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Pragmatic Pre-Grouping - Mikkel's Workbench


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Mikkel,

 

I have had a look through my books for some dates plus some other maps. My above potted history is obviously a gross over simplification of a complex history that included the infamous "Battle of Mickleton Tunnel".

 

The OWW was opened piecemeal up to 1855. It became the main part of the West Midland Railway 1860. The West Midland was absorbed in to the GWR 1863.

 

L&B station was opened in the 1880s. I did see the exact date in a records book in of all places Stockport Library. I should have noted the date. My ancient brain does not retain dates very well now. The signal box was built 1884 which would probably be about the same time as the station.

 

The lockup appears on the 1903 map along with the weighbridge but no stable building. Thus far I have not found a build date. It appears however to be well within the GWR days. As you put it it could have been a local design.

 

I am not sure whether the yard predated the station. The nearby Aldington sidings (which never had a passenger station) was in existence before 1882 according to Mitchell and Smith.

 

To get an idea how important these small goods sidings became, in GWR  Goods Wagons / Atkins, Beard and Tourret they describe the Dia Y3 fruit vans (1911/12) including the statement "at least 200 vans were specially earmarked for return to Pershore, Aldington Siding, Littleton and Badsey and Evesham". The traffic reached its peak about 1923 falling away to nothing by 1964.

 

(I will leave your thread alone now!  ;))

 

Ian.

 

Edited by Ian Major
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Many thanks Ian and Don. Railway history is never boring!

 

I didn't know the details of the OWW coup - or of the battle of Mickleton. Interesting descriptions of the battle in Don's link. I note there are two versions. I think believe the former version more than the latter :)

 

 

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Mikkel/Don,

 

I have just read the item linked by Don. 

 

I possess (at least) two books that describe the "Battle". One is in LTC Rolt's biography of Brunel. The other is in Vol 1 of "History of the Great Western Railway by ET MacDermot (revised by CR Clinker).  The MacDermot book was published in 1927 at (I believe) the request of and with the assistance of the GWR directors. Work on the history started at the time of Grouping. 

 

The MacDermot version is the most detailed and it appears that the account extracted from Terry Coleman's book is an embellished version of this!

 

Ian. 

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I have a couple of these, built up, in the collection of GW wagons I was given by a fellow club member, for whose 1950s period they were inappropriate. I've been pondering what to do with them. I soon discovered that there was no hope of backdating to the 1888 (?) batch, there being significant dimensional differences. Can I justify one in a c. 1903 GW train in the West Midlands, bringing provender from Didcot for the local company horses? A sheeted open seems more probable.

 

It would be very easy to end up with all six wagons - the kits are ten-a-penny (too many at the price!) on Ebay. In which case one has two options:

  • a diorama of the Didcot provender store
  • a diorama of the Swindon wagon paint shop the week this batch was being turned out.

There's also the question of plates vs. painted numbers. This has been discussed recently (your thread or mine?) with attempts at image enhancement of the notorious Didcot photo but I can't remember the conclusion.

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40 minutes ago, MonsalDan said:

Without wanting to derail the thread, now that DC1 brake etches have been withdrawn, are there any alternatives available?

 

There are the Morgan Design underframes sold through the S4 Society which cover all variants of the DC brakes.  They are complete underframes not components.

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19 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Can I justify one in a c. 1903 GW train in the West Midlands, bringing provender from Didcot for the local company horses? A sheeted open seems more probable.

 

I haven't seen any information on whether the Qs were used at special locations or in particular trains. There were only six of the 1903 design, so in principle a sheeted open was far more common for provender (my Q will be accompanied by a four-planker). On the other hand, if the Qs were used fairly freely, then surely at some point one would have turned up in the West Midlands :)

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18 hours ago, MonsalDan said:

Without wanting to derail the thread, now that DC1 brake etches have been withdrawn, are there any alternatives available?

 

Apart from the suggestions above, a Silhouette cutter could probably do most of the parts fairly well, if you know someone with one of those. As can be seen from these photos of the Bill Bedford etch below, the main parts are not that complicated to draw up I think. 

 

dscn2881_32616493621_o.jpg.0180521245de9edaaaf9828202c4f939.jpg.ed14def8db52caa41d0f6668c4b011d6.jpg

 

dscn2925_31896935714_o.jpg.9b18ae19ca19660821d87aa51a07df3f.jpg.12aa120b30f8e700ca16f27f14751770.jpg

 

(full build here: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blogs/entry/22513-modified-coopercraft-gwr-4-plank-open-with-dc1-brakes/)

 

Edited by Mikkel
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On 06/09/2020 at 17:43, Compound2632 said:

@Flymo749, I'd be in for a dozen or so sets of the DC1 etchings, if you're minded to make them available.

 

Give me chance to play around with them first :rolleyes:

 

What I mean is that having drawn up the basics of the levers that I needed, the next step is to decide how far I go down the road of drawing up full brakegear, with the pushrods, shoes, v-hangers, etc.

 

I suspect I'll end up doing all of that, as it will look better at the end of the day than whitemetal or plastic, and my spaces box has a surprising lack of 9ft brakegear...

 

Cheers

Paul

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

The wagon’s big because Provender ain’t heavy...

 

like crisps.  
 

many years ago, I had a holiday job in a cash & carry where the fork lift driver didn’t make allowance for the double-width pallets that were used for deliveries of industrial quantities of boxes of bags of crisps.  Anybody with a modicum of common sense would have driven with the truck leading and the load behind, but not our ‘Arry.  The bang when he crashed was impressive, there were crisp bags and crisps raining down for a good five minutes...

 

there was a story that he’d run over his own foot, once, too...
 

atb

Simon
 

 

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Nice job with the Provender wagon. I use three link couplings (possibly for similar masochistic reasons that I use a seventy year old motorcycle as daily transport) I like to get them fitted as early in the build as possible, partly because they can be a P.I.T.A. to fit, but mostly because there's less vulnerable material in the way. I usually fit them to the buffer beams straight after the dry run stage of assembly. 

As for chumps with fork trucks, we had a guy underestimate the tail swing of his truck near a wall and tried to push it away by sticking his leg out as if pushing a rowing boat away from a bank.

The word, gentlemen, was "Snap". Luckily the surgeon saved his leg.

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I'm lucky never to have injured myself or anyone else with a lift, nor have I seen truly serious injuries.   Boy, though, have I seen some property damage...

 

 

I love the provender wagon.   I've been eyeing the N-gauge offering from Great Western Replicas.

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Many thanks gents. Oh I would have liked to see that rain of crisps :) 

 

Regarding couplings, yes it is also dawning upon me that couplings aren't necessarily best saved till last. Although in this case at least I remembered to fit them before the "liquid gravity", which otherwise fills up the required space.

 

That however requires certain measures to allow the S&W weight to swing freely, and avoid it getting clogged up in pellets and PVA - so I built a 'box' for the coupling weight.

 

IMG_20200926_094017968_HDR.jpg.ddbd83e2b20a31607d7f9dba49447443.jpg

 

Oh dear, look at the width of those push rods. Good thing it doesn't run this way up. 

 

Edited by Mikkel
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