Pre Grouping general discussion

[billbedford]

Yep.

 

It's an ex NER D. 171 built between 1908 and 1922, some lasted till the 1960s. 

[Caley Jim]

2 hours ago, billbedford said:

It's an ex NER D. 171 built between 1908 and 1922, some lasted till the 1960s. 

Thanks, Bill.  I've passed that info on.

 

Jim

[Lacathedrale]

Much is made of the ballasting of running lines in the pre-group period: I understand that the general acceptance  is that ballasting to the rails fell out of favour in 1890 was typically replaced with standard ballasting methods during track renewals. But what was going on at the termini?

 

1880's-1890's

This shot of St Pancras dated 1886: https://www.francisfrith.com/london/london-st-pancras-station-c1886_l130068 show the ballast over the sleepers, as does this 1880-1890 picture of Charing Cross:

 

 

A similar undated shot of the Brighton wing of Victoria also shows the same ballast over sleepers - not even any gaps to inspect sleepers! Whatever the loco with the Willesden destination board is, it looks about half the size of a Terrier some I'm going to assume this is a very early shot - maybe pre 1880's?

 

 

Euston Station in another undated view but presumably later shows complete over-ballasting: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/antique-photograph-of-london-euston-station-gm872849890-243787553

 

This  shot in 1895 of the throat of Charing Cross seems to show the outline of turnout timbers quite well: https://thetransportlibrary.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=168210  - but it's not clear since that part of the station is above a road, so it may be deliberately not ballasted to reduce weight

 

1900's+

By 1905 Lewisham (the major junction station on the SER lines, right?) still has groomed ballast over the sleepers: https://thetransportlibrary.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=168198&search=Lens+of+Sutton+Association+SECR+Stations+part+1&page=2 -

 

By 1910 though it's more rare, examples such as Faversham still show ballast over the sleepers: https://thetransportlibrary.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=168180&search=Lens+of+Sutton+Association+SECR+Stations+part+1&page=3

 

Questions

Should ballast be over the sleepers for a 1900-1905 based layout?

Is there a distinction of ballast height depending on whether the railway is ontop of a) solid earth, b) arches/vaults or c) girders?

Colour-wise should I expect the platform roads to be filthy (i.e. soot, ash, oil) throughout, or just the ends where the locos were?

 

[Compound2632]

8 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

Much is made of the ballasting of running lines in the pre-group period: I understand that the general acceptance  is that ballasting to the rails fell out of favour in 1890 was typically replaced with standard ballasting methods during track renewals. But what was going on at the termini?

 

Well before 1890 - 1860s nearer the mark.

 

8 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

 

1880's-1890's

This shot of St Pancras dated 1886: https://www.francisfrith.com/london/london-st-pancras-station-c1886_l130068 show the ballast over the sleepers,

 

That's interesting. I don't think I've seen that photo of St Pancras before. The date is definitely not c. 1886; on the basis of the Kirtley carriages on view, I'd say it was taken soon after the opening. I'd hazard a guess 1886 is a typo for 1868!

 

I suspect, though, that ballasting over the sleepers persisted at termini on two grounds: 

1. the convenience of providing a level surface for staff to walk around on;
2. no need to replace the rails, as wear was minimal compared to running lines.

[billbedford]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I suspect, though, that ballasting over the sleepers persisted at termini on two grounds: 

1. the convenience of providing a level surface for staff to walk around on;
2. no need to replace the rails, as wear was minimal compared to running lines.

 

and the persistence of ash ballast. 

[Tom Burnham]

I have a volume of WW2 era radio talks by Harold Nicholson, in one of which he bemoans the introduction of loudspeakers at Paddock Wood, which he would have been passed through between Sissinghurst and the House of Commons. So I'd expect that they would have come in earlier at London termini. Possibly light-hearted pieces (Punch?) would be more likely to refer to the change? Or the Railway Magazine might have objected?

[Tom Burnham]

Not sure how common they were in pre-Grouping times.  According to this report (Birmingham Daily Gazette, Thursday 30 April 1925) the LMS were only starting to experiment with loudspeakers at St Pancras in 1925 -

[Compound2632]

33 minutes ago, Tom Burnham said:

Not sure how common they were in pre-Grouping times.  According to this report (Birmingham Daily Gazette, Thursday 30 April 1925) the LMS were only starting to experiment with loudspeakers at St Pancras in 1925 -

 

The tone of the article suggests it was a novel idea at the time. 

 

The usual pre-grouping equipment was a stentorian porter. This had the advantage that announcements could be tailored to each class of passenger, as in William Brough's "Speatrie, Loup oot".

[Lacathedrale]

The Surrey Iron Railway ran from the Thames at Wandsworth to south to Reeves Corner in Croydon from 1804. It was extended via the Croydon, Merstham and Godstone Railway in 1806 to Merstham, just past the end of the M23 motorway.

 

Though very profitable initially, it fell into disuse with the opening of the Croydon canal in 1809 (and given the abject failure of the Croydon canal and it's subsequent sale to form the trackbed of the London & Croydon it really must have been in a bad state) and was fully abandoned in 1846 after a failed bill by the L&SWR and L&BR (now LB&SCR). The CMGR forming part of the new Brighton Main line.

 

Overall, a fascinating read here: http://www.wandle.org/surreyironrailway/header.html

 

It's a fertile soil for 'what if' scenarios given that it involves the LBSCR, SECR and LSWR, the draining of the croydon canal and the construction of the route to Brighton!

[Lacathedrale]

Had a quick chat with a mate and we were discussing the relative knowledge of pre-1900 railways when presented as layouts to a) general public and b) model railway enthusiast.

 

What level do you think the average B-person would be able to sniff out as being wrong for a particular pre-1900 layout?

 

Liveries for late pre-grouping (i.e. most RTR stuff)?

RCH 1907-1923 PO wagons?

REA-type switches?

Ballast not over the running lines?

 

At what point is it sensible to draw the line for design? stock? operation?

[Compound2632]

18 minutes ago, Lacathedrale said:

Had a quick chat with a mate and we were discussing the relative knowledge of pre-1900 railways when presented as layouts to a) general public and b) model railway enthusiast.

 

What level do you think the average B-person would be able to sniff out as being wrong for a particular pre-1900 layout?

 

Liveries for late pre-grouping (i.e. most RTR stuff)?

RCH 1907-1923 PO wagons?

REA-type switches?

Ballast not over the running lines?

 

At what point is it sensible to draw the line for design? stock? operation?

 

It would depend on how familiar one was with the practices of the company depicted. By the very nature of the beast, pre-grouping layouts presented at exhibition are on the whole meticulously researched by enthusiasts dedicated to get everything right. So I'd be inclined to pretty much take things on trust in most cases. I'd only start nit-picking (or internally twitching) if it was a Midland layout! There are exceptions and I did make myself odious to the owner of one well-known EM gauge layout "depicting the period 1912-1922" (gulp)...

 

On the whole, I think one is much more likely to come across gross errors on exhibition layouts depicting BR steam.

[ChrisN]

I think the average enthusiast would not know, if you take as average those who model what is R-T-R.  (You may think that is not average.)  I think most 'average' enthusiasts would know very little about Pre-Grouping railways, but that should not stop those who build Pre-Grouping layouts working to the highest standards they can achieve.

[whart57]

13 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

Had a quick chat with a mate and we were discussing the relative knowledge of pre-1900 railways when presented as layouts to a) general public and b) model railway enthusiast.

 

What level do you think the average B-person would be able to sniff out as being wrong for a particular pre-1900 layout?

 

Liveries for late pre-grouping (i.e. most RTR stuff)?

RCH 1907-1923 PO wagons?

REA-type switches?

Ballast not over the running lines?

 

At what point is it sensible to draw the line for design? stock? operation?

 

My personal opinion is that 1900 is a poor cutoff point. OK, it's the start of a new century but in railway development terms it doesn't really represent a watershed. Maybe if you are interested in the SECR it is because of that company's specific history, or again the Great Central because that is when it became a national rather than a regional railway.

 

However to answer the question I would suggest one giveaway is the absence of six wheel coaches in mainline trains, and four wheel carriages generally. Low roofs too, despite Victorian men wearing top hats carriage ceilings didn't accommodate them. So if the passenger trains are all bogie carriages, even if they have clerestories and outside panelling, then I'd suspect it wasn't pre-1900.

 

Another sniff for me would be if all the six wheel locos were 0-6-0. Pre-1900 I would expect there to be 2-4-0s and 0-4-2s on passenger and mixed traffic duties.

[Jol Wilkinson]

The changes to the railway scene in pre-group were continuous and it isn't possible to give a definitive or even a general answer to what changed when.

 

As for the "average" modeller, I would suggest that their knowledge of pre-group would be minimal.  In several years of exhibiting a pre-group layout loosely set in 1907 I received few critical comments. One was from a BR signal engineer about a catch point location, another was from an "expert" and someone I knew, who makes statement that are difficult to challenge because they are rather broad, another was one of those nit picking criticisms . More often I got asked questions about how the layout was created, what kits were used, etc. I found that female viewers were more interested in the static details, buildings, figures, etc. than the male of the species who wanted to see the trains run.

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, whart57 said:

Another sniff for me would be if all the six wheel locos were 0-6-0. Pre-1900 I would expect there to be 2-4-0s and 0-4-2s on passenger and mixed traffic duties.

 

Again, that's a company-specific thing. I would expect to see 0-4-2s on a model of the G&SWR, M&CR, or LB&SCR; I wouldn't be surprised to see one on a L&SWR layout; and I be pleased to see one on a Caledonian or GNR layout. I'm fairly sure I must have seen one on a very well-known NBR exhibition layout. On a LNWR, Midland, or GWR layout I wouldn't expect to see 2-4-0s working goods trains. Which is really to say, I would be pleased to see the layout accurately representing the utilisation of the company's stock. 

Edited December 31, 2021 by Compound2632
sp.

[whart57]

Perhaps I should have said 2-4-0s or 0-4-2s  .........

 

On the pre-1900 LNWR, MR or GWR wouldn't you have seen 2-4-0s on secondary passenger trains?

[Lacathedrale]

@whart57, I know the date is somewhat fuzzy - but looking at the carriage and locomotive register for the southern railways, a huge number of 1860's-70's stock was de-rated around 1880-1890 and then subsequently condemned at the start of the century. I don't know how this is mirrored elsewhere but it does seem like a good a point as any.

 

You do make a fantastic point about 2-4-0 and 0-4-2's - they were all over the place!

 

@Compound2632 I don't disagree but I wonder how much confirmation bias there is in BR steam being  unauthentically modelled?

 

I don't think anyone could cite Buckingham as being unauthentic, but by 'MRJ'-style standards there are lots of inaccuracies - but those inaccuracies absolutely are not detrimental to the layout as a whole.  Maybe because it is wholly 'pre-group' in every aspect - scenically, operationally, stock and design? That would imply that the details are significantly less important than consistently adhering to an approach.

 

For what it's worth, I am notionally setting my forthcoming LCDR/SER/SECR layout in the summer of 1899, and any scratch or kit-building is going to be aligned to that - but I'm going to allow myself flexibility of a decade or so in order to take advantage of the SECR Birdcage bogie coach sets and RTR H, D and C-classes.  Similarly, I'm going to be taking advantage of the EMGS RTP track - REA B6 and 60' panels of 8'6" sleepers - when it should obviously be loose heel turnouts and short panels of 9' sleepers.

 

Realistically - would anyone see or care? Would anyone know that a Stirling R-class in SER lined black would never have been seen alongside a Wainwright locomotive? Or that the LCDR/GNR carriage trucks were all gone by the 1880's? I doubt it...

[Lacathedrale]

As a slight digression - how would private sidings connected to stations work, assuming they had their own locomotives? Would the main railway and the private locomotive push and pull wagons from a shared siding used for this purpose, or would one venture into the other's domain?

[Jol Wilkinson]

5 minutes ago, Lacathedrale said:

As a slight digression - how would private sidings connected to stations work, assuming they had their own locomotives? Would the main railway and the private locomotive push and pull wagons from a shared siding used for this purpose, or would one venture into the other's domain?

I would expect that the PO loco wouldn't be permitted onto the "main line" but that the railway companies loco would enter to collect the already sorted wagons to  add to an existing train and brake van.

[t-b-g]

6 minutes ago, Lacathedrale said:

@whart57, I know the date is somewhat fuzzy - but looking at the carriage and locomotive register for the southern railways, a huge number of 1860's-70's stock was de-rated around 1880-1890 and then subsequently condemned at the start of the century. I don't know how this is mirrored elsewhere but it does seem like a good a point as any.

 

You do make a fantastic point about 2-4-0 and 0-4-2's - they were all over the place!

 

@Compound2632 I don't disagree but I wonder how much confirmation bias there is in BR steam being  unauthentically modelled?

 

I don't think anyone could cite Buckingham as being unauthentic, but by 'MRJ'-style standards there are lots of inaccuracies - but those inaccuracies absolutely are not detrimental to the layout as a whole.  Maybe because it is wholly 'pre-group' in every aspect - scenically, operationally, stock and design? That would imply that the details are significantly less important than consistently adhering to an approach.

 

For what it's worth, I am notionally setting my forthcoming LCDR/SER/SECR layout in the summer of 1899, and any scratch or kit-building is going to be aligned to that - but I'm going to allow myself flexibility of a decade or so in order to take advantage of the SECR Birdcage bogie coach sets and RTR H, D and C-classes.  Similarly, I'm going to be taking advantage of the EMGS RTP track - REA B6 and 60' panels of 8'6" sleepers - when it should obviously be loose heel turnouts and short panels of 9' sleepers.

 

Realistically - would anyone see or care? Would anyone know that a Stirling R-class in SER lined black would never have been seen alongside a Wainwright locomotive? Or that the LCDR/GNR carriage trucks were all gone by the 1880's? I doubt it...

 

One of the reasons why Peter Denny chose to model the GCR was because there were not so many experts around to point out the faults. Having said that, in terms of the locos and stock, I don't think there is anything that would have been impossible to see in the selected year of 1907. Geographic location is another matter! I had a discussion with a visitor once about the likelihood of seeing things like the LD&ECR locos and stock and the WM&CQ tank in leafy Buckinghamshire. He explained it away superbly. It is a fictitious line. Who can say what locos and stock might have been moved there to work the services had the line really been built?

 

To me, it is one of the big bonus points for modelling a fictional line. As long as you work within normal railway working practice, you have a blank canvas when it come to choosing what to run. Nobody can say "They never ran there!". 

[Dave John]

" Realistically - would anyone see or care? Would anyone know that a Stirling R-class in SER lined black would never have been seen alongside a Wainwright locomotive? Or that the LCDR/GNR carriage trucks were all gone by the 1880's? I doubt it... "

 

Hmm.

 

The thing is Lacathedrale you would know. Attention to detail is the addiction that pre-group modellers tend to end up suffering from. It is nice if other modellers appreciate what you are doing but the biggest critic is always your own eye. 

 

It took me three layouts to be able to lay track that I would consider to be a reasonable representation of the real thing, and I still spot (usually on photos)  things which are not quite right. So, like the real railways the pw gang chops out the offending bit and replaces it.

 

The same is true of rolling stock. Many of my blog entries are about things I made years ago but now need rebuilding because new information has emerged. 

 

Another thing which is hard to define is period style. You get an eye for it after studying many period phots of your chosen subject. So when looking at model scene in an overall sense it is hard to say just why it looks right, but it can be very obvious why it looks wrong. 

 

Anyway, I welcome anyone having a shot at pre-group modelling, so have a go and see how you get on. 

 

 

[Compound2632]

  

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

Perhaps I should have said 2-4-0s or 0-4-2s  .........

 

Yes, you see, that's the precise thinking that an interest in pre-grouping railways engenders. You will find it spilling over into other walks of life...

  

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

On the pre-1900 LNWR, MR or GWR wouldn't you have seen 2-4-0s on secondary passenger trains?

 

Of course, in abundance. It was the goods side of your "mixed traffic" that I was picking up on. That wasn't really a 19th-century concept. The nearest thing to a mixed-traffic locomotive on many lines would be the bigger-wheeled varieties of 0-6-0 - the 5'3" or thereabouts types - that were used on passenger work; I'm thinking of LNWR Cauliflowers or MR Johnson standard goods engines. The exception is perhaps the 0-4-2s on those lines that had them, but I'm not familiar enough with those. So if I saw a 0-4-2 pulling a goods train on your G&SWR layout, I would assume that this was the fruit of your research into the question. There's a very Reethian streak to pre-grouping layouts - they should inform and educate as well as entertain.

[whart57]

17 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

  

 

Of course, in abundance. It was the goods side of your "mixed traffic" that I was picking up on. That wasn't really a 19th-century concept.

Yet I was sent a scan of a drawing from the 1850s of Sharp Stewart 's standard mixed traffic engine - an 0-4-2 as it happens. 

 

Also why would companies go to the expense of automatic brakes on goods engines in the 1880s if not for the eventuality of needing them for passenger trains. 

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, whart57 said:

Yet I was sent a scan of a drawing from the 1850s of Sharp Stewart 's standard mixed traffic engine - an 0-4-2 as it happens. 

 

Interesting. Does the drawing actually use the words "mixed traffic"?

 

7 minutes ago, whart57 said:

Also why would companies go to the expense of automatic brakes on goods engines in the 1880s if not for the eventuality of needing them for passenger trains. 

 

Well yes, exactly. It was the 0-6-0 that was the "mixed traffic" engine, not the 4-coupled types (except on those lines using 0-4-2s...)

 

On the other hand, once fitted express goods trains started to become a thing in the first decade of the 19th century, it wasn't unusual to find express passenger engines moonlighting on them. Not often photographed, owing to the moonlight not being strong enough for a short exposure!

[whart57]

1 hour ago, Lacathedrale said:

@whart57

 

Realistically - would anyone see or care? Would anyone know that a Stirling R-class in SER lined black would never have been seen alongside a Wainwright locomotive? Or that the LCDR/GNR carriage trucks were all gone by the 1880's? I doubt it...

I would question the presence of that Stirling R myself. Not a well travelled locomotive. The Canterbury and Whitstable (with cut down boiler fittings), the Folkestone Harbour branch and carriage shunting.