this. The wide cab was out of gauge for Marsh Bridge at the south end. 

 

 

More brass. This colonial 4-4-0 ran a bit hot! 

 

And, some EM items.

 

 

A DJH S15.

 

 

Both items here scratch-built, I think.

 

Thanks for a great day, chaps. Also thanks for your hospitality and generous donations to CRUK. 

 

 

[landscapes]

Hi Tony

 

Having been out of the UK for the past month i am just catching up with the RMWeb discussions.

 

I see the Hornby Thompsons have been discussed again so I hope you don't mind me posting a photo of my own Hornby A2/2 60501.

 

I replaced all the linings to both locomotive and tender using Fox transfers and had to add some additional weathering to cover up the Hornby green livery.

 

 

i have also changed the tender totem and double chimney to bring it up to the 1958 period but still need at some point to replace the existing smokebox door so the front number plate is in the correct position.

 

Regards

 

David

 

 

Edited October 1, 2021 by landscapes
Spelling

[Tony Wright]

1 hour ago, landscapes said:

Hi Tony

 

Having been out of the UK for the past month i am just catching up with the RMWeb discussions.

 

I see the Hornby Thompsons have been discussed again so I hope you don't mind me posting a photo of my own Hornby A2/2 60501.

 

I replaced all the linings to both locomotive and tender using Fox transfers and had to add some additional weathering to cover up the Hornby green livery.

 

 

i have also changed the tender totem and double chimney to bring it up to the 1958 period but still need at some point to replace the existing smokebox door so the front number plate is in the correct position.

 

Regards

 

David

 

 

I don't mind your posting images of your models David,

 

Please continue to do so.

 

Your 60501 certainly looks more realistic than as supplied. It is a pity that the base green is unnatural, though the fresh lining and weathering certainly disguise it.

 

On a tangential subject, I've just finished reading the latest book telling the life of A H Peppercorn, published by Pen & Sword. It's very interesting, and I'll be reviewing it for BRM. Peppercorn's close association with Thompson is mentioned and it's suggested that he was OK with the rebuilding of the P2s (though there's no mention of his need to travel to Scotland to quell the 'rebellion' brewing by those who were responsible for running them). It would appear from the book that he was also happy enough with the further Thompson Pacifics; if so, then why were the A2s and the A1s so different in proportion? 

 

In fairness (as with his book on Thompson) the author tries to be sympathetic to ET's problems during the war (and Colonel Rogers' volume on Thompson and Peppercorn gets a  thumbs-down), though how he can assert that the rebuilt GREAT NORTHERN looks 'typically Gresley' (by implication) I'm really at a loss to understand.   

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[micklner]

13 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

I don't mind your posting images of your models David,

 

Please continue to do so.

 

Your 60501 certainly looks more realistic than as supplied. It is a pity that the base green is unnatural, though the fresh lining and weathering certainly disguise it.

 

On a tangential subject, I've just finished reading the latest book telling the life of A H Peppercorn, published by Pen & Sword. It's very interesting, and I'll be reviewing it for BRM. Peppercorn's close association with Thompson is mentioned and it's suggested that he was OK with the rebuilding of the P2s (though there's no mention of his need to travel to Scotland to quell the 'rebellion' brewing by those who were responsible for running them). It would appear from the book that he was also happy enough with the further Thompson Pacifics; if so, then why were the A2s and the A1s so different in proportion? 

 

In fairness (as with his book on Thompson) the author tries to be sympathetic to ET's problems during the war (and Colonel Rogers' volume on Thompson and Peppercorn gets a  thumbs-down), though how he can assert that the rebuilt GREAT NORTHERN looks 'typically Gresley' (by implication) I'm really at a loss to understand.   

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

Thats a new version .

All I have read state that Peppercorn could'nt wait for Thompson to retire . Plans for his  A1 and A2 were being drawn during Thompsons tenure, suppposedly without ET's knowledge?.

P2 the whole saga is endless spinning of various tales !!.

 

GN well it had the same Cab Roof ,Wheels and Tender !!.

Edited October 1, 2021 by micklner

[brightspark]

4 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

Yesterday, I had a visit from some splendid EM modellers.

 

They brought some very interesting things........... Obviously, not all EM.

 

 

Japanese brass, I think.

 

 

As was this. The wide cab was out of gauge for Marsh Bridge at the south end. 

 

 

More brass. This colonial 4-4-0 ran a bit hot! 

 

And, some EM items.

 

 

A DJH S15.

 

 

Both items here scratch-built, I think.

 

Thanks for a great day, chaps. Also thanks for your hospitality and generous donations to CRUK. 

 

 

Hi Tony,

thanks for hosting us. It was a day worth waiting for.

 

The S15 is my effort and is described in this thread.

I think that Tony has captured it well in his portrait.

He did however question my sanity as I had built it with a compensated chassis instead of a rigid chassis. 

 

I explained that my rational for doing so was to try and get improved track holding and better pick up. As I was saying this, several trains were running past at speed on LB, all with rigid chassis pulling full length trains and showing no sign of faltering or leaving the four foot. 

 

Oh well.

 

[St Enodoc]

7 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

 

 

It's GNR 1472, Jim, but not as we know it.

[Dunsignalling]

1 hour ago, brightspark said:

Hi Tony,

thanks for hosting us. It was a day worth waiting for.

 

The S15 is my effort and is described in this thread.

I think that Tony has captured it well in his portrait.

He did however question my sanity as I had built it with a compensated chassis instead of a rigid chassis. 

 

I explained that my rational for doing so was to try and get improved track holding and better pick up. As I was saying this, several trains were running past at speed on LB, all with rigid chassis pulling full length trains and showing no sign of faltering or leaving the four foot. 

 

Oh well.

 

Bear in mind that the track on LB was laid by Mr Norman Solomon.....

 

John

[polybear]

5 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Bear in mind that the track on LB was laid by Mr Norman Solomon.....

 

John

 

On baseboards constructed by a Wizard.....

[gr.king]

8 hours ago, brightspark said:

Hi Tony,

 

He did however question my sanity as I had built it with a compensated chassis instead of a rigid chassis. 

 

I explained that my rational for doing so was to try and get improved track holding and better pick up. As I was saying this, several trains were running past at speed on LB, all with rigid chassis pulling full length trains and showing no sign of faltering or leaving the four foot. 

 

Oh well.

 

 

Welcome to the insanity club. It's your engine, so you can build it any way you like, so long as it works, especially if it makes no sense to anybody else.

[Tony Wright]

9 hours ago, brightspark said:

Hi Tony,

thanks for hosting us. It was a day worth waiting for.

 

The S15 is my effort and is described in this thread.

I think that Tony has captured it well in his portrait.

He did however question my sanity as I had built it with a compensated chassis instead of a rigid chassis. 

 

I explained that my rational for doing so was to try and get improved track holding and better pick up. As I was saying this, several trains were running past at speed on LB, all with rigid chassis pulling full length trains and showing no sign of faltering or leaving the four foot. 

 

Oh well.

 

Good morning Andy,

 

The one loco I did run which looked as if it might come off the road at any time was that compensated Crownline original 'West Country'.

 

 

Painted beautifully by Ian Rathbone.

 

 

And fizzing round LB on a previous occasion.

 

As I said, because it was built for a review (years ago now), I used the prescribed method. Never again, and all subsequent Crownline 'Spam Cans' I built, I soldered the compensation up solid.

 

Thank you for the praise of Bytham's running, though you (tactfully?) neglected to mention the two glitches.  I didn't build all of the A1 which stuttered. It had been started by a chap who then died (it's not cursed, by the way) and I bought it from the estate. The frames were made-up (nice and square - and rigid!) and plunger pick-ups had been installed. I completed it (motion and detailed bodywork) and it seemed to run OK to start with. 

 

 

Geoff Haynes' excellent painting certainly made it into a most-acceptable LB loco.

 

However, over the last three years its running has not been as sweet as at first completed, and it's down to the plunger pick-ups getting dirty I think. They'll be replaced with nickel silver wipers. 

 

The pick-up freight which derailed was caused by a three-link coupling getting twisted somehow. How this occurs, I have no idea (other than its occasionally being reversed), but the effect is to cause the towed wagon to be forced sideways, resulting in its leaving the rails on a crossing. This is the opposite of the dynamics of the real thing, where the coupling would probably just break. 

 

Anyway, those two moments didn't seem to cause disappointment, and the ability for me to leave guests running Little Bytham entirely by themselves as I go to make tea/coffee or collect items is something I'm delighted with. The MR/M&GNR bit is particularly good fun. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Tony Teague]

Tony

To my way of thinking it is the effort and discipline which you put into understanding every single fault that inevitably occurs, that enables you to learn, and the performance of the layout as a whole to steadily improve; the two examples above demonstrate this.

I share your intolerance of poor or unreliable running but have some way to go in order to reach LB's performance!

Tony

[t-b-g]

I haven't reached perfection yet and probably never will but I agree totally about striving for the best running possible.

 

I had long conversations with Roy Jackson about it and we boiled it down to two simple statements. Every bit of poor running has a cause. If you can find the cause you can fix it.

 

I once visited a layout which is a team effort with many people having contributed. There was one particular train which derailed consistently in one place. The same bogie on a particular carriage derailed every time. All the other trains went over the points just fine and so did all the other bogies under the carriages on the train. The chap running it said that the point must be "a bit tight and needed looking at". I suggested that the coupling between the carriage and the next one might be the problem as it was tending to keep the carriages in a straight line and that was the only place it derailed so it was very likely the cause. I suggested that the point was the only place on the route with a slight reverse curve, which would explain why it only came off there. He wouldn't have it.

 

I asked questions and established that he had built the carriages and somebody else had built the track, so he wouldn't accept that it was his bit that was wrong.

 

I gave up!

 

There is a logic to sorting out faults that is as important to a good running layout as any other part of the hobby. If anybody adopts the right approach and is determined enough to eradicate as many faults as they can (I would exclude human operator error - we are stuck with that!) then we should all be able to get nearer the sort of running that TW gets on Little Bytham.

 

Top quality running isn't an unattainable holy grail. It is there for anybody who makes the effort to reach it.

 

 

Edited October 2, 2021 by t-b-g
Correct typo

[Northmoor]

53 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

I asked questions and established that he had built the carriages and somebody else had built the track, so he wouldn't accept that it was his bit that was wrong.

If there is one thing worse than someone who will not accept they have made a mistake, it is the person who will not accept that they could ever make a mistake.

[t-b-g]

16 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

If there is one thing worse than someone who will not accept they have made a mistake, it is the person who will not accept that they could ever make a mistake.

 

Another Roy Jackson pearl of wisdom (with language suitable altered to make it acceptable on RMWeb) was that the difference between the average modeller and the good modeller was not whether they made mistakes or not. It was about how much effort they put into correcting them.

[Barry Ten]

1 hour ago, t-b-g said:

 

 

There is a logic to sorting out faults that is as important to a good running layout as any other part of the hobby. If anybody adopts the right approach and is determined enough to eradicate as many faults as they can (I would exclude human operator error - we are stuck with that!) then we should all be able to get nearer the sort of running that TW gets on Little Bytham.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's the 1-in-100 derailments that frustrate me, you know the kind, where a loco will run well over a set of points 99 times out of 100, but will occasionally derail. If you watch it over and over, it never derails, but as soon as you turn on your back on it, it plays up. And because the fault isn't easily repeatable, it's hard to observe what's going on.

[Bernard Lamb]

Recent mention of LFC and King's Cross plates sent me looking in the put away long ago draw.

 

For all those people who expressed support over a recent post that I made may I say a big thank you. Your action was very much appreciated. it would have been nice to have had an apology from the person who caused my distress, but there you go, such is the world we live in.

Bernard

 

 

 

[t-b-g]

22 minutes ago, Barry Ten said:

 

It's the 1-in-100 derailments that frustrate me, you know the kind, where a loco will run well over a set of points 99 times out of 100, but will occasionally derail. If you watch it over and over, it never derails, but as soon as you turn on your back on it, it plays up. And because the fault isn't easily repeatable, it's hard to observe what's going on.

 

Agreed. All you can really do in those situations is to check everything dimensionally and in terms of good alignment. My most likely cause, if everything else goes through fine and a single loco derails but only rarely, would be a wheel either not having the correct back to back or perhaps not running true, so that the wobble on the wheel coincides with that bit of track every once in a while. Either that or a bogie/pony truck not sitting down well on the track and something causing the wheel to lift slightly.

 

I have had a struggle with the points into the fiddle yard on Buckingham ever since I have had the layout. It doesn't help that there are multiple combinations of locos and stock and the turntable fiddle yard means that trains are turned regularly. The trains don't always go in the same roads in the yard either. You can have a train that will run in and out of all the sidings one way round but will perhaps derail into a particular siding just once, usually when you are looking elsewhere, so you don't see where it happened.

 

Making a note and going back to it after a running session doesn't always work as the train may be the other way round with different vehicles in it by that time. So I have solo running sessions where if anything goes wrong, I stop and try to fix it there and then, before I proceed.

 

I have been tinkering with the points and the stock for 10 years now. The number of derailments has been drastically reduced and I am just chasing the last couple now. The causes have varied from kinks in the brass rail, to tired springs on buffers and couplings, to bearings worn so much that the wheels wobble around, to badly adjusted bogie and pony springs, to points not throwing fully. It doesn't help that we are talking about outside cylinder locos in EM gauge and 2ft radius curves! Everything has to be "just right" for that combination to work at all.

 

I may be slightly odd but I actually enjoy such work. Having something that doesn't work as well as it should and ending up with something that does work as well as it possibly could is hugely satisfying.