More Pre-Grouping Wagons in 4mm - the D299 appreciation thread.

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, phil_sutters said:

Now we have moving model trains, with sounds and smoke, perhaps we need to add smells as well to be really authentic.

Steve Cook did that for his G1 diorama, “Dungeness Siding”, about 15 years ago, in response to me saying it was a shame that wasn’t possible. Can’t remember what he used, but it smelt like seaweed.

Richard Chown used colt’s foot oil, or similar, and wire wool, heated in a tin can, to create the pungent aroma of poor quality coal, for his small French S7 layout, Courcelle (Part), at about the same time.

I dare say there have been others, but I have long since learned not to say something isn’t possible, at least to some people.

[Mikkel]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

That's of a piece with an extract that @Mikkel posted elsewhere quite recently - since it'll have gone the way of all attachments I hope he can be persuaded to post it again here. 

 

Had a look but can't remember where I filed it or what the context was! Will dig some more later.

[phil_sutters]

1 hour ago, kitpw said:

It's a handsome little building you attached above.  I particularly like the corbelling for the projected bay, the box sash window on the left with three sets of sliding sashes and the gauged and inset arches to the ground floor windows.  The street door is an unusual arragement too: not an obvious solution in designing an entrance door.  Some of that detailing might just turn up in model form in due course.

 

Kit PW

Much of the rest of the building has been modernized, but there are still some more interesting details left. The other building is at the far end of this elevation.

[wagonman]

On 05/05/2022 at 20:28, phil_sutters said:

 

In Victorian times it was one of the smelliest places in a generally rather smelly city. If you look at a map of the area there were loads of tanneries, for which urine  was a required chemical agent. These were associated with currieries where the tanned hides were further processed or 'cured'. At the centre of this was the London Leather, Hide and Wool Exchange near to Guys Hospital

Some of the leathers were from whales' and seals' skins, so another source of pungent odours was the Alaska Building.

There were also a number wool warehouses that had their own distinctive odours.

It had its own large and small breweries and indeed the Hop Exchange, close to London Bridge Station, served most of the country, with supplies coming in mainly from Kent and Sussex, but from as far afield as Herefordshire.

There was at least one glue and size factory, which would have had some very unpleasant raw materials I guess. Who knows what the 'black lead and emery works' smelt like.

All this is in addition to poor drains, horse and other animal dung in the streets, smoke from every building whether domestic or commercial etc. etc..

 

 

 

Further upstream there was a group of riverside factories in Battersea – Price's candle works was one, and there was a distillery (Gordon's?) and possibly Haywards pickles – that together created what the polite citizens of Chelsea called the Battersea Pong when the wind was in the right direction. What the less polite citizens of Chelsea called it I'll leave to your imagination.

 

 

[Compound2632]

The steady progress of this thread may have successfully masked the fact that I've hardly done any actual modelling over the last three months. I'm hoping that a visit to ExpoEM in Bracknell this weekend will get me up and going again. It would be a delight, I believe, to meet any contributors to or readers of this thread who might be there. I expect to be there in the afternoon on both days.

 

I hope that doesn't sound too pompous.

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I hope that doesn't sound too pompous.

That suggests that you are open to being a little bit pompous.

I do so hope.

[Compound2632]

23 minutes ago, Regularity said:

That suggests that you are open to being a little bit pompous.

I do so hope.

 

Indeed. I wanted to avoid sounding as if I was saying:

 

"Stephen Lea announces to his admiring readers that he will be making a rare public appearance at ExpoEM. Advance booking is recommended."

 

... which is, of course, more or less what I was saying.

 

Neither will I be walking round the hall with a stick with a picture of Smith-Johnson Compound No. 2632 on it.

Edited May 10, 2022 by Compound2632

[Nick Lawson]

You will be the one autographing copies of MRJ.

 

See you Sunday!

 

[sir douglas]

a quick question if you may

 

i am currently painting up an midland 3 plank drop side but i want some variety since i already have some wagons in MR livery, though i dont want to do it in LMS or BR, is there some other way to paint them?

 

with the S&DJ 3 plank being a Derby design, is close enough to the MR 3 plank do it?

 

[Compound2632]

23 minutes ago, sir douglas said:

i am currently painting up an midland 3 plank drop side but i want some variety since i already have some wagons in MR livery, though i dont want to do it in LMS or BR, is there some other way to paint them?

 

with the S&DJ 3 plank being a Derby design, is close enough to the MR 3 plank do it?

 

You could do it as an Engineer's Department wagon in the post c. 1905 (?) red livery - oxide of iron rather than red lead; locomotive crimson lake undercoat colour. For this, you would have to add the canvas (or are they leather?) flaps over the axleboxes. Also, if you've kept the 10 axleboxes, you'll need to add the door-stops.

 

The relationship between S&DJR wagons, either built at Highbridge or by contractors, and their Midland equivalents, is an interesting topic that I'm currently delving into. To make that wagon from the Slaters kit, there are two modifications one could make. The most obvious is the long brake lever - you must have something you could use left over from another kit? (One of the advantages of modelling wagons with brakes on one side only!) The other is that the headstocks are longer than the standard 7' 6". I can't quite decide from the photo if they are angled, as on the earlier Midland wagons, or just longer - an 1899 specification for 8 ton 5-plank wagons (S&DJR version of D299 but without bottom doors) states 7' 8". It should be straightforward to extend them with a bit of 60 thou-wide plastic strip.

 

See my first and second posts in this topic!

 

 

 

I mention in that second post that this wagon is similar in overall dimensions to 3-plank dropsides from several other companies, but axleboxes and again the brake lever would need some attention.

 

Apologies if you've already primed your model!

 

 

Edited May 10, 2022 by Compound2632

[sir douglas]

thanks, its a repaint of a second hand wagon ive had for years but making a new lever from some brass is easy

[Compound2632]

30 minutes ago, sir douglas said:

thanks, its a repaint of a second hand wagon ive had for years but making a new lever from some brass is easy

 

Please do post a photo of the repainted wagon.

[billbedford]

Please sirs, I have a question...

 

I've been working on some new buffers for my wagon kits and realised that as some point in the late 19th just about all the railway companies extended the buffer guides on both wagons and coaches by about an inch and a half. Existing vehicles had a wooden pad inserted between the guide and the headstock while new builds were given langer guides. 

 

Can anyone explain the circumstances that lead to this occurrence and, maybe an aproximate date?

[Compound2632]

To illustrate:

 

 

Crop from Midland Railway Study Centre's copy of Drg. 1822, Covered Goods Wagon & Fruit Van, D364, 450 built as part of lot 543 in 1902, showing emendations for the 16 built to lot 723 in 1909 and 20 to lot 840 in 1913. [MRSC Item 88-D1817.]

 

Many of these, I suspect all of those later lots, were given AVB through pipes, so I wonder if in this case it has to do with the use of screw couplings.

 

But that would not adequately explain the general change Bill notes. I haven't found another Midland drawing that shows the alteration; I haven't been through checking the length of buffer guides on all!

[Nick Holliday]

19 hours ago, sir douglas said:

a quick question if you may

 

i am currently painting up an midland 3 plank drop side but i want some variety since i already have some wagons in MR livery, though i dont want to do it in LMS or BR, is there some other way to paint them?

 

with the S&DJ 3 plank being a Derby design, is close enough to the MR 3 plank do it?

 

The Brecon and Merthyr Railway acquired a number of Midland Railway wagons, including over forty three-planks. Most were allocated for ballast use, but ten were used as general goods vehicles and, presumably, could have ranged away from home. B&M livery was a light grey, and several made it to grouping, with two actually receiving GWR numbers, 71870 and 71881.

Some of the S&DJR versions  that @Compound2632 has mentioned were allocated to the LSWR in 1914, I believe, and would have run in their, and Southern, brown liveries.

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Nick Holliday said:

The Brecon and Merthyr Railway acquired a number of Midland Railway wagons, including over forty three-planks.

 

Do you happen to know the date of that transaction? Also, do you know if it was a direct sale by the Midland to the B&M or, as some other sales to minor lines were, through a broker (usually one of the wagon firms)?

 

Have you seen any photo or drawing? I'm particularly interested to know if they were the early type with angled headstock ends or the later type with door-stops on the sides?

Edited May 11, 2022 by Compound2632

[Nick Holliday]

27 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Do you happen to know the date of that transaction? Also, do you know if it was a direct sale by the Midland to the B&M or, as some other sales to minor lines were, through a broker (usually one of the wagon firms)?

 

Have you seen any photo or drawing? I'm particularly interested to know if they were the early type with angled headstock ends or the later type with door-stops on the sides?

All my information came from the WRRC pamphlet on Welsh wagons. No date given, but they refer to the Railway Modeller October 1977 for a drawing. Barrie in his history seems to ignore wagons, and I haven’t seen any photo either. Ominously the numbering of these wagons is consecutive from No 1!

[Compound2632]

20 hours ago, sir douglas said:

with the S&DJ 3 plank being a Derby design, is close enough to the MR 3 plank do it?

 

By the way, the photo you use is from @phil_sutters's gallery. I'm wondering if, on his original print, the wording on the number-plate is legible. I suppose the lettering on the bottom line reads HIGHBRIDGE WORKS; on either side of the number we have MONTH and YEAR but I'm curious as to what month and year they are?

[Miss Prism]

12 hours ago, billbedford said:

just about all the railway companies extended the buffer guides on both wagons and coaches by about an inch and a half

 

As far as I know, the GWR only had 1'6" and 1'8 1/2" (the latter for screw and instanter use).

 

[sir douglas]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

By the way, the photo you use is from @phil_sutters's gallery. 

 

i didnt know where the photo originally came from, i just URL inserted the photo from another thread, going back to there i find that it was posted by Phil himself

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/117584-midland-railway-three-plank-open-wagons/?do=findComment&comment=2525906

 

[Compound2632]

41 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

As far as I know, the GWR only had 1'6" and 1'8 1/2" (the latter for screw and instanter use).

 

Interesting that those are the two dimensions on the Midland drawing I posted, which supports the idea that the change there was made for lots that were piped and had screw couplings.

 

@billbedford's enquiry describes a more general change which I think involved simply extending the guide while keeping the head at 1' 6" from the headstock. That wouldn't require replacement of the buffer head and shank. I wonder if there was a change in the RCH specification? Looking in Watts' Ince book, the 1887, 1903, and 1906 drawings all show 10" guides; these all have leaf buffing springs. The guides in the 1923 drawing are obviously longer though the dimension is not marked but these have individual coil springs behind the headstock*.

 

*Wording chosen to distinguish them from self-contained buffers with the coil spring housed within the buffer guide.

[Miss Prism]

17 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I wonder if there was a change in the RCH specification?

 

This is RCH 1923, with the buffer stock front 12" from the headstock face:

 

 

 

[Grahams]

On 10/05/2022 at 23:54, Compound2632 said:

To illustrate:

 

 

Crop from Midland Railway Study Centre's copy of Drg. 1822, Covered Goods Wagon & Fruit Van, D364, 450 built as part of lot 543 in 1902, showing emendations for the 16 built to lot 723 in 1909 and 20 to lot 840 in 1913. [MRSC Item 88-D1817.]

 

Many of these, I suspect all of those later lots, were given AVB through pipes, so I wonder if in this case it has to do with the use of screw couplings.

 

But that would not adequately explain the general change Bill notes. I haven't found another Midland drawing that shows the alteration; I haven't been through checking the length of buffer guides on all!

The Midland 8 Ton Lowside D305 drawing 88-DO155) has 1/2" packing from part way through Lot 682 in 1908. It doesn't explain what was going on though. I suspect there was some standardisation being forced through the system. 

[Compound2632]

8 hours ago, Grahams said:

The Midland 8 Ton Lowside D305 drawing 88-DO155) has 1/2" packing from part way through Lot 682 in 1908. It doesn't explain what was going on though. I suspect there was some standardisation being forced through the system. 

 

Thanks. I knew I'd seen it somewhere other than that van.

[Compound2632]

Kitbash:

 

MR Carriage & Wagon Committee minute No. 2114, 6 May 1887

Brake Vans for Snow Ploughs

Read Traffic Committee minute No. 24983 as follows:-

"Resolved that two brake vans for use with snow ploughs be provided by placing the bodies of two old passenger brake vans upon the framing of two old locomotive tenders, at an estimated cost of £23.13.0 each, and the matter was referred to the Locomotive and Carriage & Wagon Committees."

Ordered

That the work be carried out.

 

[TNA RAIL491/254]

 

As seen at Hellifield, possibly in the 1880s or perhaps early 1890s - I expect the inside-mounted tender springs would help narrow down the date if I read carefully through the relevant bit of Summerson. It does show that those ugly tender cabs go back a long way - were they handed down the generations of snow-plough engines?

 

The van itself is evidently on the frames of an old Kirtley tender and has kept the long rear overhang, giving the assymetrical appearance. The body is presumably also of Kirtley origin - there are not many photos around of Kirtley-era passenger brake vans!

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue thumbnail of MRSC Item 6462.]