Castle Aching

[Northroader]

You’ve got plenty of pictures for making the pits, usual construction brick walls, possible stone capping, longitudinal timbers and chaired track. As long as you can make them, you want them sticking out past the loco you’ve parked on there, or you can’t get in them. To get in, steps at one or both ends. Floor usually brick or setts with camber, as drains needed with gutter each side.

Not so obvious, they ain’t very deep, something like just over waist height. Once you were in and straightened out, your head would be level with axles and such. To get in, you would develop a sort of crouch, bent knees, shoulders low and screwed sideways. Wet, dark, dirty, but still fun.

[Donw]

Its what magnets and Dyson hand-held vacuum cleaners were invented for!

 

A brass magnet would be handy and just try picking 2mm scale chairs out of dust.  A strategy for containing the bits can be helpful.

 

Don

[runs as required]

Mightily impressed by the posted pics (in +7836) of the 'Great Leap Forward' in Teesdale

 

I'd say the answer to your question about pit construction is plain to see in the second pic of #7835. I suggest we are looking at a series of stone cappings on coursed brickwork. The capping stones appear to be two brick courses deep and maybe 2fft 6in or 3ft long, probably keyed one to another in non ferrous metal set in lead and laid to break joints over the top course of the brick pit walls. The steps also look to have 6 in (2 course) risers.

The other pics appear to shew the brick walls to be smooth rendered - perhaps to reduce dust when the ashpit is being shovelled then swept out, or prevent grazing of of fitters arms in f.f. brick lined pits.

dh

 

[postscript

To think I was once privileged (as C J Allen would shurely have put it) to work in an office the length of Platform 1 alongside York Way N1 where one could pull out a drawer from a battered plan chest and check the construction on a beautifully rendered ink on cartridge paper CE's drawing from anytime since the origins of the GER down to the 1900s after which tracing paper took hold.

I remember having to amend one such set of beautiful construction drawings of Ipswich shed - wielding an 0.2 Rapidograph.]

[jcm@gwr]

Regarding the 4th photo, I wouldn't want to be the

fireman taking the first load of coal off that pile!

They must have spent ages stacking it that neatly.

[Edwardian]

Regarding the 4th photo, I wouldn't want to be the

fireman taking the first load of coal off that pile!

They must have spent ages stacking it that neatly.

 

Building walls with coal seems to have been an established practice on the GE - there is another example in photo 7.

 

EDIT: Extreme coal architecture was a feature of Ipswich:

Edited February 12, 2018 by Edwardian

[Andy Hayter]

Possibly a security measure to discourage theft.

 

The NER used to paint a white line round their heaps for the same purpose, though what happened once  a heap was legitimately broken into I do not know.

[Edwardian]

 

 

I wouldn't know much about carriages, they all look the same to me....

 

Back of the class with the pointy hat for this!

 

6-wheel coaches are important to the pre-Grouper. Many companies did not start building significant numbers of bogie coaches until the 1890s; some built few if any before the Turn of the Century.  6-Wheelers were being built for mainline express work up to the Turn of the Century, sometimes along-side new bogie coaches.

 

They do not all look the same!

 

Panel styles evolved over time and differed between companies.  I'm getting reasonably good at spotting the date of a coach from the body style.  It is fascinating. 

 

Also, coaches differ depending upon the accommodation they contain. Generally the width of the panels between the quarter lights will reveal the compartment spacing and tell you whether it is First, Second, or Third Class.  Then there are luggage and lavatory compartments, necessary because these are 'inter-city' journeys, not brief branch-line rambles. Then, of course, there is the accommodation for the Guard.

 

All these can be jumbled up in different orders, e.g. Centre Brake Third or Luggage Composite.

 

There are thus an almost infinite number of variations of the theme can be seen. So, if they all look the same to you, you're not paying attention!

[St Enodoc]

Back of the class with the pointy hat for this!

 

6-wheel coaches are important to the pre-Grouper. Many companies did not start building significant numbers of bogie coaches until the 1890s; some built few if any before the Turn of the Century.  6-Wheelers were being built for mainline express work up to the Turn of the Century, sometimes along-side new bogie coaches.

 

They do not all look the same!

 

Panel styles evolved over time and differed between companies.  I'm getting reasonably good at spotting the date of a coach from the body style.  It is fascinating. 

 

Also, coaches differ depending upon the accommodation they contain. Generally the width of the panels between the quarter lights will reveal the compartment spacing and tell you whether it is First, Second, or Third Class.  Then there are luggage and lavatory compartments, necessary because these are 'inter-city' journeys, not brief branch-line rambles. Then, of course, there is the accommodation for the Guard.

 

All these can be jumbled up in different orders, e.g. Centre Brake Third or Luggage Composite.

 

There are thus an almost infinite number of variations of the theme can be seen. So, if they all look the same to you, you're not paying attention!

So I'm not the only one who files the flanges off the middle wheels...

[Compound2632]

6-wheel coaches are important to the pre-Grouper. Many companies did not start building significant numbers of bogie coaches until the 1890s; some built few if any before the Turn of the Century.  6-Wheelers were being built for mainline express work up to the Turn of the Century, sometimes along-side new bogie coaches.

 

Cough, cough. The Midland built large numbers of bogie carriages for main line use between the late 1870s and mid 1880s. 

 

It has to be admitted that there was a relapse to building 6-wheelers - mostly for local trains, many in close coupled sets, in the later 1880s - although there were also some luggage composites for the Midland Scotch Joint Stock. And it does have  to be admitted that when Clayton introduced the square-panelled clerestory carriages in the late 1890s, there were a number of 6-wheelers built alongside the 60' 12-wheelers and 48' 8-wheelers.

[Compound2632]

They do not all look the same!

 

I'm getting reasonably good at spotting the date of a coach from the body style.  It is fascinating. 

 

We'll soon have you at the point where the engine is the last thing you look at in a photo.

 

Re. the ash and inspection pits. Note how many of them use a special chair that has a narrower base on the pit side - I think it's important to replicate this in 00, where the width of the pit is already compromised by the narrow gauge. If the pit uses FB rail, even easier to fudge this.

Edited February 12, 2018 by Compound2632

[Poggy1165]

The Midland were a bit of a special case.

 

Charles Sacre, of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, thought that 6 wheels was going it a bit, and that four wheelers were quite adequate, even for through trains to London. Perhaps explains why the GCR was still running complete trains of 4 wheelers in the Manchester area as late as 1909; albeit, at the same time Mr Robinson was introducing bogie stock of unparalleled luxury for expresses and London commuters.

 

I have the impression that the great transition to heavier bogie stock was generally around the turn of the century - about the time when the LNWR found itself double-heading expresses because its principal express engines had not been designed with such heavy stock in mind. Passengers were demanding more comfort, and in those days, when the market actually worked, suppliers had to respond. (Similarly, they couldn't get away with not introducing new services due to "lack of capacity". If they didn't provide the "capacity" someone else would.)

[Compound2632]

I have the impression that the great transition to heavier bogie stock was generally around the turn of the century - about the time when the LNWR found itself double-heading expresses because its principal express engines had not been designed with such heavy stock in mind. Passengers were demanding more comfort, and in those days, when the market actually worked, suppliers had to respond. (Similarly, they couldn't get away with not introducing new services due to "lack of capacity". If they didn't provide the "capacity" someone else would.)

 

Corridor carriages. 50% greater weight per passenger. Their advent marks the beginning of the railways' long descent into unprofitability. (Though that's also linked to other Edwardian innovations - cf George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England.)

[Guy Rixon]

The Midland were a bit of a special case.

 

Charles Sacre, of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, thought that 6 wheels was going it a bit, and that four wheelers were quite adequate, even for through trains to London. Perhaps explains why the GCR was still running complete trains of 4 wheelers in the Manchester area as late as 1909; albeit, at the same time Mr Robinson was introducing bogie stock of unparalleled luxury for expresses and London commuters.

 

I have the impression that the great transition to heavier bogie stock was generally around the turn of the century - about the time when the LNWR found itself double-heading expresses because its principal express engines had not been designed with such heavy stock in mind. Passengers were demanding more comfort, and in those days, when the market actually worked, suppliers had to respond. (Similarly, they couldn't get away with not introducing new services due to "lack of capacity". If they didn't provide the "capacity" someone else would.)

 

 

The LNWR was building new 4-wheeled coaches in 1909, to operate the NLR which it had just taken over. That company also built a complete, new train of 6-wheeled coaches for the Birmingham-Sutton service in 1911. However, prior to that, they had introduced bogie stock on the Euston-Watford trains. I conclude that that the policy was "whatever works best" rather than "everything on bogies or the passengers will mock us".

 

There's also the case of the SER, who had bogie coaches in set trains for the inner-London locals while their boat trains were still formed of 6-wheeled stock. They later (1890s) repented of this and built new 4-wheelers for the local trains.

[Tom Burnham]

Also, coaches differ depending upon the accommodation they contain. Generally the width of the panels between the quarter lights will reveal the compartment spacing and tell you whether it is First, Second, or Third Class.  Then there are luggage and lavatory compartments, necessary because these are 'inter-city' journeys, not brief branch-line rambles. Then, of course, there is the accommodation for the Guard.

 

All these can be jumbled up in different orders, e.g. Centre Brake Third or Luggage Composite.

 

 

The GER carriage illustrated was originally a Luggage Composite, with a 1st and a 3rd class compartment either side of a central luggage compartment.  In preservation the luggage compartment has been converted to a guard's compartment, and all the compartments are designated as third, although as you can see from the picture they are of two different widths.  See http://www.preservation.kesr.org.uk/coaching-stock/ger

[Donw]

One of the factors affecting coaches was the requirement to have a continuous automatic brake on passenger trains which was part of the railways act 1889 although time was allowed to fit all stock. There was also a reluctance to accept non bogie stock on through trains by the turn of the century. Some older stock was scrapped rather than add brakes and although building of short coaches continued for use on specific routes the new builds for general use tended to be bogie stock which had greater flexibility of use, although some railways dragged their heels. Branch lines of course were at the back of the queue for new stock and corridors were less of an issue.

There is a wonderfull description somewhere of the shock and horror felt by two ladies when the large somewhat rough looking man who had joined their compartment relieved himself between stations. Ah the joys of victorian railway travel.

 

Don

[Northroader]

By the bye, looking at your progress report pix, I hope the two roads converging on the turntable pit are just temporary laid? It’s best to sort your turntable out, and then use that to set up the alignment of the roads coming into it.

On the short coaches debate, from a modelling angle four wheelers are simple to do, six wheelers need a lot more care with allowances for sideplay and springing.

[Regularity]

Although we use the term “corridor” to mean the connection between coaches, corridor really refers to a passage down the side of a coach, and the connection between the corridors of adjacent coaches is a gangway. Even now, we see Mk1 stock described as, say, BCK with the K standing in for side corridor (as the C has been used for Composite) as against, say, a TSO, Tourist Second Open. (Tourist meaning 4 seats across the coach, 2+2, against SO, with 3 seats arranged 1+2. We will, for the moment, overlook suburban trailer stock, which was 2+3!)

[jwealleans]

Is that current usage? The LNER used BCK for a brake composite gangwayed/vestibuled carriage (one with connections to other carriages) and BC for a brake composite without vestibules/gangways, irrespective of the presence of an internal corridor.

 

I don't do much modelling after about 1955; when did that usage evolve?

[Edwardian]

Is that current usage? The LNER used BCK for a brake composite gangwayed/vestibuled carriage (one with connections to other carriages) and BC for a brake composite without vestibules/gangways, irrespective of the presence of an internal corridor.

 

I don't do much modelling after about 1955; when did that usage evolve?

 

I don't do much modelling after 1800, that being Gin O'clock.

[Edwardian]

By the bye, looking at your progress report pix, I hope the two roads converging on the turntable pit are just temporary laid? It’s best to sort your turntable out, and then use that to set up the alignment of the roads coming into it.

On the short coaches debate, from a modelling angle four wheelers are simple to do, six wheelers need a lot more care with allowances for sideplay and springing.

 

I have decided that the permanent way is only to be lightly laid, with a dab of pva on every third or fourth sleep, so, until I ballast I can re-arrange the tracks.  I had already done so at the other end, as the platform road wasn't quite in alignment with the turnout.

 

The turntable is going to prove interesting .....

 

4-wheelers are easier, but I think that the line requires a number of 6-wheelers.

 

 

Although we use the term “corridor” to mean the connection between coaches, corridor really refers to a passage down the side of a coach, and the connection between the corridors of adjacent coaches is a gangway. Even now, we see Mk1 stock described as, say, BCK with the K standing in for side corridor (as the C has been used for Composite) as against, say, a TSO, Tourist Second Open. (Tourist meaning 4 seats across the coach, 2+2, against SO, with 3 seats arranged 1+2. We will, for the moment, overlook suburban trailer stock, which was 2+3!)

 

Yes, the layout is set in an age where corridors, for part of the length of a coach, have been a feature of some long distance coaches for a while.

 

The GE did not bother with bogie coaches (save for the Royal Train) until the Turn of the Century, when it produced a semi-corridor clerestory composite.

 

I suppose the way to distinguish coaches with corridor connections between vehicles is to refer to them as 'gangwayed' coaches.  

[Regularity]

Is that current usage? The LNER used BCK for a brake composite gangwayed/vestibuled carriage (one with connections to other carriages) and BC for a brake composite without vestibules/gangways, irrespective of the presence of an internal corridor.I don't do much modelling after about 1955; when did that usage evolve?

Don’t know for sure, but BR adopted the LNER system, which did differentiate between brake (B) and gangwayed brake (BG) and for non-gangwayed stock would indicate a lavatory accessible from within the coach via side corridors by adding an L to the code, which they didn’t do in the case of gangwayed stock - although they did then add the K for corridor plus gangway (gangway would be pretty pointless without a corridor, when you think of it!) TL meant lavatory third, non-gangwayed, and T meant third, non-corridor. A mainline third coach was TK or TO. TKG or TOG would have been clearer. Parcels stock also supposedly used Y for 4 wheels and Z for 6, (e.g. BY, BGZ) but these were not used for passenger stock. Similarly, there is a difference in the G as a prefix (GUV, general utlitity van) and a suffix as in BG. And yes, a CCT should have been a CCTY, or CCY, but as with the good old PMV, the distinction wasn’t made!

 

It is slightly ambiguous, but I think the LNER used K for “through corridor with gangway”, and determined that a corridor without a gangway would be indicted simply with the L. Anything else was assumed to be compartment stock for mainline use, and compartment stock for suburban and local use. Because of the ambiguity, it seems we are both right! Why they didn’t put a G in place to indicated a gangway is something we will never know, but that criticism comes from the perspective of historical hindsight. It seems that as far as new carriage designs (Mk 1s) were concerned, the 64’ Stock was gangwayed, and the 57’ stock wasn’t by default, hence the BG needed the G, but the BFK didn’t.

 

BR certainly didn’t denote multiple unit stock as anything other than trailers, as these were nearly all opens anyway. Not sure whether they were overly bothered about Inter City dmus, assuming that they had corridors at all. My local electric units (AM10/310) were described as “partially gangwayed within, there being no through connection between the MBS (motor brake second, with the pantograph and traction motors, etc) and TS (trailer second), not even for the guard, and there was a 6 person bench seat across the inner ends. When refurbished, as well as losing the wrap-around cab windows, the units gained an extra gangway and a doorway for use of the guard only. The MBS lost 1 seat, and the TS lost 2.

 

Now, this may not seem to be pre-grouping, but (a) it is a useful way to describe things, and (b) I believe it was introduced in 1920 although I am not sure which company came up with it. I would guess NER, but I might be wide of the mark.

[Edwardian]

The GER carriage illustrated was originally a Luggage Composite, with a 1st and a 3rd class compartment either side of a central luggage compartment.  In preservation the luggage compartment has been converted to a guard's compartment, and all the compartments are designated as third, although as you can see from the picture they are of two different widths.  See http://www.preservation.kesr.org.uk/coaching-stock/ger

 

As I pictured it, the coach was in 1918 livery, and, presumably, had been downgraded by then - or was that a K&ESR thing?

 

I take it to be a 32' luggage Comp, D219, was one of the standard early Holden general service types and were fairly numerous, with 295 built. As built they were 1st/2nd composites, but after the abolition of second class travel on the main line in 1893 the seconds simply became thirds, so I would want one classed as 1st/3rd.

 

The K&ESR had the coach in brown at one stage (though note they still label the luggage compartment as 'Guard') and this might not be a bad representation of GE coach brown - the painted colour applied once the wood was too shabby for a varnished wood finish to be maintained.

 

The black and white photograph is at Cambridge, said to be Dia.200 No.327 of 1880, which would be a similar, earlier Worsdell 31' design, pictured c.1911.

 

Finally, at the end of Worsdell's tenure, there were some built that were a mix of Worsdell features (raised beading to the waist) but assuming Holden's taller doors and longer body.

Edited February 12, 2018 by Edwardian

[Nearholmer]

I think you may have simplified the multiple-unit situation a bit. I don’t know about elsewhere, but southern region EMU and DEMU cars were treated to full descriptive codes, some of which could become quite a mouthful.

 

A 4-BIG, for instance was DTCsoL, MBSO, TRSB, DTCsoL.

 

None of that needed K, because ‘everyone’ knew that a BIG went with a CIG, as a BEP went with a CEP, and a C in any SR unit designation indicated a corridor set.

 

The K was used, however, for cars that were fully side-corridor, as in TFK (for posh commuters from Tunbridge Wells, who used to form an orderly queue for each door, and effectively have ‘personal seats’) in the Hastings Units.

 

Simple really(!).

Edited February 12, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Regularity]

I think you may have simplified the multiple-unit situation a bit. I don’t know about elsewhere, but southern region EMU and DEMU cars were related to the full descriptive codes, some of which could become quite a mouthful.

Yes, but for the most part, they are post-grouping issues, particularly the examples you cite. Edited February 12, 2018 by Regularity

[Edwardian]

Don’t know for sure, but BR adopted the LNER system, which did differentiate between brake (B) and gangwayed brake (BG) and for non-gangwayed stock would indicate a lavatory accessible from within the coach via side corridors by adding an L to the code, which they didn’t do in the case of gangwayed stock - although they did then add the K for corridor plus gangway (gangway would be pretty pointless without a corridor, when you think of it!) TL meant lavatory third, non-gangwayed, and T meant third, non-corridor. A mainline third coach was TK or TO. TKG or TOG would have been clearer. Parcels stock also supposedly used Y for 4 wheels and Z for 6, (e.g. BY, BGZ) but these were not used for passenger stock. Similarly, there is a difference in the G as a prefix (GUV, general utlitity van) and a suffix as in BG. And yes, a CCT should have been a CCTY, or CCY, but as with the good old PMV, the distinction wasn’t made!

 

It is slightly ambiguous, but I think the LNER used K for “through corridor with gangway”, and determined that a corridor without a gangway would be indicted simply with the L. Anything else was assumed to be compartment stock for mainline use, and compartment stock for suburban and local use. Because of the ambiguity, it seems we are both right! Why they didn’t put a G in place to indicated a gangway is something we will never know, but that criticism comes from the perspective of historical hindsight. It seems that as far as new carriage designs (Mk 1s) were concerned, the 64’ Stock was gangwayed, and the 57’ stock wasn’t by default, hence the BG needed the G, but the BFK didn’t.

 

BR certainly didn’t denote multiple unit stock as anything other than trailers, as these were nearly all opens anyway. Not sure whether they were overly bothered about Inter City dmus, assuming that they had corridors at all. My local electric units (AM10/310) were described as “partially gangwayed within, there being no through connection between the MBS (motor brake second, with the pantograph and traction motors, etc) and TS (trailer second), not even for the guard, and there was a 6 person bench seat across the inner ends. When refurbished, as well as losing the wrap-around cab windows, the units gained an extra gangway and a doorway for use of the guard only. The MBS lost 1 seat, and the TS lost 2.

 

Now, this may not seem to be pre-grouping, but (a) it is a useful way to describe things, and (b) I believe it was introduced in 1920 although I am not sure which company came up with it. I would guess NER, but I might be wide of the mark.

 

Back in the happy days of rural Norfolk of 1905, fortunately, I don't need to worry.  Everything is non-ganwayed. The sort-of exception might be Guards leaping manfully between Kelvedon and Tollesbury-style tram-cars on the Bishop's Lynn tramway!

 

Coaches of a given class are either "Lav." or not, and where some have partial corridors, it is merely a feature ancillary to the presence of said Lav, so not really necessary to mention.