Pre Grouping general discussion

[Lacathedrale]

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

Coal Trade Wagons, L Tavender, ISBN 0 9510987 1 3

 

This book covers the whole story but there are a fair number of nineteenth century drawings along with a few only just into the 20th century. Some undated too but I think we can assume dumb buffers was before 1900.

 

Seems to be completely unavailable anywhere, but I'll try to keep an eye out!

[Compound2632]

17 minutes ago, Lacathedrale said:

Seems to be completely unavailable anywhere, but I'll try to keep an eye out!

 

With patience, I tracked down a second-hand copy about 18 moths ago. 

[Argos]

4 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

Seems to be completely unavailable anywhere, but I'll try to keep an eye out!

 

I hunted for about six months before finally getting my copy at a reasonable price, some book stores were trying to charge eye-watering amounts, but I guess that's supply and demand for you!  I blame Adam Smith and his pin factory......

 

Also of use, and also by Tavender is "Railway Equipment Drawings" it is sub-titled "Rolling Stock - 7m scale - sourced GWR-LMS-LNER-SR etc" but contains a lot of pre-grouping goodies including PO wagons.

 

Airnimal who posts elsewhere on the forum put me onto these books in conversation at an exhibition where he was manning a demonstration stand. I know some of his builds are based on the details in these books.

 

Another book in my collection is "Specialist Booklet No11 Private-Owner wagons by Peter Mathews. It is only a slim volume but deals with the construction details of the various RCH standards as well as being littered with examples to model.

[Lacathedrale]

Thank you all for the pointers. Speaking of early wagons, an SER plan for Bromley North shows two oil tanks adjacent a pump house at the end of one siding. Presumably these infer the use of tank wagons, rather than opens of barrels or tins - but does anyone have a rough idea of what these would look like in 19th century? I know there are rectangular tank wagons, would this be used for that?

Edited January 4, 2022 by Lacathedrale

[NHY 581]

Afternoon all, 

 

Lord and Butler in Cardiff have acquired a private collection consisting of a  considerable number of kit built locos. 

 

The kits were purchased by the owner then handed over to be built and painted on his behalf and then displayed as part of his collection. 

 

As an example, I am advised that there are somewhere in the region of 200 Southern locos alone. 

 

The locos are all finished in either ppre-grouping or grouping liveries. I visited today and there are locos from The Caledonian, Midland, L&NWR, L&Y, GWR, L&SWR, LB&SCR, Highland, SECR to name but a few. Some are in early grouping livery others in full pre-grouping finery. 

 

I am aware that L&B are updating their website but this will take time. The locos are still being checked as I believe that few have actually moved from their display cases for may years prior to the acquisition by L&B. 

 

The shop have lists but these are constantly being updated. Therefore, I would recommend a call to the shop to enquire into what is available. 

 

Here are a few photos of my own locos purchased recently from this collection. 

 

Chivers Finelines EX -LSWR 0330ST

 

 

 

 

Jidenco brass (?) EX L&SWR T1 0.4.4T

 

 

 

 

SEF EX-LB&SCR D1 0.4.2T

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regarding myself, I have no connection to L&B other than being a satisfied customer but I can confirm I am quite happy with the above locos. 

 

 

Rob. 

[NHY 581]

Morning, 

 

Pretty satisfied now that the T1 is a build of the Craftsman kit rather than Jidenco. 

 

A couple more images. 

 

 

 

Rob. 

[woodenhead]

You've an awful lot of these little Southern engines now, Lamb Regis?

[bill-lobb]

21 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

Thank you all for the pointers. Speaking of early wagons, an SER plan for Bromley North shows two oil tanks adjacent a pump house at the end of one siding. Presumably these infer the use of tank wagons, rather than opens of barrels or tins - but does anyone have a rough idea of what these would look like in 19th century? I know there are rectangular tank wagons, would this be used for that?

Oil on the Rails by Alan Coppin has much information. On a quick look, rectangular wagons were used for tar and heavy oils. Cylindrical tanks certainly existed in the 1890s and there were also some semi cylindrical and D-shaped varieties.

 

Bill 

[Caley Jim]

According to Mike Williams' book, the earliest record of a tank wagon in the CR rolling stock returns is in 1861 when there were also 4 vitriol (Sulphuric acid) wagons, probably tanks mounted on ordinary open wagons.  By January 1866 there were 8 such tanks.  The CR tended not to build their own tank wagons, but hired underframes on which private owners could mount their own tanks.

 

Jim

[Lacathedrale]

My first wagon is nearing completion - requiring lettering and a glaze to tone it down a little - but I wanted to check what the wooden brake shoes should look like?

 

 

Painting them the same colour as the inside of the wagon feels a little silly. Is there any evidence for what they should have looked like?

[Regularity]

28 minutes ago, Lacathedrale said:

Painting them the same colour as the inside of the wagon feels a little silly. Is there any evidence for what they should have looked like?

I imagine that they got pretty filthy (and scorched, if pinned down too tightly!), but the basic colour is probably right, and you just need to add track dirt to it and indicate a bit of weathering. A wash of metallic gunmetal is always good for bringing aged wood colours alive.

[Lacathedrale]

I'm so used to post-diesel weathering, I guess 'track grime' would be more grey/brown/black than the reddy brown we associate with brake dust?

[Regularity]

Yes: wood doesn’t rust.

[Compound2632]

As I've said elsewhere, I'm not a believer in pre-grouping rust. Rust is for out-of-use equipment.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Compound2632

[Penlan]

11 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

My first wagon is nearing completion -

Not my first, but the first I did using Plastikard - or whatever it was called then,

in 1967 (55 years ago) things have improved since then,

It's still in service on the layout  
Many thanks Lacathedrale, gave me have a few minutes dreamy recollections.

 

 

Edited January 12, 2022 by Penlan

[billbedford]

14 hours ago, Regularity said:

Yes: wood doesn’t rust.

But it does go grey with weathering. 

[Regularity]

47 minutes ago, billbedford said:

But it does go grey with weathering. 

Hence the suggestion of weathering, including gunmetal…

[Tom Burnham]

On 04/01/2022 at 14:45, Lacathedrale said:

Thank you all for the pointers. Speaking of early wagons, an SER plan for Bromley North shows two oil tanks adjacent a pump house at the end of one siding. Presumably these infer the use of tank wagons, rather than opens of barrels or tins - but does anyone have a rough idea of what these would look like in 19th century? I know there are rectangular tank wagons, would this be used for that?

Some further investigation shows that the depot was operated by the Anglo-American Oil Co., the British subsidiary of Standard Oil. It was destroyed by a fire in 1920, thought to have been started by a spark from a locomotive. Descriptions of the fire refer to cans of petrol as well as the bulk tank. I think there are illustrations around of Anglo-American tank wagons of the period.

[Lacathedrale]

Thank you Tom, I'm in the same email thread with you and Jim Greave.

 

Weathering of any kind (save for washes) will have to wait until I've got my new airbrush, my previous one took a dive off the desk without the nozzle cap on!

 

 

[colin smith]

On 31/12/2021 at 19:13, Compound2632 said:

But if you put your handiwork before the paying public who will take it for an accurate representation of the past...

Really? Would anyone look at a modern image layout and think it's an accurate representation of the present?

I think most would acknowledge that a model is highly compressed and its creator very selective in terms of what he/she chooses to represent.

[Compound2632]

10 hours ago, colin smith said:

Really? Would anyone look at a modern image layout and think it's an accurate representation of the present?

I think most would acknowledge that a model is highly compressed and its creator very selective in terms of what he/she chooses to represent.

 

Yes, of course there are compromises in any model of a railway. It's the points on which one doesn't have to compromise that matter: truth to place and period. 

[colin smith]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Yes, of course there are compromises in any model of a railway. It's the points on which one doesn't have to compromise that matter: truth to place and period. 

 

I'm not sure I even see it as compromise. My main interest is narrow-gauge with a leaning towards the exotic and I see the pre-grouping era as just offering more scope for the imagination. Much as I can admire a model like Burntisland I don't want to be restricted by geographic or historical reality. For me, self-expression is all that matters.

[Compound2632]

37 minutes ago, colin smith said:

I don't want to be restricted by geographic or historical reality. For me, self-expression is all that matters.

 

Whimsey is a choice. But you wouldn't present a layout built on such principles as representing "the GN&SR in the Edwardian period" or whatever; you would make it clear that it was an ahistorical jeu d'esprit?

[colin smith]

24 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Whimsey is a choice. But you wouldn't present a layout built on such principles as representing "the GN&SR in the Edwardian period" or whatever; you would make it clear that it was an ahistorical jeu d'esprit?

 

Who said 'whimsy'? Is P D Hancock's legendary Craig and Mertonford Railway whimsy? Whimsy is something like the Far Tottering and Oystermouth. Craig and Mertonford is realist fiction.

 

As I said, I admire model railways like Burntisland but it's not the only approach and not, to me, the most interesting approach. Put it this way, if I go to an art gallery I'd far rather see the work of artists who have reimagined and reshaped reality in their own style than those who have merely copied it. 

 

Personally, I wouldn't present a model railway as anything other than my model railway in the same way I wouldn't present any of my novels as non-fiction. One takes elements of real history and real places and hopefully recombines them into an entertaining and believable whole.

[Compound2632]

Well, perhaps whimsy was too loaded a term, reflecting my perhaps too puritanical attitude to the question. To set a benchmark for my puritanism, I'll say that I find John Ahern's Madder Valley whimsical, but not Pendon. What I look for is credibility, in a freelance scheme as much as in a layout purporting to portray one of the pre-grouping companies. I'm happy to take your word that the Craig & Mertonford, with which I am not that familiar, the magazine articles having been before my time, fulfils that condition. @Edwardian's West Norfolk scheme inserts a fictional railway company into a "fold in the map", but aims to do so with the greatest attention to fidelity to the practices of his chosen period - "prototype literate" to use a phrase he coined in reference to the Hattons Genesis carriages; in other words, a railway that whilst being fictional, is not implausible. A great many pre-grouping layouts fit this mould, even when they represent real companies - fictional locations, "might-have-beens". But as others have contended, it can be easier to model a real location...

 

But each to his own taste; I'm merely stating my own.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Compound2632