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All Midland Railway enthusiasts may wish to know that the Midland Railway Society now has an eBay store where over 60 issues of its celebrated journal, plus books, occasional publications and the last surviving stocks of the superb Wild Swan produced 'Midland Record' may be purchased with FREE UK postage and packing (overseas rates on application).

The Society purchased all remaining stocks of Midland Record from Wild Swan and they have been selling like hot cakes since we listed them with several issues selling out - time to plug the gaps in your collections while you can!


https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/midland_railway_society?_trksid=p2047675.l2559

Edited by Holmesfeldian
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7 hours ago, Rowsley17D said:

Thanks for the heads-up. A couple of "last one" publications bought.

 

Glad to help - we are now down to the last 1 or 2 copies of Midland Records Nos. 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 & 14.
(Plenty of No. 26 and Nos. 29-35).


All other issues have now sold out!

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Like Nick I am starting to build a layout. Although I have been involved with club and exhibition layouts for many years in various scales and gauges but mainly Scale7, including Bob Essery's Dewsbury and Pete Kibble's Little Severn/ Severn Mill, I haven't had a layout of my own since the early eighties. That was an OO Midland MPD that featured in a 1981 issue of Model Trains but by then I'd already gone into 7mm, followed a few years later by being persuaded by the late John Horton and Crimson Rambler of this parish to embrace Scale7.

 

Nearly 16 years ago now I did start the 'ultimate' layout, which was to be a 35ft x 20ft roundy roundy in a purpose-built shed and based loosely on Berkeley Road but by the time I'd made the baseboards we had decided to move house so it was all ripped up. The fact that the house move never took place didn't do a lot for my modelling mojo and I let other things take up my hobby time so my scratchbuilt locos sat for many years in a display cabinet gathering dust. Frequently I looked at them and thought that it was a shame they weren't being used for what they were meant to do - run - and finally when it struck me rather forcibly that I was abou to start my eighth decade on earth, I resolved to do something about it. For some time I'd thought that if I was to make another layout it would be unrealistic to try for the big roundy roundy again as I haven't realistically now got enough time left to build it as well as all the rolling stock required. But what to do? What did I really enjoy doing? Answer - making locomotives, one-off vehicles of various types, and buildings; so all-in-all another MPD. Sadly, things were put on hold because my Mum had a series of strokes and eventually died a couple of years ago then we had to sort out my 90 plus year old Dad so not much happened for some further time.

 

Then things settled down somewhat and as a result I drew up plans last year for a 26ft x 3ft 6in MPD based loosely on Hellifield but with the turntable and some sidings moved so that it would fit onto the relatively narrow baseboards to make access to all parts easier. Commencement finally happened earlier this year and with the help of some other RMWebbers I got to grips with Templot, finalised a plan, bought a Midland Railway Centre turntable kit and ordered the wood. What my late friend David Jenkinson would have termed my 'last great project' was underway.

 

Progress hasn't been swift by any stretch of the imagination as all the track is hand built, the pointwork using scale cast acrylic chairs made for me by my great friend the Rambler, and so far the layout consists of the baseboards on top of which are the turntable, three turnouts, the ramp up to where the coaling stage will be, and about five feet of plain track. I've got to produce another simple turnout and three of the three-throws much loved by the Midland for yards and sheds so if I can get all that done this year as well as the electrics (simple DC) I'll be happy (I've also got another book to write whilst this is going on, which will slow things down). 

 

So so there we have it, the start of what I hope will be a worthwhile project. I hope that the above ramblings aren't too boring but I wanted to set out my stall so to speak. One more small thing to report though; something like fifteen years ago I made a 2-4-0 No. 1505 for Bob Essery that has been running on the Warley club's Ellerton Road but last week I offered to buy it back and Bob has agreed so next week I'm going to collect it, which I'm looking forward to.

 

Once I get one of those round tuits that everyone needs I'll try to post a track plan and the odd photograph. Until then, happy Midland modelling.

 

Dave

 

PS - the Crimson Rambler is also starting a S7 layout based on Sharnbrook so watch this space for news of that in th (hopefully near) future.

 

PPS - I live in North Shropshire so if anyone would like to get involved with this project or even just have somewhere to run any S7 stuff once I've got the track sorted out, please feel free to PM me.

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My "great project" was to build a model of Brynamman, both stations, GWR and Midland. Back around 2005 I started, built the baseboards and gradually built the track. Progress was slow. I was still working and I seemed to have less and less spare time plus I discovered the delights of scratchbuilding locos. Then in August 2012, I was diagnosed with Kidney cancer. While I was recovering from having the wretched thing removed, and possibly under the influence of Tramadol, I started to review my life and this included the railway. I started to jot down on paper what I still had to build and how long it would take me. The realisation I had to build 2 stations plus two lots of stock made me realise that unless my life expectancy was 120 plus, I would never finish it. So my light on the road to Damascus came in the form of Penwyllt / Craigynos. It's N&B but had Midland trains. Tudor Watkins had all the photos, track plans, there were only 6 signals (plus ground signals) and only Midland stock (I could borrow some N&B stock from Tudor if I wished).

 

So many hours on Templot later, the track plan was done (I got to version 28), the Brynamman baseboards were rebuilt and progress started. The track is down and wired, signals are built, thanks to Graham Tierney the signal box and station building are done, I've cracked how to do static grass and so about 20% now has scenery. I have 7 locos (4 of which are elsewhere being painted at great cost) and plans for lots more. The main thing is I'm having fun doing it.

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My current project, and certainly my last "great one" is Lancaster Green Ayre.   I had lived near Midland lines until the age of 26 in Carlisle, Chesterfield, Clapham (NY), Giggleswick, Nottingham and Woodlesford.  I started a model of one of the quarries at Helwith Bridge at home (with part of the main line connection, then a 4mm model of Woodlesford. This did operate in my loft but never very well.   I then saw the light and moved into 7mm and wanted a small country station to run the Compound that I was building, on.   The small station became Long Preston which grew and grew until it was a 40' by 18' roundy roundy.   This was exhibited several times between 2002 and 2010 but I had made many mistakes in the planning and building of it so it was retired.  Fortunatley the Long Preston Heritage Group approached me and asked if they could have part of it to display in their village hall.   The station area is now on display in a specially adapted cupboard in the village hall with curtains and lighting.   Apparently the WI insist on having the curtains open and the lights on during their meetings.   Much of the layout only needed scrapping but the station area, with an array of scratch built buildings and structures, from various sources, does look rather nice, I think, and it would have been a shame to scrap the buildings.

P5123372.JPG.3b3ec9ad49a36ea006884484691ff773.JPG

The narrow gauge was a bit of modellers licence to add interest and depicts the Forest of Bowland Light Railway which was only 4 miles away and we modelled a "what if" that assumed it had actually started at Long Preston.  The stock on it is all scratch built by Ray Clasper and the late Tony Bond.

 

I was always thinking about what to do next and initially wanted to do Clapham (NY) but the viaduct at the eastern platform end would have made it a difficult layout to exhibit and transport.  I eventually plumped for Green Ayre and the rest they say is history.   This was exhibited several times but then my wife and I decided to move to France and by sheer chance the house we bought happened to have a 400 sq metre shed in the garden.  Green Ayre is now permanently erected and it's running is improving all the time.   Most of my modelling at the moment, is building locos to replace the ones that I used to borrow from friends.

Here it is in it's place in the shed.

P2273994.JPG.1be06c1375ada0dda503b401a3dc1644.JPG

This is before I got the lighting rig erected.   When I got that up I tried some night shots and rather liked this one.

2019-03-01-5.jpg.4015cd359eafa533ea9922a7ff97f876.jpg

It not only shows the canopies and footbridge but also the adjustments that I need to make to get things vertical and parallel.

 

Jamie

 

Edited by jamie92208
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Should anyone be after a set of Midland Record, I have Nos. 1-23 inclusive. 

 

Rob. 

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2 hours ago, NHY 581 said:

Should anyone be after a set of Midland Record, I have Nos. 1-23 inclusive. 

 

Rob. 

Hi Rob, unfortunately I've got all those, it's no 27 that I can't get to complete the set.   The MR Soc have also run out of that one.

 

Jamie

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Well, the tuit was in yesterday's post so I've taken a few pictures of progress, such as it is, on the MPD layout. First of all an overall view of the baseboards with the three turnouts and bit of plain track in the middle distance where the locos are, as well as the turntable and the ramp for the coaling stage in place. Then, to make a bit more sense of it, the trackplan. As I wrote earlier, it started off based on Hellifield but in order to keep the baseboards narrow enough for everything to be accessible I moved the turntable and two sidings. Then I decided that some sheerlegs would be a good idea (with encouragement from Jamie Green Eyre) and to make the offices and stores easily visible from the viewing side I detached them from the shed and moved them to the position shown.

 

So when I stated that it was based loosely on Hellifield, that was early on in the proceedings and can only be said now using the term loosely in a fairly elastic sense!  However, all the structures will be pure Midland but I'll have to find a new name and location.

 

Sorry about the lack of captions or text in between the images but I haven't yet figures out how to do that.

 

More later.

 

DaveP1050669.JPG.ffdec03f3c3932b657e257b3b87266c5.JPG

scan0001.jpg.1c57eb84bbf1765d1e1efb18d270fce6.jpg

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Now that I've managed to work out how to put images sort of where I want them in the text and to resize them so that the system allows them through, here are another few photographs of the layout.

P1050674.jpg.336b4227cfb13189d48733f2287d6c1b.jpg

First a look at some of the trackwork and the bones of the coaling stage ramp.

P1050670.jpg.35fe37424b251426db30fcb4170aecfc.jpg

Next the turntable. It's a 60 footer so that I can get my Compound and Single on it, both of which have watercart tenders.

P1050671.jpg.62f91135d0fa151f21880ff872098fc4.jpg

Then one of the points, the plan of which was prepared from Midland PW drawings by Crimson Rambler, and finally a close-up of the acrylic 'special' chairs also made by him.

P1050673.jpg.5ac046a83f34d8ca8e31125d8e284e7d.jpg

They are a bit fiddly to use as they have separate keys that have to be inserted but the spacing and orientation of the crossing and wing rails is automatically set correctly. Being a very amateur track maker, though, it has so far taken me two days to make each turnout so progress is hardly rapid but the end result is a scale piece of Midland trackwork. The other chairs are C&L plastic ones and most of the track is steel. Since it's been lying about in the workshop for about sixteen years with only the odd speck of rust appearing I'm not worried about it getting manky and I think that nothing looks more like steel than, err...…, steel. The timbers are 1/16 in ply as all the track will be ash ballasted at least up to the tops of them and some of it up to the rail tops. 

 

Only one more simple turnout and three 3-throws to go plus all the plain track. Then I can get on with the wiring and control panel. Doddle really...…

 

Dave 

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A little inspiration, though I'm sure it's coals to Newcastle, or Derby at least:

 

893128601_DY2115338Enginetakingcoal.jpg.e146258945327bdb7872eff298bd0176.jpg

 

NRM DY 2155, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.

 

Am I doing this citation correctly?

 

Derby, 25 Nov 1909.

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The citation looks OK to me Stephen. The coal stage I'm planning on using is like that but a bit smaller with only one chute for the coal tubs and based on the one at Bedford. The one at Hellifield was wooden but I fancy a brick-built version.

 

Dave

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At this stage I'm going to put in unashamedly an advert for the Midland Railway Society. Formed in 1981 the Society has developed from a limited membership of about 50 to its present one of some 450 with a high quality Journal produced three times a year as well as a Newsletter of similar quality. There are also several members' meetings at various places throughout the year, an annual weekend gathering somewhere looking at Midland sites and places of interest, and an AGM held in April at Derby. The latter includes an afternoon presentation by the year's President and for the last couple of years we have been able to provide a subsidised buffet lunch for attendees. The Society amalgamated a few years ago with the Roy Burrows Trust and now has what is probably the largest and best documentary archive and collection of memorabilia of any line society. This collection is held in partnership with Derbyshire Museums in the Midland Railway Study Centre housed in the Silk Mill at Derby, which is in the process of being extensively refurbished as the Derby Museum of Making. The amount of information contained within the archive is an invaluable source for anyone wanting to produce models.

 

Although the Society began with a heavy emphasis on modelling the Midland, this aspect of its activities has been less in evidence of late but I (as chairman) am trying to bring it back to prominence. As the founding member, Bob Essery, often says, one of the best ways of showing what the Railway looked like is to make models of it. To that end I have revived the presentation of the Chairman's Cup at the AGM each year and am encouraging members to bring along models. We are also trying to introduce more modelling items into the Journal.

 

Whilst I appreciate that many of you reading this are already members of the MRS ( and the topic was started by one such person), there are possibly some who don't belong to the Society and it is my hope that this may encourage you to join. For £20 a year, membership has many advantages for those interested in modelling the Best Way.

 

I hope that me highjacking the topic in this way does not upset anyone but if it does I apologise - my intentions were honourable, as the saying goes.

 

Regards to all.

 

Dave Hunt

 

 

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Magnificent! I hope you won't take it amiss if I suggest that 2633-2635 are a slightly easier build than the original pair 2631/2632, notably around the cylinders. The second batch had a straight running plate over the cylinders with an oblong box to cover the top of the cylinder whereas the first two had a section of raised running plate with a rather complicated-shaped valence:

 

845223401_2632cylinderdetail.jpg.fabdce2f2a8bc4cf0aad4c64d43e32cf.jpg

 

The second batch also had just the single reversing lever, rather than the separate levers for high and low pressure cylinders. The original arrangement enabled the relative cut-off in high and low pressure cylinders to be optimised, which is how No. 2632 came to be recorded at 92 mph over eight consecutive quarter-miles by Charles Rous-Marten, coming down Ribblesdale with the Scotch Express in 1902, while O.S. Nock states the highest speed he recorded with any other Midland or LMS Standard Compound was 82 mph.

 

The Belpaires were also very handsome engines, setting the style for the Compounds, and rather more numerous. Personally, I'm not so fond of the Princess of Wales class singles - just pushing the format beyond the point of elegance, which was reached with the 115 Class - also exceptionally fast machines; in 1896 Rous-Marten timed No. 117 at over 80 mph for 13 consecutive miles down towards Bedford, with a maximum of 90 mph - the highest speed recorded with a service train in the nineteenth century in Great Britain (and possibly the world, making due allowance for some dubious American claims). Rous-Marten also claimed to have got 96 mph with a Belpaire (after 1900) but never published any details.

 

I'm harping on about speed because it seems to me it's an aspect of S.W. Johnson's locomotives that is often overlooked in the general chorus of admiration of their looks. They were very well-designed on the inside as well as the outside. Johnson seems to have had a great many close friendships amongst the locomotive engineering community - that with W.M. Smith was especially fruitful, not just for compounding but also for Johnson's adoption of piston valves for his express passenger engines from the mid-90s. One also has to look back to his early days with E.B. Wilson and at Gorton, and especially the couple of years he spent at Cowlairs with Stroudley and Drummond on his staff.

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Stephen,

 

I have to confess that the alteration to the platform arrangement above the cylinders was the main reason I chose 2633 to model (hangs head in shame).

 

You are correct in what you state about the reduced top speed attainable by the last three Johnson engines due to the omission of the separate reversers. Another feature of all five engines, though, was a valve on the right-hand side of the smokebox, referred to in different documents as a starting, auxiliary, reinforcing, reducing or regulating valve, with which boiler steam could be admitted directly to the LP receiver to equalise the power output of all three cylinders when pulling hard or to increase tractive effort. When starting, the reinforcing valve admitted boiler steam directly into the LP receiver and if the HP steam ports were closed, non-return valves lifted due to pressure from the LP receiver and admitted steam to both ends of the HP cylinder. This meant that the HP piston effectively floated until one of the ports opened, at which stage the non-return valves closed and it began working normally. Since the LP cylinders were receiving boiler steam directly, the engine worked as a simple until the maximum LP pressure of 160 psi was achieved, at which point the valve closed automatically and compound working began. If more power was needed when hauling a heavy train on an incline, the driver could control the reinforcing valve, again to admit boiler steam directly into the LP receiver and adjust the pressure within it from the normal 50 – 60 psi when working compound to the maximum 160 psi. Hence, the engines could be worked as compounds or what was referred to as ‘semi-compound’ as required, the latter when the reinforcing valve was fully open resulting in their being virtually three-cylinder simples. Deeley reckoned that they gave trouble, though, so he omitted them from the engines built under his superintendency and starting in April 1907 he had them removed from the Johnson engines, which were then fitted with Deeley pattern regulators.

 

Another interesting difference between the Johnson Compounds concerned the bogie tenders. Those paired with 2633 - 2635 were included in O/2482A issued on 1st August 1903 for fitting 23 bogie tenders with water pick up apparatus and received tank vents, scoops and scoop operating handles, probably before entering service. The handle was positioned on the right-hand side of the front platform and at first the vents on 2634 had cylindrical cowls at the top but by the spring of 1904 these had been changed to the more familiar mushroom type. It would seem reasonable to assume that the other two initially had cylindrical vents but I can't be certain and 2633 was photographed with mushroom vents shortly after being built. No. 2632’s tender was also fitted with a scoop operating handle but there were no vents on the tank top, which would seem to indicate that the installation of pick up gear was not completed. No. 2631’s tender appears from photographic evidence to have remained unaltered until it was rebuilt as a six-wheeler.

 

Altogether the Johnson Compounds are a bit of a minefield for modellers, albeit a fascinating one.

 

I agree with you that the 115s were the most elegant  of the singles but I chose to build a 'Princess' mainly because David Jenkinson said to Jack Braithwaite and me that they were the worst example of Johnson's styling and nobody in their right mind would want to model one. That was enough for me to choose to build one, much to Jack's amusement. Regarding 117's record run in 1896, not only was it the highest speed recorded with a service train in the nineteenth century in Great Britain but it was the highest speed ever achieved by mankind at the time - 117 was actually the world speed record holder. 

 

Dave

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Does anyone know where I can find some footage of the Ambergate to Chinley line?  I'm particularly interested in the section between Rowsley and Buxton but the few dvds I've looked at completely miss out the Wye Valley.

Are there any good BFI films with this railway?

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16 hours ago, GWR8700 said:

Does anyone know where I can find some footage of the Ambergate to Chinley line?  I'm particularly interested in the section between Rowsley and Buxton but the few dvds I've looked at completely miss out the Wye Valley.

Are there any good BFI films with this railway?

 

Forward to First Principles (1963) is the go to film for Derbyshire footage including a view from the cab of Type 4 near Bakewell and Great Longstone  - albeit too brief!

 

However the LMS publicity department was one of the foremost producer of marketing films of the big 4 in the 1930s. The Southern (which provided many staff for the BTF unit) was the only other producer of note.

 

Here’s a brief clip from “Passenger Trains of the LMS” (1936)...

 

 

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