Pre Grouping general discussion

[Compound2632]

Doorstops, I presume. 

[Buhar]

12 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Doorstops, I presume. 

I agree. You don't want the door ironmongery damaging the woodwork. 

Alan 

[Florence Locomotive Works]

Would anybody happen to know where this photo was taken? I think its outside Swindon, but I don't know where outside Swindon it was, or is.

[Northroader]

Just off the top of my head I’d suggest on the viaduct just west of Gloucester station? Certainly not Swindon.

Edited July 1, 2020 by Northroader

[Florence Locomotive Works]

On 01/07/2020 at 02:39, Northroader said:

Just off the top of my head I’d suggest on the viaduct just west of Gloucester station? Certainly not Swindon.

After a while I found my way back to the photo on the internet and the caption on the website says its outside Swindon, I'm guessing on a bridge somewhere. That doesn't help me much as there's quiet a lot of railway in Swindon!

[Lacathedrale]

What did engineering sidings look like in the pre-group era? Was it how we imagine them with bolster trucks, open wagons, ballast brakes, cranes, snowplows, etc. ?

[Compound2632]

46 minutes ago, Lacathedrale said:

What did engineering sidings look like in the pre-group era? Was it how we imagine them with bolster trucks, open wagons, ballast brakes, cranes, snowplows, etc. ?

 

Here's a small-scale installation: Ballast Pit Sidings, at Kings Heath on the Midland's Camp Hill line in Birmingham, c. 1890. Just a pair of sidings alongside the running lines and a handful of decrepit huts, with the ballast being extracted on site. Is that a crushing machine between the huts? Note the Engineer's Department wagons - dropside wagons, usually thought of as ballast wagons, but here apparently being used for other items, and the 6-wheel (pre-diagram) rail wagon - probably 24ft rails at this date.

 

Larger cranes - steam cranes in particular - would belong to the Locomotive Department, along with their attendant tool and mess vans, also snowploughs, and so would live at locomotive running sheds. The Engineer's Department would borrow such cranes for large jobs but would have smaller hand cranes of 5 ton or 10 ton capacity. Here's the match wagon for one, though lacking its jib rest.

 

 

[rocor]

 

Someone having a desire to model mid-Victorian railways, can soon find that there is a problem from there being a deficit of information about the stock that was then currently in service.

 

I am attracted to the idea of producing models of early London, Chatham and Dover Railway goods stock (1860 - 1875), but there appears to be a paucity of details available of this.

 

So far I have found this image from the London Illustrated News of an accident near Beckenham in 1866. This shows some derailed and broken wagons. If the paper's artist has got the constructional details correct, it is doubtful that the proportions of the wagons are, as I have scaled the wagon that is sideways on being around 18 foot long.  

 

 

[Compound2632]

55 minutes ago, rocor said:

Someone having a desire to model mid-Victorian railways, can soon find that there is a problem from there being a deficit of information about the stock that was then currently in service.

 

I am attracted to the idea of producing models of early London, Chatham and Dover Railway goods stock (1860 - 1875), but there appears to be a paucity of details available of this.

 

The period c. 1850 - c. 1870 really is the dark age as far as goods rolling stock goes. At the beginning of the period, photography was in its infancy; at the end, we're just starting to get into the period when official photos got taken. Few drawings survive from the period; of those that do, it's often difficult to be confident that they represent wagons as actually built. Few if any of the wagons built in this period survived into the era of diagram books, which were largely an early 20th century invention, and tend to be the starting point for the compilers of Illustrated Histories. Chance glimpses in the margins of locomotive photographs are our best hope.

 

One can, however, know something about types and quantities, if one digs into the minute books. (are those for the LCDR at Kew?) If orders were being placed with outside builders, there's a reasonable probability they will be to the builder's designs, especially for a small company such as the Chatham. One can have a reasonable idea of what a Metropolitan wagon of the period looked like from published drawings.

 

Towards the end of your period, following the opening of the Metropolitan Widened Lines, you can flood your layout with dumb-buffered PO wagons that have come south on the Midland or the Great Northern. 5 & 9 Models have some suitable kits.

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

The period c. 1850 - c. 1870 really is the dark age as far as goods rolling stock goes. At the beginning of the period, photography was in its infancy; at the end, we're just starting to get into the period when official photos got taken. Few drawings survive from the period; of those that do, it's often difficult to be confident that they represent wagons as actually built. Few if any of the wagons built in this period survived into the era of diagram books, which were largely an early 20th century invention, and tend to be the starting point for the compilers of Illustrated Histories. Chance glimpses in the margins of locomotive photographs are our best hope.

 

One can, however, know something about types and quantities, if one digs into the minute books. (are those for the LCDR at Kew?) If orders were being placed with outside builders, there's a reasonable probability they will be to the builder's designs, especially for a small company such as the Chatham. One can have a reasonable idea of what a Metropolitan wagon of the period looked like from published drawings.

 

Towards the end of your period, following the opening of the Metropolitan Widened Lines, you can flood your layout with dumb-buffered PO wagons that have come south on the Midland or the Great Northern. 5 & 9 Models have some suitable kits.

 

Well, if you can model the coaches, Andrew Stadden now makes the passengers.

 

One of my bucket list layouts is Waskerley, with a Hownsgill viaduct module, in 1858-9.

 

No passengers, mind you.

 

 

[Caley Jim]

Wouldn't like to be crossing that in a high wind!

 

Jim

[Caley Jim]

A fellow member of our 2MM SA area group has sent round this photo taken in Glasgow Queen Street station around 1950.  Can anyone identify the 6-wheel full brake?  Has a GER or GNR look about it to my eye, but then what would I know about such 'furrin' companies?

Jim

[Edwardian]

37 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

A fellow member of our 2MM SA area group has sent round this photo taken in Glasgow Queen Street station around 1950.  Can anyone identify the 6-wheel full brake?  Has a GER or GNR look about it to my eye, but then what would I know about such 'furrin' companies?

 

Jim

 

Great Eastern, I would say.  The roof profile and the distinctive vertical beading below the (wide) waist is a match for the Holden 50' bogie stock built in large numbers from about 1907 to 1917.  I know that the GER built some 6-wheel brake vans in the same style, so I imagine that is what is pictured. 'J' hangers on the central springs only is typical of the GE.

 

 

[Caley Jim]

Thanks, James.  I'll pass that on.

 

Jim

[Edwardian]

5 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

Thanks, James.  I'll pass that on.

 

Jim

 

I've looked these up, and I can offer you the 32' D536, built 1908-1909 and the 34'6'' D540 of 1911.

 

All the 50' Holden stock was gang-wayed, but these matching 6-W vans weren't.

 

 

[Caley Jim]

Thanks again, James.  A font of knowledge as always!  

 

Jim

[Edwardian]

8 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

Thanks again, James.  A font of knowledge as always!  

 

Jim

 

Possibly more like a terrier with a bone, so I've been rootling around further. My GER knowledge, such as it is, rapidly fades post 1905!

 

Jonathan Wealleans of this parish has built a D536. Comparing this with your picture, it seems that yours might be of a D540, as there are extra panels in a couple of places. 

 

[tomparryharry]

13 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Well, if you can model the coaches, Andrew Stadden now makes the passengers.

 

One of my bucket list layouts is Waskerley, with a Hownsgill viaduct module, in 1858-9.

 

No passengers, mind you.

 

 

 Balustrade on one side? Wow..... 

[Edwardian]

48 minutes ago, tomparryharry said:

 Balustrade on one side? Wow..... 

 

Suicide fences from 2012 rather spoil it nowadays, and sadly failed to stop someone getting round them in 2017.

 

[Guy Rixon]

20 hours ago, rocor said:

 

Someone having a desire to model mid-Victorian railways, can soon find that there is a problem from there being a deficit of information about the stock that was then currently in service.

 

I am attracted to the idea of producing models of early London, Chatham and Dover Railway goods stock (1860 - 1875), but there appears to be a paucity of details available of this.

 

So far I have found this image from the London Illustrated News of an accident near Beckenham in 1866. This shows some derailed and broken wagons. If the paper's artist has got the constructional details correct, it is doubtful that the proportions of the wagons are, as I have scaled the wagon that is sideways on being around 18 foot long.  

 

 

There was an article recently in Invicta describing LCDR wagons of that period. Various decent drawings of such have been published. I think the union of SECR Soc. and HMRS archives might serve you quite well. The big problem is the lack of good photographs.

 

IIRC, c.1875 is the period when the LCDR designs evolved dramatically, with changes in overall length, wheelbases, form of axleguards and probably churning most other details.

[Compound2632]

56 minutes ago, Guy Rixon said:

IIRC, c.1875 is the period when the LCDR designs evolved dramatically, with changes in overall length, wheelbases, form of axleguards and probably churning most other details.

 

Kirtley a new broom, maybe importing some Midland practices?

[Guy Rixon]

Kirtley, possibly. MR practice? Probably not, as the general form of the wagons didn't change to MR norms. Opens still had high, elliptical ends. Brakes were still single-block on most wagons. The wheelbase was 3" greater than typical MR stock, and the new wagons were longer than MR contemporaries.

 

The main change was from 8-ton loads to 10-ton*, for which the LCDR needed new springs and journals, hence different axleboxes, hence different axleguards (wider between the vertical legs), hence small differences in carpentry rippling out and hey, if we're changing all the templates for the chippies anyway, now's the time for that increase in internal capacity that we've been putting off. I think the opens got an extra plank in this round of changes, but I may have dreamt that.

 

* Which is not to say that all the 8-ton wagons were retired in the '70s, or that the LCDR didn't built any 8-ton-rated stock at a later date; but the first of the heavier wagons came in then, IIRC.

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, Guy Rixon said:

MR practice?

 

Clearly not. 8 tons remained the norm for ordinary Midland wagons until the start of the 20th century. But on the one hand, in 1875 Midland designs were still evolving towards the standard components of the last two decades of the 20th century and on the other hand, who's to say that Kirtley hadn't been itching to build larger wagons. However, I'm inclined to think he wasn't an innovator on the C&W side: the designs he provided for the Hull & Barnsley Railway in 1885 were based on LCDR designs and already outmoded.

[Caley Jim]

A friend has sent me a copy of the Epsom and Ewell MRC's newsletter which contains photographs of two vehicles which they thought were Caledonian.  One (a 6-wheel horsebox) definitely is, but the other, a 6-wheel PBV is not.

 

Can anyone identify this?  The lack of eaves panels at first suggests LNWR or WCJS, but both only had waist panels on the doors.

 

Jim

[David Bell]

On 14/03/2021 at 20:49, Caley Jim said:

A fellow member of our 2MM SA area group has sent round this photo taken in Glasgow Queen Street station around 1950.  Can anyone identify the 6-wheel full brake?  Has a GER or GNR look about it to my eye, but then what would I know about such 'furrin' companies?

 

Jim

That is a good find. Certainly something out of the ordinary to consider for a 1950's GQS.

Cheers

David