Castle Aching

[J C Fenton]

Hi.  This is a really cool layout concept.  As I am a GER fan, and I notice you mention the GE fairly often.  What is the relationship between your line and the GER?  Is it a constituent?

 

Your buildings really look like a Norfolk village to me. Look forward to seeing the layout progress.

[Nearholmer]

If you run light on Chinchillas at any stage, another useful grey powder is "rottenstone", which is a very fine indeed abrasive, used by furniture restorers, and ideal for dusting into wet paint to give texture.

 

It can also be used to add very effective fake-ageing to furniture, so is a staple of the sort of antiques trader who also keeps a selection of small square-cut nails in a jar of brine, and a bottle of linseed-oil and lamp-black about their person.

 

K

[Argos]

I should think about the time they turned deep purple, in about 1968.

 

Presumably the ideal surface for a Highway Star.......

[Donw]

It is quite an achievement to have a thread which is so informative whilst also being humerous.

Don

[Shadow]

 Have removed my Hi Viz vest, steel capped boots, protective leather gloves, helmet, access harness, etc and have managed to descent from the loft space unscathed.

 

Here are the images of the artists medium with sand that I put down last night.

 

Put a quick couple of washes of colour and looks good.

 

Think that I will use it for surfaces when needed later.

 

 

Dave

 

A close up from a few inches away

 

 

And with an OO scale wagon for size comparison 

 

 

[Caley Jim]

I suspect, Don, that this area of the forum is likely to appeal to modeller's who take the hobby slightly more seriously, and who are consequently more relaxed and tolerant and a lot less likely to take themselves seriously.

You canNOT be serious!!! :-)

 

Jim

Edited May 18, 2016 by Caley Jim

[Nearholmer]

Edwardian

 

Nothing to do with grey dust, and probably a bit premature, but presumably the locomotives of the WNR will bear names?

 

There was a long and high-falutin' discussion about the nine muses (correct plural??) on the radio this morning, and it struck me that they would provide ideal names.

 

"Calliope" I particularly like, but maybe "Thalia" would fit better at Castle Aching, because, according to a bit of Googling, "she discovered comedy, geometry, architectural science and agriculture", which feels about right.

 

If your railway insists on numbers as well, I think it should have a No.0, which a couple of companies did, and at least three No.7, as a result of secondhand purchases and a desire not to have too much capital on the books, thereby making itself less attractive to its numerous creditors.

 

Kevin

Edited May 19, 2016 by Nearholmer

[uax6]

And the coaching stock should be numbered in a weird and confusing way:

 

All coaches to be divided into types, and then all these types start numbering from 1. Then all older stock is then 'cyphered' by adding a 0 to the front to place them on the duplicate list. All bought in secondhand stock to keep the original number of the previous owner.

 

There must also be one very strange and highly novel item of loco power, that was bought at great expense, but has proved to be powerful enough to not even pull itself along the siding. It should be shown dumped with bits missing.

 

Andy G

[Edwardian]

Edwardian

 

Nothing to do with grey dust, and probably a bit premature, but presumably the locomotives of the WNR will bear names?

 

There was a long and high-falutin' discussion about the nine muses (correct plural??) on the radio this morning, and it struck me that they would provide ideal names.

 

"Calliope" I particularly like, but maybe "Thalia" would fit better at Castle Aching, because, according to a bit of Googling, "she discovered comedy, geometry, architectural science and agriculture", which feels about right.

 

If your railway insists on numbers as well, I think it should have a No.0, which a couple of companies did, and at least three No.7, as a result of secondhand purchases and a desire not to have too much capital on the books, thereby making itself less attractive to its numerous creditors.

 

Kevin

 

Not sure my numerous creditors would be so easily fooled.

 

So the WNR is to have nine locomotives?  Who's paying for that lot, I'd like to know?!?

 

Initially I had thought of the names of some of Nelson's ships; Captain, Agamemnon.

 

Then, having realised that a late 1860s Sharp Stewart 0-6-0T like the GC/FR types was a good addition to my plans, the name Armadale suggested itself, no doubt because I am currently re-reading the novel, which dates from the '60s and is partly set in Norfolk.

 

Then you come up with the Muses.  Well, I could not remember all their names, and, having seen what comes up when you Google The Nine Muses these days (Korean Popsters largely made up of legs, from what I could tell), I decided to do this the old fashioned way and leafed through to Musae in my Everyman's Smaller Classical Dictionary to find: 

 

Clio (History)

Euterpe (lyric poetry)

Thalia (comedy)

Melpomene (tragedy)

Terpsichore (choral dance & song)

Erato (mistakes - no, sorry, erotic poetry ("Gad Sir! This is the 1860s!"))

Polymnia (sublime hymn (!))

Urania (astronomy)

Calliope (epic poetry)

 

Originally I had planned only 3 locos: Adam-designed 0-4-2T (late 1860s - late 1870s), Fox Walker 0-6-0ST (late 1870s), and, an 0-6-0 Not-an-Ilfracombe Goods (early 1870s).  Now I have added a Sharp Stewart 2-4-0T (mid-1870s) and 0-6-0T (late 1860s) to my plans. Still only 5.

 

However, the idea that the infrastructure dates from the mid-late 1850s, rather suggests the need to have, or to have had, an earlier generation of locos.  Have not yet considered this prospect in any detail.

 

 

And the coaching stock should be numbered in a weird and confusing way:

 

All coaches to be divided into types, and then all these types start numbering from 1. Then all older stock is then 'cyphered' by adding a 0 to the front to place them on the duplicate list. All bought in secondhand stock to keep the original number of the previous owner.

 

There must also be one very strange and highly novel item of loco power, that was bought at great expense, but has proved to be powerful enough to not even pull itself along the siding. It should be shown dumped with bits missing.

 

Andy G

 

 

Yes, weird and confusing numbering seems essential in order to add that touch of prototypical verisimilitude.  To work well, though, I'd need a lot of coaches.  But then, if I'm to have nine locomotives ....!

 

One very strange and highly novel item of loco power ....!

 

Costinuffe & Failsmore's patent reed burning locomotive? 

[Nearholmer]

I wasn't suggesting that the WNR would need nine working engines simultaneously, although, since we have learned little so far about its routes or timetables, it might, especially using the "one on; one off; one existing only as a firebox that is used as a gents toilet" approach that sometimes applied, I was thinking more that a theme might have begun in the 1850s, and been continued.

 

The firebox, IIRC, was on the Liskaerd & Caradon (also serving Looe, appropriately) Railway.

 

The continuation would,naturally, be such as to baffle future locomotive historians, with some engines having carried several different names/numbers, other names/numbers (No. 7 specifically) having been recycled, or carried by more than one engine at a time, and perhaps some engines having been made from bits of several previous ones, and bearing multiple appellations at the same time.

 

This needn't be costly, because most of the fleet will only ever be seen peeping from engine sheds (these can be cardboard mock-ups), or in varying states of dismantlement (more cardboard mock-ups).

 

Do you have a copy of "Chronicles of Boulton's Sidings"? The ideal "combined volume" for the WNR, I would think.

 

K

 

PS: I can only find one reference to a Costinuffe and a Failsmore being in business together, and that seems to place them as the owners of a huge tract of fenland, which, in 1867, was cited as "the largest commercial reed-bed outside of The South American continent"; were they locomotive engineers besides?

Edited May 19, 2016 by Nearholmer

[Donw]

A Manning Waddle provided by the contractors might have been one of the first locos perhaps now just lingering in the back of a shed.

 

Don

[Echo]

May, Dupp & Co are my favourite bygone loco and rolling stock contractors. They were famous for (almost) copying existing designs from other manufacturers, but misplacing the odd rivet, adding 6" to the tender width or extending the chimney height by an inch or two, for example, to avoid copyright infringements. I managed to buy their entire portfolio of drawings and photos in an auction a few years ago. It will prove an invaluable source of inspiration once I get my own light railway off the ground.

 

[Nearholmer]

Except that MW wasn't producing locos until after 1858 (In case you think my "sadness quotient" is even higher than it actually is, I had to Google that to check!). A contractor was more likely to have something from their predecessor, E B Wilson, or something created by fitting smaller driving wheels, and a saddle-tank, to a secondhand 2-2-2, or by simply plonking a saddle-tank on top of a secondhand goods engine.

 

This way, a secluded railway, built in the middle-1850s, could, c1900, have, lurking in the shed, a loco with origins stretching back to the 1840s!

 

So, I'm bidding to make a converted "Jenny Lind", with an ill-proportioned saddle-tank, and spectacles back and front, but no cab roof, WNR No.0.

 

K

 

Here is the woman herself, made in Staffordshire (where the bricks come from).

Edited May 19, 2016 by Nearholmer

[Caley Jim]

And the coaching stock should be numbered in a weird and confusing way:

 

All coaches to be divided into types, and then all these types start numbering from 1.............

 

Andy G

Nothing weird or confusing about that! The Caledonian Railway numbered all their coaching stock in this way right up to the grouping.

 

Jim

[mullie]

What about a shunting horse, working of course!

[Donw]

The horse would probably die trying to eat the static fibres not much nourishment in them.

 

 I had forgotten the MWs were late in the fifties. The Cambrian had them, got rid of them then had more from acquiring other railways but of course the Cambrian RYS were late starters. 

E B Wilson sounds about right. Fletcher Jennings were late 50s too. A HAwthorn would be possible but perhaps not exzotic.

Don

[Northroader]

Loco name suggestions:

A) Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed.

B)Attica, Epafra, Fortunata, Myrine, Nereia, Quintilia, Tyche.

Edited May 20, 2016 by Northroader

[Shadow]

You've got to have the "Ostrich", that being the local gentry's emblem!

[Caley Jim]

Surely all that fine dust is far more of an H&S issue than sandpaper. Not only hi-viz stuff needed, but masks, filters and hi-tech extraction systems too!

I trust that you have all prepared and printed out a full risk assessment prior to putting your fingers anywhere near a keyboard! ;-)

 

Jim

[runs as required]

I wasn't suggesting that the WNR would need nine working engines simultaneously, ... I can only find one reference to a Costinuffe and a Failsmore being in business together, and that seems to place them as the owners of a huge tract of fenland, which, in 1867, was cited as "the largest commercial reed-bed outside of The South American continent"; were they locomotive engineers besides?

 

I'd have thought with your bottomless pit of little known facts about Irish byelines, you could have at least posted a pic of an early C&F Norfolk 0-4-0WT turf burner - until their attention turned to exploiting the reed beds resulting from centuries of over-enthusiastic peat cutting.

 

dh

[Nearholmer]

And, I'm beginning to think that my recommendations as to what secondhand engines a contractor might have are ten years out, so appropriate to the 1860s, rather than 1850s.

 

Because of rapid development, most locos at this period seem to have been pensioned-off into branch-line or contractor service after only 10-15 years, so for 1855, we might see Stephenson Long-Boilers, Bury 0-4-0 or 2-2-0, early Nasmyths, something by Gilkes, and other real eohippus-types, on the secondhand market.

 

There were notable exceptions to the c10-15 years thing, though, like the two weirdities on the Padarn railway, built c1847, which were in traffic until the late 1880s, IIRC. One survived and is now owned by the National Trust.

 

K

 

PS: R-as-R, I am aware of this, which gets incredibly close to the reed-burner, but is about 120 years too recent http://www.martynbane.co.uk/modernsteam/ldp/lvm/lvm800.htm

Edited May 19, 2016 by Nearholmer

[ChrisN]

Apparently a lot of companies numbered their locos in a way to hide the fact from their shareholders that they had bought new ones.  If a loco was scrapped then the new loco would take its number.  Also when they were coming to the end of their life they  would be put on the reserve list and have a 'A' or something put after their number and a new loco given the old number.  If the contractor gave an engine the number 7 for example then all the replacements could be called 7 and the others given names.  The same name perhaps. 

 

How many engines do you need in steam at one time?  I suggest that if it is less than four then you need to number in steam plus a spare, plus any that have not been scrapped.

[£1.38]

Jennie Linds, Sharps and other early single driver locos were converted to tank locos by several concerns. The CV&H had something like that, I think.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_early_locomotives_of_the_London_Brighton_and_South_Coast_Railway#/media/File:CVHRsharp222.jpg

[runs as required]

PS: R-as-R, I am aware of this, which gets incredibly close to the reed-burner, but is about 120 years too recent http://www.martynbane.co.uk/modernsteam/ldp/lvm/lvm800.htm

Thank you K

A cracking good bedtime reed.

I knew I could rely on you - and I can be flexible about time.

dh

[The Stationmaster]

Apparently a lot of companies numbered their locos in a way to hide the fact from their shareholders that they had bought new ones.  If a loco was scrapped then the new loco would take its number.  Also when they were coming to the end of their life they  would be put on the reserve list and have a 'A' or something put after their number and a new loco given the old number.  If the contractor gave an engine the number 7 for example then all the replacements could be called 7 and the others given names.  The same name perhaps. 

 

How many engines do you need in steam at one time?  I suggest that if it is less than four then you need to number in steam plus a spare, plus any that have not been scrapped.

 

Normally it dependedt on how the cost was accounted - a good example being the L&YR where new engines built on the revenue account took the number of a  previous engine (which was either scrapped or placed on the duplicate list).  Engines built to a charge on the capital account were given new numbers as they represented an increase in the capitalisation of the company.

 

As far as numbers are concerned i would expect a  rural line like this, even in the Edwardian era, to have no more than a couple of engines in steam for most of the time  and probably only one on a Sunday (assuming they ran trains on the Holy Day?).  But at times of seasonal peaks and fairs etc when traffic increased an extra engine might be pressed into use.  Another would be in pieces undergoing repair and another might be in store waiting repair or - again - be pressed into service for very busy times.