Nether Madder and Green Soudley Rly

[St Enodoc]

3 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

In the middle of what will become the underside I superglue a steel nut to give depth to the load as well as weight,

Those nuts are a good idea. They will also let you lift the loads out using a magnet.

 

Can you show us the 10-sided dice please?

[Martin S-C]

Argh! I just wrote out a huge explanation of the freight system and my computer ate it just as I was about to post. I'll rewrite it tomorrow. For now its late and I'm all grumpy now so I'll be off to bed...

[Annie]

10 sided dice.  Very familiar to D&D and RPG table top game players.

 

[St Enodoc]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

10 sided dice.  Very familiar to D&D and RPG table top game players.

 

Thanks Annie. Now may I ask what D&D and RPG mean please?

[Stubby47]

Dungeons and Dragons,  and Role Playing Games.

[RedGemAlchemist]

5 hours ago, Annie said:

10 sided dice.  Very familiar to D&D and RPG table top game players.

 

Speaking as a D&D player I can say that I have more of these than I can keep track of.

[St Enodoc]

5 hours ago, Stubby47 said:

Dungeons and Dragons,  and Role Playing Games.

Ah, I see. D&D was (is?) Distress & Diversion in the flying world, while Role Playing Games sounds like something dreamed up by the Human Remains Resources department.

[Nearholmer]

I thought RPG meant  ‘rocket propelled grenade’, which worries me, because I don’t know how I know that!

[RedGemAlchemist]

27 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I thought RPG meant  ‘rocket propelled grenade’, which worries me, because I don’t know how I know that!

Same way I do I expect - video games, movies or the Imperial War Museum.

[Martin S-C]

5 hours ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

Speaking as a D&D player I can say that I have more of these than I can keep track of.

You are well equipped to design a freight despatch system for your railway then!

My dice are 20 sided, which I think makes them dodecahedrons. I use the red to indicate tens and the black for units. 00 is 100. I apologise for the yellowed numbers and the accumulation of, ...erm, material, within the recessed digits; I bought these when I played D&D in the sixth form at school and they've been rattled between teenagers sweaty palms far more times than I've had hot dinners.



For information the roll above is 76.

A bit more on my open wagon loads method. Due to quite a few pre-grouping small wagons I have five sizes of coal load - #1 is 57mm long, #2 is 60mm #3 is 63mm, #4 is 66mm and #5 82mm, the last being for 20t wagons of which I only have a couple. The 66mm ones are also restricted to my 1950s stock set as they fit a few old Mainline and Hornby wagons of non-standard dimensions which in time I'll probably dispose of. The smaller three are for 14ft 6ins/9ft wb wagons, 15ft/9ft wheelbase wagons and 16ft/10ft wheelbase respectively. I have to mark them up on the underside with the size as an aid to operators but perhaps I may need to put a corresponding mark inside each wagon somewhere. I'll see if confusion reigns when we get operating sessions started.



Plastic or resin coal loads commonly come with RTR wagons so I just spray these black, daub on a generous helping of PVA and shake real crushed coal onto them. To prevent coal granules getting stuck near the edges and fouling the wagon sides I don't put PVA near the edges. This also lets you handle them by the edges so you don't get dirty fingers. If the load is injection moulded plastic it'll have a domed shape underneath. For this type I press in a blob of DAS clay and when that's dry, glue the steel nut to that.

So far I have loads of coal, graded limestone, sawn timber and some engineering parts resting on timber baulks, the baulks being cut to be a close but not tight fit inside the wagon. For my bogie bolster and twin MITES wagons I have some sawn timber loads, a few lengths of timber in the round (old offcuts of buddleia) and a pipes and a girder load. I also have some of the commercial resin tarpaulin loads, some barrels, etc. I am not a big fan of these as they look wrong, the tarpaulins being over the load but inside the wagon which is a useless way of keeping rain off the load, but they are very easy and forgiving to use so for private use I accept their inaccuracies. My limestone test examples I am not happy with and will re-do these. The machinery loads can be hand-lifted out, but all the mineral loads have either nuts or washers glued underneath and can be lifted out with my magnetic "grabbers". These are a 10cm length of 15mm dia wooden dowel with a neodymium magnet glued on one end and a screw loop fixed to the other so it can be hung on a hook next to the control panel. Each control position on the layout has a grabber made for it.

Tools of the trade.

 

Underside of load showing DAS clay filler and markings for a #3 63mm long load. Some have had washers added under the nut for extra weight.
 

Loaded! There is a small visible gap but having that is a price I am prepared to pay for the ease of use. The alternatives are permanently full and permanently empty wagons (just no) and loose filling with a loader system. This requires handling the models too much to empty them.
 

Unloaded! Endless hours of fun for all the family. Well, the operating team anyhow. My apologies to Annie and anyone else of a nervous disposition for that strange green contraption in the background. I was play-testing with my 1950s rolling stock set yesterday.
 

I recommend consuming copious amounts of Cornish ice cream to provide suitable storage containers. Other flavours of container are available. I'm going to need one per operator location. Yum.
 

The graded limestone shapes need to be lower to go into the 2- 3- and 4- plank quarry wagons. A couple of washers does the trick for these. On the right is a #1 57mm load for a small 9ft wb wagon.

 

Some of the easy to use but not so realistic resin loads.

 

Edited July 25, 2019 by Martin S-C

[Harlequin]

In BBC BASIC:

PRINT RND(100)

 

You could (one could) write a nice little freight generation program to run on your operator's terminals. Software would have some advantages over cards and dice but maybe not the same romance.

 

[Martin S-C]

Last night I thought about a freight generation program based on the variables I'm working with. I have a programmer friend who could knock one up for me for the price of a couple of beers.

The card deck though is cycled all the way through and reshuffled once completed so this means you get every single freight type at some stage, even the extremely unlikely ones. With a computer program you might never see some wagons in use for months due to the random picking.

[Harlequin]

17 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

Last night I thought about a freight generation program based on the variables I'm working with. I have a programmer friend who could knock one up for me for the price of a couple of beers.

The card deck though is cycled all the way through and reshuffled once completed so this means you get every single freight type at some stage, even the extremely unlikely ones. With a computer program you might never see some wagons in use for months due to the random picking.

 

You could make the program do absolutely anything you wanted. It could easily cycle through all the "cards" before "reshuffling" them.

 

[Annie]

4 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

My apologies to Annie and anyone else of a nervous disposition for that strange green contraption in the background. I was play-testing with my 1950s rolling stock set yesterday.

The aliens have landed, - RUN!

[Martin S-C]

12 minutes ago, Annie said:

The aliens have landed, - RUN!

On the Southern Railway the aliens ask "Take us to your leader".

[Nearholmer]

Very Eagle comic. If they didn’t provide a cutaway drawing of the Leader, they should have, and they had the Mekon.

 

Now, this loco really is frightening. 

 

 

Edited July 25, 2019 by Nearholmer

[RedGemAlchemist]

55 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Very Eagle comic. If they didn’t provide a cutaway drawing of the Leader, they should have, and they had the Mekon.

 

Now, this loco really is frightening. 

 In more ways than one.

[Compound2632]

On 24/07/2019 at 18:52, Martin S-C said:

Next up, I need a few wagon loads of pit props. Fairly simple to make. 28mm x 62mm 30 thou plasticard rectangles cut deliberately loose to easily fit a standard 10ft open wagon. In the middle of what will become the underside I superglue a steel nut to give depth to the load as well as weight, then I'm chopping up lengths of 2.5mm dowel bought from Hobbycraft into 14mm lengths. These stack 128 to a wagon. Slow going but satisfying once your rhythm gets going.

 

 

Loading of pit props: see p. 43-44 here. Thanks to the Barrowmore Model Railway Group for putting this document online.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Compound2632

[relaxinghobby]

Was the atomic loco a steam turbine loco with an atomic generator, like an atomic submarine?

There was one in Harry Harryharryson's alternative history story A Trans-Atlantic Tunnel Hurrah,

perhaps this should be on the modeling musings / imaginary locomotives.

[Martin S-C]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Now, this loco really is frightening.

Hm... one rough shunt and we'd all be talking from our left head to our right head... Mind you, on the plus side you'd need half as many operator for a model railway.
 

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Loading of pit props: see p. 43-44 here. Thanks to the Barrowmore Model Railway Group for putting this document online.

Cheers Stephen, thanks for the link. My model is based 25 years before the BR period however, so my modelled pit-prop loads will follow local practice which would be close to GWR instructions.

 

All the following images are courtesy of Chris Gwilliam and the Freight and Goods Wagons (UK) FaceBook group.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

And some really nice wagon pictures as a bonus too.

[Martin S-C]

Yes, its a very useful FaceBook group to be a member of if FB is your thing.

[Compound2632]

I had actually been looking for an illustration of the method of loading pit props using four of them as vertical stanchions to secure the rest, but couldn't find one I could post. Evidently this method had fallen out of use by BR days. (Too much faf?) Otherwise, that BR document is full of ideas for loading and sheeting and represents a century or more of accumulated experience and wisdom.

 

Your set of photos is fascinating not only for the loading but, as Annie says, for the Great Western wagons - the examples with plates are especially interesting, raising the question whether as late as 1905 these wagons were turned out new with the G.W.R plate at the right hand end (and hence possibly red) or with just the number plate and 25" G W as seen in these photos - possibly the plates had been cast before the decision to change the livery, so it was thought a pity to waste them.

[Annie]

7 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

Yes, its a very useful FaceBook group to be a member of if FB is your thing.

Faceplant does have its uses surprisingly enough.  I belong to a couple of narcolepsy groups on Faceplant, but I make a point of ignoring all the rest of the garbage Faceplant throws up.

[Annie]

34 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Your set of photos is fascinating not only for the loading but, as Annie says, for the Great Western wagons - the examples with plates are especially interesting, raising the question whether as late as 1905 these wagons were turned out new with the G.W.R plate at the right hand end (and hence possibly red) or with just the number plate and 25" G W as seen in these photos - possibly the plates had been cast before the decision to change the livery, so it was thought a pity to waste them.

Yes those number plates were a surprise and definitely show that GWR wagon paint schemes &etc are not as cut and dried as some might think.