Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

19 hours ago, CKPR said:

 

Well, quite.

 

Yesterday, as Storm Isha was ravaging the North (well, shaking our casements), a day of 99 mph winds that ended with trains north of Newcastle cancelled, an advisory to stay in doors and outlandish claims of a possible northern tornado*, we naturally decided to go sight-seeing on the Wall.

 

 

 

 

And we were not the only ones. Yes, there were diehard Wall-walkers, but plenty of day visitors, including young families, all doing the British thing of choosing to ignore the biting gales and driving rain as we ambled round the fort with an air of studied leisure.

 

There was a museum, which did provide some welcome cover!

 

 

In better weather last August:

 

 

 

* Not seen

 

 

Edited January 22 by Edwardian

[John B]

You lot in the lee of the storm were lucky... the Wet(sic) Coast suffered rather more. I returned from an enjoyable evening at Celtic Connections at the Glasgow Concert Hall to find my greenhouse on it's side, patio furniture strewn across the garden, a heavy iron sack barrow where it shouldn't be, and my recycling bins in bits and their contents scattered across the shire. Later yesterday I discovered a substantial stretch of flashing, where the slates are bonded to the sandstone, ripped off and on a lower roof...

 

Thankfully, the modelling shed, workshop and wild animal pens (ok, rabbit shed and run) remained intact...

[Schooner]

And yet, as they say, worse things happen at sea...

[John B]

Quite. Having "hunkered down" through 4 hurricanes during my sojourn in Florida, Storm Isha was uncomfortably the worst I've experienced in the UK, definitely gusting at or above hurricane force at times hereabouts, and we're about 10 miles inland as the gull flies. I would not like to have been out on the shore or the briny...

[Caley Jim]

Here in Biggar, about as far from the sea as you can get in Scotland, one of the double skinned polycarbonate roof panels in my greenhouse has gone AWOL. The base of the greenhouse itself is screwed to 2ftX2ft slabs, so it isn't going anywhere in a hurry🤞.  Our bins were intact, but all higgledy-piggledy even though they are a bit sheltered between ourselves and our neighbours houses.  Slightly calmer today, but rain coming down in stair-rods.

 

Jim

[Edwardian]

So, just about the one thing I have failed to find are the tram coach bodies for the Bishop's Lynn Tramway.

 

I had taken a Keil Kraft West Ham tram and used the bottom deck for a short First Class body and the upper for a Second. I then extended a lower deck from their 1920 Birmingham tram for a bogie Third. I was never entirely happy with the Second, which was slab sided., or the extended Third body.

 

Recently I saw some of the West Ham trams offered for very little....

 

 

 

So I thought I might as well just replace the lost bodies, but this time I would use the lower deck for both First and Second (First to have armrests and posher upholstry). Then I saw this kit, and thought I might try that for a slightly longer Third:

 

 

I found some stupidly inexpensive HO bogies for the slightly longer Third. This will result in a rather short bogie tram coach, shorter than the GER W&U types, but it seemed to suit the WNR, so I will not extend the body this time.

 

Anyway, this is where I've got to so far:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 24 by Edwardian
Spelling!

[Schooner]

Spotting from the BM branch platform is going to be an esotericist's delight! 

 

Updated plan seems sound, looking forward to seeing it come together :)

[Edwardian]

Ready to plant buildings ...

 

I have nothing against them, indeed, I often gaze admiringly at them. Nevertheless, there are many reasons why I do not buy them as a rule.

 

First, they cost a lot of money. I am not saying they are overpriced, but they are the most expensive way of creating the built environment on a model railway. Even now purse strings are a little looser than when I started, I have only finite resources to devote to the hobby and they are best applied elsewhere.

 

Second, they are, for someone like me, the least satisfying. I enjoy trying to model buildings. Third, the textured resin buildings are not a great match for my card and paper efforts. Fourth, most of what I want is a specific building, often a prototype, related to a specific location. Mostly this is West Norfolk! Lastly, there is the risk of just having the same buildings as everyone else, though this is less a concern with these resin models than with Metcalfe Land. 

 

Some months ago, however, Rails was flogging off a very nice looking Bachmann tin tabernacle for 9 squid something. It is well attested that I have an almost Betjemaniac weakness for such things. So, I indulged. 

 

 

Very attractive, though I need not have bothered. It's tiny. I had to triple check the box, yes, it purports to be "OO". Frankly, it would do better as 2mm scale model.

 

The doors could just about pass as 4mm scale, but here, pictured with one of Andrew Stadden's figures, which. as true scale people of the past, tend to be smaller than most figures sold as 1/76th, we see that it even the main door is pushing its luck with a 4mm scale gent. 

 

 

So, this building will sit on a distant hill, where it will not offend and where, frankly, any building not scratch-built belongs!

 

The experience was enough to make me swear off my ill-advised foray into ready-to-plant land, but then, for a similarly modest sum, I spotted something in the Hattons' Death Sale. Hornby this time, and a great example of how easy one makes life by just plonking these down, for example, here:

 

 

 

[Schooner]

Bought...ummmm...5 Bachmann buildings for Ingleford (Ebay finds, from when the layoit was a 100hr start-to-finish winter project, and before I got carried away).

 

The second most expensive outlay, after locos, by some margin.

 

Unlike the locos, they were a total, utter, waste of money. Not one is usable, being hopelessly out of scale even for my diminutive little chunk of Gloucestershire*. They should be sold with both warning and 1:87 stickers prominent on the box. Sounds like you got off lightly!

 

Have you experience of the Petite Properties range?

 

*'Up North'

[Compound2632]

31 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Very attractive, though I need not have bothered. It's tiny. I had to triple check the box, yes, it purports to be "OO". Frankly, it would do better as 2mm scale model.

 

Wee Free Kirk?

[Edwardian]

16 minutes ago, Schooner said:

Bought...ummmm...5 Bachmann buildings for Ingleford (Ebay finds, from when the layoit was a 100hr start-to-finish winter project, and before I got carried away).

 

The second most expensive outlay, after locos, by some margin.

 

Unlike the locos, they were a total, utter, waste of money. Not one is usable, being hopelessly out of scale even for my diminutive little chunk of Gloucestershire*. They should be sold with both warning and 1:87 stickers prominent on the box. Sounds like you got off lightly!

 

Sounds like it. Poor you!

 

Of course there has traditionally been a tendency to make model railway buildings somewhat underscale or out of proportion to make them smaller, the better to fit layouts. I'd hoped we'd got past these architectural equivalents of Triang Shorty Coaches.

 

I was disappointed. If I'd paid anything like full price I'd be like Gerald the Gorilla, "wild? I was absolutely livid!" 

 

16 minutes ago, Schooner said:

 

Have you experience of the Petite Properties range?

 

 

 

Yes, they and Fair Price Models are well-worth mining. The ability to add  a covering/texture of one's choosing is a boon. 

 

14 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Wee Free Kirk?

 

Wee Reduced Price Kirk in my case! 

 

 

Edited January 31 by Edwardian
spelling

[Caley Jim]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

The doors could just about pass as 4mm scale, but here, pictured with one of Andrew Stadden's figures, which. as true scale people of the past, tend to be smaller than most figures sold as 1/76th, we see that it even the main door is pushing its luck with a 4mm scale gent. 

 

Well, that will make sure he takes his hat off before he enters the sanctuary!  🙂

 

Jim

Edited January 31 by Caley Jim
Typos as usual!

[Edwardian]

19 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

Well, hat will make sure he takes his at off before he enters the sanctuary!  🙂

 

Jim

 

By that reckoning, Isambard must have been more high church.

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Some tin churches are very tiny in reality, although maybe not that tiny.

 

 

You can attempt to use my son as a scale rule. This was a couple of years ago, and I reckon he was about 5’8” then. If you put a topper on him, I think he’d still get through the doorway.

[Edwardian]

15 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Some tin churches are very tiny in reality, although maybe not that tiny.

 

 

You can attempt to use my son as a scale rule. This was a couple of years ago, and I reckon he was about 5’8” then. If you put a topper on him, I think he’d still get through the doorway.

 

Indeed, but I bet I could cross the threshold of that porch before needing to remove my topper!

 

The Bachmann model appears to be based on St Saviour's Church, Westhouses, Nottinghamshire, which is now apparently at Butterley museum. Thus it seems that Bachmann probably had access to the protoype and just decided to make it smaller!  If someone cares to take some measurements, we can see if I'm wrong and it was, in fact, built for a congregation of Oompa Loompas.  

 

 

One of my favourite tin tabernacles of this ilk is Blackgang Mission Church, Chale, Isle of Wight. It is now holiday accommodation, I believe.

 

 

[Donw]

It was up for sale a while ago. I would have been interested if the location had been better ( on a mainish road with no pavement not good with the dog).

 

Don

[Dave John]

Well, a lot of the kits and ready to plonk stuff I have looked at in the past is badly underscale. Dunno why, unless the makers think that it goes with the general trend of model railway compression. 

 

Perhaps some of it is down to the idea that the trains are to the front and buildings to the rear a bit smaller adds depth as forced perspective. Certainly my backscene is about 80% of true size. 

 

All a case by case decision I guess. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[St Enodoc]

29 minutes ago, Dave John said:

Well, a lot of the kits and ready to plonk stuff I have looked at in the past is badly underscale. Dunno why, unless the makers think that it goes with the general trend of model railway compression. 

 

Perhaps some of it is down to the idea that the trains are to the front and buildings to the rear a bit smaller adds depth as forced perspective. Certainly my backscene is about 80% of true size. 

 

All a case by case decision I guess. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I remember years ago that somebody made their own buildings to 1/100 scale for the main dimensions but with 1/76.2 doors, windows, etc.

[Nearholmer]

Yes, that was Barratt Homes, IIRC, then all the other developers, and the people who plan the street layouts on new estates, copied the idea.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 1 by Nearholmer

[monkeysarefun]

9 hours ago, Edwardian said:

If someone cares to take some measurements, we can see if I'm wrong and it was, in fact, built for a congregation of Oompa Loompas.  

 

 

Assuming I'm measuring the right thing,  the nave is a smidge under 40ft long.

 

 

 

[Edwardian]

9 hours ago, Dave John said:

Well, a lot of the kits and ready to plonk stuff I have looked at in the past is badly underscale. Dunno why, unless the makers think that it goes with the general trend of model railway compression. 

 

Perhaps some of it is down to the idea that the trains are to the front and buildings to the rear a bit smaller adds depth as forced perspective. Certainly my backscene is about 80% of true size. 

 

All a case by case decision I guess. 

 

 

8 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

I remember years ago that somebody made their own buildings to 1/100 scale for the main dimensions but with 1/76.2 doors, windows, etc.

 

Yes, I don't think it's a case of simply making buildings to a smaller scale than advertised. 

 

In some cases doors, for example the larger than domestic double doors of Bachmann's St Saviours, might be a little underscale, but in general features such as doors, windows, chimney pots, drain pipes and bricks themselves are likely to be scale or very close to it.

 

What manufacturers seem to have done, in what I can only see as an exercise of great art and skill egregiously misapplied, is somehow to shrink a building round such scale or near to scale features.

 

This renders them mere caricatures of real buildings, but the level of detail often lavished on kits and ready-to-plants helps to disguise just how toylike the proportions have become. These are often very charismatic models, yet one can sometimes be left with a vague sense that something does not look quite right. 

 

 

Why is this done? Well, I think it's train set thinking. If the expectation of the "average enthusiast" is that he jack-knives Mark I coaches round set-track on a 6'x4', he is going to need buildings that are similarly compromised, otherwise they will not fit and might snap the thin skein of illusion. 

 

While people will have views of the compromises of N or OO gauge track, I have seen less discussion on other immersion-breaking issues. For instance, arguably the worst problem with OO track is the  sleeper length and spacing of the traditional FB "OO/HO" track and the geometry that sets parallel tracks too far apart. This means that, even using generous radius curves and long turnouts, things will still look off. Then there is the fact that many figures sold for 4mm scale are too large, and then there is this issue of these trainset buildings. I suspect there are other pitfalls, resulting from some long-forgotten compromise, waiting out there to trap us!

 

Real tin tabernacles were sold as prefabs to standard sizes. William Cooper of the Old Kent Road, for instance, would bang them out at a variety of sizes starting at 30' x 20' and rising to 60' x 25'.  Judging from the catalogue for Humphrey's Iron Churches, a modest 3-bay church would have an interior measurement of 40' x 20'. 

 

So, what about the Bachmann effort? It's very much of this compromised, trainset, mentality.  The main body of the  church scales at 26'6" x 14'. While a tin tabernacle might be this small, I doubt St Saviour's is, or anything of such an appearance would be. In this case, the illusion is helped by keeping the window size reasonably proportionate to the reduced size of the building, and the doors a little underscale.  Also, Bachmann has lopped off a bay; the rear of the real St Saviours has 4 windows, not Bachmann's 3. 

 

EDIT: Thanks to the Honourable Member from Sydney, we do know how long the real St Saviour's main body is, about 40'.

 

 

It's hard to get an impression of size from a photograph, but in terms of overall size - dimensions and sense of mass - this "OO gauge" church looks like a 2mm scale model, mainly becaue the main body of the church looks so small.  Because the detailing is to a larger scale than 2mm, it cannot be used for that. Because it is absurdly small, it cannot be used as 4mm scale. I suspect that its best use is as part of carefully arranged forced perspective modelling, treated as 3mm or 1/100 scale.

 

EDIT: given we have the length measurement of the prototype, we can say that the model is two thirds the length it should be, suggesting that, although still smaller than that, 3mm scale is, indeed, the nearest we can get to a standard scale it might suit.

 

Other such compromised models will need different treatment, if they can be used at all.     

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 1 by Edwardian
Further information

[St Enodoc]

20 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Thanks to the Honourable Member from Sydney

That must make me the dishonourable member from Sydney...

[Penlan]

On 24/01/2024 at 15:25, Edwardian said:

........ I had taken a Keil Kraft West Ham tram and used the bottom deck for a short First Class body and the upper for a Second. I then extended a lower deck from their 1920 Birmingham tram for a bogie Third. I was never entirely happy with the Second, which was slab sided., or the extended Third body.

I found a Keil Kraft kit in a local Charity shop for £2, this became a LNWR Omnibus 😎
Myself, via ModelU waiting to board....

 

[Edwardian]

1 minute ago, Penlan said:

I found a Keil Kraft kit in a local Charity shop for £2, this became a LNWR Omnibus 😎
Myself, via ModelU waiting to board....

 

 

How absolutely brilliant, in both conception and execution. Truly magnificent, sir!

 

A pity that the WNR of 1905 has yet to adopt the internal combustion engine.

[WFPettigrew]

13 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Wee Free Kirk?

Well known for its Epiphany Carols service, beginning with a rousing rendition of "We Free Kings"...