Peterborough North

[great northern]

About the wall. It's probably more important that the boundary wall should run outside the shed to the left, as the shed is clearly more recent and is built inside the railway's property, so I'd expect the wall to continue behind it.

 

(I haven't  contributed in ages, but I'm still following and enjoying developments.)

Alan

Hi Alan, and welcome back. The problem in this area is that I haven't the width to model all the way back to the boundary wall with Westwood Street. There were buildings which fronted the street and the wall ran flush with them on either side. In fact some are still there, as can be seen on the Google Earth tour that Artizen posted. Those buildings would be well off the beaseboard edge, if you see what i mean, but they can be seen on 1950's photos sometimes, depending on the angle at which the camera was pointed. The following photos were taken in 1958 by Tim Easter's Father, and are reproduced with his kind permission. All were taken from the North end of platform 3.

The building which is cut in two by the lattice post, and the one to its left, are the two that still exist.

From this angle though, and with the train further away from the platform, they can't be seen at all.

Nor from here. You'll have to take my word for it that they wouldn't be visible even if there wasn't a train in the way. If you look back to the photo of 60012 a few posts back, you will see that there are other buildings in sight, one of which is the subject of the grey mock up which is in place now. Those are well inside the boundary, and just creep onto the bit I can model.

 

The problem then is which view do I choose? Both have advantages. I'm still thinking about it......

[coachmann]

Thompson supporters? That may be going a bit too far.........

I wonder.......... Thompson B1, Thompson L1, Thompson K1, Thompson 01,Thompson coriidor coaches, Thompson non-corridor coaches....all very popular, so if he is chastised for two duds (A1 and A2 variants), then he aint doin' too bad. It seems other big four followers appreciate Thompsons locos more than supposed true LNER followers ha ha, but then some of us were used to seeing cylinder behind bogies.

Edited December 3, 2013 by coachmann

[hornbyandbf3fan]

I wonder.......... Thompson B1, Thompson L1, Thompson K1, Thompson 01,Thompson coriidor coaches, Thompson non-corridor coaches....all very popular, so if he is chastised for two duds (A1 and A2 variants), then he aint doin' too bad. It seems other big four followers appreciate Thompsons locos more than supposed true LNER followers ha ha, but then some of us were used to seeing cylinder behind bogies.

True, Thompson isn't completely evil. The more utilitarian designs such as the B1 and K1 are among my favourite locos. Secretly, we all like him.

 

*Runs for door being chased by angry mob with pitchforks*

[micklner]

Thompson supporters? That may be going a bit too far......... It has a "presence" , that's for sure, but actual performance left a lot to be desired.

         Not so, read excellent Peter Tatlows ( edit sorry Townsend !!)  Eastern Pacifics at Work. Great book for the pictures alone. He had high regard for in particular the A2/3 's . He also states the A1/1 was better than the A10 it replaced. 

         It dispels some of the rumours and falsehoods that still persist to this day 70 years later !!

Edited December 4, 2013 by micklner

[Clive Mortimore]

Not so, read excellent Peter Tatlows Eastern Pacifics at Work. Great book for the pictures alone. He had high regard for in particular the A2/3 's . He also states the A1/1 was better than the A10 it replaced.  It dispels some of the rumours and falsehoods that still persist to this day 70 years later !!

Hi Mick

 

Do you mean Peter Townsend, the last shed master at Kings Cross depot? If so in Eastern Pacifics at Work I am sure he gives the results of a trial between the A1/1 an A4 in coal and water consumption. As a "Modern Image" modeller I better not say who came out best.........

 

 

Edit, by the way Gilbert well done in reaching 200 pages.

Edited December 3, 2013 by Clive Mortimore

[Donington Road]

The problem then is which view do I choose? Both have advantages. I'm still thinking about it......

 

Don't forget you've got to fit those telegraph poles in.

[Donington Road]

is that a double sided buffer next to the engineers building, in the colour picture?

Yes, apologies if this has been posted before.

[islandbridgejct]

I like the double sided buffer stop a lot. How to prevent those b****y shunters using your siding as a through road and moving your departmental stock out of the way in the process.

 

The close up of the building makes clear what was causing the difference in the lower brickwork in the earlier photos. It's been repointed. Presumably steam leaking out of various vehicles parked alongside over the years would have damaged the brick and necessitated a bit of mortar.

 

About that wall on the edge of the yard, there's insufficient information to say what was there, but there's lots of lovely stuff in front of it - wooden frames and, in one picture, what looks like the lower half of the wall of a demolished building. Might I suggest a trick from your legal days? If in doubt, obfuscate - and in this case there's plenty of sh... stuff to throw in the way.

 

Alan

 

(Nice B17 by the way.)

[tetleys]

Gilbert,

 

I've been catching up on P.North and you ask a page or two back whether standing the boundary wall off the back scene is worth bothering with.

 

My old and now dismantled Tetleys Mills had a back drop of industrial buildings and I deliberately added a ginnel in front which had the affect of distancing the retaining/ boundary wall from the flat low relief buildings. I didn't realize why or what my rationale was at the time but I'm sure you'll agree it gives the scene a third dimension rather than a bland flat appearance.

My thanks to T. W. for his excellent original photography and for reducing the pixel size so I could EBay the buildings and more importantly post on RMWeb.

 

Thompson's Pacific's will always divide opinion and I never could appreciate an ugly woman despite her other strengths but since Tim built and weathered your Gateshead example I have to say, like the LMS Ivatt 2-6-0 there is an attraction in both, (not ugly women, I mean locos!).We don't want to be restricted to just the

glamour.

 

Picky of Ancaster

[HerbertHopkins]

Lots of interesting comments regarding Thompson loco's, I think that there will be controversy about the man and his machines for as long as steam locomotives are discussed.

 

I remember, many years ago now, talking to a gentleman who had been a fireman at New England when Thompson Pacifics were first allocated there. He spoke highly of them, 'They were fast' I recall him saying 'God, were they fast!'. Of course it could have been that, compared with other engines that had become very run down during the war, they did indeed seem like something of a revelation. Later, as they themselves became run down, they probably became much less well regarded.  

 

Apart from his pacifics, and possibly the L1's, most of Thompson's engines adequately carried out the jobs they were designed for. B1's and K1's were well regarded and more O1's would probably been built had not vast quantities of WD's been available at knock down prices. 

 

With regard to the A1/1, I think Tony Wright summed it up admirably some years ago when he said it was better than the A10 it originally was but no better than the A3 it would have become had it not been selected for Thompson's controversial rebuild.

 

On a different subject, Congratulations Gilbert on reaching 200 pages and nearly 5,000 posts.

 

Regards

 

Rob

[Metr0Land]

I wonder.......... Thompson B1, Thompson L1, Thompson K1, Thompson 01,Thompson coriidor coaches, Thompson non-corridor coaches....all very popular, so if he is chastised for two duds (A1 and A2 variants), then he aint doin' too bad. It seems other big four followers appreciate Thompsons locos more than supposed true LNER followers ha ha, but then some of us were used to seeing cylinder behind bogies.

 

I hope this isn't taking the thread too far OT but ref the Thompson L1's in the Chilterns something's been puzzling me.  I've seen it stated in books (so it must be true musn't it?) that the Chiltern area crews much preferred the later build L1's to the lowered numbered ones. Were they really so different in behaviour?

[jwealleans]

The first 30 (I think) were built at Stratford, the rest by outside contractors.  Did the contractor built ones have significant differences (apart from the gap in the running plate)?

[JeffP]

Not been on for a while, but here are a few musings, if anayone is interested.

 

I liked the Thompson locos, the A2/3 and Great Northern being my special favourites, they were so a part of my spotting childhood. Great Northern, I seemed to see every time I went to Doncaster, and the spotters on the platforms got excited when an A2/3 arrived instead of the seemingly endless A3 and A1 stream.

 

About that wall: Gilbert, could you cheat a bit? Would it be possible to add some extra distance at the left hand end of the wall, so that the houses appesar to be going further and further away?

The wall could then be suitably reduced in height, and gently curved to the edge of that shed?

 

WE know it's not entirely prototypical, but........

[great northern]

         Not so, read excellent Peter Tatlows ( edit sorry Townsend !!)  Eastern Pacifics at Work. Great book for the pictures alone. He had high regard for in particular the A2/3 's . He also states the A1/1 was better than the A10 it replaced. 

         It dispels some of the rumours and falsehoods that still persist to this day 70 years later !!

Difficult subject this Mick, especially as it is now such a long time ago. I don't think we are going off topic, as the Thompson Pacifics were such an integral part of operations at Peterborough, but that fact alone raises questions in my mind. New England had a fair number of Thompson A2's for most of the '50's, and into the '60's too. There were on average seven allocated at any one time, which is between a quarter and a third of the total number of A2/1's, 2's and 3's. York had another six, so more than half were at one or other of those sheds, neither of which had very much top link express work. Grantham, 30 miles North of Peterborough had, after 1956, only A3's, but was expected to provide power for many of the first rank expresses. I think even the most ardent Gresley fan would concede that by the mid '50's the A3's were showing their age, and were not generally considered to be front line power.

 

The fitting of double kylchaps of course transformed them, as it did the A4's, but that didn't happen until 1957 for the A4's, and mid 1958 for the A3's. So, why were the Thompson engines left at New England, often doing no more than round trips to London on slow stopping trains? And why did the A2/2's average no more than 18000 miles per annum? Some were occasionally sent to Grantham, but always very quickly sent back again. That suggests to me that Grantham enginemen did not even regard them as being the equal of a single chimney A3. Their marginalisation at second rank sheds surely gives an indication as to how they were regarded? Had they been as consistently good as the A1's and the Gresley locos, would they not have been kept at Top Shed and Grantham from new, particularly given the well documented problems with single blast A4's?

 

I'm sure that when recently outshopped after general overhaul they would have seen more use, but the same can be said of any engine. A Thompson Pacific with 3000 miles since overhaul would be preferable to a run down high mileage A3 or A4, but that seems to be as far as it went. My personal recollection, which covers 1955 to 1962, is that they weren't on the first rank trains, and that they were to be seen in much larger numbers on Summer Saturdays, when just about everything that could turn a wheel was pressed into service. Mine have to be content almost exclusively with second rate work, because that is what they were rostered to do.

 

As to Great Northern being better as an A1/1 than as an A10, it would be something of an indictment of ET if it hadn't been. The original was getting on for 25 years old, had not been upgraded to A3, and apparently was regarded as a pretty average member of the class. A more or less full rebuild, with an A4 boiler and technology a quarter of a century advanced would have had to be very poor indeed not to have shown up as being better. Look what it finished up doing though. Passenger pilot at Grantham for some years, and then transferred to Doncaster, which post war was another shed that tended to get the dregs, at least until the advent of diesels resulted in the ER A1's being sent there.

[great northern]

Don't forget you've got to fit those telegraph poles in.

Thanks for reminding me Mick.   I keep looking at them, and then hurriedly relegating them further down the list of jobs to be done. In fact, I think they might be allocated to that nice Mr Leyland.

[great northern]

Gilbert,

 

I've been catching up on P.North and you ask a page or two back whether standing the boundary wall off the back scene is worth bothering with.

Low relief factories.jpg

 

My old and now dismantled Tetleys Mills had a back drop of industrial buildings and I deliberately added a ginnel in front which had the affect of distancing the retaining/ boundary wall from the flat low relief buildings. I didn't realize why or what my rationale was at the time but I'm sure you'll agree it gives the scene a third dimension rather than a bland flat appearance.

My thanks to T. W. for his excellent original photography and for reducing the pixel size so I could EBay the buildings and more importantly post on RMWeb.

 

Thompson's Pacific's will always divide opinion and I never could appreciate an ugly woman despite her other strengths but since Tim built and weathered your Gateshead example I have to say, like the LMS Ivatt 2-6-0 there is an attraction in both, (not ugly women, I mean locos!).We don't want to be restricted to just the

glamour.

 

Picky of Ancaster

Thanks Dave. I think I may defer development of this area until you are able to come over to give your learned opinion on site. I realise that may not be for a while yet, but your eye for detail is second to none. There are several options, but I think it is necessary to be actually looking at the layout to be able to assess which is the best one.

[great northern]

Not been on for a while, but here are a few musings, if anayone is interested.

 

I liked the Thompson locos, the A2/3 and Great Northern being my special favourites, they were so a part of my spotting childhood. Great Northern, I seemed to see every time I went to Doncaster, and the spotters on the platforms got excited when an A2/3 arrived instead of the seemingly endless A3 and A1 stream.

 

About that wall: Gilbert, could you cheat a bit? Would it be possible to add some extra distance at the left hand end of the wall, so that the houses appesar to be going further and further away?

The wall could then be suitably reduced in height, and gently curved to the edge of that shed?

 

WE know it's not entirely prototypical, but........

Thanks Jeff. One of the options I have considered is indeed to add a bit to the baseboard in that area, which would allow the houses to be set back a bit from the wall, and to alter the perspective as you suggest. First though I have to decide what I am going to include and what I'm not, and that is proving to be rather difficult.

[micklner]

Difficult subject this Mick, especially as it is now such a long time ago. I don't think we are going off topic, as the Thompson Pacifics were such an integral part of operations at Peterborough, but that fact alone raises questions in my mind. New England had a fair number of Thompson A2's for most of the '50's, and into the '60's too. There were on average seven allocated at any one time, which is between a quarter and a third of the total number of A2/1's, 2's and 3's. York had another six, so more than half were at one or other of those sheds, neither of which had very much top link express work. Grantham, 30 miles North of Peterborough had, after 1956, only A3's, but was expected to provide power for many of the first rank expresses. I think even the most ardent Gresley fan would concede that by the mid '50's the A3's were showing their age, and were not generally considered to be front line power.

 

The fitting of double kylchaps of course transformed them, as it did the A4's, but that didn't happen until 1957 for the A4's, and mid 1958 for the A3's. So, why were the Thompson engines left at New England, often doing no more than round trips to London on slow stopping trains? And why did the A2/2's average no more than 18000 miles per annum? Some were occasionally sent to Grantham, but always very quickly sent back again. That suggests to me that Grantham enginemen did not even regard them as being the equal of a single chimney A3. Their marginalisation at second rank sheds surely gives an indication as to how they were regarded? Had they been as consistently good as the A1's and the Gresley locos, would they not have been kept at Top Shed and Grantham from new, particularly given the well documented problems with single blast A4's?

 

I'm sure that when recently outshopped after general overhaul they would have seen more use, but the same can be said of any engine. A Thompson Pacific with 3000 miles since overhaul would be preferable to a run down high mileage A3 or A4, but that seems to be as far as it went. My personal recollection, which covers 1955 to 1962, is that they weren't on the first rank trains, and that they were to be seen in much larger numbers on Summer Saturdays, when just about everything that could turn a wheel was pressed into service. Mine have to be content almost exclusively with second rate work, because that is what they were rostered to do.

 

As to Great Northern being better as an A1/1 than as an A10, it would be something of an indictment of ET if it hadn't been. The original was getting on for 25 years old, had not been upgraded to A3, and apparently was regarded as a pretty average member of the class. A more or less full rebuild, with an A4 boiler and technology a quarter of a century advanced would have had to be very poor indeed not to have shown up as being better. Look what it finished up doing though. Passenger pilot at Grantham for some years, and then transferred to Doncaster, which post war was another shed that tended to get the dregs, at least until the advent of diesels resulted in the ER A1's being sent there.

Excellent points in particular re the A2/2, which I made a too suttle point by not mentioning them in my reply !!. They were I agree the poorest of the bunch!!. Still cannot understand how Thompson in mid war managed to get authority to  rebuild the P2's when they should have been simply been transfered South to the ECML.

Re the A1/1 I believe the book comment is in relation to all the original A1/A10 outputs not just GN in particluar? She was never going to be a 1st class front runner , a one off design quickly overlooked with the arrival of the best Pacific ever built, the Peppercorn A1's. There was no logic in maintaining her in tip top condition, the general Railway workers apparent attitude to Thompson probably didnt help either. Surprising she lasted as long as did, Steam wasnt exactly being looked after in general in the Sixties.

Re the A2/3 the only one designed from scratch, much better and a good performer and one of my personal favourites.

[Tony Wright]

It seems that one only has to post a picture of a Thompson Pacific or mention them and partisanship 'breaks out'.

Gilbert's (and micklner's) points are well made, and I've written reams about them. However, perhaps a few observations might be relevant.

 

As is probably known, in the last 12 months I've had privileged access to the first-hand (unpublished) notes of some of those responsible for the running of the P2s up to their rebuilding. There is no doubt there was a near mutiny in Scotland and, as has been said many times, how ET obtained permission to rebuild them in the darkest war days still has a hint of mystery about it. Though the rebuilding cured some of the problems, equally debilitating (if not more so) features were introduced and the locos could no longer do what they could as P2s. According to the late and 'in the know' Malcolm Crawley, not a penny of the expenses incurred in the rebuilding was ever recovered, and the six locos weren't as useful (or reliable) as rebuilds. One hears of ET 'making the most of a bad job' - not according to the guys who actually ran the P2s (and Toram Beg was only in the junior links at Haymarket at the time).

 

The A2/1s are a curiosity. The irony is they weren't as good and reliable as Kylchap double-chimney V2s, so that rather begs the question why, at the time, didn't ET just fit the last four with this device? That said, the same question could also be asked of Gresley, and the BRB in the early/mid-'50s.

 

The A2/3s were the best, of course, but were let down by features such as the poor front end (no need to inherit the cylinder arrangement from the A2/2 for new construction), the further-forward dome and the old-fashioned cab front. If they had been 'right', a further 15 would have been built under Peppercorn's signature.

 

The A1/1 is probably the most contentious, and Gilbert's observations are dead right. I've recently assisted Peter Coster (in the most modest of ways) by proof reading his latest A3 book and checking on the picture captions. Our e-mail correspondence on 60113 was most enlightening. One cannot question ET's motives in seeking to produce an 'improved' post-Gresley pacific. However, apart from the divided drive/separate valve gear (the latter, one could argue was better than the conjugated sort), the best bits in in were Gresley features - the A4 boiler/firebox/combustion chamber and the Kylchap exhaust. Where it failed was in the frame/cylinder arrangements, dictated by Thompson's insistence on equal-length connecting rods. Compared with a double chimney A3 (with an A4 boiler?) it was no better in terms of performance and far less reliable.

 

None of the Thompson Pacifics rode as well as the Gresley pair (neither did the A1s/A2s as well, until ALCAZAR got an A4 bogie - then it rode like an A4). This was probably due to the use of the inadequate B1 bogie (why did Thompson need to change a bogie/bearing/springing arrangement which rode so perfectly?).

 

My observations of ET's Pacifics were that they were almost always used on secondary services - I never saw HONEYWAY. The 'almost' refers to 60500 fairly blasting northwards through Retford after a signal check at Grove Road, on the down 'Heart of Midlothian'. 60504 turned up on a humdrum stopper later on, its front end obliterated by its own steam. A few days later, on Bawtry Station, I watched 60506 really struggling in an even larger wreath of steam to recover from the viaduct slack, as 60032 just regally breezed by on the up 'Elizabethan. During my only visit to York in full steam days (summer, 1957), most of the Thompson Pacifics allocated there were on shed and 60515 was south-side pilot.

 

But, it was all such a long time ago, and, as Gilbert has alluded to, the fact that, in England, they were always shedded at places with little top-link work rather does indicate what the operating authorities thought of them.

 

Still, I can relive those memories through the models I've made, and, as models, the Thompson Pacifics run just as well as any others.

[micklner]

I think Tonys last post  sums up a lot of Thompsons work, he appears to take great delight with interfering with original designs. Ones that spring to mind are other than Pacifics are:-

J11 D49 D20 O4 B17

As far as I know none of these were any better than the original designs or in some cases even worse!!.

Same point again, he must have been some kind of magician with the LNER Board how to did he ever justify these rebuilds to them. Wartime conditions, LNER skint as ever and there he is fluffing about with old Locos looking for ones to rebuild to become projected standard designs for the LNER.

 

Tony those unpublished notes, sound like a very good basis for a very interesting book !!

[great northern]

Well, we may have been going over old ground, but it is good to see that it can be done in a reasoned and non confrontational way. As Tony says, they were a part of the 1950's ECML scene, so they need to be there on any model, and they are welcome and appreciated on mine.

 

Having somehow got to page 200, and very nearly to 5000 replies , I think we should have a few more photos to celebrate. This morning I reached the Down Northumbrian in the sequence, which resulted in this sight at the end of Platform 3.

How lucky those spotters are to be sandwiched in between two of Sir Nigel's finest. I suspect that our minds might have been more on Sir Murrough Wilson, who didn't appear down here very often,but did we appreciate at the time how incredibly fortunate we were to witness sights like this? I can only speak for myself, but even as a 13 year old oik I reckon I did have a sense of privilege.

 

Silver Link will reappear later, and head back to London, while Sir Murrough will return to the mysterious land where, so we were told, he and even the Scottish A4's were daily sights. I'm not sure we believed it though.

 

I then trotted off to the South end, where a Spital Bridge D16 was waiting to take passengers for East Anglia down to East station. Lovely engines, of which I saw very few, until five were suddenly and rather inexplicably transferred to Lincoln in 1957 mainly to work over the Midland line to Nottingham and Derby. They replaced our D11's, so we had two very handsome 4.4.0 classes right at the very end of their long and successful lives. Did we appreciate them as much as we did A4's? Sadly, no.

[Tony Wright]

Heartiest congratulations on 200 Not Out.

 

Sorry to be a pedant, though, but none of my records ever has 60014 as being shedded at St Rollox (65B). That is unless my eyes are playing tricks with identifying the shedplate. 

[Mallard60022]

Warm pictures and informative chat on a cold night - lovely.

Thanks

P

[LNER4479]

Is it me? Am I post #5000? Congratulations on your milestone GN irrespective.   Here's to the second 5000 to get you to...Hush-hush!

 

I'm not even going to enter the ET debate. Being pre-war, I don't have to

 

(#4999 - Damn! missed it by one...)

Edited December 4, 2013 by LNER4479

[New Haven Neil]

no, me!