Nether Madder and Green Soudley Rly

[Dave John]

True Jim, and straw was the bubble wrap of its day, used to stop stuff bumping around in all forms of transport. 

[Annie]

8 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I should have added my belief that although merchants may have advertised all their activities on the sides of their wagons, the wagons themselves were for the conveyance of coal and coke, or lime if they had specialized lime wagons. Hay would have been conveyed in railway company wagons - as I anticipate @Annie's GE photos would demonstrate.

The wagons used seem to have been mostly 2 or 3 plank fixed side open wagons, - and yes they were railway company wagons.  When I recently commissioned some (digital) model wagons I had some discussion with Cameron from Darlington Works as to how best to represent a hay load.  It's still very much a WIP at this stage.

[Compound2632]

Reading Vastern Road yard, c. 1905:

 

 

.. and a dumb-buffered PO lime wagon.

[Martin S-C]

Whoa. That lime wagon is extremely white. I may have to revisit my weathering techniques.

 

[Compound2632]

Photos of lime wagons in traffic are rare, especially for the pre-Great War period, but while I have seen examples that are white all over, I've seen others where the lime is chiefly around the doors, as on your model. 

[Martin S-C]

There is also a tendency for photos to 'burn out' white and light colours in photographs, even modern emulsions (pre-digital) had that problem to some extent so a pale grey object can look much whiter in photographs. Even so, in that image you can see the doors are dropped open and the interior is white as well. For a long while I could not work out the perspective of the dark shape, its alignment looked so odd, but its the shadowed interior of the wagon with one corner angled back as the light falls on the white floor interior.

 

EDIT: Looking at the sheeted feed wagons I think I could make up a removable load to represent that - a block of balsa wood that is a loose push-fit into the wagon with the load represented by a curved balsa shape covered with a wagon sheet, some lines and some grassy material sticking out along the sides and ends.

Edited May 24, 2021 by Martin S-C

[Compound2632]

10 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

EDIT: Looking at the sheeted feed wagons I think I could make up a removable load to represent that - a block of balsa wood that is a loose push-fit into the wagon with the load represented by a curved balsa shape covered with a wagon sheet, some lines and some grassy material sticking out along the sides and ends.

 

How would you make the ropes that secure the load removable? I've come to the conclusion that one has generally to conceive of a wagon and its load as a single model, especially when it's a sheeted load. I wince whenever I read of removeable sheeted loads - it must be so fiddly untying the sheet tie ropes from those miniature cleats...

[Schooner]

Elasticated thread? Readily available down to .5mm which is probably as close as anyone anyone would want to get to scale.

 

Wouldn't be perfect, but could be reasonable. Anyone tried?

[Compound2632]

36 minutes ago, Schooner said:

Elasticated thread? Readily available down to .5mm which is probably as close as anyone anyone would want to get to scale.

 

Wouldn't be perfect, but could be reasonable. Anyone tried?

 

Looping under the solebars? Essentially holding the sheet down with rubber bands! 

 

Anyway, what I don't quite understand is why one would want removeable loads. There's no realistic way of unloading them in the open on the layout*. If you want a wagon to go into the goods shed loaded and come out unloaded, have two models of the same wagon and use sleight of hand...

 

*Well, there are exceptions...

 

Crude, but firmly rooted in the prototype:

 

 

Edited May 25, 2021 by Compound2632

[Martin S-C]

We have different imaginations at work. I am more than happy to hand-lift loads into and out of wagons on my railway and much of my wagon modelling (such as the interiors) is done with this practice in mind. Some of us sit and make chuff-chuff noises (in our heads maybe, some using our vocal chords) and some of us shunt empty or permanently loaded wagons around our model yards and both are fine. I just have an imagination that says its more fun if a wagon arrives in a yard loaded and leaves empty using the same model because in my imagination the little metal people have become animated and done it.

My coal loads have steel washers and nuts glued underneath so I can lift them out with a magnetic "grabber stick" without handling the model. This also makes loaded coal trains significantly heavier than empties.

I think a large part of our hobby is escapism and playing trains this way is one path I take to escape.

Of course covered vans are easy But I often lament the lack of removable roofs to my cattle wagons which prevents me adding a load of livestock temporarily. I do plan to make small rectangular bases of "dirty floor" with a cluster of cows, pigs or sheep attached that will slot into the pens of my cattle dock so that a "cargo" can be put there to be taken away after the cattle vans depart.

We had a thread on here a while ago about sheeted opens and I have a set of sheets made up like paper hats that I just push over the wagons. Some have anonymous lumps under them to represent some bulky load and others sag. Still others are pitched to slot over a sheet rail.

For these and for any future horse feed load I just don't use lines. They'd be run over the sheet as per the great photo Stephen supplied but the lines would end at the top of wagon body side.

[Compound2632]

Chacun à son goût, or each to his own gout, as my Irish grandfather used to say. I'm a wagon sheet pedant!

[Sandhole]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Looping under the solebars? Essentially holding the sheet down with rubber bands! 

 

Anyway, what I don't quite understand is why one would want removeable loads. There's no realistic way of unloading them in the open on the layout*. If you want a wagon to go into the goods shed loaded and come out unloaded, have two models of the same wagon and use sleight of hand...

 

*Well, there are exceptions...

 

Crude, but firmly rooted in the prototype:

 

 

Lionel were the kings of working accessories.
Check out the youtube stuff, they made some awe-inspiring stuff.

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, Sandhole said:

Lionel were the kings of working accessories.
Check out the youtube stuff, they made some awe-inspiring stuff.

 

The infamous Triang giraffe car was based on their O-gauge version, I believe:

Which does raise the question of how giraffes were transported. Elephants and camels went by horsebox, generally.

[Martin S-C]

And of course Annie, with her digital worlds has it better than all of us with loads that really are loaded and unloaded... kind of.

[Sandhole]

Just now, Compound2632 said:

 

The infamous Triang giraffe car was based on their O-gauge version, I believe:

Which does raise the question of how giraffes were transported. Elephants and camels went by horsebox, generally.

A direct oo scale copy.
Having googled just that. The Ringling Bros Circus evidently had a specially designed padded railway wagon.

[Regularity]

Peter  Denny used to have swappable coal wagon bodies, loaded and empty, and at the end of the timetable day, would do the relevant swaps (to empties in the yard, to fulls in the fiddle).

Nothing wrong with a similar approach to loads and sheets.

[Compound2632]

9 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Peter  Denny used to have swappable coal wagon bodies, loaded and empty, and at the end of the timetable day, would do the relevant swaps (to empties in the yard, to fulls in the fiddle).

Nothing wrong with a similar approach to loads and sheets.

 

I don't see how one could have swappable bodies - whole wagons surely?

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I don't see how one could have swappable bodies - whole wagons surely?

Railway Modellers, May 1975. Or his books.

[Martin S-C]

He built them all himself so perhaps his bodies had lugs or spigots that slotted into the underframes?

Bit more therapy today...

 

[Regularity]

6 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

He built them all himself so perhaps his bodies had lugs or spigots that slotted into the underframes?

Although they are technically part of the underframe, the side sills sat either side of the floor, projecting below it between the head stocks: a bit of packing between the sills and the sole bars, and there you go. There would also be the stanchions on the end, for extra location.

[Compound2632]

39 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Although they are technically part of the underframe, the side sills sat either side of the floor, projecting below it between the head stocks: a bit of packing between the sills and the sole bars, and there you go. There would also be the stanchions on the end, for extra location.

 

I suppose that might be worth doing if you were scratchbuilding the running gear, as I imagine he was; also saving on wheels.

[Schooner]

Just a little note to clarify that I 'agree'd to @Compound2632's earlier post pre-edit, when it only mentioned looping elastic under solebars.

 

I can absolutely understand why some would want removable loads (I'm toying with becoming one of them), but life overtook my reply to that part and @Martin S-C has covered it all so I've 'agree'd with his post too.

 

While I'm here saying things that don't need said: it's great to see life on this thread again. Enjoy the catharsis 

Edited May 25, 2021 by Schooner

[Annie]

7 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

And of course Annie, with her digital worlds has it better than all of us with loads that really are loaded and unloaded... kind of.

True enough Martin, though it can sometimes look a bit suddenly done by magic if it's not set up properly.  One thing that does work well in the digital world is that loaded wagons are heavier and have different movement physics to unloaded wagons.

[Regularity]

57 minutes ago, Schooner said:

 

I can absolutely understand why some would want removable loads (I'm toying with becoming one of them)

You are toying with the idea of becoming a removable load?

[Martin S-C]

15 hours ago, Regularity said:

You are toying with the idea of becoming a removable load?

I think that means being scanned by ModelU and having your 4mm self placed on a platform?
 

15 hours ago, Schooner said:

While I'm here saying things that don't need said: it's great to see life on this thread again. Enjoy the catharsis 

Thank you for those kind words. Even though all my 'carpentry' at the moment is destructive, its totally enjoyable because I know I'm dismantling a model railway I'd come to realise I'd never be happy with and can work towards replacing it with one I will be. It was an expensive lesson but I've learned it well.

Today wasn't so damp and simply awful as it has been for a week so I worked until 9:00 o'clock tonight and made good progress. Green Soudley (aka my version of Madderport) was dismantled today and that was a shame, but I feel no remorse or loss. As the song lyric goes "The only way is up".

Edited May 26, 2021 by Martin S-C