Castle Aching

[webbcompound]

8 minutes ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

I'll believe that when I see it.

Any advance on R2?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KQLsiEJiD0

[Hroth]

8 minutes ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

Depends on the fish. 

 Herrings allegedly fart, which is definitely a sound and also adds to the unpleasant olefactory miasma...

Fish oil also sloshes....

 

11 minutes ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

I'll believe that when I see it. 

 

I DID say claimed...

https://www.Hornby.com/uk-en/rivarossi-h0-1-87-union-pacific-heavy-freight-train-steam-locomotive-class-4000-big-boy-running-number-4014-special-edition-in-celebration-of-the-150th-anniversary-of-the-first-transcontinental-railroad.html

 

Although originally Hornby also claimed that the Austerity "Lord Phil" would be DCC Ready

https://www.Hornby.com/uk-en/0-6-0st-lord-phil-j94-class.html

 

Naturally it wasn't and they retracted the claim after complaints.

 

[Hroth]

9 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

The photo I posted earlier was a Robinson Class 8 4-6-0 (LNER B5)

 

Check B4 you post..... 

 

Sorry, it had to be done!

[Compound2632]

Agh, missed a trick! One page late:

 

 

Note the 40 ft bogie composite brake, D263, in the background - I think it's got Pullman-style bogies, which makes it one from Lot 16 of 1879.

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Check B4 you post..... 

 

Sorry, it had to be done!

 

 

Class 8F - check.

 

 

Thank you for your B9 interest!

[Annie]

53 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Nope, depends on how well-oiled the fish is.

 

I made a mistake. The photo I posted earlier was a Robinson Class 8 4-6-0 (LNER B5), these were in fact the first of his 4-6-0s. Fish engine:

 

 

I am correcting my previous posts.

I thought you might've made a mistake Mr Compound since I've got one of those in my digital trainset box.

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, webbcompound said:

All this talk of pretty B1 class locos misses out the cutest: The Pennsylvania Railroad B1.  built 1926, but then when was pre-grouping in the US anyway? 

Probably pre-1980 and the Staggers Act, which led to the series of mergers resulting in the emergence of the Big Six (see, Ransome again!) USA Class 1 railroads:

 

Amtrak

BNSF Railway

CSX Transportation

Kansas City Southern Railway

Norfolk Southern Railway

Union Pacific Railroad

 

Interesting how three of them are "railways" rather than "railroads".

 

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, webbcompound said:

All this talk of pretty B1 class locos misses out the cutest: The Pennsylvania Railroad B1.  built 1926, but then when was pre-grouping in the US anyway? 

 

US locomotive builders/railroads seem to have a fascination for taking prime-mover motor bogies and converting them into shunters!

 

https://www.railwaygazette.com/traction-and-rolling-stock/economical-shunter-unveiled/39443.article

 

[St Enodoc]

1 minute ago, Hroth said:

 

US locomotive builders/railroads seem to have a fascination for taking prime-mover motor bogies and converting them into shunters!

 

https://www.railwaygazette.com/traction-and-rolling-stock/economical-shunter-unveiled/39443.article

 

Huh! Why the fuss? Tri-ang did that years ago...

[Hroth]

3 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Huh! Why the fuss? Tri-ang did that years ago...

 

They probably got the idea from Lionel, like the Giraffe Car...

[Regularity]

Hey guys, page 900!

[Edwardian]

900 pages (including at least a page-worth of my modelling - really must do better)!

 

By way of a Celebratory Feature, I saw this in a temporary exhibition on a recent foray to York.

 

It left me feeling that there was much more of interest concerning this model than the rather bland caption let on ....

 

Also, let's face it, Cosmo Bonsor is splendid name, and a great name for an engine, not least as it's the name of the man who engineered the SE&CR joint committee in 1899.  

 

"C M R"?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 9, 2019 by Edwardian
spelling!

[Regularity]

24 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

"C M R"?

Probably C (Cardiff?) Miniature Railway, but it would be rather pleasant if it was Craig and Mertonford Railway...

Might even refer to Cagney, who produced the 4-4-0 used at Blakesley Hall.

Edited December 9, 2019 by Regularity
?

[Talltim]

On 06/12/2019 at 12:44, Nearholmer said:

Anyone else see the cast-of-three (or is it two?) stage production? We saw it I think at The Tricycle about 12 years ago (yikes!) and it is seriously good - funny, and a ripping yarn.

We saw at the Lyceum in Sheffield, and funnily enough were talking about it last night. Any inconsistencies with the book (and I don’t remember any glaring ones) were more than made up for by the acting

Edited December 9, 2019 by Talltim

[Talltim]

3 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Probably pre-1980 and the Staggers Act, which led to the series of mergers resulting in the emergence of the Big Six (see, Ransome again!) USA Class 1 railroads:

 

Amtrak

BNSF Railway

CSX Transportation

Kansas City Southern Railway

Norfolk Southern Railway

Union Pacific Railroad

 

Interesting how three of them are "railways" rather than "railroads".

 

Of course the Big Four was around from 1889

[Compound2632]

16 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

Rational scientific debate is antithetical  to fundamentalism because it knocks away all the comfortable certainties, and comfortable certainties really don't have a place in science. 

 

Sorry, only just read through your post. One would like to think that what you say there is true but there are those who believe that "There is no God and Dawkins is his prophet"!

 

Apologies all, we had moved on quite successfully.

 

Going back for a moment to those Robinson 4-6-0s, there were, I think, nine different classes produced over a 20 year period, along with four classes of closely-related 4-4-2s - thirteen classes for a 121 locomotives. Comment has been passed before now in this thread on the variety of S.W. Johnson's 4-4-0s for the Midland built over the previous 20 years - also thirteen classes (including the Belpaires and Compounds) totalling 360 locomotives - the Midland was, of course, a much larger railway. There are a variety of ways in which J.G. Robinson can be seen as S.W. Johnson's successor!

[Regularity]

Just now, Compound2632 said:

"There is no God and Dawkins is his prophet"!

My personal beef with Dawkins is the way he portrays other people's sincerely held beliefs as "childish". It might be to him, and maybe he is possessed of a superior intellect which is able to cut through to the real issues, but I have found his tone to be condescending and frankly, just rude.

As rude as a zealot telling someone else that they will be damned for all eternity, I hasten to add.

 

What about the locos of Edward G Robinson, that's what I want to know!

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, Regularity said:

What about the locos of Edward G Robinson, that's what I want to know!

 

On a par with those of Samuel Johnson or Grahame Gooch.

[Tom Burnham]

5 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Also, let's face it, Cosmo Bonsor is splendid name, and a great name for an engine, not least as it's the name of the man who engineered the SE&CR joint committee in 1899.

In full, Henry Cosmo Orme Bonsor - even better!  He lived at Kingswood Warren and was instrumental in the building of the Tattenham Corner branch.  Kingswood & Burgh Heath, which became his local station, was particularly lavishly equipped, with the unusual feature of a tea terrace on top of the up side platform canopy.  Incidentally, the Pullman Car Co had a car named Cosmo Bonsor running on the SE&CR at one time.

[Nearholmer]

A tea terrace on the canopy!?

 

That has to be one of the best ideas ever. Why, oh why was it not standardised as a feature of all stations??

 

i spent a decade in station engineering/design, and never once did anyone raise this option - so many years wasted!

 

Doesn’t look very well-patronised in this picture.

Edited December 9, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Tom Burnham]

I believe the idea was to serve hikers and such at the weekends, but smoke from passing trains turned out to be an issue....  It was shut by about 1920, but if it had still been in business in 1928 when the line was electrified (apart from Royal Trains and such like) it might have become more popular.

[RedGemAlchemist]

57 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

A tea terrace on the canopy!?

 

That has to be one of the best ideas ever. Why, oh why was it not standardised as a feature of all stations??

I know, right? 

[Ruston]

On 02/12/2019 at 14:41, Edwardian said:

Watched the final episode of the BBC's Bore of the Worlds.

 

I gave the series the benefit of the doubt until the last, to see if any of the odd changes and clunky writing would resolve itself into something worthwhile in the end.

 

IMHO, it didn't.

 

It was moronic.

 

The protagonist, George, became increasingly insipid and irritating. The story bogged down.  The depressing 'post apocalyptic' scenes petered out with the revelation that red weed is allergic to salmonella typhi (typhoid). So. if enough people contract this fatal disease and bleed all over the ground, eventually, we'll be fine.  It was colossal b0ll0cks.

 

What several people have picked up on is the scene in which the survivors are being stalked through a building by a rather more violent and fleet-of-claw alien than Wells imagined. George chooses this point to launch into some self-flagellational nonsense about how it's all our own fault because of the British Empire.    

 

Rather than listen to this guff, I'd have followed the brother, Frederick.  Frederick understood that, when you are being hunted by blood sucking aliens, what you don't do is pause to wring your hands over a clunky analogy. George was, all in all, a bit of a berk.

 

Strangely, that does seem to mirror the book to at least to some extent.  The narrator is largely passive and reactive. The brother (younger in the case of the book) is pluckier and more proactive. 

 

Was the 'Empire speech' justified, would Wells have agreed?  

 

Wells was a socialist, well, a Fabian, and anti-rascist and anti-nationalist, but he was probably restricted in terms of how explicit he could be in print.

 

The text of WotW certainly takes swipes at the Hobbit-like parochialism and complacency of the English of his day.  He notes their ignorance, xenophobia and unthinking racism, illustrated in the assumption that the Martians (despite travelling across the gulf of space) are an inferior species. Wells's English are rather like Betjeman's casually racist supplicant in Westminster Abbey.  There are some possessed by greed, which might be taken as a swipe at the rapacious side of capitalism, and an instance of religious delusion. Most are just ignorant, and don't know any better (though perhaps they should). 

 

Wells uses the Martians to force the complacent English to face a number of their less attractive assumptions and beliefs. It's not that he portrays them as particularly bad, but rather as guilty of lazy thinking.  They are presented as victims of their complacency, not judged on their Empire. His analogy is that of the Dodo.  Their extinction is not a judgment in the moral sense.  Rather, they are victims of complacency and the obvious analogy with Empire is that the stronger will always prey on the weaker. It has more to do with Darwinian inevitability than with moral condemnation and receipt of the wages of sin. Wells leaves the latter to the Curate, who is clearly mad, and, thus, the whole concept of the Martians as a moral judgment is rejected by Wells.  The BBC steals the idea back and places it on its head; their priest is equally delusional, but the nature of his delusion is that the defeat of the Martians is evidence of divine approbation.

 

Thus, I conclude that the BBC's mawkish wallowing in post-colonial guilt is bound to strike a false note, quite apart from being an absurd digression for the characters at the point of the story at which it occurs. 

 

According to Wiki, Wells stated in his autobiography that from 1900 onward (two years after writing WotW) he considered a World State inevitable. He envisaged the state to be a planned society that would advance science, end nationalism, and allow people to progress by merit rather than birth. Wells's 1928 book The Open Conspiracy argued that groups of campaigners should begin advocating for a "world commonwealth", governed by a scientific elite, that would work to eliminate problems such as poverty and warfare.

 

All this sounds rather like the United Federation of Planets in the Star Trek universe.  As to whether that will ever come to pass .....

 

That's all a bit deep and complex for me. What I, as someone who watched the series but has never read the book, or watched any other film or TV adaptation, want to know is...

 

The creatures that came out of the crashed tripod were themselves tripods. Tripods that stood on legs with points - no claws, hands or feet, just points. They can't even pick anything up, let alone do anything with it!  They can't even put two legs together to use chopsticks, otherwise they would just fall over!

 

And we're expected to believe that a race of creatures that cannot manipulate the simplest of tools can construct massively complex machines, weapons, propulsion and navigation systems and fly them from Mars?

 

I know it's science fiction but this is taking the Michael

[robmcg]

10 hours ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

....

 

Not my favourite LNER B, but a solid one nonetheless. 

.....

10 hours ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

 

 

Gadzooks! I have plenty of pictures of GCR  8C and Sam Fay  LNER B1s and B2s but thought discretion is the better part of valour...    which I take to mean that being alive is better than being dead, so hesitate in pursuing this line of illustration.

 

nice carriages for those of that bent though...

 

[Andy Kirkham]

1 hour ago, robmcg said:

.....

 

Gadzooks! I have plenty of pictures of GCR  8C and Sam Fay  LNER B1s and B2s but thought discretion is the better part of valour...    which I take to mean that being alive is better than being dead, so hesitate in pursuing this line of illustration.

 

nice carriages for those of that bent though...

 

 

Reminds me of the work of George Heiron.