Wright writes.....

[coachmann]

Shucks! I was hoping you were reviewing some new Hornby coaches......

 

[gr.king]

Mischievous remarks coming up, so don't read them if your sense of humour is non-existent:

 

1. What? No comment from Coachmann to tell us how LMS coaches were superior to the LNER streamliners?

 

2. Does it really say, as I suspect, "Yorkshire Tea" on Rupert Brown's shirt?

[Barry O]

Mischievous remarks coming up, so don't read them if your sense of humour is non-existent:

 

1. What? No comment from Coachmann to tell us how LMS coaches were superior to the LNER streamliners?

 

2. Does it really say, as I suspect, "Yorkshire Tea" on Rupert Brown's shirt?

In response - something from me not Coach:

 

 

1 yes the LMS streamlined stock was very good and may have been better but were never really used as a rake in the UK

 

and as Yorkshire CCC member myself..

 

2 Yes it does as he's wearing a Yorkshire CCC supporters shirt to celebrate them winning the county championship...

 

Baz

[Oldddudders]

And I note the box for your Life-Like Proto 2000 C&O E8 has also made it into the pic!

[coachmann]

1. What? No comment from Coachmann to tell us how LMS coaches were superior to the LNER streamliners?

 

 

 

 

Hell, how old do you think I am?   

 

 

[Barry O]

And I note the box for your Life-Like Proto 2000 C&O E8 has also made it into the pic!

Yes and I brought the one with a Kaydee on it instead of the one with the stoke summit special one.

 

People noticed the Mars light...

Edited October 4, 2014 by Barry O

[Tony Wright]

Tony

 

the M&GN layout is great .. well I enjoyed playing with it yesterday.....

 

Barry

Thanks Barry.

 

You cracked how to operate the little bit of my railway very quickly, including the marshalling of the 11-car excursion. 

 

The MR/M&GNR bit is 12' x 4', meaning 2' radius curves on the ends. Actually, it's a twitch more than 4', so the inner radius at the west end is 2', and the outer one a bit more, but that's still a bit tight. However, I've built a B1, B12, two K2s and umpteen 4Fs to go round those tight curves without too much difficulty. The four Bachmann 'Flying Pigs' have no trouble, and neither does one of the three J6s (the bottom two are on the GN bit, so I haven't tested them). The six other B1s on the main line might also get round, but there was only one which ran (61159, which I've modelled). Though the gap between carriages is a bit wide, even the longest LMS stuff goes round with ease. 

 

But, those 90 degree bends are a bit of an eyesore, but I'll have to live with that. It's amusing how (with maturity?) attitudes change through life. Imagine as a kid having a train set of 8' x 4'. Mine to start with was fixed to an old flat door, yet I still filled it with track and had two stations. On the upper bit, I have eight trains - the 'Leicester' (shortened by a carriage), an 11-car excursion, an Up and Down freight and four three-sets (two two Up and two Down) for the Nottingham-Kings Lynn services.

 

I'll take some pictures tomorrow showing how it all works.

 

Finally, Rupert (quite rightly) wore a shirt in celebration of Yorkshire's well-deserved victory in the County Championship, but why doesn't someone in authority sort out the nonsensical tautology of 'Yorkshire County Cricket Club' (or Lancs, Leics, Notts, Northants or any of the other shires)? It should be York County Cricket Club or Yorkshire Cricket Club, because shire and county are words for exactly the same thing. They might just as well put Yorkshire Shire Cricket Club or York County County Cricket Club. Middlesex CCC, Essex CCC or Surrey CCC are quite correct because they have no 'shire' suffix, and are, thus, not tautological. 

 

One day I might be be arrested for defacing (by painting out the 'shire' bit) the 'Welcome to the County of Lincolnshire' signs when I travel back home on occasions. Justifiable graffiti? I think not. 

 

The GWR and its successors knew exactly the correct usage, with 'County of Chester', 'County of Hants', 'County of Berks', 'County of Worcester' and so on. The post-War educated managers who were responsible for latterly naming some of the Class 47s were ignorant in the extreme! Shame on them. 

Edited October 3, 2014 by Tony Wright

[teaky]

Minefield!

 

Shouldn't "County of Hants" be "County of Hamwic", Hants being an abreviation of the shire (Hampshire) rather than the town originally at its centre (now absorbed into Southampton)?

 

Don't Essex, Kent etc. already refer to administrative areas (counties based on old kingdoms) rather than towns thereby creating the same tautological problem?

 

I'm in complete agreement on the principle though.

 

A modern minor irritation is PIN number - personal identification number number (sigh).

 

There's a fantastic example where things got out of hand in Worcestershire.  Bredon Hill which combines Celtic, Saxon and English to say Hill Hill Hill !

[Mallard60022]

PAT + Test yuch!

P

 

P.S. Tony. have you considered  holes in the shed wall and a Coachman style exterior weatherproof shelf. Even if only at the east side it could help your radius issues?

Phil

[gr.king]

For tautology in place names I understand that Lincolnshire's Isle of Axholme takes the first prize, Holme being old Danish for island (remember the Danes held sway for a while over the East of England) and Ax (it is thought) also meaning island in a much older English tongue.

Edited October 4, 2014 by gr.king

[petethemole]

Shouldn't "County of Hants" be "County of Hamwic", Hants being an abreviation of the shire (Hampshire) rather than the town originally at its centre (now absorbed into Southampton)?

 

The county name derives from the Late Saxon settlement of Hamtun that succeeded the Middle Saxon trading town of Hamwic. It was sited on higher ground to the west following the decline of seaborne trade due to the Vikings. Alternative spellings were Hantun and Hantune and the county name derived from it, recorded  in the Domesday book as Hantescire. The wic part of the earlier name indicates a trading settlement on a navigable river or estuary and also occurs in Norwich, Ipswich, Dunwich, etc. Other examples include Eborwic (Saxon York, derived from Roman Eboracum and later Viking Jorvik) and Londonwic.

 

Tautological placenames include the various rivers Avon (Conquering Saxon: what's that called? British prisoner: Avon (=river).

 

Pete.

[Tony Wright]

PAT + Test yuch!

P

 

P.S. Tony. have you considered  holes in the shed wall and a Coachman style exterior weatherproof shelf. Even if only at the east side it could help your radius issues?

Phil

I had thought of that, Phil. 

 

However, though my wife is the most understanding of women (and also the most tolerant after 40+ years of being married to me), even her acceptance of my being a total loony might have been stretched to breaking point if various weatherproof  'U'-shaped protrusions from my shed had begun to cover her decking and neatly-tended flower beds!

 

No, I'm afraid 'selective compression' has to be the order of the day for my MR/M&GNR bit of LB. 

 

 

But how much selective compression can one accept? Eight miles reduced to two and half feet? The plate bridge in the background on the MR is a modified Hornby product and is representative of the one that used to stand at Wymondham (the only one of its sort between Saxby and Bourne). The nearest real overbridge westwards is at Castle Bytham but though it's girder-supported, it's brick-topped. Not only that, in both cases (though the decks are at an angle to the track) the rails beneath are dead straight. So, here we have an example of my hypocrisy with regard to the smaller system. Note the far-too-near plate bridge, the too-tight angle between the carriages and the fact that the rest of the train just disappears. 

 

The A1 on the bottom bit has no such problems. Though it's just come round a 180 degree bend, there's at least six inches of straight track before it bursts out into the light, so selective compression is not apparent at all, nor needed. 

 

The locos are, respectively, my pre-historic Nu-Cast K2 on a scratch-built chassis, painted and weathered by me, and one of my A1s I built from a DJH kit. The latter is painted by Ian Rathbone - a much better job than I could ever achieve.

 

 

Another consequence of tight radii is the need for much greater gaps between carriages. I know there are systems which expand and contract accordingly but some of those are a fag to couple up in my experience. The B1 is about to dive into a tight curve but the A4 has a much easier path. You can just make out the start of the 'tight' curves on the main line but these are out of sight in normal lighting conditions and the eye is tricked into believing that the lines just carry on straight. No such luck with the top bit. 

 

Even more hypocrisy is the presence of a Hornby Buffet Car on the M&GNR. No matter, I've just started building the appropriate D&S replacement. 

 

Even, even more hypocrisy; the A4 has electric warning flashes (1961) and the bit on the top was lifted in 1959. The A4 is a renumbered/renamed/detailed/weathered Hornby product and the B1 a Bachmann body on a Comet chassis.

 

 

Taken from track level, perhaps the tight curve can be lived with. In reality, the curve (of huge radius) should go to the right (that would take it right into the middle of Mo's garden!), but Shaky's impressionistic trees do the trick, at least in part. Ian Wilson's part-built signal box marks the end-on junction. The loco is a modified Bachmann 4F, one of three I reported on in BRM last year. Mr Wilson's front numberplate definitely looks the part.

 

 

Looking westwards, the problem of what topography should be to the north and south is apparent as a 2P heads for Bourne (Palitoy? body on a Comet chassis with the tender-drive chucked away). I renumbered/weathered it and added yet another correct-style Pacific front numberplate, though I need to change the shedplate.

 

Obviously, I've Photoshopped out the curtains and wall in the background but does it work? 

 

The girder bridge, other than being the correct length, is all wrong by the way. It's obviously been cobbled together from Airfix/Dapol parts but really needs replacing (more hypocrisy?). Is 3D printing the answer? I have all the dimensions. Will anyone like to comment, please? 

 

 

 

As promised, shots of the MR/M&GNR fiddle yard. I'll let folk work out how it might be operated, but it requires (in part) a fair bit of backwards and forwards movement of stock. The two trains on the lower level are in the Up kick-back sidings on the main line.

 

Finally, Phil, thanks for a great day in Retford during the week. How things have changed since I first stood (not was stood) on the 'wall', in 1956!

 

Thanks, too, to all those delightful comments about tautology. Another thing I hate with regard to the 'mangling' of our beautiful mother tongue is the qualification of absolutes - watching some antiques programme this week, the 'expert' stated 'this piece is entirely unique'. More tautology? 

 

Speaking of experts, professor Brian Cox doesn't seem to know the difference between the correct use of 'myself' and 'I'. 'A friend and myself visited some observatory (or something like)' as he stated on radio this week doesn't sound right to me. 

 

Not that my commenting on tautology or the subtleties of correct grammar make my railway modelling any better, even though it should be. 

Edited October 4, 2014 by Tony Wright

[queensquare]

Oh what larks, great fun:-)

In Wiltshire and Somerset we say, 'gert big .......' , gert of course meaning, big.

 

I fully agree about 'entirely unique' or 'almost unique'. The other one that gets me is putting in 110% effort.

 

Jerry 

[Allegheny1600]

Oh what larks, great fun:-)

In Wiltshire and Somerset we say, 'gert big .......' , gert of course meaning, big.

 

I fully agree about 'entirely unique' or 'almost unique'. The other one that gets me is putting in 110% effort.

 

Jerry 

Hi Jerry,

I well remember the slating the new American boss of (British Gas?) got when he stated that he would put in 150% commitment, ha, ha, ha! Such things are merely symptomatic of how lazy or uneducated our media and people in general have become in my humble opinion, of course!

 

 

Obviously, I've Photoshopped out the curtains and wall in the background but does it work? 

 

It does for me, Tony! While there are evidently compromises, you have a model there of what is quite clearly M&GNR to me and as with your philosophy towards the East Coast route, in order to capture the wide open and straight 'feel' of this railway at this point, I believe you would need shed of at least 40' by 30' in the shape of a cross!

Then not only would Mo complain but I fear Network rail might have something to say!!!

 

The girder bridge, other than being the correct length, is all wrong by the way. It's obviously been cobbled together from Airfix/Dapol parts but really needs replacing (more hypocrisy?). Is 3D printing the answer? I have all the dimensions. Will anyone like to comment, please? 

 

I'm not qualified to answer fully but if someone who knew how to make it happen, why not!?

Cheers,

John E.

 

PS Really good to see so many different people visiting your railway, I'd love to be in your position eventually.

[teaky]

Shouldn't "County of Hants" be "County of Hamwic", Hants being an abreviation of the shire (Hampshire) rather than the town originally at its centre (now absorbed into Southampton)?

 

The county name derives from the Late Saxon settlement of Hamtun that succeeded the Middle Saxon trading town of Hamwic. It was sited on higher ground to the west following the decline of seaborne trade due to the Vikings. Alternative spellings were Hantun and Hantune and the county name derived from it, recorded  in the Domesday book as Hantescire. The wic part of the earlier name indicates a trading settlement on a navigable river or estuary and also occurs in Norwich, Ipswich, Dunwich, etc. Other examples include Eborwic (Saxon York, derived from Roman Eboracum and later Viking Jorvik) and Londonwic.

 

Tautological placenames include the various rivers Avon (Conquering Saxon: what's that called? British prisoner: Avon (=river).

 

Pete.

 

(Sorry to OT a little here Tony but you started it!)

 

Hi Pete,

 

Hants - Thanks.  That's put my dodgy info. straight.

 

Wic - There's a trap there too.  As well as corruptions of wic there's the term wich in its own right which refers to salt e.g. Northwich, Middlewich, Nantwich in (Tony's and my home county of) Cheshire and Droitwich (the place of the salt, Roman Salinae) in Worcestershire which has the claim to fame of being mentioned more times in the Domesday book (albeit under its previous name of Upwich) than any other town.

 

Rivers - That explains a lot.  We have several Avons, Ouses, Tames etc.  I wondered why the Anglo Saxons seemed so unimaginative!

Edited October 4, 2014 by teaky

[teaky]

Hi Tony,

 

I think you are agonising unnecessarily over the tight radii of the M&GNR section.  To my mind this is a bonus feature of a superb layout not the main part.  Sooner or later a model railway is going to have to compromise on a tighter curve or a fiddleyard to represent the rest of the world.  It seems appropriate to consider how to disguise view lines with trees and bridges but I certainly don't think it impacts on the layout as a whole which does a great job of representing part of the east coast mainline along with lengthy mainline trains.

 

It is going to be a wonderful layout when finished and I, along with many others, am enjoying seeing it develop on this thread.

[69843]

The girder bridge, other than being the correct length, is all wrong by the way. It's obviously been cobbled together from Airfix/Dapol parts but really needs replacing (more hypocrisy?). Is 3D printing the answer? I have all the dimensions. Will anyone like to comment, please?

I'd say it is perfectly feasible. Even though there's people on here with a heck of a lot more experience in CAD and 3D printing (and life!), I'd happily have a look at it for you Tony

[teaky]

Oh what larks, great fun:-)

In Wiltshire and Somerset we say, 'gert big .......' , gert of course meaning, big.

 

I fully agree about 'entirely unique' or 'almost unique'. The other one that gets me is putting in 110% effort.

 

Jerry 

I had an email from a company recently saying that if I wasn't 108.8% satisfied with their service on a recent order then I should let them know.

 

I was so tempted to reply but feared it would be a lengthy conversation!  I was completely satisfied with their service but could not figure out how I was going to explain what else they needed to do to gain the extra 8.8%.  Perhaps it involves folding space and time?

[Andrew P]

Hi Jerry,

I well remember the slating the new American boss of (British Gas?) got when he stated that he would put in 150% commitment, ha, ha, ha! Such things are merely symptomatic of how lazy or uneducated our media and people in general have become in my humble opinion, of course!

 

 

 

It does for me, Tony! While there are evidently compromises, you have a model there of what is quite clearly M&GNR to me and as with your philosophy towards the East Coast route, in order to capture the wide open and straight 'feel' of this railway at this point, I believe you would need shed of at least 40' by 30' in the shape of a cross!

Then not only would Mo complain but I fear Network rail might have something to say!!!

 

I'm not qualified to answer fully but if someone who knew how to make it happen, why not!?

Cheers,

John E.

 

PS Really good to see so many different people visiting your railway, I'd love to be in your position eventually.

Hi Tony and John, me too eventually with Bitton, having seen Tony's lovely white inside to the Shed, mine was finished yesterday and is now ready for the framework to go in, alas its a mere 17.5ft x 8.5 ft inside, but I will make do, its better than the 9 x 7 I had before.

 

 

All the best to Tony and Mo.

Edited October 4, 2014 by Andrew P

[Tony Wright]

Hi Tony,

 

I think you are agonising unnecessarily over the tight radii of the M&GNR section.  To my mind this is a bonus feature of a superb layout not the main part.  Sooner or later a model railway is going to have to compromise on a tighter curve or a fiddleyard to represent the rest of the world.  It seems appropriate to consider how to disguise view lines with trees and bridges but I certainly don't think it impacts on the layout as a whole which does a great job of representing part of the east coast mainline along with lengthy mainline trains.

 

It is going to be a wonderful layout when finished and I, along with many others, am enjoying seeing it develop on this thread.

Many thanks for your kind comments.

 

I don't know whether I've been agonising unnecessarily, more trying to justify what I'm doing. Having been a bit critical recently of too-much compression and trying to get too much in, it seems a bit thick to me to then build (part of) a layout which is 'ridiculously' compromised.

 

I suppose I can get away with it to some extent because the largest loco to run on the M&GNR bit is a B1, and that only one example. I can get every loco (and carriage) round without having to lose cylinder drain cocks (though the 35-year old K2 doesn't have any!), front steps and, by having a sprung drawbar, keep a close relationship between locos and tenders. If I had to go offstage on the main line via a visible 2' 6" radius curve (the curves tighten after passing through the upper-level bridges) then the illusion wouldn't work at all; not to me, anyway. 

 

Still, as you so rightly say, sooner or later one has to compromise, though I won't compromise on the running. Even round the tighter bends on the M&GNR bit, there's no shorting, stalling or stuttering, even with kit-built locos. If I'd try to get more than eight trains in the fiddle yard, then that would not have been the case.

Edited October 4, 2014 by Tony Wright

[gr.king]

Rather predictably, I've been tinkering with another conversion project. Although obviously incomplete, the spade work is now done so here are a couple of pictures.

 

Edited October 4, 2014 by gr.king

[Andy Kirkham]

 

 

One day I might be be arrested for defacing (by painting out the 'shire' bit) the 'Welcome to the County of Lincolnshire' signs when I travel back home on occasions. Justifiable graffiti? I think not. 

 

The GWR and its successors knew exactly the correct usage, with 'County of Chester', 'County of Hants', 'County of Berks', 'County of Worcester' and so on. The post-War educated managers who were responsible for latterly naming some of the Class 47s were ignorant in the extreme! Shame on them. 

 

I appreciate the reasoning about tautology, but I still feel there could be a justification for "County of Lincolnshire" and the like, which I would base on examining the meaning of "of".

 

When we speak of the City of Birmingham, we are surely not referring to two separate entities: (a) an entity named Birmingham and ( B) a separate entity: a city, which is owned by Birmingham; don't we mean that the city is Birmingham? If that is true, then "of" does not have its standard meaning that denotes possession; rather it has an idiomatic meaning that seems to apply only to places and can be understood as meaning something like  "that is named". Thus "The City of Birmingham" is equivalent to "The city that is named Birmingham" or even just "The city:Birmingham"..

 

ON that basis we could justify "County of Lincolnshire" if we understand it to mean "County that is named Lincolnshire", which seems to me perfectly OK and not at all tautological.

 

I should stress that this argument is based not on scholarship or expertise, just my own notions; so if anyone can prove that I am talking nonsense, I would be happy to be corrected.

 

[edit - I had no intention of inserting a smiley above: it is meant to be a letter b in brackets]

Edited October 4, 2014 by Andy Kirkham

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Tony,

Re-the MGN, I feel that the selective compression is an added bonus to Little Bytham. It increases the contrast between the open and spacious nature of the trunk ECML, with the meandering, slightly down-at-heel feel of the cross country route passing overhead.

 

I might even be inclined to further reduce the train lengths on the MGN. As they pass at right angles to the ECML, then the length of each individual vehicle appears greater than the more head on view of an ECML express.

 

Wonder if you ever thought of modelling the MGN in a slightly smaller scale (say 3mm), so it receedes slightly more into the background?

 

Regards,

Peter

[richard i]

3D printing can work but you need to pay extra for the finer printing as on the cheeper versions you can see the lines of printing and so the model surfaces have grain lines on them. This is less of an issue on matchboard stock but when representing smooth metal would detract from the appearence.

Richard

[Bernard Lamb]

Photo in post 2542.

The one with the 4F and the signal box.

Greatest advert for going P4.

Sorry, could not resist.

Bernard