Pre Grouping general discussion

[Johnson044]

On 31/12/2021 at 19:10, Regularity said:

That’s the only metric that matters.

 

If you know, and getting it wrong or omitting it bothers you, then you need to do it and to do it right.

 

You are engaged in a hobby, not paid employment, not voluntary service and not a competition. For all of those, there is some external expectation/standard. As a hobby, you are passing your own time entertaining yourself as you see fit. What anyone else thinks is irrelevant: you set your own standards, and you work to them. Then the only question that anyone can put to you is, “Are you satisfied with your efforts?” That’s true even if they don’t like what you have done (be that in terms of era, location, prototype railway, standard of workmanship, level of detail or what have you).

I think this is concise and shrewd and I completely agree. In the end the cruellest critic of one's workmanship is oneself.

[colin smith]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

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.

 

Gosh. I'm a little surprised you haven't heard of the Craig and Mertonford. P. D. Hancock was a pioneer in both narrow-gauge modelling and in creating a fictional basis for his model railway, which included establishing a new Scottish county in the Firth of Forth. I mentioned him because I assumed he and his layout were a common-currency among all railway modellers.

 

John Allen was only whimsical in that he modelled mainly narrow-gauge prototypes running for mechanical convenience on a standard gauge model because at that time it was very difficult to do anything else. In other ways he was as realist as technology allowed. Pendon for many is the very opposite of whimsicality.

Yes, I think you have diagnosed your problem as a form of puritanism, but that is purely your preference and others will have different, yet equally valid, preferences. As you say, each to their own, but equally each without feeling a need to disparage the other.

 

As for believability, the ability of people to suspend disbelief is behind the success of fictions such as Game of Thrones, The Time Machine, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, Mary Poppins, Lord of the Rings, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Beowulf, and many other stories and should not be underestimated.

Edited January 14, 2022 by colin smith

[Compound2632]

9 minutes ago, colin smith said:

Gosh. I'm a little surprised you haven't heard of the Craig and Mertonford.

 

Heard of, seen the odd photo, but not read any of P.D. Hancock's articles.

[Johnson044]

Narrow Gauge Adventure by PDH is a ripping read and should be in every sensible railway modeller's library, along with Buckingham Great Central. It's good - very good.

[colin smith]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Heard of, seen the odd photo, but not read any of P.D. Hancock's articles.

 

Ah, that's not so bad. He has been dead a decade or more and I think the articles dried up in the late seventies. However, his locomotives and fragments of his layout are cherished like holy relics. In terms of his contribution to railway modelling I'd say he's not that far behind John Allen.

[Johnson044]

The Aire Valley series by D A Naylor in Railway Modeller in the sixties was also excellent. All of these are exemplars of creativity adapting the limited range products and using the basic raw materials that were around to create fictional / semi fictional worlds that were more than the sum of their parts.

[Compound2632]

There are two different ideas here: the desire to create one's own fictional world and the desire to recreate some part of the world now lost. These can come together, as in the West Norfolk scheme I mentioned, or they can be quite different. For myself, having become very interested in the research side of things, I lean to the recreation side. I don't think that would stop me building an entirely fictional model railway but for me it would have to have at least an air of probability. As with the novel: does one's taste run to magical realism or truth to nature? One can appreciate both but should not confuse the two.

 

As this topic is entitled "Pre-Grouping General Discussion" I think it's reasonable to expect the discussion to tend to the side of realism based on research and sense of period.

[Johnson044]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

There are two different ideas here: the desire to create one's own fictional world and the desire to recreate some part of the world now lost. These can come together, as in the West Norfolk scheme I mentioned, or they can be quite different. For myself, having become very interested in the research side of things, I lean to the recreation side. I don't think that would stop me building an entirely fictional model railway but for me it would have to have at least an air of probability. As with the novel: does one's taste run to magical realism or truth to nature? One can appreciate both but should not confuse the two.

 

As this topic is entitled "Pre-Grouping General Discussion" I think it's reasonable to expect the discussion to tend to the side of realism based on research and sense of period.

I quite agree Compound. However, these two ideas can become inextricably linked- and the boundary between magical realism or truth to nature can become very blurred.  Most of us, I think, want to create one's own vision of all that is best in all that is lost. The workhouses and children with polio are forgotten- and the beautiful lost things of iron, brass , stone and timber made real again in miniature. This is a hobby and pretty personal so this doesn't mean that the modeller is un-caring or oblivious to the imperfect past- just creating something special which helps him or her to keep the bloody black dog at bay.

 

Both PDH and Peter Denny very definitely base their work on research and sense of period.

 

Philip Pullman mentions railways from time to time in His Dark Materials - certainly in the recent prequels - and I do wonder what the alternative Oxford might have in railway terms...

[Regularity]

43 minutes ago, colin smith said:

which included establishing a new Scottish country in the Firth of Forth.

I know that, I lamenting the laziness of those south of “The Border” in speaking the English language, The Reid twins from Leith showed disdain for throwing the ‘R’ away, but in this case, I do think it tends to be pronounced when appropriate…

 

(A sesquipedalian way of saying, “I think you meant county”!)

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, Regularity said:

I know that, I lamenting the laziness of those south of “The Border” in speaking the English language, The Reid twins from Leith showed disdain for throwing the ‘R’ away, but in this case, I do think it tends to be pronounced when appropriate…

 

(A sesquipedalian way of saying, “I think you meant county”!)

 

I'm not so sure. The Scots have been quite good at creating new countries, after their initial failure with the Darien Scheme: Canada, Australia, New Zealand...

[Regularity]

4 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I'm not so sure. The Scots have been quite good at creating new countries, after their initial failure with the Darien Scheme: Canada, Australia, New Zealand...

Quite, but after the failure of the first scheme, whose money were they using… *

 

Interesting that certainly two, if not all three, of those countries are more civil and civilised places to live than the UK.

 

* “Much can be made of a Scot, an he be caught young enough. - Dr. Johnson, to his biographer (and Scot - was this just a wind up?) Boswell.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Regularity
One tow threee

[colin smith]

Ahem. I've fixed my typo. Indeed, Craigshire was a county, not a country in it's own right.

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, Regularity said:

was this just a wind up?

 

Undoubtedly.

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, colin smith said:

Ahem. I've fixed my typo. Indeed, Craigshire was a county, not a country in it's own right.

 

A country of the mind!

[Johnson044]

- and a very fair count(r)y of the mind Craigshire was too! Please gentlemen - and any ladies present - let's not get political! It leads to the opening of so many different cans of worms. I go onto RMweb to escape reality. I live in Dover and I need to walk the dog through the backstreets in a short while, passively inhaling dope fumes amidst the tagging, burst bin bags and rotting laminate- I like to have something nice to think about so can we maybe revert to fictional pre-grouping railways again? 

[burgundy]

1 hour ago, Johnson044 said:

 The workhouses and children with polio are forgotten- and the beautiful lost things of iron, brass , stone and timber made real again in miniature. This is a hobby and pretty personal so this doesn't mean that the modeller is un-caring or oblivious to the imperfect past- just creating something special which helps him or her to keep the bloody black dog at bay.

 

Most of my modelling has been of the  mid-Victorian period, but, I have to admit, that the more I understand about the period (roughly when my grandfather was born), the less appealing it seems. Using a layout to research or visualise what the place actually looked like ought to make you think about the dark side as well as the shiny bits. 

Vintners' Yard featured a group of men standing in front of a warehouse, waiting to be hired as day labourers. Not a pleasant way to earn a living. Roswell Mill, set in pre-Civil War Georgia, featured almost exactly the same grouping of men in front of a warehouse but, if you think about it, it would be very difficult to avoid the conclusion that they were slaves.  

I suspect that Hurstmonceux, set in rural Sussex, may feature the "local family", awaiting their family saloon, carriage truck and horsebox, to go on holiday to Scotland, but will also find some uncomfortable feature of Victorian life to illustrate as well.   

Best wishes 

Eric 

 

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, burgundy said:

Vintners' Yard featured a group of men standing in front of a warehouse, waiting to be hired as day labourers. Not a pleasant way to earn a living. Roswell Mill, set in pre-Civil War Georgia, featured almost exactly the same grouping of men in front of a warehouse but, if you think about it, it would be very difficult to avoid the conclusion that they were slaves.  

Then there’s the opium dens, the cocaine abuse, the prostitution, etc.

Life for a poor white man in the “Deep South” was not slavery but it was dire and destitute.

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, Johnson044 said:

Please gentlemen - and any ladies present - let's not get political! It leads to the opening of so many different cans of worms.

I don’t think anyone who regularly frequents this part of the board would take it seriously, but the correct place for such comments is, of course, the Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council.

[Johnson044]

On 14/01/2022 at 20:41, Regularity said:

Then there’s the opium dens, the cocaine abuse, the prostitution, etc.

Life for a poor white man in the “Deep South” was not slavery but it was dire and destitute.

Ah - you've been to Dover then!

[colin smith]

A question. 

 

Given its route mileage and character is the Cambrian Railway unusually ill-provided for by model manufacturers compared to companies like the SE&CR, the Midland, and the LSWR, among others. I can't think of a single rtr loco, carriage, or wagon in OO or O.

[Compound2632]

16 minutes ago, colin smith said:

Given its route mileage and character is the Cambrian Railway unusually ill-provided for by model manufacturers compared to companies like the SE&CR, the Midland, and the LSWR, among others. I can't think of a single rtr loco, carriage, or wagon in OO or O.

 

No, proportionally speaking, not unusually ill-provided. If one considers the pre-grouping big four - LNWR, MR, GWR, and NER (in that order by most but not all measures) - they're represented by less than a handful of locomotives each and next to nothing in terms of carriages and wagons - at least, anything that's close to being an accurate model. For the middle-ranking English companies - LYR, GNR, GER, GCR - there is pretty much zero apart from a couple of express passenger locomotives. So it's hardly surprising that the smaller companies, such as the Cambrian, Furness, or North Staffordshire, have nothing.

 

The three Southern companies are, by contrast, moderately well-represented in the locomotive department, though you'd still struggle to assemble a balanced stud of locomotives suitable for a realistic representation of the pre-grouping scene on any of those lines. This is partly due to the appeal of modelling pastoral southern branch lines as opposed to the industrial north but also has a good deal to do with Southern Railway policy, which led to a much higher proportion of pre-grouping classes surviving until the 1950s than for any of the other regions, except perhaps Scotland. But for rolling stock, there's still next to nothing except for the SECR. 

 

 

Edited January 24, 2022 by Compound2632

[ChrisN]

23 minutes ago, colin smith said:

A question. 

 

Given its route mileage and character is the Cambrian Railway unusually ill-provided for by model manufacturers compared to companies like the SE&CR, the Midland, and the LSWR, among others. I can't think of a single rtr loco, carriage, or wagon in OO or O.

 

Taff Vale Railways, (Dragon Models in the past), has 00 and 0 gauge Cambrian locos and at least one wagon.  Gem do a tank but I am not sure who now sells the chassis as the company that made it went bust.  I think someone still does.  Cambrian Models do four and two plank wagons.  @Knuckles does some 3D prints of the Large Bogie, the Albion and the Queen Class.

 

There are brass kits from Richard Evans for the 4 wheel coaches, and Smallbrook Studios do a resin body of a 4 wheel composite.  LOndon Road Models do a 4 Wheel Composite of a LNWR Composite that can be used as an early Cambrian Composite.

 

There are transfers available from The Welsh Railway Circle.

 

Yes, these are all kits, but many of the Cambrian locos and most of the stock, hardly survived into GWR ownership, let alone into BR ownership so there is limited saleability for R-T-R models.

 

That said, I can name, with difficulty, the Pre-grouping Cambrian layouts on the fingers of one hand, but there may be more.  I think the three companies of the SR have many more followers than that.

 

Not that I am trying to build very slowly one of the layouts counted on my fingers, set in 1895.

Edited January 24, 2022 by ChrisN

[Compound2632]

8 minutes ago, ChrisN said:

Yes, these are all kits

 

A significant part of the appeal of pre-grouping modelling is that it is modelling. 

 

That said, I'm not averse to making use of an appropriate piece of RTR if it appears - but it's a luxury rather than a necessity.

[ChrisN]

2 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

A significant part of the appeal of pre-grouping modelling is that it is modelling. 

 

That said, I'm not averse to making use of an appropriate piece of RTR if it appears - but it's a luxury rather than a necessity.

 

This is true, but a helping hand would be nice but no one would make any money out of it.  A Sharp Stewart 2-4-0 or 0-6-0 might have a wider appeal, but then would probably need to be hacked about to get exactly what you wanted.

 

One thread suggested that the new generic 6 wheel 5 compartment third might pass as Cambrian.  The problem is that the only Hattons' one with oil tops is their GWR one, leaving anyone who does not want to cover an intricate paint job looking at Hornby.

[colin smith]

24 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

A significant part of the appeal of pre-grouping modelling is that it is modelling. 

 

That said, I'm not averse to making use of an appropriate piece of RTR if it appears - but it's a luxury rather than a necessity.

 

For you, no doubt. I was a professional architectural modeller for twelve years and a picture framer for several more years so I'm not averse to making things, but the engineering aspect of model railways doesn't interest me and I'd rather put the energy into the creative and imaginative aspects. Also, life is too short to acquire the skills needed to produce the relatively few items I would want to a standard I would accept.

 

The particular bit of Cambrian that interests me is the Aberdovey harbour branch which, in my reimagining, would also have been the terminus of the 2'3" gauge Talyllyn Railway* but it really can't be done without one or two Cambrian locos.

*The initial proposal for the Talyllyn was for a line from the slate quarries at Abergynolwyn to Aberdovey but once the standard gauge reached Towyn they decided to build an interchange with the Cambrian. Much of the slate went via the Cambrian to the harbour at Aberdovey.