Wright writes.....

[Porcy Mane]

You would get a close inspection of the trees if this train decided to take the short route.

 

 

The kaydees seen to keep these box cars well in check.

 

 

[Lecorbusier]

Is there a difference between climbing and descending? ie.... when coasting presumably the forces are much more favourable, but when climbing much greater eccentric forces are involved?

[Northmoor]

5 minutes ago, Lecorbusier said:

Is there a difference between climbing and descending? ie.... when coasting presumably the forces are much more favourable, but when climbing much greater eccentric forces are involved?

When descending through a curve, each wagon would like to go straight on but is prevented from doing so by the wagon in front and the flanges acting against the outer rail.  Also, continuous brakes mean that the end loads vary much less between wagons along the train, whereas when climbing, the maximum trailing load is obviously between the first wagon and the locomotive, the load reducing with each wagon.

 

[Lecorbusier]

22 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

When descending through a curve, each wagon would like to go straight on but is prevented from doing so by the wagon in front and the flanges acting against the outer rail.  Also, continuous brakes mean that the end loads vary much less between wagons along the train, whereas when climbing, the maximum trailing load is obviously between the first wagon and the locomotive, the load reducing with each wagon.

 

So by that reasoning so long as each wagon is well set up you coast as many wagons round a spiral as you wish .... but when climbing there will be a limit before derailment?

[grahame]

1 hour ago, Porcy Mane said:

You would get a close inspection of the trees if this train decided to take the short route.

 

 

 

Hmm, that shot looks rather like a poorly put together photoshopped montage of at least five different trains. The upper curve of the spiral at the left edge appears to be flying in mid air and the top carriage is at a precarious angle to the viaduct for which the darker red train can even be seen behind it at the top left. The actual video footage is of the real thing and interesting but most of the trains are quite short. 

 

G.

 

 

[Porcy Mane]

24 minutes ago, grahame said:

Hmm, that shot looks rather like a poorly put together photoshopped montage of at least five different trains

 

 I think most folk will have realised the establishing shot is a poor composite for the very reason it's such a poor composite!

 

It's the video content that is relevant.

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Porcy Mane

[PJT]

On 21/08/2019 at 15:31, polybear said:

The Auction listing for Maindee East states "Passed", which I guess is auction speak for failed to achieve reserve.  Bearing in mind the estimate was £300-£400 I'd say someone missed a bargain....

On 21/08/2019 at 16:33, 5 C said:

£190 was the highest bid. 

I got in touch with the auction house last night and negotiated the purchase of Maindee East today.  I'll be picking it up next week.  I haven't decided yet what I'll do with it; my primary concern was to ensure its survival, as intact as possible, since I'm a fan of Steffan Lewis's work and as a model I always found Maindee East very inspiring.  Once I've got it home I'll decide what to do with it.  If I decide to keep it (and a big part of me would really like to) I certainly have the space to do so, though I'm already pretty well committed as far as modelling time is concerned!  On the other hand, it might be best for its future to offer it to a club, museum or even AIMREC at Ashford; it's certainly good enough for the latter.  I'm open to thoughts and suggestions...

 

By the way, thank you to those who highlighted its plight here on RMWeb.

 

Pete T.

Edited August 22, 2019 by PJT
Forgot to say thank you.

[grahame]

37 minutes ago, Porcy Mane said:

 

 I think most folk will have realised the establishing shot is a poor composite for the very reason it's such a poor composite!

 

 

Maybe, but I suspect that there will be sone who don't realise and will be taken in much in the same way that obvious fake news gets believed. As such it is misleading and unnecessary given the real video content.

 

G

[5 C]

30 minutes ago, PJT said:

I got in touch with the auction house last night and negotiated the purchase of Maindee East today.  I'll be picking it up next week.  I haven't decided yet what I'll do with it; my primary concern was to ensure its survival, as intact as possible, since I'm a fan of Steffan Lewis's work and as a model I always found Maindee East very inspiring.  Once I've got it home I'll decide what to do with it.  If I decide to keep it (and a big part of me would really like to) I certainly have the space to do so, though I'm already pretty well committed as far as modelling time is concerned!  On the other hand, it might be best for its future to offer it to a club, museum or even AIMREC at Ashford; it's certainly good enough for the latter.  I'm open to thoughts and suggestions...

 

By the way, thank you to those who highlighted its plight here on RMWeb.

 

Pete T.

 

I'm glad someone has stepped forward to take this on. I saw Maindee East at a couple of exhibitions and regarded it as a "go to" layout for its sheer realism and attention to detail. It always seemed to draw a good crowd. 

 

The auction house house didn't really help its cause by listing it as furniture and selling it alongside a selection of chairs and cabinets. Little wonder it failed to make its reserve. If that means you've got it for an acceptable price and it can see the light of day again, that's all to the good.

[APOLLO]

Well done and good luck with the layout PJT.

 

Brit15

[Barry Ten]

46 minutes ago, PJT said:

I got in touch with the auction house last night and negotiated the purchase of Maindee East today.  I'll be picking it up next week.  I haven't decided yet what I'll do with it; my primary concern was to ensure its survival, as intact as possible, since I'm a fan of Steffan Lewis's work and as a model I always found Maindee East very inspiring.  Once I've got it home I'll decide what to do with it.  If I decide to keep it (and a big part of me would really like to) I certainly have the space to do so, though I'm already pretty well committed as far as modelling time is concerned!  On the other hand, it might be best for its future to offer it to a club, museum or even AIMREC at Ashford; it's certainly good enough for the latter.  I'm open to thoughts and suggestions...

 

By the way, thank you to those who highlighted its plight here on RMWeb.

 

Pete T.

 

Thanks are due to you, for conserving such a fine piece of modelling.

[Evertonian]

48 minutes ago, PJT said:

I got in touch with the auction house last night and negotiated the purchase of Maindee East today.  I'll be picking it up next week.  I haven't decided yet what I'll do with it; my primary concern was to ensure its survival, as intact as possible, since I'm a fan of Steffan Lewis's work and as a model I always found Maindee East very inspiring.  Once I've got it home I'll decide what to do with it.  If I decide to keep it (and a big part of me would really like to) I certainly have the space to do so, though I'm already pretty well committed as far as modelling time is concerned!  On the other hand, it might be best for its future to offer it to a club, museum or even AIMREC at Ashford; it's certainly good enough for the latter.  I'm open to thoughts and suggestions...

 

By the way, thank you to those who highlighted its plight here on RMWeb.

 

Pete T.

 

[Evertonian]

Excellent news Pete, congratulations on obtaining ( and more importantly) saving Steffan's last layout. I am sure whatever you decide to do

with "Maindee East" in the future will be satisfying, it would be a treat for myself , and many others I suspect, to be able to see it again one day -

either at an exhibition should you be willing and able - or at a suitable museum. 

 

Well done and thanks.

 

Chris Knight

[PJT]

Thanks for all the messages of goodwill.  I thought I was doing the right thing to purchase Maindee East to save it, but naturally a part of me was concerned that I was, not for the first time in my life, being a bit too impulsive and/or sentimental.  Your kind comments have reassured me.  Whatever I end up doing with it, I am determined that it should be available to view because it's such a wonderful example of observational artistry and it shows a great understanding of the way things used to be done on the railways - which you all know already.

 

I sincerely hope someone, or some organisation, can step forward to do the same for Roy Jackson's Retford and ensure its future, though of course they'll have to have far deeper pockets, a lot more time and a great deal more space than I'll ever have. 

 

Pete T.

 

[polybear]

1 hour ago, 5 C said:

 

I'm glad someone has stepped forward to take this on. I saw Maindee East at a couple of exhibitions and regarded it as a "go to" layout for its sheer realism and attention to detail. It always seemed to draw a good crowd. 

 

The auction house house didn't really help its cause by listing it as furniture and selling it alongside a selection of chairs and cabinets. Little wonder it failed to make its reserve. If that means you've got it for an acceptable price and it can see the light of day again, that's all to the good.

 

If I were the seller I'd be disappointed with the Auction House; they would've been better off using Ebay I think, with collect only

Edited August 22, 2019 by polybear

[PJT]

1 hour ago, 5 C said:

The auction house house didn't really help its cause by listing it as furniture and selling it alongside a selection of chairs and cabinets. Little wonder it failed to make its reserve. If that means you've got it for an acceptable price and it can see the light of day again, that's all to the good.

 

9 minutes ago, polybear said:

If I were the seller I'd be disappointed with the Auction House; they would've been better off using Ebay I think, with collect only 

 

I fully understand your feelings.  With the thought at the front of my mind that the sellers were most probably Steffan's family, I deliberately and immediately accepted the auctioneer's offer to sell it to me at their estimated sale price plus buyer's premium.  There wasn't a lot of negotiating to be done from my point of view.  I wouldn't have felt comfortable paying anything less, though I know I still got an awful lot of very skillful man-hours of work for the price I paid and that had a different route to market been taken the seller might have realised more money (though there's no guarantee of that).  And please excuse the well-worn cliche but I really do feel more that I've taken over as its guardian, rather than owner.  I'll be driving from East Sussex to Gloucestershire sometime next week to collect it, by the way.

 

Pete T.

 

[polybear]

42 minutes ago, PJT said:

 

 

I fully understand your feelings.  With the thought at the front of my mind that the sellers were most probably Steffan's family, I deliberately and immediately accepted the auctioneer's offer to sell it to me at their estimated sale price plus buyer's premium.  There wasn't a lot of negotiating to be done from my point of view.  I wouldn't have felt comfortable paying anything less, though I know I still got an awful lot of very skillful man-hours of work for the price I paid and that had a different route to market been taken the seller might have realised more money (though there's no guarantee of that).  And please excuse the well-worn cliche but I really do feel more that I've taken over as its guardian, rather than owner.  I'll be driving from East Sussex to Gloucestershire sometime next week to collect it, by the way.

 

Pete T.

 

 

Hi Pete,

Sorry - I hope my post didn't sound like criticism of you; in fact what you've done I think Steffan would approve of  (I actually edited my original post shortly after sending it for fear that it did sound like a snipe against you - maybe I still got it wrong?).

The point I was trying to make was that I don't think the Auction house listed the layout well at all; in fact it would've been better off in a more specialised sale amongst lots of railway/modelling items - not buried with tables and chairs.  Thinking more, perhaps an ad in MRJ might have worked well?  Someone could so easily have bought it purely for the baseboards, and scrapped the layout completely 

It could be that the family wanted the very easiest way to dispose of the layout without scrapping it, bearing in mind the sad circumstances...

Cheers,

Brian

[PJT]

5 minutes ago, polybear said:

(I actually edited my original post shortly after sending it for fear that it did sound like a snipe against you - maybe I still got it wrong?).

 

No, not at all Brian.  No offence given or taken; I completely agree with your comments.  It's just that they did also make me wonder if I ought to assure some people who might otherwise see my actions in a harsher light that I wasn't just an opportunist swooping in and paying as little as I could get away with for the layout. 

 

I too thought it might have sold better if it had been advertised in MRJ, as a few other wonderful layouts have been over the years.  However, as I said before, there's no guarantee that it would have sold - and then what?  Last night, before I emailed the auction house, I wondered long and hard whether I was doing the right thing.  My life has more than enough going on in it already without getting involved in Maindee East.  The clincher, though, was contemplating what might have happened to it if I hadn't stepped in.  I'd have hated to hear later that it had been scrapped after I'd seriously contemplated saving it and then turned away.  I would hope that someone else might have stepped in if I hadn't - but again, there's no guarantee of that, so I decided to go for it myself. 

 

The photos in the auctioneer's on-line catalogue show some damage that will need repairing, but they also made me think that it was definitely worth saving and not a mishandled basket case or worn out (admittedly that's harder to judge in photographs).  I hope I was right to think so!

 

Pete T.      

[jamie92208]

10 hours ago, t-b-g said:

I can accept all that and agree that is reasonable but....

 

So why didn't my 115 wagon train, round tight curves, pull off when it went right round a circuit with tight curves? Were my wheels somehow having less friction than others. Many of the wagons were travelling in a totally opposite direction. The train was heavy and needed a lot of tractive effort to pull it, so as soon as the loco went from the curve to the straight, the front wagons should have been pulled hard against the inside rail. I fully expected it to come off the track but it didn't.

 

There is clearly a tipping point, where friction, drag, train weight, wheel/flange shape and size plus types of coupling all combine to cause a derailment but I do just puzzle and wonder why in some cases, a long train round small radius curves works and in others it doesn't.

 

I should probably get out more, or get a life, or find something more important to think about! 

Out of interest, exactly this sort of thing has been happening recently in the US.   Due to changes in operating practices (Precision scheduled Railroading) which have lead to longer trains and many more mixed trains rather than unit trains.   Many operators have been disregarding long established rules of train make up that specified types and weights of cars and their position in the train, together with where extra remote control locos are placed. There was a very good article about the problem and the various solutions in Trains Magazine in the last few months.  Very good reading it was.

 

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

Hi Pete,

Sorry - I hope my post didn't sound like criticism of you; in fact what you've done I think Steffan would approve of  (I actually edited my original post shortly after sending it for fear that it did sound like a snipe against you - maybe I still got it wrong?).

The point I was trying to make was that I don't think the Auction house listed the layout well at all; in fact it would've been better off in a more specialised sale amongst lots of railway/modelling items - not buried with tables and chairs.  Thinking more, perhaps an ad in MRJ might have worked well?  Someone could so easily have bought it purely for the baseboards, and scrapped the layout completely 

It could be that the family wanted the very easiest way to dispose of the layout without scrapping it, bearing in mind the sad circumstances...

Cheers,

Brian

I have seen two examples of railway estates sold at auction,   One was the late David Jenkinsons, which went via Christies as he had been an advisor to them.  The friends of his who dismantled his layout and prepared lots for the auction house were dismayed when the lots were all mixed up or amalgamated to ensure a quicker throughput of lots in the auction room.   I also bought some kits at an auction in Ossett  and was appalled at the way it had been put together, basically for the same reasons as Christie's actions.   I did have words with one of the staff and he asked me what I thought.  I told him and he wasn't very happy.  In neither case were the heirs well served by the auctioneers.  In my opinion the slow and steady sale via such methods as Ebay and also second hand stalls and society and gauge shows is a fa better way.   Unfortunately it is also much more labour intensive.   At least one gauge society, that I know of, is struggling to recruit a new volunteer to run their estate disposal service.

 

Jamie

[LNER4479]

On ‎21‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 15:25, Tony Wright said:

With regard to 'less is more', this certainly wasn't the case on LB this morning. 

 

 

Would you believe that this monster ran on the ECML, hauling 105 wagons? Except, it could only run on the scenic section of LB because it was too tall to go underneath the scenic break 'disguising' pieces of ply, even though it's HO. It brushed against the platform edges as well! It's Hornby/Rivarossi's latest Big Boy model, of course. 

 

105 wagons (several white metal) was not an absolute maximum, but the head of the train became unstable on the end curves when more were added. 

 

I was gratified that a DJH A1 was just as powerful! 

 

Finally, does anyone know where Brisco is, please? 

Very nice Tony - but not a patch on seeing the real thing in the flesh.

 

Cheyenne, 2nd May

[PMP]

I’m not surprised Maindee didn’t sell. I agree the listing wasn’t ideal, at the very least they should have put it in the ‘toy’ section. Modellers ‘grazing’ through the catalogue would be more likely to see it. The biggest hurdle to it selling is it’s P4, and that knocks a massive part of the market out straight away. It’s unlikely to be of use to a club/group as they’re unlikely to have a P4 group that wants a RTR layout of a large GW shed, that won’t be already underway. The next problem is with P4/EM/S7/2FS etc many of those modellers are focused on their ‘projects’ and interests and tend to have their path forwards defined by those projects, and get their kicks from making and researching etc the items to complete those specific projects. So with Maindee and another P4 layout I know of, the vendor is trying to find a purchaser in a niche of a niche market at best. I’ve acted for a couple of estates recently and it’s not easy, especially if the projects are sizeable like Maindee is, storage and deterioration take their toll, and I wish Pete T the best with the layout.

Edited August 22, 2019 by PMP

[PJT]

13 minutes ago, PMP said:

I’m not surprised Maindee didn’t sell. I agree the listing wasn’t ideal, at the very least they should have put it in the ‘toy’ section. Modellers ‘grazing’ through the catalogue would be more likely to see it. The biggest hurdle to it selling is it’s P4, and that knocks a massive part of the market out straight away. It’s unlikely to be of use to a club/group as they’re unlikely to have a P4 group that wants a RTR layout of a large GW shed, that won’t be already underway. The next problem is with P4/EM/S7/2FS etc many of those modellers are focused on their ‘projects’ and interests and tend to have their path forwards defined by those projects, and get their kicks from making and researching etc the items to complete those specific projects. So with Maindee and another P4 layout I know of, the vendor is trying to find a purchaser in a niche of a niche market at best. I’ve acted for a couple of estates recently and it’s not easy, especially if the projects are sizeable like Maindee is, storage and deterioration take their toll, and I wish Pete T the best with the layout.

 

I agree with every word of that - which is why I (and Polybear, and probably several others) wondered if it might have stood half a chance of reaching an interested P4 audience if it had been advertised in MRJ.  Even then, converting an interest in the fate of a very well regarded model into a desire to buy it would probably require a huge slice of good luck to see the right buyer come along for (as you rightly say) a 'niche of a niche market' item.  I know I wouldn't have wanted to be tasked with selling it.  

[Lecorbusier]

9 hours ago, PMP said:

It’s unlikely to be of use to a club/group as they’re unlikely to have a P4 group that wants a RTR layout of a large GW shed, that won’t be already underway. 

Another option might be to contact the Scalefour soc.? In P4 because of the nature of the beast , having a layout to run stock on/play trains might be attractive whilst work is underway on the main project? .....particularly if the layout is well respected.

 

Changing the gauge might be rather problematic for such a layout.

 

[PJT]

1 hour ago, Lecorbusier said:

Another option might be to contact the Scalefour soc.? In P4 because of the nature of the beast , having a layout to run stock on/play trains might be attractive whilst work is underway on the main project? .....particularly if the layout is well respected.

 

Changing the gauge might be rather problematic for such a layout.

 

You're right, but I'd put it a little more strongly than that.  When you look closely at photos of Maindee East, changing the gauge is absolutely a non-starter.  I'd end up with half destroyed baseboards and a collection of very beautiful buildings to find new homes for and that's the very last outcome I'd want for something that I set out to save.

 

Contacting the Scalefour Society is a very good idea and once I have everything back here and I've found out exactly what I have bought I think I'll be in touch with them.  Lying in bed last night, I had one of those head vs. heart conversations with myself.  Much as I'd love to, I really can't keep it long term.  I have too many other commitments for my time and for me to leave it languishing untouched for years is definitely another outcome I wouldn't want for it.  If ultimately I can pass it on to an individual, an organisation or museum that will give it the future it deserves, then I'll be happy with that.

 

In the meantime I just need to get it back here before the auction house start charging storage...

 

Pete T.

[jamie92208]

Someone mentioned a short while ago that the new edition of Steam Days had some nice colour photos of Duchesses(as I call them). I can't remember who mentioned it but would like to say a huge thank you. A friend  went back to the UK for a wedding and was tasked with buying a copy and also getting some Humbrol no 74 paint for lining.  He was happy as he was allowed to visit Smiths and a model shop and I'm ecstatic.  The article is superb and there is a great colour photo of 46238 which my model is going to become one day.  Just as aside the magazine was handed over to me when we were out on a steam excursion. The loco was an Ex PLM 4-6-0 built in Glasgow in 1917 and looked and sounded great.

 

That's it on our return trip to Limoges after a long and pleasant lunch.  The diesel didn't do much work but is demanded by SNCF as insurance.  It is also preserved and maintained by the same society as the steam loco.

 

Jamie

Edited August 23, 2019 by jamie92208