Strand and its trains

[Guy Rixon]

The siphon build plods on. Today, I made the sliding axle for the middle pair of wheels.

 

To get side-play on the centre wheels of 6-wheeled stock, I favour a tubular axle rotating about and sliding over a fixed, central pin, where that pin has the pin-point ends and is carried in the sprung bearings. This idea I got from Bill Bedford and is sound, but of course one has to make up the wheelset and the details come with added devil at no extra charge.

 

One is supposed to star with 2.0mm OD x 1.0mm ID brass tube. I didn't have any, of course, and my nearest approximation was 2.05mm OD x 1.5mm ID. The extra 0.05mm on the OD makes the axle an interference fit in the wheels. This is good for making the wheels stay on, but means that one needs an actual press to get them on in the first place; pushing hard enough with hand tools will inevitably distort things. The extra 0.5mm on the ID means that the tubular axle rattles on the pin by about a P4 flange-depth, which is NBG at all: it will come off if I allow it that movement. However, the tube does admit an Exactoscale parallel-bearing which is 1.0mm ID x 1.5mm OD and actually designed to run on the 1.0mm pin-point axles of choice. So the trick is to make up the wheels on the rattly tube and then bush it with the fancy PB bearings.

 

I don't have an arbour press for this kind of job, but I do have a drill press, so I used that. This is as suggested by Mark Tatlow.

 

First job is to cut the tube. It needs to be longer than the finished axle so that it can be gripped accurately in the chuck. I cut mine to about 35mm. I then chamfered the ends of the tube so they'd engage nicely in the plastic wheel.

 

Press stage 1 looked like this:

  

The wheel rests on the bed of the x-y table, which I'm trusting to be square to the drill axis (this may be a bad idea, we'll see later). I grip a good length of the tube in the chuck and bring it down onto the wheel, aligning by eye and then letting the chamfer centre it up. Then I put light, downward pressure on the chuck ... and nothing happens, because this is a serious interference fit, so I put more and more pressure and eventually the tube slides through the wheel. Raising the chuck so the wheel comes away lets me eyeball the amount that's passed through and I go on pressing until it looks like this:

I.e. there has to be enough tube on the far side of the wheel to hold in the chuck when I press the second wheel.

 

The second wheel is aligned like the first and I press until the tube is just showing on the outside of the wheel, such that the wheels are further apart than the required back-to-back. Then the back-to-back gauge goes in:

and note that this is the kind with wide, flat gauge-faces; it's actually an Exactoscale product. I'm using the gauge both as gauge and jig here, so the wide faces make things a lot easier than it would be with the L-shaped type of gauge. 

 

If you look closely, you can see plastic swarf on the end of the tube, and some more on the table underneath, where the tube has cut through the wheel. I hope that this indicates a good, strong interference-fit,  but it may also indicate that I've murdered these wheels. I think it shows that the tube has cut through on axis rather than over-compressing the plastic so that it's stressed and splits.

 

Anyway, I press the second wheel until the backs of both tires are against the gauge faces, then with draw the wheel-set from the press. It now looks like this:

The spare tube has to be cut away, which I do with a piecing saw while the wheel is held in the vice:

This gives a remarkably clean, level cut (better than I've a right to expect from this kind of tool-abuse), but scuffs the finish of the tire; I shall have to re-blacken later.

 

Finally, I fix the bearings with Loctite 603. You can see one bearing already in place and the other waiting to be fitted.   The crucial thing here is that the Loctite is officially  Not Glue: it's a resin that sets only in the absence of air and expands as it sets. That means firstly that it doesn't matter if I get some inside the bearing as it won't set there and can be washed out later; and secondly that the expansion will tend to centre the bearing in the tube, so I don't have to fret about fit and tolerance here.

 

More reports on this a bit later, when both bearings are in and I can see if all is true.

Edited April 9, 2019 by Guy Rixon
Credit Mark Tatlow for the technique

[Portchullin Tatty]

On 07/04/2019 at 19:35, Guy Rixon said:

 

I don't have an arbour press for this kind of job, but I do have a drill press, so I used that. This is in line with good advice I found on-line, and I'll credit that page here if I can ever find it again.

 

 

Probably here or in the Scalefour News.

 

My advice would be to chamfer the end of the tube before inserting it into the wheel blank.  The sharp cut to the end will, as you have seen, scour the plastic and there is a good chance it will not do this equally and hence cause the wheel to go on untrue. 

 

 

 

[Guy Rixon]

Having added the second bearing to the tube, I found that the steel axle was too tight in the bearings. Probably, I misaligned them slightly. I drilled the bearings out to 1.05mm and now the fit is acceptable.

 

So far as I can see the wheels are square and true.

 

The axleguards are mounted on 0.020" packing and the springs and wheels fitted. Axleguards are by Bill Bedford and all three axles are sprung. Therefore, all carry weight, which I hold to be important in making it stay on the track. One of the spring carriers, on the right of the photo, is not quite right yet and carries its bearing too high, reducing the load on that wheel. I'll fix that before going on. This "chassis" seems to roll well enough with the body laid on it and some weight laid in.

 

Next job is to model the vacuum cylinder and associated bits. I need to find out these vehicles had 25" cylinders (available as castings, I think) or 18" (needs to be made from scratch, or printed).

[Guy Rixon]

Loot! I've just won an eBay auction for the frames of a Stirling R class. This will become Strand's pilot-engine. Now I need to find options for the bodywork. If nothing more modern turns up, I'd use the SEF kit, probably with upgraded boiler-fittings. 

[Guy Rixon]

Having rejoined the SECR Society, I'm working through their collection of historical railway-papers. One in particular is pure Kryptonite: the special working instructions of Jul 11th 1921 for handling parcels and perishable traffic, with particular reference to how this was exchanged between railways in London.

 

The hubs for this traffic seem to have been Cannon Street (for the SER section) and Holborn Viaduct (for the LCDR section). Dedicated trains would come from the northern railways to these stations overnight and be broken up with vans forwarded to SECR stations by the early passenger-trains. Some highlights follow.

 

The fish traffic from the GCR (presumably starting from Grimsby) was passed to the SECR by a GNR train via the Metropolitan Widen LInes which ran every night except Sundays. It called at Ludgate Hill at midnight and detached vans there, before going on to Clapham via Loughborough Junction and Brixton. The vans for the SECR and LBSCR stations were tripped round promptly from Ludgate Hill  to Cannon Street and the LBSCR portion was then sent on to London Bridge at 01:15. The typical load was 5 vans for the LSWR, 4 for the LBSCR and 9 for the SECR. Of the latter, the vans for LCDR stations were worked back from Cannon Street to Holborn Viaduct to be put on Chatham-section trains. This cascade of train portions rattling around the inner-London sections is rather appealing.

 

Fish traffic from Fleetwood (Wyre Dock) over the LNWR took a different route. A regular transfer train (of more than just fish? - unclear) left Willesden at 21:30 and ran via the West London railway, the South London Line and the LCDR City Branch to Holborn Viaduct. Portions for the SER section and for the LBSCR were then tripped round to Cannon Street on the 12:15 fish train (which seems to be the traffic detached from the fish train ex GCR. above).

 

With the CCEJ in play, it seems likely that the GCR fish still came via the Widened Lines courtesy GNR, but the LNWR fish ran via the CCEJ through Strand. If it was a general transfer train, it would probably detach fruit vans at Strand before going forward to Cannon Street and then working the LCDR portion back to Holborn.

 

Fish trains from the GER went by the East London line to Hither Green, arriving 20:35. They were then sent back up the line to Cannon Street at 21:15 arriving at 21:35. Cannon Street were instructed to transship any loads less then 30 cwt and to send the vans thus emptied to Southwark depot.

 

In the context of the model, Southwark depot was never built and this empty-van traffic appears at Strand.

 

There's much more than fish of course. The other thing that caught my attention was instructions for the Fruit and Paris Grand Vitesse traffic to Southwark depot (and therefore to Strand, in layout terms).

 

"Folkestone Harbour to arrange for any traffic left behind overnight [which I think means anything that couldn't be attached to the previous day's passenger workings] to be forwarded by 8.16 am to Cannon Street (week days). Train to be formed as under :- engine, VB, vans with GV traffic, two trios. No more than 5 vans to be forwarded by 8.16. Cannon St. to arrange to work forward to Southwark about 10.25."

 

So that's a short trip of foreign fruit etc. arriving at Strand mid-morning. The produce traffic would end up in Bedford Street Depot for the market and the rest would be handled at Buckingham Street, so however the train is received some vans have to travel up or down in the wagon hoists.

 

It's fun to invent working arrangements, but oddly more fun when one is given a historic document telling how they should be. I am most relieved that my guessed-at swarm of trip workings rattling between terminals and depots is real.

 

 

[Nearholmer]

This business of goods distribution around London, especially but not only the perishables, really merits a book being written about it, it is such a fascinating insight into the logistics of supplying a huge city.

 

Are you an author in waiting?

 

Kevin

[Joseph_Pestell]

1 hour ago, Guy Rixon said:

Having rejoined the SECR Society, I'm working through their collection of historical railway-papers. One in particular is pure Kryptonite: the special working instructions of Jul 11th 1921 for handling parcels and perishable traffic, with particular reference to how this was exchanged between railways in London.

 

The hubs for this traffic seem to have been Cannon Street (for the SER section) and Holborn Viaduct (for the LCDR section). Dedicated trains would come from the northern railways to these stations overnight and be broken up with vans forwarded to SECR stations by the early passenger-trains. Some highlights follow.

 

The fish traffic from the GCR (presumably starting from Grimsby) was passed to the SECR by a GNR train via the Metropolitan Widen LInes which ran every night except Sundays. It called at Ludgate Hill at midnight and detached vans there, before going on to Clapham via Loughborough Junction and Brixton. The vans for the SECR and LBSCR stations were tripped round promptly from Ludgate Hill  to Cannon Street and the LBSCR portion was then sent on to London Bridge at 01:15. The typical load was 5 vans for the LSWR, 4 for the LBSCR and 9 for the SECR. Of the latter, the vans for LCDR stations were worked back from Cannon Street to Holborn Viaduct to be put on Chatham-section trains. This cascade of train portions rattling around the inner-London sections is rather appealing.

 

Fish traffic from Fleetwood (Wyre Dock) over the LNWR took a different route. A regular transfer train (of more than just fish? - unclear) left Willesden at 21:30 and ran via the West London railway, the South London Line and the LCDR City Branch to Holborn Viaduct. Portions for the SER section and for the LBSCR were then tripped round to Cannon Street on the 12:15 fish train (which seems to be the traffic detached from the fish train ex GCR. above).

 

With the CCEJ in play, it seems likely that the GCR fish still came via the Widened Lines courtesy GNR, but the LNWR fish ran via the CCEJ through Strand. If it was a general transfer train, it would probably detach fruit vans at Strand before going forward to Cannon Street and then working the LCDR portion back to Holborn.

 

Fish trains from the GER went by the East London line to Hither Green, arriving 20:35. They were then sent back up the line to Cannon Street at 21:15 arriving at 21:35. Cannon Street were instructed to transship any loads less then 30 cwt and to send the vans thus emptied to Southwark depot.

 

In the context of the model, Southwark depot was never built and this empty-van traffic appears at Strand.

 

There's much more than fish of course. The other thing that caught my attention was instructions for the Fruit and Paris Grand Vitesse traffic to Southwark depot (and therefore to Strand, in layout terms).

 

"Folkestone Harbour to arrange for any traffic left behind overnight [which I think means anything that couldn't be attached to the previous day's passenger workings] to be forwarded by 8.16 am to Cannon Street (week days). Train to be formed as under :- engine, VB, vans with GV traffic, two trios. No more than 5 vans to be forwarded by 8.16. Cannon St. to arrange to work forward to Southwark about 10.25."

 

So that's a short trip of foreign fruit etc. arriving at Strand mid-morning. The produce traffic would end up in Bedford Street Depot for the market and the rest would bendled at Buckingham Street, so however the train is received some vans have to travel up or down in the wagon hoists.

 

It's fun to invent working arrangements, but oddly more fun when one is given a historic document telling how they should be. I am most relieved that my guessed-at swarm of trip workings rattling between terminals and depots is real.

 

 

That's a very interesting document that justifies quite busy freight traffic being handled in a passenger station. Of course, it's not just about transit traffic. Cannon St is close to the old fish market.

[Nearholmer]

If you read old accident reports, it becomes clear that quite a bit of ‘goods’ was handled in the passenger termini, including horses, and fruit and veg, straight onto the passenger platforms, until traffic levels built-up to a level that made such things impracticable.

[Guy Rixon]

Also, some cargo was sent, explicitly and expensively, as railway parcels to get fast carriage. The SECR document includes lists of trains where parcels may not be booked, and also of stations that cannot handle parcels. The entire underground network was a parcel-free zone, and much of the LSWR electric network also. I get the impression that it was changes in the passenger working rather than increase in the number of parcels that forced the changes.

 

In respect of Strand, the EMU services - Met, MDR, H&C, LNWR - clearly cannot convey tail traffic and probably can't handle parcels either. At the time depicted on the layout, the CCEJR is evolving from a traditional railway that handles all traffics to an effete, electric thing that only does passengers. I expect to run many transfer trips to carry the displaced traffic.

 

Writing a book on the cross-London traffic ... interesting, but I don't have nearly enough primary material for a general work. I might manage a few articles specific to the SECR concerns when I've done more research. It's a huge subject.

[Guy Rixon]

Strawberrygate! The next paper from SECR Soc. cache, the special instructions for working fruit traffic in 1900, dispels the myth (which I repeated earlier on this forum) that the Kentish fruit-traffic went mainly by road and the SECR had little of it.

 

In 1900, there were four special trains per day on the new main line just to move strawberries into Cannon Street. These started at Halstead or Dunton Green and detached vans at Hither Green for the northern railways. There were four balancing workings of empty vans, plus trips to clear those vans away from Cannon Street to Hither Green where the down specials collected them. In the season when these trains were running, strawberries were not allowed to be carried on passenger trains.

 

There were another 7 fruit specials per day, each way, from other parts of the SECR network, plus a couple of as-required workings. Then there were the cross-London connections to the LNWR, MR and GNR variously from Hither Green and Loughborough sidings.

 

So "all the fruit went by road" is revealed to be utter , and shows the problem with relying on secondary sources. Doubtless, some reached the London markets by road by the method and for the reasons already discussed.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

If you read old accident reports, it becomes clear that quite a bit of ‘goods’ was handled in the passenger termini, including horses, and fruit and veg, straight onto the passenger platforms, until traffic levels built-up to a level that made such things impracticable.

 

There was a nasty terminal smash on platform 6 at St Pancras in August 1894, which Maj. Mandarin attributed to excessive speed on entering the station. Whilst it was almost certainly the case that drivers were habitually entering the station at more than the permitted hand-braking speed, having got used to relying on the vacuum brake, S.W. Johnson was adamant that the direct cause was the failure of station staff to sand the rails after a fish train had been unloaded at the platform, a practice about which he had previously complained [Letter entered into the minutes of the Locomotive Committee (National Archives) - I'm afraid I don't have the minute number to hand].

[Guy Rixon]

More from the Strawberrygate files. This delightful centrefold from GWRJ shows how the fruit were loaded at Cheddar in the 1920s.

 

I count two 6-wheeled siphons (608 is a Siphon O1, like the one I'm building), three 4-wheeled siphons, one bogie siphon and three other vans which may well be Y-series fruit vans; I suspect two fruit C and and one fruit D. That's just the vans in shot, there may be more behind the camera. Quite a lot for one country station!

 

Of specific interest is the shelving in the Y-series vans. They seem to have three shelves that extend across the door opening. The visible traces are consistent with the diagram of a fruit C in Atkins+ showing expanded-metal shelves on wooden frames, the shelves in the doorways being separately and possibly removable for loading the fixed shelves further inside. Some of the O1 siphons dedicated to strawberry traffic were fitted with shelves, and for my model I'm going to assume that they were of the same pattern.

[Nearholmer]

I think it was in the Castle Aching thread that I caused a diversion into strawberries, based on an absolutely brilliant series of photos taken in Hampshire for a news service , which revealed, among other things, LNWR passenger-rated vans being worked direct from the originating station to midland and northern cities.

[Guy Rixon]

Today, a tiny milestone: I have built my first track. It's only a tiny length of dead-straight plain line, intended as a photographic platform, but It's there and real.

Rail from S4 society, chairs by Exactoscale, sleepers of eBay, dunno who originally made them. 

[Compound2632]

Sitting firmly on the fence in the great LNWR wagon sheet debate, I see!

[Guy Rixon]

6 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Sitting firmly on the fence in the great LNWR wagon sheet debate, I see!

The logic is that the square crosses on the old sheets were white, as per photographic evidence, and the saltaire on the new design c. 1908 was red, which corresponds to it being next to invisible on the photos i've seen. But both sheets look a bit rubbish at close quarters and I may re-do them in better material.

[Guy Rixon]

The Metropolitan drop-sided wagon got finished, finally.

I was slightly dissatisfied with my assembly of the body, so chose not to go overboard with replacement parts for the brakes and such. The brake blocks, hangers and push-rods are by RFM, because that was easier than fitting the parts from the kit, but the outside V-hanger, brake lever and guard are all the castings from the kit. Because SEF castings are rather good, they look OK IMHO. The buffers are also castings from the kit.

 

The livery is dubious. On the one hand, there is written support for the M E T. branding being in use c1909. On the other, I found at HMRS, a painting-specification drawing of 1912 for this kind of wagon showing Metropolitan written out in full along the length of the side.

 

It's a reasonable kit, but I think I will not build more of them when I do more wagons of this type. Replacing the floor to accommodate a modern suspension was a lot of work, and it might be easier to build from scratch in plastic with printed fittings. And I'm trying to eliminate filing and milling work on lead-bearing materias for health reasons.

 

Having cleared out one Unfinished Thing, I felt empowered to start another, viz:

This is an antique kit won from eBay a while ago. It's an ... interesting build. On the one hand almost everything actually fits, which is above average for pre-CAD etchings, and there are useful tabs and slots for main assemblies. The underframe was particular easy. On the other, each of the body sides is made from four laminated layers, two of them half-etched so prone to cockling under heat, with a further overlay for the body ironwork. That is not at all easy to build without a resistance-soldering set (and I have two of those but both are bust).

 

This is an example of something that today should not be etched. The body should clearly be moulded or printed.

 

The roof in the kit is flat plasticard. That's a flat-packed disaster in waiting, so I rolled one from 0.015" brass. That is really easy if one has rolling bars. The cover for the oil lamp is actually done as a three-part etched thing - seriously! - and that's not happening. I shall use a print or a spare casting. Also, the buffers from the kit shall be replaced with RFM prints.

 

Two nights ago it had got to this stage:

...and you can see how clean the soldering isn't. With a conventional iron it's almost impossible to get the layers to bond without clarting the surfaces. Hopefully it will scrub up OK; I'd removed a few grams of solder already before taking the photo. Note also the filler (Miliput super-fine) at the ends where the corners didn't come out clean. Body ironwork was added to one side last night and you're not getting a photo of that because it look leperous, but I think it will clean up OK. I'll show it when I've got some primer on it.

 

Livery is slightly tricky. I really wanted to do the as-built livery of c.1902, but the HMRS transfer-sheet doesn't have the markings. I shall end up with the 1908 livery (white lettering, diamonds, large LNWR) and the CATTLE BOX branding can be made up by scavenging the letters from depot allocations of brake vans: BUXTON, LONGSIGHT and CARLISLE should do it.

 

The colour is also not quite clear to me. It needs to be the NPCS brown livery, sometimes described as "plain chocolate", but how should I make that colour? The kit instructions say to use the "plum" coach colour: does anybody know if that is right?

[Argos]

Hi Guy,

 

I believe chocolate brown is correct but I'm away from my books to confirm.

[webbcompound]

As far as I am aware chocolate and plum are two descriptions of the same thing. The difference amounts to the varnish rather than the colour. Chocolate is not really a brown, and plum is a very dark purple/red.

[Nearholmer]

Yesterday evening, I was reading a letter in a 1925 MRN, wherein the correspondent was complaining about the midlandisation of the LNWR, and the disappearance of “chocolate and white” carriage livery.

[Worsdell forever]

The problem is what colour is chocolate?

 

[Jol Wilkinson]

2 hours ago, Worsdell forever said:

The problem is what colour is chocolate?

 

It's the dark brown one, the others are mere impostors.

[Guy Rixon]

The white "chocolate" is the homeopathic one - no actual cacao involved.

[Edwardian]

On 10/05/2019 at 18:28, Nearholmer said:

I think it was in the Castle Aching thread that I caused a diversion into strawberries, based on an absolutely brilliant series of photos taken in Hampshire for a news service , which revealed, among other things, LNWR passenger-rated vans being worked direct from the originating station to midland and northern cities.

 

Strawberries on the South Western

 

Strawberries on the South Eastern

 

LNWR fruit vans in deepest Hampshire

 

Loading the LNWR Vans

 

Inside the Edinburgh Van

 

 

[Guy Rixon]

Thanks for the links. This is important for Strand as the recently-discovered WTT shows that there were LNWR vans working up from Kent in the fruit specials. These will go from Cannon through Strand and up the CCEJ to Willesden instead of via Holborn and the Met Widened Lines.

 

I see the removable shelves in the picture of loading a van. They are stacked against the van side.

 

I shall have to build some louvred LNWR vans; it looks like there were a few diagrams to choose from. I have one D&S kit part-built from years back but have lost some chassis parts. Perhaps a printed kit is in order?